Happy Tuesday! It’s officially the end of an era: Netflix’s original DVD rental operation will close up shop on Friday after 25 years. 

If you still have a little disc in a red sleeve collecting dust on top of the DVD player you haven’t used in a decade—you might as well just leave it there. 

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• More than 6,000 ethnic Armenians fled Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway region in Azerbaijan, to Armenia over the weekend after last week’s Russia-brokered ceasefire agreement moved the enclave more firmly under Azerbaijani control. Armenian government officials—historically backed by Moscow—warned of ethnic cleansing of the roughly 12,000 ethnic Armenians who lived in the formerly semi-autonomous region. Meanwhile, at least 200 people were injured near the unofficial capital of the region when a fuel depot exploded. The cause of that explosion is still unknown.  
• The Biden administration announced Monday the U.S. had established diplomatic relations with two Pacific island nations, the Cook Islands and Niue, as part of an effort to strengthen ties in the region as China looks to gain influence throughout the Pacific. The diplomatic recognition came just before President Joe Biden welcomed leaders from Pacific island countries to the White House for a two-day summit focused on climate change and U.S. infrastructure investment on the islands. 
• The Commerce Department on Monday added 28 companies from China, Russia, Pakistan, and other countries to their export blacklist, which bars U.S. companies from selling to those groups unless they’ve received a license from the U.S. government. Nine of the additions were allegedly part of a scheme to violate existing export controls and sell drone parts to a previously blacklisted company tied to the Russian security services. 
• California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will debate each other live on Fox News on November 30 in Georgia, the network announced Monday. The debate will be the culmination of more than a year of back-and-forth between the two governors—one running for the Republican presidential nomination, the other a prominent surrogate for President Joe Biden—from opposite sides of the country. 

Hard Cash, Gold Bars, and a Mercedes

Tucked away between a plastic ice bin and a red cardboard box featuring the Pillsbury dough boy—with his arms theatrically extended in his trademark “ta-da” pose, proudly presenting not one but two frozen pie crusts—were stacks of $100 bills, bound by rubber bands and wrapped in aluminum foil, that would become important evidence in the federal investigation of an elaborate bribery scheme concocted by former Louisiana Rep. William Jefferson. The banknotes, some $90,000 in cash of the cold, hard variety, were found in the freezer of Jefferson’s home in Washington by federal law enforcement officials who had watched him accept the money a day earlier as a bribe meant to facilitate business in Africa. Jefferson would be convicted in 2009 of taking more than $400,000 in bribes as part of his get-rich scheme.  

While there are no reports of hidden cash in the freezer, last week’s 39-page indictment of Sen. Bob Menendez, the senior Democratic senator from New Jersey, detailed a wide variety of bribes Menendez allegedly accepted to benefit friends and the government of Egypt. There was money funneled through a consulting company. Mortgage payments. More than $500,000 in cash—some of which was found stuffed in Menendez’s Congressional Hispanic Caucus jacket. A sinecure for his wife. A brand new Mercedes-Benz C300 convertible. More than $100,000 in gold bars. And two exercise machines, plus an air purifier. (All that’s missing is a DVD player.) 

Menendez has denied the allegations and refused to resign despite a growing number of Democrats calling for him to step down. The senator has said he will fight the charges—and his seat is up for election next fall.

Worth Your Time 

• America’s distinctive regional accents are disappearing, and that’s a sad thing for the country, Jack Butler writes in National Review. “Regional accents and dialects are some of the strongest aspects of the federalist culture that exists alongside, and in part because of, America’s federalist politics,” he argues. “Ours is—and ought to be—a vast and variegated country, not some homogenous blob. Its residents are part of the nation, obviously, but are also proud of their particularities. Our diffuse system of government suits that well. The increasing movement of power and wealth, not just to Washington, but also to certain regional hubs (Atlanta being an excellent example)—and away from areas of differentiation—has weakened this motley character. … So what can we do? Here, the concerned conservative finds himself in a familiar place: raging against trends that seem inevitable. The best recourse is to hold dearly to one’s upbringing, especially if living in or nearby one’s place of birth. But also, if one has settled elsewhere, be firmly rooted there. Respect its folkways, its mannerisms, and, of course, its dialect. Bring your own cultural priors to it, but humbly. Don’t be a cultural imperialist or centralizer, insisting that everyone speak and act as you do. Accept, embrace, and come to love the varieties of American experience. And stay strong, y’all—er, you guys.”
• What’s the No. 1 rule of friendship? “Presence,” David French writes for the New York Times. “I’ve never met a person who wants to lose friends. But I’ve met many, many people who suffer from loneliness and say that they just ‘lost touch.’ What happened? I ask. ‘Life happened,’ they say. During the early pandemic, when Zoom calls were a brand-new thing to many of us, I received an unusual invitation from a reader, who wrote that he and his old college friends all read me and would I mind joining one of their weekly Zooms? It sounded fun, so I said yes. When I joined I was struck by the obvious joy of their friendship—the inside jokes, the easy camaraderie. They were much younger than me, in their 30s, and before we signed off, they asked if I had any last thoughts. … After I got off the call, I kicked myself for not remembering a quote by C.S. Lewis: ‘Friendship is unnecessary,’ he wrote, ‘like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.’ … Compared with the competing demands of family and work, in any given moment friendship can feel unnecessary. But as the years roll on, and countless justifiable individual absences wear down our relationships, there will come a time when we will feel their loss. But it need not be that way, especially when our simplest and highest command is merely being there.”

Presented Without Comment

NBC News: Trump Breaks with McCarthy, Pushing Republicans to Shut Down the Government 

Also Presented Without Comment

The Hill: [Democratic Minnesota] Rep. [Dean] Phillips Says He Hasn’t Ruled out Biden Challenge in 2024 

Toeing the Company Line

• In the newsletters: The Dispatch Politics crew check in on Iowa evangelicals, Kevin unpacks (🔒) why comedians lie about their hard knocks and what it says about America, and Nick worries (🔒) Americans are numb to Trump’s ever-growing illiberalism at our own peril. 
• On the podcasts: The David and David era of Advisory Opinions closes with a wide-ranging First Amendment discussion. 
• On the site today: Chris writes that America, in search of a classless society, has become a society that has no class, and Anthony Ruggiero and Ivana Stradner explain how Russia is using propaganda to push back on the U.S. sending depleted uranium munitions to Ukraine.