Authored by Conor Gallagher via NakedCapitalism.com,

If you were hoping this Christmas for more clarity on the rules of the “rules-based international order,” you’re in luck. Recent events in Romania provide plenty.  Judges there canceled the results of the recent election in Romania because a candidate who favored better ties with Russia won. The decision was based on bogus intel from the state intelligence services, and naturally Brussels and Washington backed the move. While the EU has for years used all sorts of pressure and threats to get member states to continue to support Project Ukraine, the overturning of the election in Romania marks a clear escalation of tactics and is likely a harbinger of what’s to come.

Let’s start with a timeline of events in Romania and then look at why the country is so important to NATO Black Sea plans, as well as the larger significance of the election cancellation. I’ll be focusing primarily on the involvement of actors outside Romania as I’m not all that familiar with the country’s political scene, but I think we have at least a few experts in the commentariat who can hopefully offer more domestic perspective.

Timeline

The weeks running up to the election: a campaign called #BalanceAndIntegrity begins on TikTok. Roughly 130 influencers follow a similar script to make videos describing qualities of a future unnamed president. Some of the influencers do, however, write in the comments of the video: “Călin Georgescu.”

Nov. 24: The presidential election. Georgescu — a relative unknown who runs on a Christian conservative, economic populist and non-interventionist policy towards Project Ukraine — surprisingly comes out on top. Disaffected working class voters back him strongly as he wins more than 2 million votes (23 percent) in the first round.  As no candidate achieved an absolute majority, a second round was to be held on Dec. 8.

Nov. 28: Romania’s Supreme Country Defense Council (CSAT) announces that “cyber attacks with the aim of influencing the correctness of the electoral process” took place and, separately, that “a candidate for the presidential elections benefited from a massive exposure due to the preferential treatment that the TikTok platform granted him by not marking him as a political candidate.”

Despite CSAT alleging that “some state and non-state actors, in particular the Russian Federation,” were behind cyber attacks, Romania’s Special Telecommunication Service (STS), a military agency which is tasked with securing the communication infrastructure for the electoral process, said that no cyberattack was spotted during the first round of the presidential elections.

Dec 5: The secret service of the Ministry of Interior submits a note to the Constitutional Court of Romania (CSAT) in which it says TikTok campaigns were presented to the public as a “campaign aimed at raising awareness about the importance of voting” but in reality were supportive for Georgescu.

Dec. 6: Just two days ahead of the second round vote Georgescu looked sure to win, the Constitutional Court of Romania annuls the results of the first round of the election, claiming that a Russian influence operation impacted the vote. A new election will supposedly happen in the Spring.

Dec. 16: The European Commission announces it is opening a formal proceeding against TikTok over its role in Romania’s election. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen takes the rare step of publicly commenting on an investigation saying the following:

“Following serious indications that foreign actors interfered in the Romanian presidential elections by using TikTok, we are now thoroughly investigating whether TikTok has violated the Digital Services Act [DSA] by failing to tackle such risks.”

Dec. 19: The 27 leaders of the European Union meet in Brussels. The summit is dominated by Ukraine, but Romanian President Klaus Iohannis who is staying on as president due to the annulled election is welcomed with open arms and offers his insight into the Russian menace:

Russian election meddling “nearly impossible” to prove, says Romanian president, who warns: “All countries are exposed to this risk”https://t.co/IK1HOtfVzH @valentinapop in Bucharest for @ft

— Henry Foy (@HenryJFoy) December 19, 2024

EU leaders thanked Iohannis for his warnings, and everyone went back to making bold proclamations about “supporting” Ukraine and the threats posed by Putin evidenced by his TikTok wizardry in Romania.

There was a problem, however. A bombshell Dec. 21 report from the Romanian investigative media outlet Snoop.ro revealed that the TikTok campaign allegedly orchestrated by the Russians that threw Romanian democracy out of whack was actually funded by the centrist National Liberal Party.  To sum up:

So let me get this straight, Romanian government, the pro-EU National Liberal Party financed the TikTok campaign to amplify their rival Georgescu, and when he started winning, then the same party claimed this was done by ‘Russia’ and the courts annulled the elections based on…

— Sopo Japaridze (@sopjap) December 22, 2024

The firm hired by the PNL, Kensington Communication, is now saying it will file a criminal complaint for judicial authorities to investigate the possible diversion of its campaign in favour of an “extremist” candidate. From a Kensington statement:

“Kensington Communication will file a criminal complaint so that the competent authorities can investigate the hijacking, bot attack and/or cloning of the campaign carried out by Kensington, at the behest of the PNL, carried out through the Fame Up Platform, in favor of an extremist candidate.”

Kensington is owned by Răzvan Săndulescu and Cătălin Dumitru who I’m not turning up much information on. Maybe readers more familiar with the Romanian political landscape can comment.

While the media spent weeks suggesting that the alleged influence operation in Romania was “eerily similar” to alleged Russian campaigns in Ukraine and Moldova, it turns out it’s much closer to the Clinton campaign’s pied piper strategy in 2016, which led to a shock loss and subsequent blaming of Russia for that defeat. And it continues even after being debunked:

If you didn’t hate the corporate client war media enough, Politico continues to push the narrative that Romania itself has already contradicted. pic.twitter.com/RsramEt3NM

— Olga Bazova (@OlgaBazova) December 23, 2024

One key difference, obviously, is that in Romania the election was formerly overturned while in the US Trump was greeted into office by Russiagate.

It’s worth remembering that even though the PNL funded the TikTok campaign and blamed it on Russia there’s still no evidence that it swung the election.

And there’s little attention paid to the economic fallout in Romania from Project Ukraine. While Romania wasn’t hit as hard as other European countries on energy due to its own supplies and ability to continue to import Russian gas via the Turkstream pipeline, the country is still forced to grapple with inflation, Black Sea fishing and tourism difficulties due to the conflict, and higher prices for other products that used to be imported from Russia such as steel products, iron, wood, cement, and paper. Meanwhile, the government in Romania has been pushing the military budget higher.

Romania’s Importance for NATO

The EU, which has already lost so much — it has destroyed its own economy and international standing, restricted freedoms, reordered all its priorities, and has willfully subjected the entire EU project to NATO — continues to double down, and it can all be traced back to Ukraine and Russia.

In this case Georgescu cannot be allowed to win because he takes the common sense approach that confrontation with Moscow does much more harm to Romanians than to Russia.

And Romania is simply too important to NATO and the effort to weaken Russia. Washington and Brussels are already dealing with wayward governments in Hungary and Slovakia, but Romania is a different animal.

Like Hungary and Slovakia it borders Ukraine, and while providing little military support of its own, it is the second most important hub, after Poland. German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall has a facility in Satu Mare to repair Western equipment donated to Ukraine.

It also has more geographic importance due to its location on the Black Sea and is a major part of the US strategy there.

The US National Security Council (NSC) is currently working to formalize a Black Sea security and development strategy across government agencies, but the current National Defense Authorization Act already outlines several pillars of that strategy that can effectively be boiled down to “keep Russia and China out and the US and NATO in.”

What that envisions is an arc of “rules-based order” states from the Caspian to the Adriatic that would allow the US to exercise control over the movement of energy and goods through the region, and to the South Caucasus, which is positioned at the intersection of burgeoning East-West and North-South transport corridors. It’s one major part of the US bid for global dominance, which seeks to control key maritime corridors and choke points.

In January, Türkiye, Bulgaria and Romania signed a memorandum of understanding in İstanbul establishing the Mine Countermeasures Naval Group in the Black Sea, which will oversee demining operations. There was hope from some in the West that this could be a way to sidestep Türkiye’s objections to NATO warships sailing into the Black Sea, but that hasn’t happened. Still, Romania faces pressure to build up its naval forces, although that also hasn’t been going well. From the Polish Institute for International Affairs:

Since 1989, Romania has only acquired two, old Type-22 frigates, bought from the UK 20 years ago without missile systems, and a domestically-built corvette in the 1990s. In 2023, Romania bought two minehunters decommissioned from the Royal Navy. Romania is strengthening its neglected navy on an ad hoc basis. It has asked for U.S. help to upgrade the Type-22 frigates and has ordered two H215M surface combatant helicopters for them from Airbus, to be built at the factory in Braşov. It announced the rearmament with NSM missiles of three missile corvettes and the intention to order two patrol vessels in a fast-track procedure from the Galaţi shipyard owned by the Dutch firm Damen. Romania also joined the PESCO programme for the construction of patrol corvettes, which, if successful, means the first vessels would be built after 2030. These measures are intended to fill the gap caused by the cancellation in 2023 of a €1.2 billion programme to build four corvettes  and the modernisation of the Type-22 frigates in a Romanian shipyard after the Ministry of Defence failed to agree with the French Naval Group selected in the tender and did not enter into negotiations with Damen, whose offer was second..

Romania is seeking to rebuild its submarine force. It is negotiating with the Naval Group—despite past bad experiences—to build two Scorpène-type submarines in France for around €2 billion. Their commissioning would be a challenge for the Romanian Navy, as it has not had such vessels in the line since 1996, and it would take up to 10 years to rebuild the technical facilities and to train crews.

Romania is also the site of the $2.7 billion expansion of Mihail Kogălniceanu airbase to make it the largest one in Europe. An interesting thought:

The US is preparing to park a giant fleet of military drones on Romania’s Black Sea coast upon completion of NATO’s largest military base in Europe there. Could that be related to large fleets of drones potentially being tested along US coastlines this month? pic.twitter.com/rvLZZdWPuz

— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) December 22, 2024

The US has expanded its military presence in Romania to brigade size, and is pushing for NATO forward defense in Romania to include a multinational combined arms formation focused on the Danube Delta.

On the energy front, Black Sea Oil & Gas, controlled by US private equity firm Carlyle Group LP, launched Romania’s first offshore development in three decades in 2022.

Last year, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs James O’Brien testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and discussed US energy cooperation with Romania. Some highlights:

O’Brien detailed Project Phoenix, a partnership between Romania and the United States designed to increase the region’s energy security. O’Brien said the Development Finance Corporation and Export-Import Bank of the United States signed letters of interest totaling four billion dollars “to deploy a small modular reactor project in Romania.” At the same time, littoral states are working to boost their own energy security, for example with offshore energy projects underway in Bulgarian, Romanian, and Turkish waters. Yet Russia is determined to keep its energy dominance, and with a penchant for malign influence operations, will likely attempt to scuttle the United States’ efforts to help the Black Sea’s littoral states. The United States and its regional allies must be prepared with an effective strategic communications response if Russia unleashes malign influence operations—including a strategic disinformation campaign—designed to stop Project Phoenix. Such campaigns may not be unprecedented, as some European officials suspect (although without clear proof) that Russia helped finance protests against Chevron projects in Lithuania and Romania in the 2010s.

EU Courts and the “Rule of Law”

The EU has long used lawfare, economic sabotage, and threats to bend national elections in its direction. And even if the outcome didn’t go the way Brussels wanted, it usually had enough “tools” as von der Leyen calls them to force the new government to fall in line.

NEW – EU Commission President on the upcoming elections in Italy, where a right-wing victory is expected:

“We will see. If things go in a ‘difficult direction’ – I have spoken about Hungary and Poland – we have tools.” pic.twitter.com/PxtvpXyCua

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) September 23, 2022

The actions in Romania, however, mark something altogether different. In just a few short years we’ve gone from tools to pressure elected representatives to tools to simply cancel election results because of TikTok videos, and the use of the courts to enforce Brussels’ idea of “democracy” is noteworthy.

The courts throughout EU states play a major role in Brussels exerting control over the bloc and the erosion of sovereignty. The European Commission has the power to cite “rule of law” deficiencies in member states, which can put in jeopardy EU cohesion and recovery funds earmarked for the state in violation. In theory, the warning is supposed to be about democratic standards, corruption, the independence of the judicial system and the safety of journalists. In reality, the threat to cut off some EU funds is used as a form of financial blackmail to keep bloc countries from straying from neoliberal orthodoxy and NATO priorities. We can see evidence of the politicization of “rule of law” in the cases of Hungary and Poland. The Commission used billions in withheld funds earlier this year to bribe Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán into relenting on money he was holding up for Project Ukraine.

Poland’s rule of law problems with Brussels magically disappeared once loyal EU/NATO soldier Donald Tusk was elected prime minister last year — despite nearly identical issues with the media, for example, as under his predecessor.

Ultimately Brussels wants courts that are in line with its idea of democracy and a “Juristocratic” Europe rather than an expression of the “national will.” Over the years Brussels has worked to ensure that more power has been transferred to the courts in EU member states so that we now have the following: 

Ran Hirschl, a Yale University graduate and professor of Law and Political science at the University of Toronto, affirms that by transferring an ‘unprecedented amount of power from representative institutions to judiciaries’, Western regimes have established ‘juristocratical’ regimes. These regimes, Hirschl continues, are dominated by a ‘coalition of legal innovators’ determining ‘the timing, extent, and nature of constitutional reforms’ and who, ‘while they profess support for democracy (…), attempt to insulate policymaking from the vicissitudes of democratic politics’.

The fact that these courts were used in such a blatant anti-democratic nature in Romania marks a major escalation from Brussels that previously relied on more discreet pressure campaigns.

Lawfare, economic sabotage, color revolutions, and threats. Across the EU — even in the bloc’s biggest countries like France, Italy, and Germany — efforts to subvert the voters’ will have been steadily increasing as economic problems mount and voter anger rises with governments that continue to dig deeper by clinging to the centrist dogma of neoliberalism and transatlanticism.

🧵From annulling elections to banning political parties, Europe is in a state of deep political malaise.

In this series, MintPress highlights six signs that democracy in Europe is beginning to crumble, citing examples from Romania, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. pic.twitter.com/swY22SvvA7

— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) December 19, 2024

Gaining ground across the EU are parties that question the wisdom of Project Ukraine and ongoing belligerence towards Russia, China and whoever else Washington says is on the enemy list.

And more draconian measures are needed to keep the wolves at bay.

Of course, Western politicians can’t admit failure, and the US wants the sanctions in place, so they’ll have to suck it up. But even more importantly, acknowledging the damage the sanctions are doing to Europe might mean the end of the proxy war, and we can’t have that. Yet?

— Kit Klarenberg 🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻 (@KitKlarenberg) December 11, 2024

It’s entirely possible that Romania is just the start of annulled elections as the neoliberal war champions who call themselves the “center” would no doubt love the power to cancel elections wherever they see fit.

Trial Run for Upcoming Elections in Europe?

Politico announces as much in a Dec. 17 piece. Under the subhead “Germany is up next” the author casually tosses in the following:

But the real nightmare scenario that European Parliament members voiced concerns about on Tuesday is for disinformation to go rogue when Germans head to the polls in February…Earlier in December, the Commission ordered TikTok to retain all data related to election risk management for four months, starting Nov. 24 and running through March — capturing what will happen in the run-up to the German election.

“Election risk management.” Is the EU really worried about the content on TikTok and its lack of political content labels or is it more of a useful scapegoat when democracy goes wrong in the eyes of the Brussels centrists?

It would be a shocker if the political upstarts in Germany — the Alternative for Germany (AfD) on the right and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) on the left — are able to pull off a result resembling Georgescu’s. Here’s a look at current polling in Germany:

That’s a daunting deficit to overcome, but February is a long ways off, and who knows if and by how much polls might be accidentally or deliberately undercounting AfD and BSW support. The AfD has the threat of a ban hanging over its head purportedly due to Nazi elements in its ranks, but one look at who the EU and US supports in Ukraine tells you that the real reason is because it wants peaceful ties with Russia because that’s in the interest of most Germans.

The Romania election is maybe the most egregious example yet of hypocrisy from the EU, which describes its conflict with Russia and “de-risking” from China as a battle between democracy and authoritarianism. It comes at the same time Brussels and Washington are struggling to orchestrate a color revolution in Georgia in order to overturn the recent election results there and force the country’s citizens to sacrifice in the Western plutocrats’ efforts to weaken Russia.

No doubt Georgia President and French spook Salome Zourabichvili who is saying she will not leave office when her term is up Dec. 29 will point to Romania as evidence of how democracy works in the EU — and should work in Georgia. That’s because Romania’s President Klaus Iohannis is staying in office for now due to the annulled election.

Meanwhile, Ursula celebrates Romanian democracy:

35 years ago, Romanians stood up for the right to choose their own destiny.

Many gave their lives so that their children could be free and live in democracy.

Today, Romania and Europe remember their sacrifice. pic.twitter.com/YB7Q0h6cG9

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) December 22, 2024

Whether she’s clueless or simply enjoys rubbing salt in fresh wounds matters little for Romanians and all Europeans who are having their rights steadily snatched away from them by Ursula and her benefactors.

Authored by Anders Corr via The Epoch Times,

Given the coming technological revolutions in warfare, it is important that the United States and our allies get out in front early, keep the lead, and degrade the adversary’s capabilities.

China’s “loyal wingman” fighter drones get a lot of attention these days. The wingman is a force multiplier, meant to fly in numbers alongside its crewed jet fighters or to lead a fleet of smaller drones. If deployed in a swarm, the wingmen and smaller drones could quickly overwhelm a fleet of manned fighter jets and air defenses. They are jet-powered but far less expensive than a regular fighter jet to fly, in part because they do not require a trained pilot. Some simulated dogfights between human pilots and artificial intelligence (AI) pilots who learn on the fly have resulted in AI wins as far back as 2020.

The latest iteration of the Chinese wingman drone—called the Feihong FH-97A—appears to be a vast improvement over the earlier versions unveiled in 2022 and 2023. The FH-97A is reportedly faster than its U.S. counterpart, the XQ-58A Valkyrie. The range of the FH-97A is about 620 miles. The current range is more than enough to reach anywhere in Taiwan, plus sea lanes on the eastern side of the island that would be critical for provisioning Taiwan in case of a war or naval blockade. From Chinese possessions, the FH-97A can range all of South Korea, the East China Sea, parts of Japan and the Philippines, and all of the South China Sea through island hopping on China’s airfields and artificial islands.

Moreover, the FH-97A could, in the future, be used to attack any part of the United States or Europe, given that it can catapult launch from aircraft carriers and because the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has plans to give it aerial refueling capabilities. The drones will add to the power of the PLA Air Force’s other recent innovations (and thefts from the United States), including stealth fighter jets and stealth bombers. The drones can be used for air- and land-attack missions, electronic warfare, reconnaissance, and bomber escort.

While the United States has long had better-trained fighter pilots and more advanced planes, giving it air superiority over China, those tables could be turning. Without the need for pilots but rather the utilization of AI programs that have demonstrated superiority, China’s age of high technology and mass industrial production could far outproduce the United States and shift air superiority decisively to the PLA.

This would have immediate and dire consequences for countries already under military pressure from Beijing, namely Taiwan, the Philippines, Japan, and India.

One promising defense against Chinese drones is laser-based weapons; for example, the HELIOS system deployed on a U.S. naval destroyer in 2022 and the DragonFire system tested by the United Kingdom in January.

The DragonFire laser can destroy targets with pinpoint accuracy in its line of sight with shots that would cut through the drone’s mechanics or explode its warheads. Each shot costs less than £10 ($12.61) to fire for 10 seconds, suggesting they could be used to cheaply slice into an enemy system with repeated passes. Compare that to the cost of a missile interceptor at a million dollars or more, which can be a waste of money against some of the cheapest Iranian military drones, for example, that cost at most $2,000 each. The British system is planned for deployment on the country’s naval ships by 2027, with the British army also considering a deployment. Scientists in China are also developing laser weapons, including for use from space.

Laser weapons could eventually negate the power of intercontinental ballistic missiles and hypersonic missiles and force surface and air combatants underwater, where lasers are ineffective.

Subsurface combatants could become relatively useless against land targets except perhaps those closest to the coast. In the case of Ukraine, for example, the widespread adoption of laser weapons could create a stalemate for years to come.

The United States is now the world’s strongest superpower, considered economically and militarily. Many have come before, and none lasted forever. One mistake that results in the loss of the technological lead to China or Russia, for example, could be the end of the United States as we know it. Now is our chance to avoid that disaster.

*  *  *

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Authored by Adam Sabes via Campus Reform,

41% of college-aged voters consider the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thomas as “acceptable,” according to a new poll…

Emerson Polling conducted the survey of 1,000 registered voters between Dec. 11-13, according to Axios.

A whopping 41% of voters aged 18 to 29 years old either consider the killing of Thomas as “acceptable” or “somewhat acceptable.”

Support for the killing drops significantly in older generations, as 23% of voters aged 30 to 39 support the killing and 13% of those aged 40 to 49.

Just 8% of voters aged 50 to 59 support the killing.

One professor at the University of Pennsylvania apologized after praising Luigi Mangione, who allegedly killed Thompson.

In several posts, University of Pennsylvania Professor Julia Alekseyeva called Mangione “[t]he icon we all need and deserve” and took pride in the fact that he graduated from the same institution.

In her apology, Alekseyeva wrote:

“Late last night I posted a TikTok, as well as several stories on my Instagram. These were completely insensitive and inappropriate, and I retract them wholly. I do not condone violence and I am genuinely regretful of any harm the posts have caused.”

Overall, 68% of voters surveyed consider the actions of Thompson’s killer unacceptable.

Authored by Susan Crabtree via RealClearPolitics,

Donald Trump’s popular vote victory has eroded some of the demographic gains Democrats have been working on for years, giving Republicans hope they can break the historic trend of the president’s party losing seats in the first midterm election after winning the White House.

Two years from now some 14 Democratic House members will be defending districts Trump won, compared to just three Republicans in districts carried by Vice President Kamala Harris.

It’s a significantly better outlook than the GOP faced after Trump’s 2016 victory, which he eked out on the basis of an Electoral College win in the key swing states. That year, two dozen Republicans were elected in districts Hillary Clinton won, roughly the same number of Democrat-occupied seats that Trump carried. In 2018, Democrats gained seats in the Clinton districts and even carved into some of the districts that Trump won, wresting back control of the majority until 2022, when Republicans re-took control.

One reason House majorities have grown slimmer in recent years is the increasingly sophisticated redistricting fights waged by both parties. Over the last decade, Democrats and Republicans have engaged in a protracted battle over the redrawing of congressional districts involving millions of dollars in litigation, thousands of hours of closed-door negotiations, and multiple Supreme Court showdowns.  

Partly because of their efforts, Democrats limited the House majority to five seats this year – 220 to Democrats’ 215. But because of Trump’s popular vote victory, winning back the majority in 2026 will require Democrats to carve a path through Trump territory.

“In places where the Democrats were really banking on this whole ‘demographics as destiny’ thing to carry them through  the decade, President Trump just detonated that,” said Adam Kincaid, president and executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust.

Overall, Trump carried nearly the same number of congressional districts across the nation – 231 – that he did in 2016 before the most recent redrawing of the congressional maps took place. In 2016, Kincaid says Trump won many of those districts by a plurality because third-party candidate Evan McMullen, a former CIA officer who ran as an independent, siphoned off votes in nearly two dozen districts. Now, Trump’s two-party vote share is 50.8% – meaning he should have carried only 221 congressional districts if the results were directly proportional to the percentage of the vote he won.

Kincaid argues the surplus of 10 House districts is a sign of his group’s redistricting success.

Democrats counter that Republicans’ razor-thin majority demonstrates their own success in taking their fights for more advantageous maps to the courts, especially across the South, where Republicans control many state legislatures and have spent decades drawing the maps in their favor.

In 2016, voters favored House Republicans over Democrats by only a 1.1% advantage, 49.1% to 48%, but Republicans held a far larger House majority, 241 to 194. This year, House Republicans won 50.5% of the vote to Democrats’ 47.9% but will hold only a five-seat majority next year.

“The popular vote and seat-count margin in Congress this past election and in 2022 is evidence that the [Democratic] redistricting strategy is working,” Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, told RealClearPolitics. “What you’re seeing is a map that actually reflects where the voters are, and that’s a far cry from where we were a decade ago.”

Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the liberal-leaning Brennan Center has long argued that GOP-gerrymandered maps have for years given Republicans such an unfair edge that Democrats typically need to win the national aggregate popular vote in congressional races by 2-3% to control the House.

He and others often point to 2012, when House Democrats won 1.4 million more votes than Republicans, but the GOP held a 33-seat majority.

That gap has narrowed greatly in the ensuing years.

“There’s a lot of really good work that happened by candidates in competitive districts, and there are some places where those competitive districts went to Republicans, but that’s the whole point,” Jenkins said. “These districts are now fair and responsive. If it remains that way through the decade, that’s a good thing.”

With a more even playing field, the Democrats’ chances of taking advantage of the famed “midterm curse” in 2026 will depend in large part on whether Trump’s popularity recedes over the next two years, a variable impossible to predict. While the national politics play out, Democrats and Republicans will continue focusing on what they can control – continuing their redistricting court battles as far as they can take them.

This cycle, NDRC efforts are likely to result in Democrats gaining two seats in Alabama and Louisiana as a result of lawsuits forcing the state to abide by the Voting Rights Act, to draw maps reflecting the percentage of black voters. Federal judges ordered lawmakers in those states to give African Americans more opportunities to elect House candidates representing their views.

Meanwhile, the legal battle over the congressional map in Georgia didn’t change the partisan breakdown of the state’s House delegation. In North Carolina, the Republican-controlled state legislature crafted congressional district lines that gave their party a huge advantage, flipping three seats previously held by Democrats. In New York, the Democratic majority in the state legislature, ridiculed for the comically extreme gerrymandered original congressional map, adjusted to a more modest position.

Here are some of the most recent redistricting disputes, outcomes, and pending developments.

Louisiana

This year, the Supreme Court is expected to weigh in on the lower court ruling forcing the Republican-controlled state legislature to approve a second black-majority district.

After the November election, the state now has two black members of its six-member delegation – Rep. Cleo Fields representing the newly drawn 6th District, and Rep. Troy Carter, who easily won reelection with 60% of the vote.

New York

Even though the predicted Republican “red wave” never materialized in 2022, Republicans managed to flip four House seats in New York that year, which helped them secure the majority. But a ruling by the state’s highest court threatened to jeopardize those gains by making it easier for Democrats to net as many as six Republican-held seats.

Democratic state lawmakers, however, decided not to overreach and to make only modest adjustments to the district lines. The New York legislature’s final map made modest changes, reducing the number of Republicans in freshman GOP Rep. Brandon William’s district while solidifying Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi’s Long Island seat, which the party flipped in a February special election to succeed Rep. George Santos, who was expelled from the chamber.

Both parties have said they will operate with the new map, a decision that cements New York as a top battleground for House control for years to come.

North Carolina

Republicans hold a supermajority in North Carolina’s state legislature and used that power to redraw districts lines in their favor. The state’s congressional map was redrawn three times before the 2022 midterm elections, resulting in a 7-7 partisan split of the House delegation.

Republicans who had gained more sway over the redistricting process in the 2022 midterm elections, including flipping the state supreme court, weren’t satisfied and redrew the map once again before 2024.

In the end, Republicans flipped three House seats to Republicans after the Democratic incumbents decided against running for reelection in the GOP-skewed new districts.

Democratic Rep. Roy Cooper lacks veto power over redistricting legislation, so Democratic Party lawyers filed lawsuits on behalf of black and Hispanic voters alleging the new map “intentionally discriminates” against minority voters.

The cases are pending before a three-judge panel.

Alabama

The U.S. Supreme Court has already weighed in on the latest Alabama-approved map, which created a second congressional district with a substantial black population. Before the court action, the state, which is 27% African American, had only one black-majority district out of seven.

In the high court’s 5-4 decision upholding the map, conservative justices John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh agreed with three liberal justices to uphold the lower-court ruling enforcing a key provision of the Voting Rights Act – making it illegal to draw maps aimed at diluting the influence of black voters.

The ruling, which could impact the similar pending case in Louisiana, resulted in the election of two black House members from Alabama serving together for the first time in history. Shomari Figures will represent the newly drawn 2nd Congressional District, which includes Mobile County and much of the so-called rural “Black Belt” (named for its rich soil, not its people). Figures, a Mobile native who worked in the Biden administration, won by nine percentage points last month. He will join longtime incumbent Rep. Terri Sewell of the state’s sprawling 7th Congressional District centered in her hometown of Selma. She willingly ceded some of the Black Belt to help make the delegation more diverse – and more Democratic.

The Supreme Court’s ruling blocked the state from implementing its map but was not a final resolution of the case. State officials last fall said they would operate under the high court’s ruling but planned to continue litigating the case. The case is set to go to trial in February.

Georgia

Georgia Republicans fought Democratic efforts to add an additional House seat they would likely control. The GOP-drawn map complied with an order issued by U.S. District Judge Steve Jones to establish an additional black majority district.

The map accommodated that requirement but preserved the Republicans’ 9-5 advantage in the state’s House delegation by shifting the Atlanta-area district held by Rep. Lucy McBath, a black Democrat, farther into Republican territory.

Jones late in 2023 ruled that the newly drawn map, which preserved the GOP’s 9-5 advantage, “fully complied” with his ruling.

The judge was abiding by Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which protects minority voters but doesn’t prevent Republicans from altering Democratic-held districts with white majorities or where no ethnic group is in the majority. Such was the case with McBath’s district, enabling the GOP-controlled legislature to dilute the district with more Republican voters. Despite the changes, McBath won the redrawn 6th District with 75% of the vote.

That’s not the end of the litigation. A separate federal case in Georgia argues the new map is unconstitutional. That case faces a stay pending an appeals court decision in the Voting Rights Act cases, which a three-judge panel is set to hear in late January.

Florida

In September 2023, a state judge ruled against a redrawn district in Northern Florida that Gov. Ron DeSantis had defended.

The case differs from Alabama’s Voting Rights Act lawsuit decided by the Supreme Court in that it is based on the Fair District provisions in the state constitution. The Republican-drawn map dismantled a seat held by Rep. Al Lawson, a black Democrat, that spanned several black communities across a northern swath of Florida.

Late last year, however, a state appeals court upheld the map DeSantis argued in favor of, determining that the plaintiffs “failed to present any evidence” that the prior version of the district contained a singular cohesive community that would have a right to protection under Florida law.

The state supreme court is expected to issue an opinion soon.

Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics’ national political correspondent.

Authored by Matt McGregor via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) on Dec. 22 for allegedly misleading sportgoers into believing they were watching a competition between players of one gender.

“The NCAA is intentionally and knowingly jeopardizing the safety and wellbeing of women by deceptively changing women’s competitions into co-ed competitions,” Paxton said in a statement on Sunday. “When people watch a women’s volleyball game, for example, they expect to see women playing against other women—not biological males pretending to be something they are not. Radical ‘gender theory’ has no place in college sports.”

Paxton argued in the lawsuit that the NCAA’s practice of allowing biological men who identify as women to play in women’s sports violates the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, which protects consumers from scams.

In response to The Epoch Times’ request for comment, an NCAA spokesperson said though the association doesn’t comment on pending litigation, it will “continue to promote Title IX, make unprecedented investments in women’s sports and ensure fair competition in all NCAA championships.”

“Most consumers know that a ‘woman’ means an adult human female,” Paxton said, a definition that has been commonly understood “throughout human history,” he noted.

By allowing men to compete in women’s college sports, the NCAA is robbing women of their earned positions and lying to consumers about the competitive nature of the sporting event, he said.

“When female athletes are forced to compete against men in women’s sports, they are deprived of titles, records, medals, scholarships, and opportunities to win; opportunities to participate in a fair and safe environment; and the ancillary benefits that sports participation provides,” he said in the lawsuit. “Consumers do not purchase goods and services associated with women’s sporting events to watch men steal medals and records from female programs.”

In March, former college swimmer Riley Gaines and other female college athletes filed a lawsuit against the NCAA for allowing men identifying as women to compete in women’s sports.

In October, 26 college regents in Georgia called on the NCAA to ban men identifying as transgender athletes from women’s college sports.

In its “Transgender Student-Athlete Participation Policy,” updated in May 2024, the NCAA said it aligned with the student-athlete Olympic Movement, which allows for “transgender student-athlete participation for each sport to be determined by the policy for the national governing body of that sport.”

If there’s no national governing body for the sport, NCAA policy guidelines default to the International Olympic Committee’s policy criteria and the 2010 NCAA policy, in addition to a requirement that such athletes “meet the sport standard for documented testosterone levels” before competing.

On Dec. 20, the Department of Education withdrew its 2023 proposed rule that would have prohibited schools from banning male athletes who identify as women from participating in women’s sports.

Citing the complexity of the public comments and legal battles, the department said it chose “not to regulate on this issue at this time.”

Aldgra Fredly and Caden Pearson contributed to this report.

This map, via Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao, visualizes the average credit card debt held by households in each U.S. state and ranks the states where residents pay off the debt the fastest and slowest.

Data is sourced from Bankrate (2024) who also used average monthly household income to calculate how long it takes to pay off balances.

ℹ️ Assumptions made for this analysis: 5% of monthly household income is used for card payments. Also, no new debt is accrued in this time period.

How Long it Takes to Pay off Credit Card Balances in Each State

Households in Alaska and Washington D.C. are carrying more than $7,000 in credit card debt, the highest across the country. However, with average annual household incomes of $109,000 and $149,000, residents in both states can pay off their debt in about 14–20 months.

In fact, glancing through the numbers below reveals a pattern.

*Assuming no new debt is accrued. **Federal district.

Richer state households—Connecticut, California, Washington—have higher costs of living and are carrying higher credit card balances. But they also manage to pay them off quickly with their larger incomes.

On the other hand, households in poorer states have below-average debt but it take closer to two years for them to pay it off.

This highlights the unequal debt burden across America. While the people living on the coasts have higher costs, they’re compensated by their incomes. However the South’s lower costs are not as evenly compensated.

And of course, compound interest is not a game played in favor of the borrower. Carrying the debt for longer periods of time accrues additional interest. Bankrate’s analysis points out that when making only minimum payments, it would take more than 17 years to pay it off the national average debt: $6,140.

In case that seems like a ludicrous amount of time, here’s a good reminder that most credit card interest compounds daily and not monthly.

Cross reference this map with Credit Card Delinquency Rates by State to see the effects of debt burden.

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

President-elect Donald Trump said Sunday he would aim to designate Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations and will launch an anti-drug advertising campaign inside the United States.

“I will immediately designate the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations,” Trump said in Arizona at a Turning Point conference, reiterating a campaign promise to make the declaration.

While in office in 2019, Trump had planned to make the designation and ultimately did not make the move after a request from then-Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who said he wanted cooperation with the U.S. government on dealing with drug cartels.

Trump’s election platform has stated when he returns to the White House, he will direct the Department of Defense to use “special forces, cyber warfare, and other covert and overt actions to inflict maximum damage on cartel leadership, infrastructure, and operations.”

Trump on Sunday also previewed a new advertising initiative designed to provide information about the effects of drug use.

“We’re going to advertise how bad drugs are for you,” Trump said in Arizona at a Turning Point conference, referring to the ad campaign. “They ruin your look, they ruin your face, they ruin your skin, they ruin your teeth.”

While he did not provide more details about the campaign, it appears to be the first time Trump has made reference to the plan.

In the 1970s and 1980s, anti-drug ad blitzes were launched across the United States, culminating in former first lady Nancy Reagan’s “just say no” campaign that was designed to prevent younger Americans from doing drugs. Public schools also featured the Drug Abuse Resistance Education, also known as D.A.R.E, that sought to provide information on illegal drugs and controlled substances, as well as prevent gang membership and violent behavior.

Over the past several years, hundreds of thousands of Americans have died of overdoses of the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl, which is easy to do due to its potency—just 2 milligrams can be fatal. The drug, which is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, is often trafficked across the U.S.–Mexico border by drug cartels based in Mexico.

Trump’s 2024 campaign has heavily leaned into messaging around stopping the fentanyl epidemic as well as illegal immigration into the United States. Since winning the election last month, the president-elect has said he will also start operations for mass deportations and would declare a nationwide emergency over the matter.

The incoming Trump administration’s border czar, Tom Homan, a former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and other Trump officials have said that they will prioritize targeting illegal immigrants who have committed crimes or are deemed a threat to U.S. national security for deportation.

They have also pledged to deport anyone residing in the country illegally, although Trump has indicated he would consider allowing illegal immigrants who have been in the United States since childhood to remain under certain conditions.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security estimates that 11 million illegal immigrants were living in the United States as of 2022, the latest statistics that are available. While campaigning in the 2024 contest, Trump talked about creating the “largest deportation effort in the history of our country” and called for using the National Guard and domestic police forces in the effort.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Authored by Ken Silva via Headline USA,

Millions of U.S. companies might be busy over the holidays forking over their data to the Treasury Department, thanks to a last-minute ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

The Fifth Circuit on Monday overturned a lower court’s injunction against a constitutionally dubious law that requires the country’s estimated 32.6 million active companies to submit their private ownership information to a central database ran by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN.

The ruling means that all companies formed prior to 2024 must file a report with Treasury by next Wednesday, Jan. 1. Companies formed this year are required to file within 90 days of their formation.

“Enforcement of the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) has been reinstated along with its impending January 1, 2025 filing deadline,” the financial firm Brown Advisory said in a Tuesday press release. “These reports provide basic legal information about the company itself, the entity’s owners, and the individuals that create or register the entity.”

Forbes predicated there’s still a long legal battle ahead.

“Additionally, a potential new administration may take steps to limit the CTA administratively, adding another layer of uncertainty for businesses,” Forbes reported.

The cost of compliance with the law is estimated to be some $22.7 billion the first year and $5.6 billion per year thereafter.

The U.S. government and liberal activists have argued for decades that a central beneficial ownership registry is required to curtail money laundering. Critics have pointed out how the central registry would pose privacy risks and impose another layer of regulation on private businesses. Moreover, criminals wouldn’t voluntarily submit their personal information for such a registry.

There are six plaintiffs suing over the law, including two that don’t do business outside their respective states. Another plaintiff was the Libertarian Party of Mississippi, which is a non-profit political entity, but would have still had to register under the Corporate Transparency Act.

Roughly 5 million new companies are formed in the U.S. each year.

The number of Americans turning to marijuana as a substitute for alcohol, cigarettes, and painkillers has surged in recent years, according to a new survey by Bloomberg Intelligence. 

Amir Islam of Bloomberg Intelligence highlighted a “sudden spike” in the substitution of marijuana for alcohol, with the latest survey showing 44% of respondents making the switch, up from 33% in 2022.

“This is in contrast to less marijuana substitution for cigarettes (30% vs. 39%) and pain killers (30% vs. 35%). The results may prompt additional interest in cannabis from alcoholic beverage producers,” Islam noted. 

He further noted that major consumer companies, including Altria, Constellation Brands, British American Tobacco, and Imperial Brands, are expanding into the cannabis industry through joint ventures or acquiring stakes in Canadian cannabis producers, positioning for eventual US expansion when federal laws ease. 

Looking ahead, President-elect Donald Trump may follow through on the Biden administration’s proposed removal of marijuana from the list of Schedule I controlled substances, reclassifying it as a Schedule III drug, a category that acknowledges the drug has lower misuse potential and is often used for medical benefits. 

David Culver, the senior vice president of public affairs of the US Cannabis Council lobbying group, told NPR News last month that he’s very optimistic that Trump will approach cannabis in a similar way to Biden. 

“We didn’t see a lot of activity from President Trump, if any at all, on cannabis reform” in his first term, Culver said, adding, “But I think this time is going to be different.”

In markets, some of the top marijuana ETFs, including AdvisorShares Pure US Cannabis ETF (MSOS), Amplify Alternative Harvest ETF (MJ), AdvisorShares Pure Cannabis ETF (YOLO), and Amplify US Alternative Harvest ETF (MJUS), have been battered since the marijuana stock bubble unraveled in early 2021. None of these ETFs have yet to bottom. 

In early September, Trump noted on Truth Social:

As I have previously stated, I believe it is time to end needless arrests and incarcerations of adults for small amounts of marijuana for personal use. We must also implement smart regulations, while providing access for adults, to safe, tested product. As a Floridian, I will be voting YES on Amendment 3 this November. As President, we will continue to focus on research to unlock the medical uses of marijuana to a Schedule 3 drug, and work with Congress to pass common sense laws, including safe banking for state authorized companies, and supporting states rights to pass marijuana laws, like in Florida, that work so well for their citizens.

Keep in mind that with individuals like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who will have prominent roles in the incoming administration and have been pro-legalization advocates, a significant shift in national policy may be just ahead in Trump’s second term.