Good morning,
Again, just to remind: TNR has moved the daily newsletter, which you used to get in the late afternoon, to mid-morning, with a short introduction, which is brought to you today by TNR staff writer Matt Ford. Letâs get started.
The U.S. Senate voted on Thursday night not to crash the global financial system (for now). Senate Democrats broke a filibuster that had blocked a clean suspension of the debt ceiling until December 3 with 61 votes. Among those in favor were 11 Senate Republicans who supported the measure as part of a compromise worked out between Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and his GOP counterpart, Mitch McConnell. The House is expected to pass the bill early next week, staving off what would be the first-ever default on the national debt and a partial collapse of the American economy, until at least the holidays.
Franceâs Tucker Carlson is surging in the presidential polls, Axios notes. Ãric Zemmour, a controversial TV host and journalist, has leapt ahead of fellow far-right figure Marine Le Pen in the race to challenge French President Emmanuel Macron next April. Zemmour rose to national fame for his polemical views on immigration and national identity, including his espousal of the âgreat replacementâ conspiracy theory. Despite his previous conviction for inciting racial hatred, Zemmour is currently poised to face off against Macron in the Fifth Republicâs two-round presidential election. A victory in the first round would be a grim sign about the fortunes of the French far rightâand for European unity.
Elon Musk is going to the Lone Star State. The Tesla CEO announced that his company will relocate its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas, in an implicit rebuke of Californiaâs governance. Though he insisted that the electric car manufacturer would maintain a sizable presence in the Golden State, the move was taken as a sign of deeper alienation from the West Coast home of Americaâs largest tech companies. Musk first threatened to leave the state when county officials closed Tesla facilities during last yearâs Covid-19 lockdowns.
Op-ed of the day: The New York Timesâs Jesse Wegman took a look at Floridaâs felony disenfranchisement law and the extraordinary barriers it places on some Floridiansâ right to vote. The Sunshine State voted in a 2018 referendum along bipartisan lines to scrap what was one of the toughest schemes in the country, but Republican lawmakers passed a law that only allowed those affected to cast a ballot if they paid off all fines and fees first. The result, Wegman writes, is a âKafkaesqueâ bureaucratic nightmare that keeps hundreds of thousands of Floridians from enfranchisement. âThere is no central database with those numbers, and counties vary in their record-keeping diligence,â he notes. âSome convictions are so old that there are no records to be located.â
At NewRepublic.com today, we have Grace Segers on Cory Booker and why heâs (somehow) still optimistic about the Senate, Timothy Noah on Democratsâ strange thinking about the optics of the debt ceiling fight, Maggie Doherty on the morality and moralizing of Jonathan Franzenâs latest novel, and Jake Bittle on the Danish environmentalist who thinks climate change is real but thinks the cost of fighting it is too high. (Yes, you read that correctly.)
Have a happy Friday, Matt Ford, TNR staff writer
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