Politics

• Republican Dave McCormick defeats incumbent Bob Casey in Pennsylvania Senate race (Politico)

• Trump makes history with Wiles as first appointment: “I’m told Mark Cuban needs help identifying the strong and intelligent women surrounding Pres. Trump. Well, here we are! I’ve been proud to lead this campaign.” So posted Susie Wiles, the second woman in American history to lead a successful presidential campaign (the first was Trump’s first campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway). Wiles also becomes the first woman ever to be named presidential chief of staff. The daughter of former NFL linebacker and longtime broadcaster Pat Summerall, Wiles is indeed both strong and intelligent, having worked for both Ron DeSantis and Rick Scott in Florida and as a scheduler for Ronald Reagan, in addition to having helped drive Donald Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns. “Susie is tough, smart, innovative, and is universally admired and respected,” said Trump. “It is a well-deserved honor to have Susie as the first-ever female Chief of Staff in United States history.” Wiles is an inspired pick, and we expect her to stick around longer than any of Trump’s four previous chiefs of staff. Furthermore, we can guarantee she won’t undermine the Trump administration from within, slow-walking presidential initiatives and spreading rotten lies about “suckers and losers” and such.

• Catholic vote turns to Trump: In the 2020 election, Catholic voters split nearly evenly between Donald Trump and Joe “Good Catholic” Biden, 50% to 49%, respectively. In this week’s election, Catholic voters swung toward Trump by nine points, and in battleground states like Pennsylvania, the Catholic vote went Trump’s way by 13 points (56% to 43% for Kamala Harris). In Wisconsin, Trump won the Catholic vote by 16 points, and in Michigan, he won Catholics by 20 points. CatholicVote, which endorsed Trump — the first time the organization has ever made a presidential endorsement — observed that Harris reinforced fears of anti-Catholic bigotry based on her record as both a senator and her comments on the campaign trail when she told a protester who shouted “Jesus is Lord” that he was “at the wrong rally.” CatholicVote President Brian Burch explained that Harris presented “a threat to our Catholic way of life.” Thus, the Catholic vote became a significant reason behind Trump’s historic election victory.

• Harris’s debt: If money could ensure election victories, then Kamala Harris would be celebrating right now. Her campaign spent a whopping $1.1 billion on ads and airtime. All that spending amounted to a sweeping electoral loss, and her campaign is now in the red to the tune of $20 million. Christopher Cadelago, Politico’s California bureau chief, reports that her campaign’s massive debt comes despite the fact that she “raised over $1 billion and had $118 million in the bank as of Oct. 16.” Down the stretch, Harris went on a spending spree in a desperate and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to appeal to male voters. This splurge included spending “six figures” to fly banners over NFL games. She also reportedly spent “$450,000 a day” to display ads on the Las Vegas Sphere. Now, Breitbart’s Matthew Boyle says Harris’s deputy campaign manager, Rob Flaherty, “is currently shopping around the Kamala fundraising email list to anyone who wants it to try to raise the money back. This includes other campaigns and outside groups.”

• Voters reject noncitizen voting: Even in California, the leftist notion that noncitizens should have the right to vote in U.S. elections is not popular with Americans. The issue of noncitizen voting was on the ballot in eight states — Missouri, Idaho, Oklahoma, Iowa, Wisconsin, Kentucky, North Carolina, and South Carolina. In every instance, voters rejected noncitizen voting soundly. The closest vote was in Kentucky, where 62% of voters rejected expanding voting rights to noncitizens. South Carolina voters shot down noncitizen enfranchisement by 86%. In the aforementioned California, residents in the city of Santa Ana voted down an initiative to allow noncitizens to vote in city elections. Public Interest Legal Foundation head J. Christian Adams observed, “The lesson I take is that foreigners voting in American elections is very unpopular among Americans. Citizenship means something to people. It’s a treasure to be protected.”

• Why DC’s 92% Dem majority is a problem: On Election Day, we in our humble shop were only half-joking when we suggested that the nation’s capital should be moved to Nebraska, where it belongs. Washington, DC, is the swampiest cesspool imaginable — a rigged town, a one-party statist city whose inhabitants are invariably overcome with Swamp Fever and whose criminal class can’t be held legally accountable due to the overwhelmingly Democrat composition of its jury pools. Single-digit Republican voting percentages for presidential elections date back to 1992. It isn’t often discussed, but this is no way to run a representative democracy. Hot Air’s David Strom writes, “Washington, D.C. looks like America as much as Trump looks like Hitler, which is to say not in the littlest bit. It is filled with arrogant, entitled, and authoritarian twits who hate the American people and who identify with Americans even more than they do.”

• FBI leadership “stunned” over Trump’s win: Leaders at the FBI are reportedly “stunned,” “shellshocked,” and walking around in a daze after the American people resoundingly reelected Donald Trump. According to one FBI source, leadership fears a coming housecleaning. “It’s a countdown for [FBI Director Christopher Wray] because [people here] don’t think he will stay to get fired after what Trump did to Comey,” the source said. “Trump will say, ‘Yeah, fire his ass. Don’t let him take the plane home.’” Another source noted that no one on the Seventh Floor is safe, predicting that anyone with a GS-14 level or higher will likely be looking for a new job in the private sector soon. Former FBI whistleblower George Hill said, “I have friends still at the Bureau telling me that no less than 50 Senior Executives (SES) are scrambling to retire ASAP.” It appears that the rats are fleeing the ship.

Security

• Trump Bump, Part II: Iran’s currency falls to all-time low: Next to FBI Director Chris Wray, it’s hard to imagine anyone as frightened about Donald Trump’s landslide election as Iran’s mullahs. On Wednesday, we happily reported on the stock market’s “Trump Bump,” wherein the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared 1,300 points and about 3%. Iran, however, experienced a bump in a different direction. The rogue regime’s leadership is apparently “terrified” of a Trump presidency. “After President-elect Trump’s victory,” Fox News reports, “Iran must now prepare to contend with the man it’s been trying to assassinate for years. Tehran had reportedly been interfering in the U.S. election on behalf of Vice President Kamala Harris. But with former Trump’s win, the regime will have to prepare for a U.S. leader who is, at the very least, a wild card.” Beginning on January 20, look for a decidedly tougher policy toward the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, courtesy of Donald Trump.

• Trump victory has Biden admin bracing for migrant surge at southern border (Fox News)

• Israel decries “pogrom” in Amsterdam as soccer fans come under attack by rioters (Times of Israel)

Culture

• Harvard teaches resilience by canceling classes for snowflakes: With apologies to Karl Marx, history repeats itself first as farce and second as even more farce. That’s what happened this week on college campuses nationwide, just as it did eight years ago when Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton. Fox News reports, “Students at Georgetown’s McCourt School of Public Policy were reportedly offered treats like ‘milk and cookies’ and ‘hot cocoa’ as well as ‘Lego’ toys and ‘Coloring and Mindfulness Exercises’ to get their minds off the election results.” The Harvard Crimson reports of similar measures, where numerous classes were canceled, attendance was made optional, or assignment deadlines were extended. Said one Harvard prof: “As we recover from the eventful election night and process the implications of Trump’s victory, please know that class will proceed as usual today, except that classroom quizzes will not be for credit. Feel free to take time off if needed.” What a great lesson this is for coping with the real-world adversity that will no doubt confront these pampered pupils in adulthood. When the going gets tough, the tough get milk and cookies.

• Anti-woman boneheadedness in New York: The American people’s tolerance for men competing in women’s sports has been wearing thin, and that’s a welcome development. Still, some backwater enclaves continue to devolve. Take deep-blue New York, for example, where, as James Lynch reports, “Voters passed a ballot measure on Tuesday that will enshrine the Left’s radical social agenda into the state constitution, ensuring biological males are allowed to compete against women in competitive sports and making it much more difficult for the state to enforce federal law against illegal immigrants, among other progressive initiatives.” Just prior to Tuesday’s election, women’s sports champion Riley Gaines tried to rally alpha males and other fair-minded New Yorkers to do the right thing: “If you care about the safeguarding of children. If you care about parental rights … make sure you’re voting ‘No’ this November on Proposition 1,” Gaines said in a video. This, sadly, was to no avail. Prop 1 passed easily in the state, perhaps because voters were duped by the language calling the proposal an “anti-discrimination” measure. No wonder New York went soundly for Harris-Walz.

• Trump’s win is inspiring leftist women to remain chaste until they find men who align with their values and commit to them (Not the Bee)

Misc.

• Tim Walz lost his home county to Trump (Not the Bee)

• Democrats spent $9 more per vote than Republicans — and Kamala still lost (Daily Wire)

• Here we go: Bob Woodward goes on CNN, suggests Putin may be blackmailing Trump (Not the Bee)

• Federal Reserve cuts interest rates by a quarter point (CNBC)

• Humor: 4D chess: Democrats admit Trump actually won in 2020 and is now unable to serve third term (Babylon Bee)

• Humor: Here is a complete list of the rights you just lost now that Trump has been elected (Babylon Bee)

For the Executive Summary archive, click here.