News from the world that Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, are making for us.

1. The Trump Administration announced yesterday that it has launched a fraud investigation of Fed governor Lisa Cook over her claiming two different homes as her primary residence on two different mortgage applications. On the very same day, ProPublica reported that three members of Trump’s cabinet also have claimed two different homes as their primary residence on their different mortgage applications. One of those cabinet members is Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer. We’ll come back to her.
2. A massive survey of 1700 companies reveals that workers in the coming year should expect higher premiums, higher deductibles and co-pays, and the loss of coverage for specific forms of healthcare. All told, it will be the highest jump in healthcare costs for workers since 2010. (You’ll recall, 2010 was the year the Republicans took back the House in a massive repudiation of the Obama administration, specifically over healthcare issues.) According to a recent poll, about one-third of Americans, or 91 million people, already say that they cannot afford medical care that they might need.
3. John Deere’s tractor sales are down and predicted to remain down for at least another year, resulting in layoffs of American workers. According to industry experts, tariffs have so reduced agricultural exports that farmers are curbing purchases of needed machinery and equipment.
4. The Jewish president of Northwestern University, whose grandmother lost four of her five sisters during the Holocaust, was forced out of his position today because of his alleged coddling of antisemites on campus. When he was called to testify before Congress in May 2024, Chavez-DeRemer, then representing Oregon in the House, said to him and his fellow co-panelists, “I want you to kneel down and touch the stone which paved the grounds of Auschwitz. I want you to peer over the countless shoes of murdered Jews.”
5. Yesterday, the Brooklyn College Administration summoned five tenure-stream faculty and one staff member to individual meetings, where each was grilled over their presence as witnesses at a pro-Palestine student protest on campus last spring and refusal to disperse when police told students to leave. At the meetings, the Administration had on hand photographs of each individual documenting their presence at the protest, only two of the photographs misidentified two of the faculty. The five faculty members are all women. As were the four adjunct faculty who were fired this past summer for their activism on behalf of Palestine. Of the ten people who are being investigated or have been fired, four are Jewish, four are women of color, and several are Muslim.
6. A combination of Democrats and Republicans continue their efforts to deny Zohran Mamdani the mayoralty and elect a coalition government headed up by Donald Trump. Yesterday, a real estate developer and Trump ally in New York met with Eric Adams in secret, leading Adams to consider taking a position elsewhere and dropping out of the race, allowing Andrew Cuomo to consolidate the opposition against Mamdani.