January 07 2025

1. US Eight-Grade Math Test Scores Have Fallen for Last Decade
2. Premium Office Space Running Short Despite Overall Vacancies
3. Trump Jr. Visits Greenland Amid Purchase Talk
4. Driver in NOLA Terror Attack Made Trips to Egypt and Canada
5. Liberal Canadian PM Trudeau Resigns as Conservative Rival Surges
January 7, 1992: European Union formed

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1. US Eight-Grade Math Test Scores Have Fallen for Last Decade

Girls have lost ground in reading, math and science at a troubling rate, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of student test scores across the country. Since 2019, girls’ test scores have dropped sharply, often to the lowest point in decades. Boys’ scores have also fallen during that time, but the decline among girls has been more severe. Boys now consistently outperform girls in math, after being roughly even or slightly ahead in the years before 2020. Girls still tend to perform better in reading, but their scores have dropped closer to boys. The findings suggest that pandemic learning loss hit girls particularly hard in ways that haven’t been addressed by schools. The most recent test scores show that girls haven’t yet recovered. This comes following longstanding gains for girls and women in educational attainment.   

Editors note: the gender gap is concerning but the overall drop is much more alarming; also the pandemic isn’t the only culprit, scores started falling in 2015

Article Source: WSJ

2. Premium Office Space Running Short Despite Overall Vacancies

The troubled U.S. office industry is starting the new year with a problem it hasn’t contended with in years: Some business districts face a looming shortage of top-shelf workspace. Office vacancy overall remains near record levels in many cities, where a glut of unwanted and aging workspace is keeping a lid on rents and depressing office values. Decades of overbuilding made the U.S. office market vulnerable when the pandemic hit and remote work flourished.  More recently, big firms in technology, finance, transportation and entertainment are telling their employees they need to be in the office more often, in some cases five days a week.  These large tenants tend to want the same thing—buildings offering plenty of outdoor space, upscale fitness centers and restaurants, and locations near transport hubs. They are increasingly finding slim pickings, especially for hot spots such as New York City’s Park Avenue, Miami’s Brickell district and Century City in Los Angeles.  Yet even some tenants in cities hardest-hit by the glut of space, such as Washington, D.C., and Chicago, are shocked by the few choices on the top shelf.

Article Source: WSJ

3. Trump Jr. Visits Greenland Amid Purchase Talk

A. Donald Trump Jr. is set to pay a personal visit to Greenland on Tuesday as his father, President-elect Donald Trump, has again floated the suggestion that the United States should buy the Danish territory — an idea that has been roundly dismissed by Danish and Greenlandic officials in the years since Trump first brought it up. Trump Jr. said during his show Monday evening on the Rumble platform that he would be taking a “very long personal day trip” to Greenland with Charlie Kirk, the prominent pro-Trump activist. Trump Jr. said he is visiting “as a tourist” and would not meet with any government officials. 

B. Critics are sharpening their pens to excoriate President Trump for again proposing to purchase Greenland. The real-estate baron wants to buy not only the land but also Greenland’s political sovereignty. Many commentators derided the idea when Mr. Trump raised it during his first term. Then and now, the discussion could use a healthy dose of historical perspective. In 2019, Denmark, which holds sovereignty over Greenland, deemed the president’s idea ridiculous. In the U.S., critics lambasted his project as megalomaniacal or un-American. But the idea isn’t outlandish or unique to Mr. Trump. Politicians from all parties have negotiated such deals throughout U.S. history. Thomas Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase and then flirted with buying Cuba. As secretary of state, John Quincy Adams arranged debt relief for Spain in exchange for Florida. Secretary of State William Seward acquired Alaska. What Mr. Trump proposes is consistent with this American tradition—and with our current borders.

Article Source: WaPo, WSJ

4. Driver in NOLA Terror Attack Made Trips to Egypt and Canada

Months before the man behind the New Orleans terror attack plowed a truck into a New Year’s Day crowd, he rode through the area on a bicycle, recording videos of his target using eyeglasses with a built-in camera, investigators said on Sunday. He was back again a few weeks later, they said, probably to continue his plotting. Those details emerged as investigators revealed more about the driver and the extensive planning behind the attack, which killed 14 people, injured many others and left New Orleans starting 2025 grappling with a cascade of anguish and alarm. A far more sprawling search is looking back years to try to understand how a 42-year-old Army veteran with a lucrative job at an international accounting firm came to be radicalized, claiming alignment with the Islamic State terrorist group, better known as ISIS. Investigators found that the attacker, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, had made trips to Egypt and Canada in 2023. But they said on Sunday that they had yet to determine what role, if any, those travels might have played in his evolving beliefs or his planning for the New Orleans attack.

Article Source: NYT

5. Liberal Canadian PM Trudeau Resigns as Conservative Rival Surges

In early 2022, much of Canada’s political establishment lined up to blast the so-called Freedom Convoys—lines of truckers who blocked access to this country’s capital to protest Covid vaccine mandates. But not Pierre Poilievre. The opposition Conservative Party lawmaker embraced the truckers like no other mainstream Canadian politician. He used their objections to lockdowns, vaccines and mask mandates to create the narrative that an elitist and condescending prime minister, Justin Trudeau, had lost touch—a charge that stuck to the premier until he said Monday he would resign. Poilievre, 45, rode a growing tide of public discontent with Trudeau to win the Conservative Party leadership later in 2022 and is poised to become Canada’s next prime minister in an eventual election. Under Poilievre, the Conservative Party leads Trudeau’s Liberal Party by 29 percentage points in a recent poll.

Article Source: WSJ

January 7, 1992: European Union formed

After suffering through centuries of bloody conflict, the nations of Western Europe finally unite in the spirit of economic cooperation with the signing of the Maastricht Treaty of European Union. The treaty, signed by ministers of the European Community, called for greater economic integration, common foreign and security policies and cooperation between police and other authorities on crime, terrorism, and immigration issues.

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Sources

2. https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/test-scores-girls-boys-learning-loss-db020858?st=SVcpUu&reflink=article_copyURL_share

3. https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/commercial/real-estate-office-vacancies-shortages-1b640791?st=wVcRAc&reflink=article_copyURL_share

4. A https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/01/07/greenland-donald-trump-jr-visit-us-purchase/
B https://www.wsj.com/opinion/buying-greenland-isnt-a-new-idea-denmark-sovereignty-2a003c35?st=ND4t7v&reflink=article_copyURL_share

5. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/05/us/new-orleans-attack-travel.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

6. https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/the-populist-vying-to-lead-canada-and-end-a-decade-of-liberalism-df1cf3fc?st=foKnLa&reflink=article_copyURL_share