November 27 2024

1. US National Debt Tops $36 Trillion, Rising $2 Trillion in 2024 Alone
2. Adversarial States and Criminal Gangs Forge New Alliances
3. Election Aftermath: Republicans Jubilant, Democrats Fearful, Majority Accept Results
4. Fentanyl Epidemic: How Drug Crisis Reshaped The American Political Landscape
5. Trump Tariffs on Mexico Threaten Trade Over Drug Trafficking Stalemate
November 27, 1826: Jebediah Smith’s expedition reaches San Diego, becoming the first Americans to cross the southwestern part of the continent

See the new Ad Astra Podcast! Released on Apple and Spotify around 10a CST.

No issue tomorrow or Friday, Ad Astra shall return Monday December 2. Happy Thanksgiving!

1. US National Debt Tops $36 Trillion, Rising $2 Trillion in 2024 Alone

The gross national debt of the United States reached $36 trillion yesterday, just over three months since the previous milestone was reached at the end of July, according to the U.S. Treasury. As if lawmakers needed any other reasons to take America’s fiscal health seriously, the gross national debt of the United States has now officially reached $36 trillion. We started 2024 by crossing the $34 trillion threshold, added another trillion during the summer, and now we’re heading into the holidays with yet another trillion. Government borrowing is becoming as certain as the changing of the seasons these days.

Article Source: CRFB

2. Adversarial States and Criminal Gangs Forge New Alliances

A. Spies and criminals have long mingled in the shady realm of espionage and sabotage. But…a growing threat facing Western security agencies already stretched thin by war and terrorism [is] alliances between adversarial states and criminals, including drug gangs and lone wolves hired online. Dealing with crime was once the domain of law enforcement, while threats from foreign countries were the responsibility of intelligence agencies. Today the confluence of these foes is increasingly rendering such distinctions obsolete. Numerous incidents in recent years have awakened Western intelligence officials to the problem. Among their allegations: Russia recruits criminals on social media to commit acts of sabotage across Europe. China outsources overseas cyberattacks to private hackers. Iran hires teenage boys in Scandinavia to lob grenades at Israeli embassies. North Korea deals in drugs and cyber-fraud. Even the Indian government contracted a notorious gangster’s associates to kill a Sikh separatist in Canada.  

B. As the world teeters on the brink of the worst trade wars since the 1930s, with international capital flows plunging and cross-border trade and investment stagnating, there is one glaring exception to this unravelling of globalisation: International gangsters and organised criminals are on a roll. They are merrily pursuing opportunities around the world, moving goods across borders, establishing country-spanning supply chains and hiring talent internationally.

Article Source: Economist, WSJ

3. Election Aftermath: Republicans Jubilant, Democrats Fearful, Majority Accept Results

In the aftermath of the contentious 2024 U.S. presidential election, large majorities of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents describe their reaction to Donald Trump’s victory as optimistic (86%), relieved (85%), excited (76%) and proud (72%). In contrast, majorities of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents report feeling afraid (76%), angry (68%) and devastated (61%) about the election’s result. Democrats are more than twice as likely as Republicans to say they are surprised by the election outcome (59% vs. 27%, respectively). Very few Democrats express any positive emotions, and very few Republicans express any negative ones. Fifty percent of U.S. adults say they are optimistic about the election results, and between 40% and 46% are relieved, excited or proud. Fewer, 29% to 38% of Americans, report feeling afraid, angry or devastated. More than nine in 10 Americans say they will accept Trump as the legitimate president, including 99% of Republicans and Republican leaners and 84% of Democrats and Democratic leaners. Gallup last asked this question after Trump’s surprise 2016 victory, in which he won the Electoral College but not the popular vote. At that time, fewer Americans (84%) and Democrats (77%) said they would accept Trump than do so now. Trump’s current favorable rating is just one point shy of his record high since 2016, measured near the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S.

Article Source: Gallup

4. Fentanyl Epidemic: How Drug Crisis Reshaped The American Political Landscape

The fentanyl epidemic suggests that maybe things aren’t really so good here—that instability, violence, and suffering are just below the surface, even though unemployment is under four per cent. It isn’t just Republicans, or cable-news hosts, who have made this an emphasis. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a talented young moderate Democratic congresswoman from rural Washington State, has said that forty per cent of infants delivered in one of the largest hospitals in her district are born to at least one parent who is addicted to fentanyl. There were times, this summer, on the Presidential campaign trail when it seemed to me that 2024 was going to be a fentanyl election. The drug is generally understood to constitute a third wave of the opioid epidemic, the first being misuse of prescriptions like OxyContin and the second being heroin addiction. But fentanyl’s distinguishing feature for public health is its lethality—the rate of people killed from overdoses in the U.S. has more than doubled since 2008 and is nearly seven times what it was in the early eighties. In politics, this helps explain the intensity and durability of immigration as an issue for Trump, whose most recent pitch on the topic was less about jobs and more about drugs and violence. But fentanyl’s presence might also suggest why some of the public seems so alarmed by crime in places where homicide is not peaking and might even help explain why some politically detached young voters seem to have a bleaker view than the economic statistics would imply, since it is their friends—the young—who are dying. In September, as part of a profile of J. D. Vance, I spent some time in Ohio, where, among other things, I was interested in what had made the state move, in the course of two decades, from slightly Republican to convincingly red. My assumption had been that the key was economic anger, over the displacement of manufacturing jobs to China and the long-tail effects of nafta. But the Republican officials I met, when asked to explain Ohio’s turn toward right-wing populism, tended to emphasize the opioid epidemic rather than jobs. “For folks around here, it really is protecting the southern border from drugs,” Mark Munroe, the longtime chair of the Mahoning County G.O.P., told me. And Jane Timken, the former Republican state chair, emphasized that the partisan changes had been concentrated in “the pockets of Ohio that were hit so hard by the opioid epidemic.”

Article Source: New Yorker

5. Trump Tariffs on Mexico Threaten Trade Over Drug Trafficking Stalemate

President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to slap a 25% tariff on Mexico’s goods unless it stops fentanyl trafficking and illegal migration risks setting the trade partners on a collision course over an intractable challenge for both countries. Ahead of the new trade negotiations, Mexico’s greatest weakness has been its historic inability to confront the powerful drug gangs that control about a third of the country. Mexico has had success stopping immigration over the past year, but ending drug smuggling might be an impossible ask, in part because of strong demand in the U.S. Fentanyl is cheap to produce and easily smuggled. In some large areas of Mexico, organized crime groups dominate local and state officials. Different attempts to fight the gangs, sometimes with U.S. support, have led to violence at home without making any dents on the drug business.  

My take The North American Drug War

Editors note: forget Ukraine, forget the Middle East, the US southern border will be the new forever war

Article Source: WSJ

November 27, 1826: Jebediah Smith’s expedition reaches San Diego, becoming the first Americans to cross the southwestern part of the continent

Jedediah Strong Smith (January 6, 1799 – May 27, 1831) was an American clerk, transcontinental pioneer, frontiersman, hunter, trapper, author, cartographer, mountain man and explorer of the Rocky Mountains, the Western United States, and the Southwest during the early 19th century. After 75 years of obscurity following his death, Smith was rediscovered as the American whose explorations led to the use of the 20-mile (32 km)-wide South Pass as the dominant route across the Continental Divide for pioneers on the Oregon Trail.

Article Source: Wikipedia

Sources

1. https://www.crfb.org/press-releases/gross-national-debt-reaches-36-trillion

2. A https://www.wsj.com/world/americas-rivals-have-a-new-favorite-weapon-criminal-gangs-3c12a35f
B https://www.economist.com/international/2024/11/26/the-world-is-losing-the-fight-against-international-gangs

3. https://news.gallup.com/poll/653714/republicans-optimistic-democrats-afraid-election.aspx

4. https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/did-the-opioid-epidemic-fuel-donald-trumps-return-to-the-white-house

5. https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/mexico-trump-tariffs-cartels-7aeb7f83?mod=hp_lead_pos2

6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedediah_Smith