National Populist Newsletter
December 8th-15th
United States
Immigration
In an interview with NBC News, President-elect Trump vowed to end automatic birthright citizenship with an executive order. While the Supreme Court has ruled that legal residents, including visa holders’ children, have a right to birthright citizenship, it has never made a concrete decision on the babies born to illegal aliens. Any executive order on the subject would likely reach the Supreme Court. (BBC News)
Trump also plans to scrap the 2011-era ICE policy that prevents agents from arresting illegal aliens at “sensitive sites,” including churches, hospitals, and schools, or at events like weddings and funerals. (NBC News)
Illinois issued more than 155,000 driver’s licenses to noncitizens in the last five months since the Democrat governor and state legislature voted to change the allow aliens, including those in the country illegally, to obtain a standardized state driver's license to obtain a standardized state driver’s license. According to Illinois Secretary of State spokesperson Max Walczyk, since the law was enacted, the office has issued 49,852 state IDs and 106,026 driver’s licenses for noncitizens. (WTTW)
The New York Times released a graphic detailing the immigration surge during President Biden’s tenure. More migrants came to the U.S. under Biden’s tenure than at any other time in American history, 60 percent of whom came illegally. A record-breaking 15.2 percent of all people living in the United States are immigrants. The C.B.O., Goldman Sachs, and Oxford Economics all estimate that net migration exceeded two million people from 2022 to 2023 and likely will again this year.
Education
The Green Bay Area Public School District denied reading resources to a child with dyslexia because a districtwide policy requires literacy educators to prioritize black, Hispanic, and Native American children. The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty sent a letter to the interim superintendent, stating that its attorneys are preparing to file a lawsuit if the school district does not scrap its racially discriminatory policy. (National Review)
Pennsylvania per-student spending increased to $21,985 in the 2022–23 school year, according to recently released data from the Pennsylvania Department of Education. This represents a 38 percent increase since the 2014–15 school year, ranking Pennsylvania seventh highest in the nation for per-student spending. (Commonwealth Foundation)
Economy
Over the next few days, the Biden Administration is expected to grant California and 11 other states permission to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035. President-elect Trump is expected to overturn that executive order quickly after he comes into office. (The New York Times)
Dollar store chains are seeing signs of belt-tightening from their core customers of low-income households earlier this year, and it continued into the last quarter. They say their customers wait to shop for products at the last minute for occasions such as Halloween and spend less toward the end of the month when their budgets are depleted. Meanwhile, cheap store brands are selling well: Dollar General said in its earnings call on Dec. 5 that its “value valley” aisle offering $1 items was its top-performing category in its last quarter. (Wall Street Journal)
The housing website Redfin reported that rents fell by 0.7 percent year over year in November to $1,595, the lowest level since March 2022. Rents were down 1.1% on a month-over-month basis. (Businesswire)
Major Stories
A Chinese national named Yinpiao Zhou, legally residing in the United States on a visa has been arrested on suspicion of flying a drone over Vandenberg Space Force Base and taking photos of the facility. Zhou returned to the U.S. after a visit to China in February 2024. The statement said the person found with Zhou in November had arrived from China several days earlier. (CBS News)
The United Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied TikTok's bid to delay the implementation of a law that will ban the popular short-form video app next month if its Chinese parent company does not sell its stake. TikTok hoped the Supreme Court would step in, but it seems unlikely before the Jan. 19 deadline. The app said that if the platform goes dark for a month, it will lose about a third of its expected users. (CBS News)
Texas lawmakers will begin the new year with a $20 billion surplus from the last session of the state legislature, which has yet to be spent. (ABC News)
Europe
United Kingdom:
The U.K. announced it will indefinitely ban the use of puberty blockers for young people under 18, except in clinical trials. Wes Streeting, the health secretary, announced the decision after receiving advice from medical experts who concluded that prescribing puberty blockers without further research into their impact posed an unacceptable safety risk. The temporary ban began in May, and a review in July found that the ban did not spark a rise in suicides among young people who denied receiving hormone blockers. (The New York Times)
Nigel Farage’s Reform Party won a special election in Blackbrook, St. Helens, located near North West Britain. Victor Floyd of the Reform Party defeated the heavy favorite Labour candidate Sally Yeoman. In 2026, the full council will be up for an election, and Reform plans on competing for more seats. (St Helens Star)
France:
After parliament’s collapse, President Macron nominated veteran centrist politician François Bayrou to Prime Minister. That means France will have a record-breaking four prime ministers in a year. Marine Le Pen said she will wait and see how Bayrou plans to offer a budget before declaring a vote of no confidence. “I’m not brandishing the threat of a no-confidence vote morning, noon, and evening,” Ms. Le Pen, who heads National Rally lawmakers in the lower house, told reporters. But, she warned, “I am not renouncing that tool.” France cannot hold new parliamentary elections for eight more months, so a path forward is difficult. Ultimately, what this comes down to is Emmanuel Macron and whether or not he can survive. (The New York Times)
Germany:
German-Lebanese brothers aged 15 and 20 and a 22-year-old German-Turk were arrested in Mannheim and Hochtaunus for plotting a “serious act of violence” with an assault rifle and knives. German media reports said they planned to attack Christmas markets in either Frankfurt or Mannheim. (The Guardian)
Jens Spahn, a senior member of the parliament from the center-right Christian Democrat Union (CDU), said that Germany could leave the European Convention on Human Rights if the EU fails to overhaul the asylum process. While the CDU has a long history of not making good on its promises regarding immigration, this is the boldest stance of a CDU member. It’s also the most muscular stance a senior German politician took against the EU. Germany is the largest economy in Europe, and the EU could not function without it. (The Daily Mail)
Italy:
Giorgia Meloni was rated as the most powerful leader in Europe. She said she’s been able to do business in Italy while helping move the whole continent to the right. “But over the past two years, Meloni consolidated her government as one of the most stable in postwar Italy. Although the country is saddled with a national debt equivalent to 137 percent of its gross domestic product, the economic forecast is not so dire as to scare off foreign investors attracted by the unusually tranquil political environment,” Politico wrote. Other nationalists on the list included Marine Le Pen at 14, Herbert Kickl at 17, and Viktor Orban at 23.
Italian police have arrested 12 neo-Nazis in a plot to assassinate Prime Minister Meloni to spark a civil war and overthrow the government. The ‘Werewolf Division,’ a group that operated on Telegram, sought to establish an authoritarian regime 'centered on the Aryan race’ and planned violent attacks on high-ranking officials to achieve this, according to police. (The Daily Mail)
Polls:
United States:
A Siena poll of New Yorkers found that 54 percent of residents believe the state government should assist the incoming Trump Administration in deporting illegal immigrants. Just 35 percent of voters disagree. This includes 38 percent of Democrats, 54 percent of independents, 61 percent of Catholics, 51 percent of black voters, 56 percent of white voters, and 51 percent of people in New York City.
Canada:
A poll conducted by Leger found that 48 percent of Canadians believe that mass deportation is necessary to stop illegal migration. The polling also found that 65 percent of Canadians say Canada accepts too many legal immigrants. Less than a year ago, that figure was just 50 percent in February. In March 2019, only 35 percent of Canadians held that view. (The National Post)
Deep Dive:
United States:
A review of counties by @alexanderao with large populations of non-college-educated white counties in different regions found that Trump gained about a 3-4 percent increase with this key demographic. If that shift among non-college-educated whites held across the country, it would be enough to flip the Rust Belt in his favor.
Pew Research conducted a report on teens’ social media usage. While most teens are online almost constantly, social media use has dropped since 2022. All apps except WhatsApp reported declining usage over the last two years.
The report found that overall, 73 percent of teens say they go on YouTube daily, making YouTube the most widely used and visited platform we asked about. This share includes 15 percent who describe their use as “almost constant.” About six in ten visit TikTok daily. This includes 16 percent who report being on it almost constantly. Black and Hispanic teens and girls are more likely to use the internet nearly all the time than white teens and boys. Only four percent of teens use the internet less than once daily.
Interesting Takes:
I wrote a lengthy article in The American Conservative Magazine about the 2024 election and how Donald Trump made the most incredible political comeback in history. Trump managed to forge a new coalition that gave Republicans a governing majority; the only question now is whether they can keep it.
He is far beyond cogent, in fact I think he’s better than he’s ever been,” MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said on March 6 about Joe Biden when questions of his mental fitness came up in the media. “I’m about to tell you the truth, and ‘f’ you if you can’t handle the truth. This version of Biden intellectually, analytically is the best Biden ever. Not a close second.”
About 10 weeks later, a bewildered-looking Biden stood before the entire country during the presidential debate and announced, “We finally beat Medicare.” These are probably the most consequential four words ever uttered during a presidential debate.
For millions of Americans, it was an indictment of the media as much as it was of Biden himself. The public knew what was so obvious for so long: There was something wrong with our president, and everyone from the vice president to the media had lied to the country about it. Everyone who had publicly questioned the White House narrative was called a conspiracy theorist or a right-wing stooge helping Trump. Those four words permanently sowed a level of distrust in the media’s narrative about this election that could never be undone.
Within weeks, the whole house of cards came crumbling down. Trump was beating Biden by 5 to 6 points in the national popular vote according to polls from CBS News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and CNN. This election was on course to be a rout. Private polling had Trump winning Virginia, Minnesota, New Mexico, Maine, New Hampshire, and even New Jersey. Knowing how close the election actually was against Harris, it’s not inconceivable that Trump would have won all those states and put places like New York and Illinois into play.
For the first time ever, a Democrat knew what it felt like to be a Republican as the entire media, donor class, and political establishment pressed Joe Biden with wall-to-wall negative coverage and pressure to drop out of the race.