Good morning and welcome back to The Elective. We hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving and successfully avoided your family’s political landmines.

Before we jump into the news, a hearty congratulations goes out to a politician in Namibia who was just reelected for the fifth time. Shockingly, being named Adolf Hitler hasn’t slowed down his career. Must have made it into art school.

WORLD

🛑 Trump pulls green cards following D.C. shooting

Two members of the National Guard were killed near the White House. Trump kinda sorta almost went to war with Venezuela. The U.S. is yoinking green cards left and right. And, for a little icing on the cake, we’re launching airstrikes in Somalia. Welcome back to the news!

National Guard: A man from Afghanistan shot two members of the West Virginia National Guard last week, just two blocks from the White House. One died, and one is in critical condition. They were stationed in D.C. as part of Trump's move to use Guard troops to tackle big-city crime.

• The gunman, who was shot in the incident but survived, is a 29-year-old man from Afghanistan who once worked alongside U.S. forces there. He lived near Seattle with his wife and five kids.

• He was let into the United States under a Biden-era program in 2021, but was eventually granted asylum in early 2025 under the Trump administration.

Green cards: Trump vowed to pause immigration from the "Third World" and to boot anybody who's not a "net asset" to the United States. In the five days since that shooting, the administration has suspended all immigration applications from Afghanistan and has begun reviewing all Afghan refugees in the U.S. On top of that, following a fraud scandal among immigrants from Somalia, Trump ordered that green cards from Somalia and 18 other countries “of concern" be reexamined.

• Included on that list are Chad, Cuba, Haiti, Laos, Libya, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Venezuela, and Yemen.

• Back in June, Trump fully banned people from 12 of those countries from entering the U.S., and hit the other seven with partial bans.

• Per Trump’s new order, people already in the U.S. from those countries will have their green cards reviewed. That’s about 3.3 million people.

Somalia: Last week, troops from U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) — the U.S. military divides the world into 11 parts, each run by a cross-branch Command — launched more airstrikes against terrorists in Somalia. The mission was done "in coordination" with Somalia's government. In 2024, the U.S. struck Somalia 10 times. In 2025, we're now north of 100.

Venezuela: Trump on Saturday ordered the airspace above Venezuela closed "in its entirety." Venezuela is a sovereign country, so the U.S. can't really close its airspace without using military force. But airlines are largely avoiding the place now just to be safe. Venezuela, for its part, called the move a "colonialist threat."

• Trump has spent months trying to force Venezuela’s drug-running dictator Nicolás Maduro out of office.

• U.S. officials recently offered to evacuate Maduro and his family if he agreed to resign on the spot. Maduro refused, and Trump escalated.

He told the U.S. military last week to prep for potential land operations in Venezuela, purportedly to attack Venezuela’s drug infrastructure. When asked if the airspace closure was related, the president said, “Don’t read anything into it.”

GOVERNMENT

💊 The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), run by the one and only Dr. Oz, published a notice in the Federal Register (basically, the public rulebook federal agencies use) that’s drawing attention from immigration activists. CMS is going to start sharing Medicaid data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), including immigration status and location. Immigrants in the U.S. illegally aren't eligible for Medicaid, but they do receive taxpayer-funded emergency care in hospitals. Additionally, some states provide state-funded (not federal) healthcare to residents regardless of immigration status. But they don’t hand over that data to CMS.

💰️ The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is no more. Elon Musk's cost-cutting office made waves earlier in the year after dropping an army of little twentysomething geniuses into federal agencies as part of a bid to find trillions of dollars in cost savings. That turned out to be just a wee bit optimistic. DOGE claims to have instead saved the government $214 billion, though many dispute even that. According to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) — that's the federal HR department — DOGE itself is dead, but its "principles ... remain alive and well" throughout the government. Those principles include efficiency (duh), deregulation, and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.

🌎️ President Trump said he'll grant a presidential pardon to Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras. This guy was president from 2014 to 2022. In 2024, he was convicted in U.S. federal court in New York City of accepting millions of dollars in bribes to basically let the drug cartels run hog wild. Legal issues aside, Trump is a big fan of this guy’s political party back in Honduras and openly backed its candidate in yesterday’s presidential election. The results aren’t in yet, but if that guy wins, Trump’s gambit will have worked, and he’ll have a strong ally in a key Central American country.

WAR

🕊️ U.S. keeps up work on peace deal for Ukraine

Anyone else think being a high-level government official sounds awful? Instead of acting like real Americans and buying more stuff to fill up that empty corner of the garage, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other diplomats spent the weekend with Ukrainian officials negotiating a potential deal to end the Russia-Ukraine war. Rubio said they made some progress, but there's "more work to be done."

• Also in that meeting? Trump's son-in-law and skinny suit aficionado, Jared Kushner.

Last week: Everyone freaked out over a 28-point U.S. peace plan that was allegedly too pro-Russia. Ukraine, however, accepted parts of the plan and gave notes on others.

This week: U.S. diplomat Steve Witkoff is in Moscow for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Witkoff took some heat last week after a recording appeared to show him advising a Russian official on how to sell Russia's plan to the U.S. Trump defended his man, saying Witkoff was just doing "what a dealmaker does."

The big questions:

1. How much of Ukraine's territory does Russia get? Probably most of what it currently holds, with maybe some small changes.

2. Can Ukraine join NATO? Probably not, but it needs security guarantees in case Russia Russias again.

3. Can Ukraine join the European Union? Almost certainly yes, but it'll probably also want U.S. help juicing its economy after years of war.

TL;DR: The U.S. met with Ukraine. Made some progress. Meeting with Russia now. Hoping to make more progress. The end.

POLITICS

🏛️ Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene announces resignation

Well, she served in Congress five years longer than any of us probably ever will. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) announced that she’ll resign her post in January, halfway through her third two-year term (She was elected in 2020, 2022, and 2024).

The firebrand Georgia Republican was a strong Trump ally until about five minutes ago. Their fight began during the shutdown when she came out in favor of renewing soon-to-expire Obamacare subsidies. Yadda, yadda, yadda, Trump called her a “traitor,” and she called it a career.

• Someone on social media had the gall to tell her she ought to serve out the term to which she was elected.

• MTG compared that to a man telling a woman to "shut up get back in the kitchen and fix me something to eat."

Why quit? What’s the plan? Nothing. Really. She seems to have just gotten sick of politics. She has no immediate plans to start a podcast, hire a ghostwriter write a book, or ink a cable news deal. Her reporter boyfriend, of course, thinks she'll be "much more powerful actually outside of an elected position because she can help message the party very much like President Trump did when he was out of office." We’ll let that comment speak for itself.

Pension: Her last day in office will be January 5, which juuuust so happens to be two days after her congressional pension vests, which happens after five years of service. At this point, these pensions are basically identical to the ones given to regular federal employees and require contributions from each paycheck.

• Once she turns 62, MTG will be eligible for an annual pension of … drumroll … about $8,700. That’s not bad, but it’s not life-changing cash or anything. Especially for a woman who’s already rich.

Special election: In most states (the Constitution lets them decide), the governor appoints a new senator if the old one quits early or leaves for … another reason. But House seats are different. Vacant House seats can only be filled by special elections. That is, a new election is held.

Meanwhile, Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL) was indicted late last month for allegedly stealing $5 million from the Federal Emergency Management Authority (FEMA) in 2021, the year before she was elected.

TRIVIA

The prime minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese, got married on Saturday. He's the first-ever Australian PM to tie the knot while in office. A sitting American president getting married would be wild, but it has actually happened before — three times! Name one of the three U.S. presidents who got married during his term.

Hint: All three held the office before WW2. Two were Democrats.

BRIEFS

● Georgia's criminal election interference case against President Trump and his allies is no more. The new Fulton County prosecutor dropped the case, arguing "the citizens of Georgia are not served" by pursuing it “in full for another five to ten years.”

● Federal prosecutors charged dozens of people with fraud in Minnesota. They allege many in the state's large Somali community took part in a massive social services scam that robbed Minnesota's government of more than $1 billion.

● A federal judge tossed the criminal case against former FBI Director James Comey on the grounds that the federal prosecutor behind the indictment wasn’t legally appointed to that office. Trump and the Department of Justice say the case is far from over.

● If a new reform effort by the British government succeeds, jury trials will be a thing of the past for all but the most serious of criminal cases. Cases would instead be decided solely by a judge. Proponents say a growing case backlog is behind the idea.

● The Canadian government is working hard to curtail secessionist urges in Canadian Texas. Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a massive new pipeline deal with the energy-rich province of Alberta. Opponents of the deal say they’ll keep fighting.

QUOTE

ANSWER

Today’s three acceptable answers:

President John Tyler (1841-1845) lost his wife, Letitia, about 18 months after taking office. He waited another 18 months before getting remarried, this time to Julia. Julia was only 24 and is somehow not our youngest-ever first lady. Until recently, Tyler was a common trivia question because, though he was born in 1790, he still had a living grandson. RIP.

President Grover Cleveland (1885-1889, 1893-1897) also lost his trivia juice this year, now that he’s no longer the only president ever elected to two nonconsecutive terms. He was a bachelor when elected and finally got married about a year into his first term. His wife, Frances, knocked Julia Tyler out of first place in the icky race for youngest first lady. Frances was just 21 when she married the 49-year-old Grover.

President Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921) lost his wife, Ellen, a year after taking office. The next year, he found new love and married Edith. Edith Wilson is often referred to as our first female president because she preeeetty much ran the show on ole Woody’s behalf for the last 17 months of his presidency after he suffered a severe stroke.