Good morning! People who haven’t touched grass in a while often talk about us living in dark days. For the 5,000 residents of Barrow Utqiagvik, Alaska, that’s literally true. The sun set on Alaska’s northern coastline on Tuesday for the final time this year. It won’t rise again until January 22, 2026. So if you ever complain about the weather … it could be worse.

Programming note: Next week is Thanksgiving, so we’re taking some time off to wash our stretchy pants in preparation. The Elective will return on Monday, December 1.

DIPLOMACY

🍷 Trump hosts Saudi prince, fans flames of bromance

President Trump cultivated his bromance with Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), hosting a lavish White House dinner in the Saudi Arabian crown prince’s honor.

Technically speaking, this was not designated as an official state dinner. It was just, y’know, a dinner. With music, tuxedos, diplomats, royals, and a who's who of the wealthy and powerful.

Who attended? On top of all the American and Saudi officials…

• Elon Musk, who’s back in Trump’s good graces

• David Ellison, CEO of Paramount

• Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia

• Tim Apple Cook, CEO of Apple

• Cristianado Ronaldo, who currently plays for a Saudi Arabian club

• Plus the CEOs of IBM, Coinbase, Dell, Salesforce, Citigroup, Blackstone, and more.

The details of an event like this are handled by an ambassador called the chief of protocol. Aka the diplomatic protocol and “how to not offend foreign sensibilities” person. Back in the 70s, that was ex-actress and bad drink namesake Shirley Temple.

Isn’t this guy a baddie? The CIA concluded that MBS ordered the 2018 assassination of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey. That was particularly newsworthy because Khashoggi had recently moved to the U.S. and started working at the Washington Post.

• A journalist brought up Khashoggi’s killing this week, and Trump defended his guest. MBS, for the record, maintains his innocence.

• MBS isn’t the king of Saudi Arabia. That’s his dad. But daddy’s like a thousand, and the crown prince wields de facto absolute power.

Like most of the Middle East, Saudi Arabia isn’t exactly a bastion of human rights. Trump believes the country has enough geopolitical importance that overlooking some of its sketchier activities is worth it.

• Following the Tuesday dinner, the crown prince spent Wednesday meeting with bipartisan members of Congress at the Capitol.

So what comes of all this? A few things.

• Ally: President Trump designated Saudi Arabia a major non-NATO ally. That's not a mutual defense pact, but it is a critical club of countries that are key strategic partners of the United States.

• Investment: MBS agreed to up his country's promised investment in the U.S. from $600 billion to a cool $1 trillion, but gave no timeline.

• Jets: Trump said he would sell Saudi Arabia the F-35 stealth fighters they desire, but that hasn’t been nailed down yet.

• Nuclear energy: They're still working on a deal to share America’s nuclear energy tech.

The biggest real takeaway here? The crown prince joked about internet degenerates gambling on whether he would wear a black suit or more traditional Saudi gear: "Sorry, you lose!"

GOVERNMENT

🍎 The Trump administration is hard at work on a dream Republicans have clung to since the federal Department of Education was created in 1979: tearing it down (they say federal involvement has only made education worse). Getting that through Congress is all but impossible. So the administration is using a workaround and outsourcing much of the department’s work to other agencies. In their plan, the Interior Department will take over the Office of Indian Education, the Labor Department will take the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, the State Department will take foreign language programs, and more. These offices aren’t technically going anywhere. Legally, they have to stay put. If the plan is fully implemented, only shell offices and a minimal staff will remain at the actual Department of Education.

🚢 Remember early last year when that big container ship lost power and slow-mo slammed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore? Well, investigators at the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) think they know why. When the ship was built, a single label on a single wire was put in the wrong place. That's it. A decade later, that label prevented the wire from getting a good connection, the ship lost power, a huge bridge was destroyed, and six people died. Maryland officials say the new bridge won't open until 2030 and could cost $5.2 billion — up just a tad from their initial guess of $1.7 billion.

📉 The government shutdown is long over, but its aftereffects remain. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) will release its jobs report for September today, after a very slight 48-day delay. Economists expect a gain of 50,000 jobs. As for the November report, well, that one's not coming. Ever. BLS creates its reports using survey data, and that’s info that "is not able to be retroactively collected." As for the trade deficit, the Department of Commerce dropped some late numbers of its own on Wednesday (BLS is part of Labor). Imports sank by 5% from July to August as the effects of Trump’s tariffs set in.

CRIME

📃 Congress votes to release Epstein files

Alright, so if you haven’t been paying attention, Congress voted this week to force the government to release all of its files on the Epstein investigation. After months of fighting their release, Trump reversed course at the last minute and began supporting the move. He signed the bill last night.

• The Senate vote was unanimous, and only one member of the House voted against releasing the files.

• That guy's concerns? That the files could harm "thousands of innocent people," including witnesses and family members.

Couldn't Trump have done this on his own? Yes.

So what’s next? The Department of Justice (DOJ) has 30 days to release anything it has on Epstein, his creepy island, his 2019 death in prison, and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell. That includes investigation materials and internal communications. In total, we’re talking about 100,000 pages.

• At the discretion of Attorney General Pam Bondi (head of the DOJ), redactions to protect victims and ongoing prosecutions are allowed.

• That leads some people to worry Bondi will pull a CIA and over-redact, leaving the documents effectively useless.

Nothing useful is guaranteed to come from this, and if anything does, it could take a while.

One immediate casualty, though, is Larry Summers, a former Treasury Secretary and onetime Harvard President. Emails Congress released last week revealed Summers had, get this, sought Jeffrey Epstein’s advice on how to convince a young woman to date him.

Related: A veteran FBI employee is suing the bureau after being fired for displaying a pride flag at his workstation.

TRIVIA

First lady Melania Trump and second lady Usha Vance swung by a military base in North Carolina on Wednesday to visit troops and their families. Since they rarely make major news, we rarely mention the world’s two most powerful wives. We have one question on each today:

1. Where was Melania Trump born?

2. Where was Usha Vance born?

Hint: One was born in the U.S., one in Eastern Europe.

POLITICS

🗺️ Court overturns new Texas map in blow to Republicans

Advantage, Democrats. A federal court just ruled that the new boundaries Texas drew for its congressional districts — meant to net Republicans five House seats next year — are unconstitutional.

Recap: Texas Republicans launched an all-out partisan war when they completed a rare mid-decade redraw of their state’s congressional districts. The process, gerrymandering, is so old that it’s named after a guy who was born in 1744. But it’s usually only done every 10 years, when they’re already redrawing the maps to balance for population shifts post-census.

The case: Why’d Texas Republicans lose? Because they took race into account when drawing the new maps, and even bragged about creating four new Hispanic-majority seats. But that’s where they dun goofed. Racial gerrymandering is illegal.

• Partisan gerrymandering is fine, though. It’s legal under both state and federal law.

• Had they boasted about doing this only for partisan advantage and never mentioned race, they'd probably be fine.

• Confusing note for nerds: Laws on this are wonky. Sometimes drawing specific majority non-white districts is actually required. The devil is in the details.

Update: The Great Gerrymandering War of 2025™ is looking like a lot less of a Republican sweep than it was a few weeks ago. Here’s a look at where things will land in next year’s midterm elections if the gerrymandered maps work as they’re meant to:

• Texas: R+5

• Missouri: R+1

• North Carolina: R+1

• Ohio: R+2

• California: D+5

Democrats also just won a case in Utah that’ll see them pick up a seat in Salt Lake City. A judge there overturned the original, Republican-drawn, post-2020 map as a violation of state law. For those keeping score at home, that’s a net pickup for Democrats of two seats.

Future: Both parties are slinging court cases left and right on every one of these maps. And Texas has appealed this case to the Supreme Court. Justices are currently working on a huge case about district-drawing that could upend the whole thing nationwide. So there’s a chance they put this Texas decision on ice while they work that one out. If not? Advantage, Democrats.

Elsewhere in American politics:

1. In a strategy move, President Trump picked a White House budget aide to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). A new nominee enables current interim director Russ Vought to stay in that role past December.

2. President Trump's approval rating fell to 38% in a new Reuters poll, his lowest showing this year. An average of all polls has him at a slightly higher 43%. The opposition is also unpopular, as just 34% of Americans approve of Democrats.

3. Incoming New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, a moderate appointee of outgoing Mayor Adams, will stay on the job when he takes office. Mamdani will meet with Trump in the Oval Office on Friday.

BRIEFS

● A top-level Pentagon delegation is in Ukraine today as the U.S. works on another peace plan to end Russia’s war, likely involving major concessions by Ukraine. Poland, meanwhile, is accusing Russia of rail sabotage, and a Russian attack killed 25.

● More than 200 people have been arrested throughout North Carolina since Border Patrol raids began there last weekend. The crackdown is set to expand to New Orleans as soon as December 1. Elsewhere, ICE is increasing its presence in New York City.

● The list of adult SNAP food assistance recipients who have to work 80+ hours per month to keep their benefits is expanding in December. Over the next decade, the change is likely to reduce the number of SNAP users by 2.4 million.

● Texas Gov. Greg Abbott designated the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as foreign terrorists, which bans them from buying land in Texas. Opponents of the move say they’re innocent civil rights groups.

● Former FBI Director James Comey says his federal criminal indictment is a “selective and vindictive” prosecution and wants the charges tossed. Meanwhile, the DOJ admitted in court on Wednesday to a critical error in the grand jury process.

QUOTE

ANSWER

One is the daughter of immigrants, and one is herself an immigrant.

Before moving to the U.S. to become a model, Melania Trump was born and raised in what is now Slovenia (it was Yugoslavia then). She’s the second foreign-born first lady after Louisa Adams. John Quincy Adams’s wife was English, though one of her parents was American, so she only gets half credit.

Before earning two degrees at Yale and one at Cambridge, Usha Vance was born and raised in San Diego, California. Her parents, an engineer and a molecular biologist, moved to the U.S. in the 1980s. Both work at universities in San Diego.