Good morning and merry Christmas Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve to all who celebrate. We hope you’re enjoying this holiday season with family, friends, and Christmas classics like "Violent Night" and "A Very Jonas Christmas Movie."

In less merry news, Australia's social media ban for kids younger than 16 kicked in on Wednesday. In weirder news, they’re 3D printing entire Walmarts now.

DIPLOMACY

⌨️ State Department switches … fonts?

Of all the big government departments, the least controversial one that tends to do its job the best is probably the State Department (at least for the purposes of this introduction). To keep up that good image, Secretary of State Marco Rubio this week ordered a major policy shift at U.S. embassies and consulates around the world. That’s right. They’re changing fonts.

Welcome back, Times New Roman. Rubio ordered the switch in a diplomatic cable on Tuesday that argued typography "shapes how official documents are perceived." The right choice adds "cohesion, professionalism, and formality." And Calibri just wasn't cutting it.

• He slammed a Biden-era switch to Calibri as having "achieved nothing except the degradation" of State Department correspondence.

• The department originally switched to Times New Roman in 2004. Before that, they used Courier New for that ancient “I put two spaces after periods” vibe.

DEI fonts? Believe it or not, this is a DEI issue. Biden’s State Department switched to Calibri in 2023 after an internal diversity committee recommended the change. Calibri, they argued, was better for people with dyslexia and bad vision.

The new font began appearing in State Department docs on Wednesday. They use size 14, by the way. All those 12-point papers you wrote in college? Too small for the government.

Elsewhere in the world of international diplomacy:

1. Ukraine this week is polishing up a new, 20-point peace framework it hopes can end the war for good. Trump, meanwhile, spoke to European leaders on Wednesday about the U.S.-led effort to get Russia on board with peace and urged Ukraine to accept his deal.

2. The U.S. Coast Guard kicked it up a notch on Wednesday and seized a "very large" oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the ship had been sanctioned by the U.S. for years and was used "in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations." Video of the seizure is available here.

GOVERNMENT

🤳 A new policy idea from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) could have federal agents combing through tourists' old Instagram posts. CBP posted a notice in the Federal Register (the government's official journal) saying it plans to ask tourists entering the United States to provide five years of social media history and a few selfies as part of their applications to enter the country. Tourists from countries in the Visa Waiver Program (Europe, Japan, etc.) are not exempt. Officials say this is all about security. It's a "mandatory data element" on new visa applications that also includes recent email addresses and phone numbers. The proposal isn't final, and could see revisions based on public comments on the Federal Register notice.

💰️ Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell again promised that the Fed would deliver on its goal of 2% inflation. With that in mind, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) voted to cut interest rates by 0.25% on Wednesday for the third time this year. The Fed's new benchmark rate is the 3.5% to 3.75% range, which is the lowest in three years. President Trump wasn't happy, though. He thought they should've gone with a higher, 0.5% cut. The FOMC is comprised of the Fed's seven board members, the president of the New York Fed branch, and four of the Fed’s other 11 regional presidents. Trump, by the way, is conducting final interviews for Powell’s replacement. His term as chair ends in May.

👮 The government says it rakes in $700 billion less in taxes than it should each year. And some of those tax cheats appear to be getting off easy as the Trump administration shifts law enforcement resources toward the border. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has an entire criminal investigation division — that’s right, you too can achieve levels of unpopularity never before thought possible and become an IRS cop — but its budget has seen significant cuts. Federal tax prosecutions fell by 27% this year as the number of agents and attorneys working on these cases was slashed. Some were fired, others were tasked with immigration work instead.

POLITICS

🗳️ Trump hits Pennsylvania, Congress actually does its job

On Wednesday, President Trump did what he does best: He campaigned in Pennsylvania.

Okay, this wasn’t technically a campaign rally. He’s not running for anything, and the midterms aren’t for another 11 months. But his party underperforms when he’s not on the ballot, so his presence on the campaign trail next year is a key strategy for Republicans.

The president gave his 90-minute speech in a small town near Scranton and used it to test his economic message. He defended his tariffs, job growth, and Pennsylvania's lower-than-average unemployment rate.

• The percentage of Americans who say the economy is good has fallen from 38% when he took office to 32% now.

• And nearly two-thirds of people say Trump's policies are making groceries more expensive.

The White House says things are looking up, and Trump said on Monday that he's "bringing prices way down." TBD on how that message fares at the polls next November.

Congress: The House passed the annual NDAA on Wednesday. That’s the National Defense Authorization Act. It’s sort of the defense budget, but it doesn’t actually spend the money. That comes later. Instead, it authorizes the Pentagon’s programs at certain spending levels.

• The total price tag on this 3,000-page behemoth is $900 billion. That’s about $7 billion more than Trump requested back in May.

• Despite our era of constant partisan bickering, defense policy is still somewhat bipartisan. The bill passed in a solid 312-112 vote. It now heads to the Senate for final approval.

Elsewhere in politics…

1. Democrat Eileen Higgins won the race for mayor of Miami on Tuesday, ending 16 years of Republican rule. She's the first non-Cuban mayor elected since 1993.

2. Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D) is running for Senate next year, and Republicans are thrilled. In fact, there’s some evidence that the Republican Party lowkey baited her into it.

TRIVIA

The new National Security Strategy doc released by the White House last week wants America to relax its focus on the rest of the world and instead double down on the Western Hemisphere (North and South America). The plan is already being referred to as Trump's version of the Monroe Doctrine.

For those of us who took a nap at school that day, the Monroe Doctrine was President James Monroe's official policy of basically yelling "Go on now, git!" to European governments meddling in the Americas. But when did all this go down? Today’s trivia: Name one year during which James Monroe was president.

Hint: Monroe died in 1831. On July 4, by the way, like a real American.

SUPREME COURT

🤔 Court ponders presidential powers

Chances are high that the president will soon have far more control over about two dozen federal agencies than he does today.

The Supreme Court on Monday heard two-and-a-half hours of arguments in a case called Trump v. Slaughter. Earlier this year, President Trump fired two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission, Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, for, y’know, being Democrats. Problem is, the law says he can’t do that. So they sued.

• The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enforces antitrust law. When one big company wants to buy another, the FTC can sue to stop the deal if it thinks the new company will be too dominant in its industry.

• In the news right now, Senators from both sides of the aisle are clamoring for the FTC to challenge Netflix’s proposed $72 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery.

The FTC is an independent agency, so it’s not part of a larger Cabinet department. It’s run by a five-member board of commissioners who serve staggered seven-year terms. That means no president can pick the entire board. Congress created it that way back in 1914. And the Supreme Court upheld that structure in a famous 1935 case called Humphrey’s Executor.

The challenge: Trump fired Slaughter and Bedoya to challenge that system. He claims it violates the Constitution’s separation of powers between each branch of government. Basically, Congress created the FTC in a way that unconstitutionally steps on his toes, preventing him from wielding proper oversight.

• Other agencies with similar structures could also be on the chopping block.

• That includes the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Maritime Commission, the National Indian Gaming Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Postal Regulatory Commission.

Future: The Supreme Court usually waits until May or June to drop its rulings on major cases like this, so don’t expect a change anytime soon. But, during arguments, most justices appeared to agree with Trump’s attorney. By next summer, a whole slew of old Biden-appointed officials could be in for a status change on LinkedIn.

On the bright side, getting fired could be the final push Rebecca Slaughter needs to fulfill her destiny as a horror movie director.

BRIEFS

● Applications for Trump's immigration Gold Card opened on Wednesday. Wealthy foreigners can pay $1 million to fast-track their visa application. An even more expensive version, the Platinum Card, is in the works and will cost $5 million.

● Elon Musk's SpaceX could go public in 2026. It reportedly hopes to raise $25 billion via an initial public offering (IPO) of stock. SpaceX is currently the world's second most valuable private company after OpenAI. An IPO could push its value over $1 trillion.

● The administration is set to drop its plans today for an overhaul of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Trump's FEMA Review Council, co-chaired by two Cabinet secretaries, views the disaster response agency as bloated and inefficient.

● The Trump administration wants the International Criminal Court (ICC) to change its rules to ensure it doesn't investigate top U.S. officials, including Trump himself. The U.S. isn't a party to the court and has long viewed it as infringing on U.S. sovereignty.

● A trade deal the U.S. reached with Indonesia in July is at risk of collapsing. The U.S. says Indonesia is backtracking on its commitments, but Indonesia claims talks are still ongoing. Nearby, Vietnam is hedging on its U.S. ties and upping trade with China.

QUOTE

ANSWER

James Monroe ran the show from 1817 to 1825, a period often referred to as "the Era of Good Feelings." Everybody was just happy to be there after the War of 1812, and partisan bickering was pretty much dead (mostly because the Federalist Party had all but died out).

Our man Jimmy here is also sometimes called the Last Founding Father. He fought in the Revolution and appears as the guy holding the flag in that famous painting of G-Dub sneaking across the Delaware River to give the Brits the Christmas gift that keeps on giving, well, forever: death.