THE SHOW NOTES: Antisemitism On College Campus, Trump's Growing Lead, & Where is Alexey Navalny?

Welcome! Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny is missing from prison.

HEADLINE: Hillary Clinton steps out as a key player in Biden’s re-election effort - CNBC

WATCH: Is Bernie Sanders making sense? - Twitter

OFFSIDES: The Chiefs lost to the Bills when this play was called offsides and Patrick Mahomes is furious.

AGAIN: ProPublica Plots Another Clarence Thomas Hit Piece Based On Recycled, Settled Claims - The Federalist

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Trump’s Growing Lead

Donald Trump has surged to 51% in the nation’s first caucus state according to Ann Selzer, the gold standard of Iowa polling. Selzer, the veteran Iowa pollster who has been surveying presidential races in Iowa for over 30 years said, “The field may have shrunk, but it may have made Donald Trump even stronger. I would call his lead commanding at this point.”

The rest: Ron DeSantis came in second with 19%, Nikki Haley finished third with 16%, and Vivek Ramaswamy rounded out the top four with 5%.

That’s not all: A CNN poll conducted by SSRS shows Donald Trump ahead of Biden in two pivotal swing states Biden won in 2020. Trump leads Biden by 5 points in Georgia and by a shocking 10 points in Michigan. The polling is directly correlated with Biden’s historically low 39% approval rating in Georgia and 35% approval rating in Michigan.

Michigan: Biden’s Michigan problems have gotten inextricably worse since the terror attacks on October 7th and are a snapshot into the current divide inside of the Democratic Party. Michigan’s high concentration of Muslim-Americans have aggressively and vocally opposed Biden’s support of Israel. Detroit Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib made Biden’s Michigan issues worse over the weekend by hammering the President’s Israel position at a local campaign rally.

WATCH: CNN Blasts Woke Universities

Following the antisemitic congressional testimonies of the Presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria blasted the institutions claiming, “America’s top universities should abandon their long misadventure into politics, retrain their gaze on their core strengths and rebuild their reputations.”

Harvard President Claudine Gay’s fate hangs in the balance after university’s board meeting

Harvard President Claudine Gay remains at the helm after the school’s board of directors met Sunday amid calls for her removal for failing to effectively denounce threats of violence against Jewish students on campus. Though the agenda of the meeting was not publicized, it is likely that Gay’s future was discussed given the contentious congressional testimony last week of three university presidents that led to the resignation of University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill on Saturday.

The Sunday meeting was not an emergency meeting and had been scheduled long in advance, the source said. It remains unclear whether Gay has enough support to keep her job, though hundreds of faculty members have rushed to her defense in a letter to the administration.

Full story at CNN.

The Math for Buying a Home No Longer Works.

It is now less affordable than any time in recent history to buy a home, and the math isn’t changing any time soon. Home prices aren’t expected to go back to prepandemic levels. The Federal Reserve, which started raising rates aggressively early last year to curb inflation, hasn’t shown much interest in cutting them. Mortgage rates slipped to about 7% last week, the lowest in several months, but they are still more than double what they were two years ago. 

Typically, high mortgage rates slow down home sales, and home prices should soften as a result. Not this time. Home sales are certainly falling, but prices are still rising—there just aren’t enough homes to go around. The national median existing-home price rose to about $392,000 in October, the highest ever for that month in data that goes back to 1999.

Full story at The Wall Street Journal (paywall)

Tucker Carlson Is Launching His Own Streaming Service

Tucker Carlson is launching his own subscription streaming service, the former Fox News host’s official foray into paid content after months of posting videos on X.

The service, Tucker Carlson Network, is expected to go live on Monday, people familiar with the matter said. It will be home to at least five different shows by midweek, they said, including interviews, short-form videos and monologues.

Tucker Carlson Network, whose logo resembles a red pill, will cost $9 a month—or $72 a year—and will initially be solely available through Carlson’s website. Some of the content will be accessible without a subscription and will be ad-supported, while some interviews and monologues will be available exclusively to subscribers, who will have access to that content without ads.

Full story at The Wall Street Journal (paywall).

Biden Admin Pays Anti-Israel Group That Spreads Lies About Gaza War To Fight 'Disinformation'

The Biden administration, in its efforts to fight the spread of disinformation in the Middle East, awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money to an anti-Israel nonprofit that has pushed fake news about the Israel-Hamas war.

The State Department gave $573,000 on Oct. 1 to MENAACTION Inc., a Virginia-based nonprofit, to protect "media and society against disinformation" and to train Jordanian journalists how to identify "fake news," according to federal spending records.

It’s a topic that MENAACTION’s founders know all about. Cofounder Chris Aboukhaled pushed Hamas’s claim that Israel bombed Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza. The rocket that struck the hospital was actually fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another terrorist group in Gaza. MENAACTION's other cofounder, Mohammed Abu Dalhoum, who also suggested that Israel was behind the bombing, claimed Israel’s military response to Hamas "isn’t self-defense" and accused Israel of "genocide." Experts agree that Israel’s targeted retaliatory strikes against Hamas do not constitute genocide.

Full story at The Washington Free Beacon.

The Guns Were Said to Be Destroyed. Instead, They Were Reborn.

When Flint, Mich., announced in September that 68 assault weapons collected in a gun buyback would be incinerated, the city cited its policy of never reselling firearms.

“Gun violence continues to cause enormous grief and trauma,” said Mayor Sheldon Neeley. “I will not allow our city government to profit from our community’s pain by reselling weapons that can be turned against Flint residents.”

But Flint’s guns were not going to be melted down. Instead, they made their way to a private company that has collected millions of dollars taking firearms from police agencies, destroying a single piece of each weapon stamped with the serial number and selling the rest as nearly complete gun kits. Buyers online can easily replace what’s missing and reconstitute the weapon.

Full story at The New York Times (paywall)

Why Fears of a Broader Middle East Conflict Are Growing in Iraq

Just south of Baghdad, the urban sprawl gives way to glimpses of green, with lush date palm groves bordering the Euphrates River. But few risk spending much time there. Not even the Iraqi military or government officials venture without permission.

A farmer, Ali Hussein, who once lived on that land, said, “We do not dare to even ask if we can go there.”

That’s because this stretch of Iraq — more than twice the size of San Francisco — is controlled by an Iraqi militia linked to Iran and designated a terrorist group by the United States. Militia members man checkpoints around the borders. And though sovereign Iraqi territory, the area, known as Jurf al-Nasr, functions as a “forward operating base for Iran,” according to one of the dozens of Western and Iraqi intelligence and military officers, diplomats and others interviewed for this article.

Full story at The New York Times (paywall)

Trending news:

• Columbia Students Organize Tuition Strike over ‘Israeli Apartheid’ - NR

• Stanford’s antisemitism committee co-chair aligned with anti-Israel groups, concluded antisemitism wasn’t a problem on campuses in 2017 paper - JI

• Hiker rescued after getting trapped under 10,000-pound boulder for 7 hours in California mountains - NBC

• Air Force watchdog finds alleged Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira's unit "failed" to take action after witnessing questionable activity - CBS

• In a reversal, Donald Trump says he won't testify in his own defense in New York fraud trial - NBC

• After my grandmother’s ordeal, I have to speak out against sexual violence by Hamas on October 7 - CNN

• US embassy in Baghdad struck with seven mortars as attacks escalate - Reuters

• Many US teens ‘almost constantly’ using YouTube, TikTok, new Pew Research report shows - CNN

• Niall Ferguson: The Treason of the Intellectuals - The Free Press

• NBC News demands Trump campaign take down fake clip of reporter - SEMAFOR

• Navy May Have Lost to Army, But It’s Still 22-0 Against Drones and Missiles in the Red Sea - The Messenger

• Why Treasury Auctions Have Wall Street on Edge - WSJ (paywall)

Market snapshot: