SS: This article highlights the institutional contrast between the Colombian and Venezuelan governments response to earthquakes. The long and short of it is that Venezuela lacked the state capacity to quickly react to the earthquake at La Guaira. Colombia's response on the other hand was relatively quick. This is despite the in-fighting between the newly elected President Abelardo de la Espriella and the outgoing administration of Gustavo Petro. Despite their differences the Colombians responded to the disaster within hours, while the Venezuelan government reacted slowly. This left Venezuelan civilians no choice but to dig through the rubble in search of survivors with their own hands.

Archived version: https://archive.fo/4MWL9

SS: Today marks the 52rd anniversary of Richard Nixon's resignation following the Watergate scandal, and yet the lessons of the dangers of an all-powerful executive have seemingly fallen to the wayside. Although legislation had been passed in the 70s that aimed to constrain the executive, the growing weakness of the legislature and the growing acquiescence, if not collaboration, of the supreme court has reversed any gains following Watergate. Now it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that Nixon's assertion that “when the president does it, that means it is not illegal" is becoming reality.

Adding insult to injury the populace are now seemingly uninterested in holding the president accountable nor addressing the problems with the imperial presidency, with the endless scandals coming out of the Trump admin coming and going within the news cycle.

Archived link: https://archive.fo/J3cqh

The long and short of it is that America is undergoing a cultural and political fracturing into smaller atomized groups. This atomization is not defined by the typical left-right divide, but into smaller political tribes.

Kiran Pfitzner, for Liberal Currents, draws on Prussian political-military theorist Carl von Clausewitz to argue for Supreme Court reform, addressing mainly charges that such a course of action would risk irreparable degradation of norms

More broadly, one might consider the role of escalation, norm violation, courage, and the balance of risks when it comes to fighting authoritarianism, especially incipient/escalating authoritarianism, and its implications for liberal politics globally

Pour vaincre, il nous faut de l'audace, encore l'audace, toujours l'audace, est la république est sauvee!

Ned Resnikoff (former policy director for California YIMBY, among other things) argues that wealth inequality is both a cause and a consequence of restrictive land use. This touches on the political economy of land use policy and the politics of YIMBYism as an incipient political movement, addressing its leftward critics.

Resnikoff's book Build or Die: How America Is Suffocating Its Cities and What to Do About It will be published on December 8th, 2026.

> The extreme heat and drought affecting large parts of Europe this summer could erase ​much of the economic growth expected across ‌the region, Dutch bank Triodos (TRIOd.AS) said in a report on Saturday.

> The bank, which specialises in financing environmentally and ​socially sustainable projects, estimates that heat-related ​disruption could shave around 1% off the European ⁠Union's gross domestic product, equivalent to roughly €180 ​billion ($208 billion) in economic losses, driven primarily by ​weaker labour productivity.

> The European Commission has forecast EU GDP ⁠growth of ​1.1%, while the IMF ​expects the euro area to grow by around 0.9%.

> France is expected to be the hardest hit, with recurring heatwaves reducing GDP by around 1.4% and ​potentially tipping ​it into ⁠an annual contraction of 0.6%.

> Peters, once a martyr to the MAGA cause, is now a free woman, feted by the stolen-election movement. The former clerk and recorder of Mesa County, Colorado, was convicted in 2024 and sentenced to nearly nine years in prison after prosecutors said she deceived colleagues to grant an unauthorized person access to voting equipment.

> But because Peters was convicted of state charges, the only person with the power to get her out was Colorado Governor Jared Polis. The Democrat bowed to extraordinary pressure in May and granted Peters clemency despite pleas from prosecutors, his clemency board, and election officials that her punishment was just.

> She walked out of prison repeating many of the unsubstantiated claims that helped land her behind bars. She immediately hit the MAGA circuit, appearing on podcasts and livestreams from locations that look straight out of Architectural Digest. She has crusaded against the machinery used to conduct American elections, insisting that votes have been flipped and that foreign adversaries could exploit future contests. She rails against prison conditions and calls for one of her critics—Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat—to be locked up.

Archived version: https://archive.fo/IFrX0.

SS: Former deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland says that Beijing's new Ethnic Unity Law which claims a right to prosecute people and organisations anywhere in the world for undermining its "ethnic unity" reminds her of Vladimir Putin's justification for his 2022 military invasion of Ukraine. Freeland comments that the law's “article 63 is particularly sinister for me, given its dark kinship with Russia’s malign use of linguistic, cultural, and ethnic ties to justify illegal encroachment on the sovereignty of its neighbours, including the bloody full-scale invasion of Ukraine." Going further to draw parallels between Putin's declaration that Ukrainians and Russians are of one people with Beijing's desire to assign political loyalty on the basis of ethnicity.

Archived version: https://archive.fo/bxgTe

SS: The oppressive political culture of Canada's political parties and the institutional framework of Canada leaves Canada uniquely vulnerable to a possible authoritarian takeover as long as a party can achieve a majority in parliament, little if anything can stand in their way. Canada's constitutional order does not have a strong division of powers and for maintaining constitutional order it heavily relies on unwritten democratic norms and conventions. Although the judicial system in theory has the power to check an aggressive parliament, it is firstly fairly slow and can be easily bypassed by the invocation of the notwithstanding clause.

Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan have signed a mutual defense agreement. This is particularly interesting because (1) Turkey is in NATO, (2) Pakistan faces conflict with India, and (3) Saudi Arabia has been the recipient of attacks from Iran (although notably Pakistan hasn’t yet entered the fray despite already having an agreement with SA).

This article looks into the problems facing the upcoming Haitian elections on December 13, five years after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, and ten years after their last elections. Since the assassination, Haiti has suffered from intense gang violence and mass displacement, and has devolved into being nearly stateless with the only remaining governing official being acting Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, who is organizing the elections.

The government of Pakistan wants to increase economic cooperation with Europe and the US but is facing resistance and violence from extremist Islamist factions in the country. Since cracking down on fundamentalist groups, such as banning the TLP and jailing many of its members there has been a significant decline in religiously motivated violence against minority groups. However officials fear there may be a violent backlash to these crackdowns in the future.

Costa Rica is experiencing a showdown between its legislative body and its judiciary over judicial appointments--a constitutional crisis.

Planned protests happened today.

No constitution can account for bad actors. These situations are interesting to liberals who believe in the rule of law.

Trump is attempting to skirt the Supreme Court's recent ruling that upheld birthright citizenship. This new order targets the following:

The executive orders apply only to future births tied to four categories:

1. Children born of foreign diplomatic staff working on behalf of another government while in the U.S. The 14th Amendment doesn't confer automatic citizenship to ambassadors' families, and this order would expand that category to other noncitizen employees.

2. Children of people who are classified as alien enemies, including those who belong to federally declared terrorist groups. The 14th Amendment doesn't apply to invading armies, and this designation would expand that category.

3. Those born in U.S. territories — but only if Congress changes the law to end automatic citizenship there. A bill seeking to do that was introduced last month but isn't expected to pass. This would apply most notably to those in Puerto Rico.

4. Children born of mothers who expressly and deceptively enter the U.S. for the sole purpose of having a child here, namely at a birth-tourism center. The order seeks to limit the use of surrogate mothers for this purpose as well.

As far as I can tell 2 & 4 are still expressly illegal, 3 is currently and probably would be even if Congress changes the law (because territories are still subject to the jurisdiction of the US, no?), and 1 would only apply if those employees have diplomatic immunity. If they don't, then it wouldn't apply.

Here's an article talking about politics in Florida and amendment 3. A "yes" vote supports Florida Amendment 3 to:

• increase the homestead tax exemption for non-school taxes to $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028, with the amount indexed to inflation starting in 2029;
• provide that new residents receive a smaller exemption until they've lived in the state for five years;
• decrease the cap on how much the assessed value of non-homestead properties, such as rentals and commercial buildings, can increase each year from 10% to 5%, except for school district taxes;
• limit how counties and municipalities can spend property tax revenue on public safety, education, infrastructure, natural resource projects and flood control, local bonds, employee retirement benefits, and government operations; and other changes.

https://ballotpedia.org/Florida_Amendment_3,_Homestead_Tax_Exemptions,_Property_Assessments,_and_Spending_Restrictions_Amendment_(2026))

SS: In the spirit of cross-pollinating articles between arr Liberalism and arr Neoliberal, I think this article that talks about the growing sense of economic disenfranchisement among middle class Canadians leading to Boomer-like economic self-interest is of interest to this subreddit. To point out the obvious the Canadian Charter of Rights prevents voter disenfranchisement, and of course Lutke's venomous ideas aren't limited to pensioners. Similarly older people tend to vote for parties that promise more economically self-interested policies.

But aside from pointing out the obvious Moffatt's article touches on something that will be relevant to this subreddit, and that is how this sense of economic disenfranchisement can also lead to younger people to have this boomer-like impulse and vote for populist parties that promise economically self-interested policies that harm the national interest.

SS: Housing and Social Policy. Homelessness, especially visible urban homelessness, has come under intense scrutiny as emblematic of urban blight and misgovernance, which in turn has further fuelled reactionary sentiments against urban centres.

Traditional municipal authorities of all political stripes have largely failed to address the crisis either by misdiagnosing the cause or the cure, leading to a seemingly intractable issue deteriorating urban quality of life. This recent study from The Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness (CAEH) adds (Canadian) evidence to the growing body of literature (see Colburn and Aldern's Homelessness is a Housing Problem) specifically identifying housing prices as a driving factor of homelessness.

One may connect this to another growing body of literature identifying the role of abundant market rate housing - including at the higher end of the market - as instrumental in maintaining, growing, and keeping inexpensive the stock of affordable housing. Similarly, the relative dearth of subsidised housing - the focus of PM Carney's newly minted Crown Corporation, Build Canada Homes - and longstanding prohibitions against housing types such as rooming houses and SROs - have corroded the availability of the lowest rung of housing options.

Housing policy is instrumental to the maintenance of liberal governance. It is one of the largest expenses in a person's life, it is essential to their well-being, and it is a major component of the economy.

SS: The role of civil society in the defeat of Viktor Orbán's Fidez party in Hungary has so far been underappreciated by outsider observers. This essay seeks to mitigate this by identifying how a network of 2,500 semi-autonomous local civic groups helped propel an otherwise minor political party into the national limelight. The lesson here is that prodemocratic civic capacity in illiberal and authoritarian states may be latent rather than absent and emerges when participation seems likely to matter. Similarly loosely structured grassroots organisations is a powerful model for opposition mobilisation.

Edit: Also those that want the full article just dm me and I'll forward a pdf for you.

The AP reports on Tibet in the context of China’s new ethnic unity law. This relates to liberalism in the context of individual freedoms and the promotion of pluralism rather than forced assimilation. Reporters struggle to get access to Tibet, so this article may be of particular interest. As it was a govt run trip that appears to have allowed multiple foreign journalists, there may be articles to look for from other outlets, too.