Good morning. Here is what matters today, in five.
1. Texas cities race to go sanctuary before Hinojosa takes office. Three days after Democrats swept Texas, Houston Mayor John Whitmire signed an order limiting when city police may contact ICE, and other cities are drafting their own before Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa takes office. via The Daily Wire.
2. Prices jumped 0.4% in October. The annual rate? Nobody knows. Consumer prices rose 0.4% last month, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics cannot publish a yearly figure because last fall’s shutdown left no October 2025 data. Economist Heather Long’s estimate: about 4%, enough to erase the typical worker’s 3.1% raise. via The Center Square.
3. Hunter Biden gets a medal for public discourse. Really. Trinity College Dublin’s debating society handed Hunter the Gold Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Public Discourse on Tuesday, with Joe and Jill in the room. Pro-Palestinian protesters pelted the former president’s party with milk on the way out, and two were arrested. via The Daily Wire.
An award for public discourse. The laptop, presumably, was the body of work.
4. Washington checked 11 of 17,000 vendors, blessed $2.9 billion. Vendor payments at Washington state’s Department of Social and Health Services rose from $5.7 billion in 2021 to $8.6 billion in 2025. The state auditor flagged more than 1,000 fast-growing vendors, looked closely at 11, and pronounced the surge legitimate. via The Center Square.
Eleven out of seventeen thousand is not an audit. It is a tasting menu.
5. Fort Worth sweep nets 141 arrests and 41 machine-gun converters. Operation New Day, a 75-day federal push hundreds of miles from the border, charged 141 people in Fort Worth with drug trafficking, firearms crimes, illegal reentry and child exploitation, seizing 45 kilograms of meth and 41 machine gun conversion devices. via The Center Square.
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