111 MHz: ‘Fluorescein.’ Aria Cheregosha and Lauren Spaulding formed Tallā Rouge—which means “the gold-red” in a combination of Farsi and French—a few years ago while students at Julliard. They both play viola with Persian and Cajun sensibilities, respectively. In this brief track from their new album, Shapes in Collective Space, the interplay between them is gorgeous and hypnotic.

—Brendan Hasenstab

5 W Main: The Presidential Pardon Power. On Sunday, December 1, U.S. President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter Biden for “offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014, through December 1, 2024.” What's remarkable isn’t just the fact that the elder Biden broke his promise not to interfere in the legal process against the younger—who’s been convicted on gun-, tax-, and drug-related charges—but the sheer sweep of the pardon. Hunter Biden has not only been pardoned for the crimes he’s been convicted of; he’s been given immunity from any potential federal prosecution in connection to his foreign business dealings. On its face, this would all seem highly unusual. But how unusual is it?

No American president has ever pardoned his child before, but several have issued pardons to other family members and supporters. Abraham Lincoln pardoned his wife’s half-sister Emilie Todd Helm, who had sided with the Confederacy. Bill Clinton pardoned his brother Roger Clinton for drug-related convictions. Donald Trump—who’s expressed indignation about the Biden pardoning—pardoned his son-in-law’s father, Charles Kushner, who’d been convicted of witness tampering, tax evasion, and illegal campaign contributions.

Jeffrey Crouch’s The Presidential Pardon Power traces the history of how U.S. presidents have used the power to pardon. Traditionally, Crouch says, it was used to grant mercy for essentially humane reasons—but ever since President Gerald Ford pardoned his predecessor Richard Nixon for his involvement in the Watergate burglary, presidents have used it more and more to protect their subordinates and supporters.

—Gustav Jönsson

A holiday gift offer. For the month of December, we have a simple-enough offer: Anyone who buys an annual membership will receive a free gift membership to give to someone else.

(Founding members will get three.)

For you, that will mean getting two memberships for the price of one.

For all of us, it will mean helping grow our community and sharing access to a new brand of current affairs—one designed to take the stress out of understanding a rapidly changing, complex world; to help develop our ability to think clearly in a media environment flooded with noise; and to deliver essential insights into the trend lines shaping our future.

If this sounds like something you’d want to be part of, who do you know that’d want to join with you?

We’ll look forward to having you as a member—and to setting up your gift subscription.

How it works:

1) Buy a new membership, upgrade your current membership or renew an existing annual membership before January 1, 2025. 2) You’ll receive an email from concierge@thesgnl.com asking you for the details of who you want to send a gift membership to. 3) We’ll email them with the good news and get their account set up so they can enjoy full membership benefits for a year. 4) You will, we feel sure, receive warm and enthusiastic thanks for your thoughtful gift.

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• Access to all new articles behind the paywall;
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For $1,000, founding members gain:

• Permanent membership for a one-time payment—you’ll never have to renew;
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Or if you’d prefer, you can support The Signal with a donation of any size. It will be invaluable as we build an alternative kind of current-affairs media—dedicated to helping develop clear thinking, resiliency, and hope.

Thank you.

And compliments of the season,

—Hywel Mills

111 MHz: ‘Come to Me.’ From the official motion-picture soundtrack to Nosferatu—the British-Irish composer Robin Carolin brings symphonic vigor and more than a little menace to Robert Eggers’s upcoming remake of the 1922 silent German Expressionist vampire film, scheduled for release on December 25.

—Brendan Hasenstab

5 W Main: The Fundamentals of Campaign Finance in the U.S. In 15 weeks of the American presidential race, the Kamala Harris campaign spent some US$1.5 billion. Since the election, the campaign has continued to solicit money, which it’s directing to the Democratic Party’s principal executive-leadership board, the Democratic National Committee. The DNC, however, is laying off most of its staff, several hundred in total. The union representing DNC workers has been quick to criticize the DNC, not only for the scale of its post-election turnover but for laying off permanent employees with one day’s notice and no severance. And Democratic Party insiders have begun leveling recriminations at their leadership: What was all that money spent on, anyway?

The Harris campaign spent roughly $600 million on television and digital advertising, $70 million on mail, $28 million to produce merchandise, $50 million on paid canvassers, and some $111 million on online ads soliciting further donations. It also spent lavishly on consultants and celebrities—including the talk-show host Oprah Winfrey’s production company, close to $2.5 million.

Local party branches got their share, too. The Harris campaign sent at least $100 million to branches in battleground states. Which is emblematic of the role American presidents and presidential candidates now play in their parties. In The Fundamentals of Campaign Finance in the U.S.: Why We Have the System We Have, Diana Dwyre and Robin Kolodny explore how presidents and presidential candidates have become “fundraisers in chief.” They’ll travel to cities across America to collect money for their party’s local organizations. Over time, as the country’s political parties have become more and more hollowed out, they’ve also become more and more reliant on the president’s or candidate’s personal appeal—limiting the ability of local party heads to oppose their national leader.

In August, here at The Signal, Kolodny looked at the changing dynamics of political fundraising in America—and how new sources of money were shaping the coming U.S. election.

—Gustav Jönsson

‘These groups are mystical creations.’ Donald Trump won the recent U.S. presidential election with a greater share of non-white voters than in the previous two. Back in 2012, the last presidential contest Trump wasn’t competing in, Latinos voted for the Democratic candidate by 44 points; this election, it was by four. Soon after, American media outlets—including those that had condemned Trump for racism, even fascism, began speaking of his new “multiracial coalition.” Is that real?

Today, Adolph Reed explores what to make of the surge in non-white voters in America casting their ballots for Trump.

—Gustav Jönsson

111 MHz: ‘Sunbeat.’ Cahill Costello is a guitar-and-drums duo with jazz and classical backgrounds out of Glasgow. From their new album, Cahill//Costello II, a track that’s majestic and warm—in a way you mightn’t expect, if you didn’t know better, from a rainy city on the banks of the River Clyde.

—Brendan Hasenstab

The madman theory. On November 17, the U.S. and the U.K. gave Ukraine permission to use their missiles to strike inside Russia. Kyiv had long been asking for this permission, but Washington and London had refused for fear of escalation. The U.S. administration said it changed its mind after Russia deployed North Korean troops in the conflict.

Two days after the U.S. announcement, Vladimir Putin signed off on a revision of Russia’s nuclear doctrine. What the revised doctrine says is that Moscow will treat an attack by a non-nuclear country backed by a nuclear country as if both countries had jointly attacked Russia—meaning that the Kremlin could respond to Ukraine’s use of U.S. weapons with Russia’s nuclear arsenal.

The Kremlin had proposed this revision in September; but the day after Putin signed it, Russia launched an intermediate-range ballistic missile—one that could carry multiple nuclear warheads—at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. How serious is this?

In June—shortly after the last time Moscow threatened to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine—Sergey Radchenko explored how the Kremlin sees its nuclear arsenal and uses rhetoric about it. It’s a key, Radchenko says, to understanding the entire trajectory and pace of the war—its offensives, counter-offensives, and stalemates: They’re all driven by Russian threats and Western responses—anxiously calculated to keep both Russia from winning and Europe from catastrophe.

—Michael Bluhm

111 MHz: ‘Frekm, Pt 1.’ London’s Felix Manuel, who records as DjRUM, is back with a typically jazz-influenced, flute-led bop that blossoms into a colorful arrangement of keyboards and percussion. The track twists through a circular melody that bends and warps thanks to filters and time-stretching.

—Brendan Hasenstab