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Top 5 US news stories

December 9 2025

Greg Loving

09 Dec 2025 • 8 min read

The H200 is Nvidia’s second-best generation of artificial intelligence chips © Dado Ruvic/Reuters

Trump Authorizes Advanced Nvidia Exports to China, Triggering Beijing to Restrict Access in Push for Domestic Self-Sufficiency

Trump Unveils $12 Billion Bailout to Stabilize Agricultural Sector as China’s Trade War Retaliation Halts US Exports

Supreme Court Signals Readiness to Overturn 1935 Precedent and Grant Trump Authority to Fire Independent Agency Heads

White House Mobilizes National Labs Under New AI Directive to Consolidate US Data and Secure Technological Dominance

Zelensky Rejects US Pressure to Cede Territory to Russia, Stalling Peace Negotiations Over Refusal to Compromise Sovereignty

1. Trump Authorizes Advanced Nvidia Exports to China, Triggering Beijing to Restrict Access in Push for Domestic Self-Sufficiency

A. The Trump administration will let Nvidia sell a relatively advanced set of artificial intelligence server chips to China, the president said in a social media post, ending a debate in Washington about whether to let a geopolitical adversary access state-of-the-art technology from the U.S. Trump implied that the White House is directing the Commerce Department to let Nvidia sell Hopper 200 chips, which are a generation behind the Nvidia’s Blackwell chips that are now being mass produced. Many of today’s best-known AI models, such as GPT-5, were trained using Hopper 100 or 200-series chips. Nvidia previously sold a much less powerful version of its Hopper chips, the H20, to China. One question is how the Chinese government will react to the availability of H200. China has instructed many of the company’s biggest AI developers to limit their use of Nvidia chips so that China’s homegrown AI server chips, including Huawei’s can flourish. Nvidia sales to China have petered out this year. The White House decision is a win for Trump advisers such as David Sacks, a venture capitalist who has argued that restricting sales to China would help local Chinese chipmakers and that those firms would then make gains in selling chips to other nations that would otherwise buy American technology.

B. Beijing is set to limit access to Nvidia’s advanced H200 chips despite Donald Trump’s decision to allow the export of the technology to China as it pushes to achieve self-sufficiency in semiconductor production. According to two people with knowledge of the matter, regulators in Beijing have been discussing ways to permit limited access to the H200, Nvidia’s second-best generation of artificial intelligence chips. Buyers would probably be required to go through an approval process, the people said, submitting requests to purchase the chips and explaining why domestic providers were unable to meet their needs.

The Information / FT

2. Trump Unveils $12 Billion Bailout to Stabilize Agricultural Sector as China’s Trade War Retaliation Halts US Exports

WASHINGTON — President Trump unveiled a $12 billion bailout package for American farmers Monday during a White House roundtable, providing emergency relief to agricultural producers hurt by his administration's trade war with China, which halted purchases of U.S. farm products in retaliation this year. The relief funds, distributed primarily through the Agriculture Department's Farmer Bridge Assistance program, will support producers of corn, cotton, sorghum, soybeans, rice, cattle, wheat and potatoes as farmers have warned of the worst crisis since the 1980s, with China shifting purchases to Brazil, Argentina and other markets. This marked the second major farm bailout under Trump's leadership, following more than $20 billion in support during his first term when China similarly boycotted U.S. products. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday the relief money would help farmers with financing and planning, stating, "We are going to create this bridge," emphasizing agriculture's forward-looking nature amid ongoing trade uncertainties.

Citizen Journal

3. Supreme Court Signals Readiness to Overturn 1935 Precedent and Grant Trump Authority to Fire Independent Agency Heads

The Supreme Court on Monday appeared poised to make it easier for President Trump to fire independent government officials despite laws meant to insulate them from political pressure in what would be a major expansion of presidential power. Hearing a case dealing with Mr. Trump’s attempt to oust a member of the Federal Trade Commission, the court’s conservative majority seemed ready to overturn or strictly limit a landmark decision from 1935. That precedent said Congress could constrain the president’s authority to remove some executive branch officials. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who is almost always in the majority in significant cases, said the F.T.C. that opinion shielded 90 years ago looked nothing like the modern commission. Over time, he said, the commission has come to exercise significantly more executive power, an authority the Constitution generally reserves for the president. He referred to the 1935 precedent as “just a dried husk of whatever people used to think it was.” Even as they appeared receptive to the Trump administration’s maximalist position, several key justices seemed intent on making sure the court’s eventual decision in this case did not threaten the independence of the Federal Reserve. The justices will hear a separate case dealing with Mr. Trump’s attempt to fire a Fed governor in January.

NYT

4. White House Mobilizes National Labs Under New AI Directive to Consolidate US Data and Secure Technological Dominance

President Donald Trump on November 24, 2025 signed a sweeping Executive Order establishing the “Genesis Mission,” a national initiative aimed at accelerating scientific discovery through advanced artificial intelligence. The order directs the Department of Energy to build and operate a unified American Science and Security Platform, integrating national laboratory supercomputing systems, secure cloud environments, and vast federally curated datasets. The effort is framed as a large-scale, coordinated mission on par with historic federal science undertakings, intended to consolidate infrastructure, standardize data, and support the development of domain-specific AI foundation models and automated research tools. The order comes amid intensifying global competition over AI capabilities and concerns about national security, productivity, and long-term technological leadership. The administration cites decades of federal investment in scientific datasets and high-performance computing as underused assets that—when combined with recent breakthroughs in AI—could dramatically speed up innovation. It also situates the initiative within ongoing national debates over semiconductor capacity, energy resilience, federal cybersecurity, and the role of public-private partnerships in securing U.S. leadership in next-generation technologies. Ultimately, the Genesis Mission aims to use AI-accelerated research to advance national security, energy dominance, workforce productivity, and the broader scientific and economic competitiveness of the United States.

White House

5. Zelensky Rejects US Pressure to Cede Territory to Russia, Stalling Peace Negotiations Over Refusal to Compromise Sovereignty

President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday that Ukraine would not budge from its longstanding opposition to handing over land to Russia, adding that the United States was pushing Kyiv for a “compromise” on Moscow’s territorial demands. As U.S.-backed peace talks have languished amid clashing views over how to end the war, the Ukrainian leader made clear that the issues of territory remained one of the biggest gulfs. The Kremlin has insisted that Ukraine cede all of the eastern region known as the Donbas, including land that Moscow’s forces have been unable to capture through nearly four years of war. Mr. Zelensky said on Monday that Ukraine had no “legal” or “moral” right to relinquish any land.

NYT

December 9 1917: Jerusalem surrenders to British troops

Jerusalem’s surrender to British troops in December 1917 came at the intersection of very long-term religious and imperial history and the immediate pressures of World War I. For centuries the city had been under Ottoman rule (since 1517), within an empire that controlled much of the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. Jerusalem itself was a multi-ethnic, multi-religious city sacred to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and it sat at a strategic crossroads between Europe, Asia, and Africa. By the early 20th century, European imperial competition, the decline of the Ottoman Empire, and rising national movements—Arab and Zionist alike—had turned Palestine into a region of intense diplomatic and ideological interest even before the war broke out.

During World War I, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, and the British targeted Palestine partly to secure the Suez Canal and imperial routes to India. The British advance through Sinai and Palestine culminated in General Allenby’s capture of Jerusalem, framed by London as both a military and symbolic victory. In the war’s aftermath, the League of Nations granted Britain the Mandate for Palestine, during which Jewish immigration increased and tensions grew between Jewish and Arab communities. In 1947 the UN proposed partitioning the Mandate into separate Jewish and Arab states, and in 1948 the State of Israel was declared, followed immediately by the first Arab–Israeli war. After that war, Jerusalem was divided between Israel (west) and Jordan (east), and in 1967 Israel took control of East Jerusalem, later extending its law and administration there—a move not widely recognized internationally. Since then, Jerusalem has remained at the core of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, functioning as Israel’s seat of government while Palestinians seek East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state, even as the city continues to serve as a central religious and cultural focal point for people around the world.

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