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“A Nevada commissioner ruled resoundingly against Rupert Murdoch’s attempt to change his family’s trust to consolidate his eldest son Lachlan’s control of his media empire and lock in Fox News’s right-wing editorial slant,” the New York Times reports.
“The ruling was at times scathing.”
“Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Donald Trump, on Monday sought to walk back the president-elect’s recent statement that he believes the members of the House’s Jan. 6 committee who investigated him should be jailed,” Politico reports.
Said Miller: “What President Trump said, if you listen to the entire ‘Meet the Press’ interview, is he wants everyone who he puts into key positions of leadership … to apply the law equally to everybody… As far as the politics aspect, if you listen to the entire interview with President Trump, he said he’s going to leave that up to the law enforcement agents in charge, including Pam Bondi and Kash Patel.”
“New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) wants to send about $3 billion back to 8.6 million New Yorkers in a bid to alleviate inflation costs for working families,” Bloomberg reports.
“The one-time, direct payment is the first proposal in Hochul’s 2025 state of the state, which she is set to deliver on Jan. 14. New Yorkers would begin receiving the checks in the fall of 2025, if the legislature approves the initiative. The state will tap excess sales-tax revenue to send $500 to families making as much as $300,000 and $300 to individuals earning $150,000 or less, Hochul announced Monday.”
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New York Times: “As the nation’s Democratic governors gathered for a winter meeting in Beverly Hills, Calif., this weekend, they lamented their party’s messaging challenges and grappled with the widespread defeats. But in interviews with roughly 10 Democratic governors and candidates for governor, no one offered an explicit age limit for the next nominee.”
“And some said that age was irrelevant altogether if a candidate appeared to be in strong shape and was connecting with voters.”
Jonathan Chait: “A very strange disjuncture has opened up in Washington between the serene mood and the alarming developments that are under way. The surface is calm because the Republican presidential candidate won the election, and Democrats, the only one of the two major parties committed on principle to upholding the legitimacy of election results, conceded defeat and are cooperating in the peaceful transition of power. Whatever energy the chastened Democrats can muster at the moment is aimed inward, at factional struggles over their future direction.”
“Meanwhile, what is actually happening in the capital is, by any rational standard, disturbing. Donald Trump is filling his administration with ‘loyalists,’ a prerogative his opponents have grudgingly accepted as his due. Yet he is defining loyalist in maximal terms, including the belief that Trump legitimately won the 2020 election and was justified in his attempt to seize power. The winners are rewriting the history of the insurrection, and their version of history is about to acquire the force of law.”
A new video shows Rep. Nance Mace (R-SC) “downing a shot of liquor before locking lips with a spikey-haired female friend and dribbling it into her mouth,” the Daily Mail reports.
Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV) announced he was “proud to introduce legislation” with Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) “that would establish 18-year term limits for Justices of the United States Supreme Court.”
“A group of human rights activists, former corrections officials and families of crime victims asked President Biden on Monday to use his clemency power to take all 40 inmates off federal death row before he hands over power to President-elect Donald J. Trump,” the New York Times reports.
“In the gut-wrenching footage in the aftermath of Bashar al-Assad’s fall in Syria, children, the elderly, women and men sprint toward the exit of the notorious Sednaya Prison on the outskirts of Damascus — some stand frozen in confusion at the news of their freedom,” Bloomberg reports.
“The Assads notoriously used the prison system to lock up political dissidents, from leftists to suspected Islamists — but the rebels who overthrew the government over the weekend have opened the gates. Now, after the regime’s swift collapse, Syrians are trying to find loved ones who disappeared during the 13-year civil war or the Assads’ half-century rule — and grappling with the fallout.”
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) was interviewed on CNN by Jake Tapper about Pete Hegseth’s nomination to be Defense Secretary:
TAPPER: When you’re talking about drinking at ten in the morning, that’s a drinking problem.
MULLIN: Well, then there’s a lot of politicians that have a drinking problem… and there’s probably a lot of media that has a drinking problem too.
The Guardian: “As Donald Trump gathered his supporters, family and friends at Mar-a-Lago on U.S. election day last month to wait for the results to trickle in, a small group of far-right Germans went largely unnoticed.”
“Among them was the purported semi-professional, one-time porn actor, self-confessed former cocaine user, convicted thief and hard-right candidate for the German parliament Phillipp-Anders Rau. Together with a compact delegation of young political activists and influencers, Rau posed for the cameras with the American president-elect at his invitation, chanting ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’ in English and German.”
Wall Street Journal: “Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, Trump’s pick for surgeon general, sells her own line of vitamins. Kash Patel, Trump’s choice to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation, recommended pills on Truth Social in February that he said could ‘rid your body of the harms’ from Covid-19 vaccines.”
“Mehmet Oz, the TV personality whom Trump named to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, promotes supplements sold by online retailer iHerb. He has advertised multivitamins, supplements for “brain power” and fish-oil pills that he said “probably slowed” the progression of his mother’s Alzheimer’s disease.”
“Doctors and public-health experts said close ties between Trump’s nominees and supplement makers could give more leeway to an industry that is lightly regulated and sells products that are largely unproven.”
“Pete Hegseth’s attorney has threatened legal action against a woman who accused President-elect Donald Trump’s selection for defense secretary of sexual assault — if she repeats what he calls ‘false’ claims and his client ultimately fails to get confirmed,” ABC News reports.
“We’ve all had some indiscretions in our past and things like that.”
— Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), dismissing allegations that Defense Secretary-designate Pete Hegseth raped a woman and was drinking on the job.
Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) called President-elect Donald Trump’s threat to imprison her and other members of a congressional committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol an “assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic,” the New York Times reports.
She continued: “This was the worst breach of our Constitution by any president in our nation’s history. Donald Trump’s suggestion that members of Congress who later investigated his illegal and unconstitutional actions should be jailed is a continuation of his assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.”
“The Supreme Court on Monday declined to decide whether three elite Boston public schools violated the Constitution with a zip-code based admissions policy intended to ensure racial diversity,” CNN reports.
“The appeal landed at the high court more than a year after a landmark 6-3 ruling ended affirmative action at universities and prompted school officials to experiment with ‘race neutral’ policies – such as those based on geography – to promote diversity but fend off court challenges.”
CBS News: Supreme Court turns away case over Boston high school admissions criteria.
“Canadians’ trust in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to deal with incoming President Donald Trump is growing,” Bloomberg reports.
“Trudeau is now effectively tied with Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre on the question of who is best to negotiate with Trump, according to the poll from Nanos Research Group.”
President-elect Donald Trump told NBC News that “you have no choice” but to deport everyone who is illegally in the U.S., including possibly removing the American citizen family members of those deported.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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