ABC under fire for Trump settlement as GOP allies grilled on threats to jail Jan 6 committee Democrats: Live

A lawmaker on the House committee overseeing the US intelligence community on Sunday batted down rumors being leveled about mysterious sightings of drones in New Jersey and possibly elsewhere along the US east coast.

Federal agencies put out a joint statement on Thursday declaring that the spotted drones in New Jersey did not represent a foreign threat or any danger to public safety, but did not provide an explanation for what worried New Jerseyans were seeing from their homes.

Watch Jim Hines on CNN’s State of the Union here:

Utah Senator Mike Lee’s latest conspiratorial rant on Fox News suggested that his Democratic foes “destroyed” key evidence surrounding January 6 which would have implicated the FBI or other federal agencies in instigating the throngs of Trump supporters to attack the Capitol.

The Republican lawmaker is hoping to keep the dream of January 6 nonsense alive after a Department of Justice review found no evidence of federal agents instigating violence in the crowd.

In the decade since SpaceX arrived on the Texas coast, billionaire Elon Musk‘s company has created thousands of jobs near the Mexico border, launched rockets and sprung up new homes — all around an area dubbed Starbase.

Now SpaceX wants to make Starbase a recognized city.

Chris Rock made the crowd groan during his Saturday Night Live monologue with a joke about Twitter CEO Elon Musk.

The 59-year-old stand-up comedian and actor hosted the sketch comedy show last night (December 14).

During his monologue, Rock made reference to Donald Trump’s successful year, noting that he’d survived an assassination attempt, been re-elected to the US presidency and been named Time’s Person of the Year.

Ingrid Lewis-Martin is resigning from New York city hall, according to The New York Times. She was Eric Adams’ top advisor on government affairs, and had withstood weeks of critical coverage for the criminal allegations the mayor now faces.

Adams, a Democrat, has turned to Donald Trump and Magaworld for a positive embrace as he faces isolation and ridicule in his own party while facing five criminal counts related to alleged corruption.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul is calling on Washington to do more about the mysterious drones spotted in recent weeks above the Northeast.

The governor said in a statement on Saturday on X that drone activity prompted officials to shut down Stewart Airfield in New Windsor for about an hour last night.

CNN’s State of the Union interviewed retiring senator Mitt Romney on Sunday. The Republican senator has been one of Donald Trump’s last remaining opponents in the GOP, but bowed out of the Senate this year.

Romney seems to have come to terms with the future of the Republican Party as a Trumpified political movement.

“MAGA is the Republican Party and Donald Trump is the Republican Party today,” the Utah senator told Jake Tapper, adding: "Democrats have badly misread the direction of the country... and President Trump took advantage of that."

Watch a clip here:

Donald Trump announced on Saturday that Truth Social CEO Devin Nunes and the president-elect’s Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell have been selected to serve in his upcoming administration.

Nunes, as former California House Representative, was tapped for to serve as Chairman of Trump’s Intelligence Advisory Board, while Grenell was picked to serve as his Presiential Envoy for Special Missions.

While Nunes was in office he served on the House Intelligence Committee and consistently backed any move then-President Trump made. He also led the two-year investigation into US’s responde to the 2012 Benghazi attack, which ultimate found no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the US State Department under Hillary Clinton.

Nunes also refused to back an investigation into Trump former national security adviser and Q-Anon conspiracy theorist Michael Flynn after it was revealed he had unreported discussions with Russian officials while serving under Trump.

“From everything that I can see, his conversations with the Russian ambassador—he was doing this country a favor, and he should be thanked for it,” Nunes said at the time.

Grenell formerly served as Trump’s ambassador to Germany and his Director of National Intelligence.

Prior to his involvement in Trump’s administration, Grenell was a consultant for an eastern European oligarch, Vladimir Plahotniuc. He faced criticism after he wrote articles defending the oligarch without making clear he was being paid to manage the man’s image.

Grenell is a former Fox News contributor and was named as a VP at the far-right media outlet Newsmax in 2021. He earned the ire of the media in 2020 when, during a Trump press conference, he refused to identify himself to reporters and publicly accused the state of covering up incidents of voter fraud in order to help the election prospects of then-Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

These claims were made without evidence, and Mr Grenell refused to answer questions from journalists who demanded he prove his assertions.

Joe Biden’s secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, on Sunday addressed the spotting of small drone aircraft in New Jersey in an interview Sunday on ABC’s This Week.

“There’s no question that people are seeing drones,” he said. “I want to assure the American public that we in the federal government have deployed additional resources, personnel, technology to assist the New Jersey State Police in addressing the drone sightings.”

A transgender activist who staged a sit-in at the US Capitol to protest House Republicans’ new policy targeting a transgender incoming member of Congress tells The Independent that the 2024 election cycle shows that LGBTQ+ Americans really can’t trust Democrats to have their backs in a fight.

“Unfortunately, the signals coming from our government right now, under a Democratic president, are telling us that we’re essentially on our own,” the 33-year-old activist told our Io Dodds in an interview.