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

Officials are ratcheting up the pressure to respond to a series of mysterious lights spotted over New Jersey.

“Mystery Drone sightings all over the Country,” Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social on Saturday. “Can this really be happening without our government’s knowledge. I don’t think so! Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, shoot them down!!! DJT”

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan said Friday he had “personally witnessed” the lights.

Officials have said they are investigating the phenomenon, but have been unable to corroborate reports of unauthorized drones over New Jersey.

“Upon review of available imagery, it appears that many of the reported sightings are actually manned aircraft that are being operated lawfully,” National Security Council John Kirby said earlier this week.

The Pentagon has said it doesn’t believe the lights are “coming from a foreign entity or adversary.”

More than a dozen Democrats are reportedly planning to skip Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration.

Lawmakers told Axios their reasons ranged from anger over the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol to feeling unsafe around a mass of Trump supporters.

“For somebody who he said he’s going to lock me up, I don’t see the excitement in going to see his inauguration,” former Jan. 6 committee chair Bennie Thompson of Mississippi said.

What does the Middle East look like under Trump 2.0?

The president-elect is due to take office in just a few weeks, having frequently attacked Joe Biden — and later Kamala Harris — for supposedly having failed to stop the two bloody conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza from breaking out under their watch. On top of that, he also made two lofty promises while campaigning: that he would end the conflict in Ukraine quickly upon taking office; and that he would bring a “lasting peace” to the Middle East.

The latter promise was made during an interview with a Saudi news channel, Al-Arabiya, in October.

Read more:

The Nevada attorney general has charged six Republicans with submitting falsified documents to Congress declaring President-elect Donald Trump the winner of the key swing state in 2020.

Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford argues the defendants signed off on false Electoral College votes for Trump in 2020 even though he lost Nevada by more than 30,000 votes. There was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in Nevada during the 2020 election, Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske said at the time.

Read more:

US President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to scrap Daylight Saving Time (DST) and is reportedly considering scrapping a car crash reporting requirement that Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk stongly opposes.

Calling DST “inconvenient” and “costly” in a post on Truth Social on Friday, Trump said: “The Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate DST, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t!”

Meanwhile, axing the car crash regulation could hamstring the government’s ability to effectively investigate collisions and regulate the safety of vehicles with self-driving systems, such as Musk’s Teslas and Cybertrucks, according to Reuters, which viewed a new document reportedly proposing the removal. It would likely directly benefit Tesla, which has reported the majority of crashes – more than 1,500 – to federal safety regulators under the program.

Social media users are misrepresenting a report released Thursday by the Justice Department inspector general’s office, falsely claiming that it’s proof the FBI orchestrated the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

The watchdog report examined a number of areas, including whether major intelligence failures preceded the riot and whether the FBI in some way provoked the violence. Claims spreading online focus on the report’s finding that 26 FBI informants were in Washington for election-related protests on Jan. 6, including three who had been tasked with traveling to the city to report on others who were potentially planning to attend the events.

Although 17 of those informants either entered the Capitol or a restricted area around the building during the riot, none of the 26 total informants were authorized to do so by the bureau, according to the report. Nor were they authorized to otherwise break the law or encourage others to do so.

Here’s a closer look at the facts.

Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong killed an opinion column that was critical of President-elect Donald Trump’s recent Cabinet picks, telling his paper’s editorial board that it could only publish the piece if it also ran an editorial with an opposing view, according to The New York Times.

The spiked column was set to be published in the outlet’s Sunday newspaper and website on November 24. Soon-Shiong intervened just hours before the op-ed was scheduled to be sent to the printer, prompting the editors to pull the piece as the deadline approached.

Read more:

Less than 20 percent of American adults approve of President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary, former Army National Guard soldier and Fox & Friends weekend host Pete Hegseth, according to a new poll.

The results of the AP-NORC poll come as Republican senators appear to be warming up to his nomination in the face of allegations of sexual misconduct, excessive drinking, and financial mismanagement.

Only 17 percent in the poll conducted between 5 and 9 December said they strongly or somewhat approve of Hegseth, while 36 percent said they strongly or somewhat disapprove.

Thirty-seven percent said they didn’t know enough to share a view and 11 percent said they neither approved nor disapproved.

The results were the lowest of the four Trump nominees the poll asked about.

Amazon’s executive chair Jeff Bezos is reportedly set to donate $1m to Donald Trump’s inaugural fund – following in the footsteps of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who did the same earlier this week.

Bezos’s gesture was first reported by The Wall Street Journal and dwarfs the $57,746 the company donated to Trump’s first inauguration in 2017.

Amazon will also make a second in-kind donation worth $1m by streaming the inauguration on its Prime Video platform, a source told the paper.

Read more: