• Illegal immigrant found guilty of murder in the killing of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley (NBC News)

Government & Politics

• FEMA head says anti-Trump treatment is limited to one employee: FEMA Director Deanne Criswell was grilled yesterday by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee about her agency’s response to recent hurricanes that devastated parts of the Southeast, particularly western North Carolina. Foremost among the concerns of the committee’s Republicans was an outrageous order from FEMA supervisor Marn'i Washington, who, via text message, told a group of 13 staffers to “avoid homes advertising Trump” in their disaster relief efforts. As Fox News reports, “Criswell has insisted that orders to avoid pro-Trump homes originated from a lone employee and were not part of a wider directive.” A FEMA whistleblower who appeared before the House Oversight Committee yesterday begs to differ, saying that at least some FEMA officials consider Trump supporters to be “domestic terrorists.” Criswell, though, says her agency is investigating the incident and that they have “found no evidence that there is anything beyond this one employee’s specific direction.” On the bright side, Republican Scott Perry at least got Criswell to call the employee’s actions “unacceptable” and to say that she’d “welcome” an independent inspector general’s investigation into the incident.

• Senate GOP truants allow lifetime post to hard-left judge: “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” So said accused child molester and leftist playwright Woody Allen in a moment of glaring cynicism. But did he have a point? It would seem so, at least insofar as lifetime judicial appointments to the federal bench are concerned. The Democrat-controlled Senate confirmed Judge Embry Kidd to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals by a vote of 49-45 because only 94 senators bothered to show up. VP-elect JD Vance and Secretary of State nominee Marco Rubio were among the Republican no-shows, as were Tennessee’s Bill Hagerty, Indiana’s Mike Braun, and Montana’s Steve Daines. “This leftist judge would have been voted down and the seat on the important 11th Circuit would have been filled by Donald Trump next year had Republicans showed up,” noted an understandably outraged Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. “Now, the leftist judge will have a lifetime appointment and the people of FL, AL and GA will suffer the consequences.” Article III Project founder Mike Davis was equally chagrined. “These are the worst of the worst, the nominees that could not get confirmed,” he said. “Your only job as a Senate Republican is to show up and vote.”

• Trump names Howard Lutnick as commerce secretary: He was angling for treasury secretary, but he’ll have to settle for the commerce gig. We’re speaking of Donald Trump’s longtime friend and Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick, whom the president-elect nominated yesterday to serve as commerce secretary. From that powerful post, Lutnick will lead Trump’s trade agenda, including his plan for targeted tariffs against unfair traders like China. Lutnick is the co-chair of Trump’s transition team and is reportedly responsible for a number of picks. As former Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow adds, “You can bet that Howard Lutnick will be a bulldog in defending American business around the world. Thankfully, Mr. Lutnick is a dyed in the wool capitalist who is a strong believer in ‘America First.’ He will also be a strong advocate to remedy unfair trading practices directed at the U.S.” Lutnick is also, in Trump’s words, “a dynamic force on Wall Street.” He brought Cantor Fitzgerald back from having been wiped out on 9/11, when the company lost 658 employees in its offices on floors 101-105 of the World Trade Center’s North Tower. On that fateful morning, Lutnick was taking his son to kindergarten.

• Trump taps Linda McMahon for EdSec: On Tuesday, Donald Trump nominated Linda McMahon, the wife of World Wrestling Entertainment owner Vince McMahon, to head the Department of Education. This will be McMahon’s second stint in Trump’s administration after serving as the administrator of the Small Business Administration from 2017 to 2019. Trump noted McMahon’s experience with both business and education, as she served on the Connecticut Board of Education for two years. While Trump had been toying with the idea of eliminating the Department of Education altogether, McMahon’s nomination indicates that won’t be happening — at least not yet. In light of this, Trump made clear that his goal for the department is to expand school choice to every state while also giving each state the authority over educational standards. That will be an interesting juxtaposition for McMahon to pull off. Furthermore, will she be able to cull the number of DOE bureaucrats?

• Trump taps Dr. Mehmet Oz to lead Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (USA Today)

• Trump chooses former acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker as NATO ambassador (AP)

Around the Nation

• Wyoming pro-life laws struck down: Teton County District Judge Melissa Owens has ruled that two pro-life laws in Wyoming are unconstitutional. The first law prohibited on-demand abortion except in the extremely rare cases of rape, incest, or the life of the mother being in jeopardy, while the second was a ban on medication-induced abortions. Owens claimed that the laws “impede the fundamental right to make health care decisions for an entire class of people, pregnant women.” Is a pregnant woman a different type of person than a non-pregnant woman? She writes, “The Court concludes that the Abortion Statutes suspend a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions during the entire term of a pregnancy and are not reasonable or necessary to protect the health and general welfare of the people.” Owens’s decision assumes that preborn babies are not human persons; therefore, any consideration of their rights and protections is moot. It’s a sad day in Wyoming, especially for babies in utero, as this judge has just declared them to be subhumans.

• Nanny Staters arrest Georgia mom for unleashing her kid: It’s a sad sign of the times that so many of us now live in fear of letting our children do what children have always done: explore, venture out, and grow. Some of these parents are afraid of harm coming to their kids, while others, more rightly, are fearful of what might happen to them as parents. Here’s a case in point, from NBC News: “A Georgia woman was arrested and accused of allegedly endangering her son — all because the unsupervised 10-year-old walked less than a mile away from home, officials said. … The Fannin County Sheriff’s Department called to say her son Soren had wandered from their rural home in Mineral Bluff and into town.” Anyone else out there remember having “wandered” when you were a kid? “It’s not a super dangerous or even dangerous-at-all stretch of road,” said Brittany Patterson, 41, last week in an interview. “I wasn’t terrified for him or scared for his safety.” Apparently, though, that’s not good enough for our statist usurpers of parental rights, the Nanny State Police.

• North Carolina House overrides veto of $463.5M increase for private-school vouchers (WRAL)

Security

• Tren de Aragua gang now in DC: The violent Venezuelan gang known for human trafficking and drugs has established a foothold in the DC Metro area. Tren de Aragua, or TDA, is in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, according to a memo from the Department of Homeland Security. The memo notes that it is “highly probable” that TDA will seek more control in the region. TDA has been aggressively setting up shop in major cities across America. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) recently reported that TDA has been engaging in human trafficking in the state’s four largest cities, Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, and Chattanooga. TBI Director David Rausch reported that TDA members “shot a cartel member 31 times, broad daylight on video and posted it to social media.” The growing presence of TDA in the U.S. will likely lead to escalating violence with rival gangs, especially the notorious Salvadoran gang MS-13. This is what failure to secure our southern border has gotten us.

• Feds dismiss charges against Jordanians who trespassed on military base (Washington Times)

• Putin open to Trump’s Ukraine peace plan, aims to avoid concessions (Newsweek)

• Ukrainians are changing their minds on the war (Newsweek)

Culture

• The Vatican goes rainbow: Pope Francis recently named Father Pasolini to the position of preacher of the Papal Household, a post within the Vatican wherein he “will deliver Advent and Lenten sermons to the pope and members of the Roman Curia.” Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa had previously held this role for the past 44 years. Pasolini represents the second blatantly pro-LGBTQ priest that Francis installed in the Vatican. Earlier this year, Francis appointed Timothy Radcliffe as a cardinal. Pasolini has hypothesized “that there could have been homosexual relationships, for example, within the circle of the disciples, between Jesus and the disciples, Jesus and Lazarus, because there are expressions that ‘Jesus loved Lazarus,’ there are very strong expressions.” Regarding the Bible’s clear teachings against homosexuality, Pasolini has stated, “It must be said that the Bible does not even hypothesize a world in which there is a tendency that is not heterosexual. In the culture of that time, the only tendency that existed in the eyes of the authors and the people they saw was the heterosexual one.” Radcliffe has said that homosexual sex can be “Eucharistic,” arguing, “Certainly, it can be generous, vulnerable, tender, mutual and non-violent,” and even “expressive of Christ’s self-gift.” That sounds to us like blasphemy.

Misc.

• Trump sentencing in hush money case indefinitely "adjourned" (Daily Wire)

• Left-wing “smear factory” SPLC doxxes Babylon Bee-linked writers (Daily Wire)

• Stellantis job cuts near 4,000 and delaying RAM electric pickup to 2025 (Hot Air)

• China set to lose over 50 million people in population crisis (Newsweek)

• Humor: Kamala asks Biden to stop doing Trump dance in cabinet meetings (Babylon Bee)

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