• Johnson wins: Congressman Thomas Massie (KY) was the lone Republican holdout against Mike Johnson’s speakership reelection Friday afternoon. Two other Republicans, Keith Self (TX) and Ralph Norman (SC), had initially cast their votes for one another but then switched their votes to back Johnson, ensuring he retains the speakership in a closely divided House. In so doing, the Republicans avoided another embarrassing and protracted speakership fight. Prior to the vote, Donald Trump once again voiced his support for Johnson with a post on Truth Social: “Good luck today for Speaker Mike Johnson, a fine man of great ability, who is very close to having 100% support. A win for Mike today will be a big win for the Republican Party, and yet another acknowledgment of our 129 year most consequential Presidential Election!!” This result was not only a win for Johnson but also for Trump in getting Republicans lined up as he seeks to implement his policy agenda quickly.

• Trump sentencing this week: Donald Trump charged New York with having “a corrupt court system” after Judge Juan Merchan rejected calls for tossing Trump’s dubious and purely politically motivated guilty verdict. Instead, Merchan announced that he would hand down a sentence against Trump this coming Friday, January 10. Trump was charged with and found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels. Numerous legal scholars have blasted the case against Trump as obvious lawfare with charges cooked up in a blatant effort to find him criminally liable for something. Trump will likely win his appeal, but in the meantime, Merchan gets to exercise his personal anti-Trump bias. However, Merchan stated that he would likely not “impose any sentence of incarceration” but rather an “unconditional discharge,” which means effectively no punishment other than the official “felon” label.

• Biden’s parting regulations: On his way out the door, Joe Biden is virtual signaling about climate change. Over the weekend, he announced two key moves: regulations effectively banning 40% of tankless water heaters on the market and a ban on drilling along nearly all of the U.S. coastline. The Department of Energy formally published water heater rules the day after Christmas but without the standard press release. It’s a sequel to 2023’s gas stove fiasco, in which bureaucrats decide what’s good for you and your home. Consumers can expect to pay more for fewer options. As for drilling, roughly 625 million acres of ocean along the Pacific, Atlantic, Gulf, and Alaskan coasts will be off-limits to oil drilling. “Drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation’s energy needs,” Biden said in a statement. “It is not worth the risks." American energy security will suffer, and consumers will pay more. Oil comes from somewhere, and if not here, then from places that don’t even feign concern for the environment. Fortunately, Donald Trump can undo Biden’s dirty work, but it won’t come without left-wing screaming about his destruction of the planet.

• Net neutrality is dead (again): Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Chevron last year, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has pulled back against bureaucratic malfeasance, as the court decided that Biden’s FCC rule classifying broadband providers as common carriers was a case of impermissible agency overreach. Thus, the Obama-era effort to force a government-controlled, socialist-based net neutrality rule is finally dead. During Donald Trump’s first term, his FCC chair, Ajit Pai, worked to repeal the rule, only to have it reinstated under Joe Biden. Now, it will take an act of Congress for net neutrality to ever become law.

• WaPo cartoonist stomps out: Anti-Trump cartoonist Ann Telnaes will no longer be providing her work to The Washington Post. The political cartoonist explained that she quit the Leftmedia outlet after the paper nixed her cartoon featuring Amazon founder and Post owner Jeff Bezos and several other billionaires groveling before Donald Trump. "I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations — and some differences — about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at,” Telnaes said. “Until now.” She noted, “The cartoon that was killed criticizes the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect Trump.” WaPo editor David Shipley said he made the decision to reject the cartoon and was not politically motivated. Instead, he claimed he wanted to avoid topic “repetition.”

• Schumer gaslights on Biden’s mental state: Why did Joe Biden drop out of the 2024 presidential race if his mental acuity was as “sharp” as the Democrats kept on insisting it was? The truth is it was obvious to everyone that Biden was mentally diminished even before he was elected back in 2020. Yet it took his abysmal debate performance against Donald Trump last June before the Democrats and mainstream media finally admitted reality. Yet as late as February of last year, then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer asserted, “[Biden’s] mental acuity is great, it’s fine, it’s as good as it’s been over the years.” He called reports of Biden’s declining mental state “right-wing propaganda.” Well, over the weekend, Schumer was questioned by NBC over his misleading the American public regarding Biden’s mental state, a charge Schumer denied. “Look, we didn’t,” Schumer argued. “Let’s look at President Biden. He’s had an amazing record, the legislation we passed, one of the most significant groups of legislation since … Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.” Really? Talk about gaslighting. No wonder a growing majority of Americans don’t trust Democrats.

• NYC congestion tax: It’s not just drivers who will pay Manhattan’s new congestion toll, which went into effect on Sunday. It will also apply to nearly everyone living in the city, regardless of whether they drive. That’s because companies that engage in delivery or other services in Manhattan are passing the $9 toll onto their customers. As a memo to customers from phone and data service company CompuVoip explains, “While the costs of providing service calls have risen, we’ve absorbed these increases without passing them on to you — until now.” Noting the new congestion toll, the memo adds, “As a result, we will need to introduce a ‘congestion pricing surcharge’ for customers located within the Congestion Pricing Zone. This surcharge will reflect our actual costs and will only apply to service calls in that area.” This congestion toll is the brainchild of Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul and, as a result, has been dubbed “Hochul inflation.”

Headlines

• Harris readies to certify Trump’s election win — and her decisive defeat (The Hill)

• Trump vows “one powerful Bill” to pass major MAGA policies (Newsweek)

• Biden signs Social Security Fairness Act (Newsweek)

• Pelosi falsely suggests her husband was a “victim” of Trump’s rhetoric (Daily Wire)

• NYPD applicants have plummeted as force tries to hire 1,600 officers (NY Post)

• Michigan to clear 400+ acres of state forest for solar farm to meet “clean energy” goals (Not the Bee)

• Theses states have cracked down on DEI at colleges (Daily Wire)

• Greenland’s prime minister calls for independence from Denmark as U.S. tries to acquire island (Daily Wire)

• Canada’s Trudeau is likely to announce resignation (Reuters)

• Humor: Biden honors Harris with Presidential Medal of Participation (Babylon Bee)

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