• Good news: Crime is down: The murder rate across America hit a historic low last year, says a newly released report from the Council on Criminal Justice. The report, which analyzed crime stats from 40 cities, noted that 11 of 13 crime categories saw a decline. Nine categories saw decreases of 10% or greater, and homicides dropped 21%. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt highlighted the lowest homicide rate since 1900, concluding, “This is what happens when you have a President who fully mobilizes federal law enforcement to arrest violent criminals and the worst of the worst illegal aliens.” The city with the largest drop in homicides was Denver, which reported a 41% decline, followed by Washington, DC, and Omaha, both with 40% declines. Overall, violent crime dropped to its lowest level since 2019, and car theft dropped by 27%.

• Warrantless ICE entrees? Whistleblower Aid, a nonprofit legal organization, circulated an ICE memo obtained from two unnamed government officials to Congress, and Democrat Sen. Richard Blumenthal has now released it to the public. The memo, signed by Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, instructs ICE agents on methods to enter the homes of illegal immigrants using only a Form I-205 “administrative warrant.” The whistleblowers and Blumenthal decry this action, as administrative warrants have typically only been used to arrest illegal immigrants in public places. Form I-205 differs from a judicial warrant in that it is signed by an ICE officer and relies on a prior final removal order issued by a judge. Typical judicial warrants to forcibly enter a home require a neutral magistrate’s signature. Although in today’s political climate, neutral magistrates may be an extinct species.

• House passes last four funding bills: On Thursday, the House passed its final funding bills for 2026, as three minibus bills were packaged and passed by a vote of 341-88. These bills provide funding for the War Department, HUD, HHS, Transportation, Labor, and Education. The bill funding DHS was also passed by a vote of 220-207, despite opposition raised by Democrat leaders, who sought to politicize the death of anti-ICE agitator Renee Good over their opposition to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement. Speaker Mike Johnson praised the House’s progress and attributed it to “returning the appropriations process to a committee-led, member-driven approach, as it should be.” The funding bills now head to the Senate, where they are expected to be taken up prior to the January 30 deadline.

• Trump sues JPMorgan for $5 billion: In the wake of the protest-turned-riot on January 6, 2021, a bevy of institutions took action to silence the 45th president. Shortly after he left office, Donald Trump and his organization were informed that JPMorgan Chase had made the “final and unequivocal” decision to close his accounts, giving him just weeks to find an alternative. The lawsuit alleges that JPMC’s decision was because “the political tide at the moment favored doing so.” The bank argues that its commitment to following the letter and the spirit of the law left it no choice but to debank the former president against its own wishes. Somehow, the largest banking institution in America arguing that its hands were tied and that it had no alternative but to take unilateral action of a kind never seen before, without taking the issue to court, just doesn’t ring true.

• Sayonara, WHO: The Trump administration officially withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization yesterday, ending its 78-year membership with the UN’s health agency. The White House pointed to the WHO’s mishandling of the COVID pandemic and subsequent “failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence” from the likes of China as the reason for this action. The fact of the matter is that, like much of the UN, the WHO has become little other than an organization that exists to push increasingly radical leftist ideology under the guise of “healthcare” and “science.” It’s a globalist front organization, and it’s about time America reclaimed a bit of sovereignty and left.

• The TikTok deal: All those leftists who use TikTok can thank President Trump for saving it, but they won’t. After a year of extensions on the complete ban, a deal has been reached for a group of investors that includes the American tech giant Oracle, the California-based private equity fund Silver Lake, and the United Arab Emirates investment firm MGX, with ByteDance keeping a 19.9% stake in the U.S. operation. Trump’s fourth extension was going to end today, so the deal came in the nick of time. The New York Times cried foul because several of the investors have ties to Trump, but the real concern is whether China still controls the algorithms and data. The deal did not transfer the company’s algorithm to the new enterprise; rather, ByteDance is licensing it to the U.S. TikTok. Who controls the propaganda machine remains to be seen.

• No more funding for research via fetal tissue: Donald Trump, the self-described “most pro-life president ever,” sometimes needs reminding of that fact, but not this time. The National Institutes of Health on Thursday ended federal funding for any research that uses tissue from aborted babies. This win prevents the sale of aborted babies to labs for research into areas like stem cells, but NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya stressed that parents who suffer miscarriages can still donate the baby’s body to science. Abortion is the moral issue of our time, and widespread adoption of the abortion pill has led to an explosion of problems, but decisions like this from the NIH that get between abortionists and a paycheck are a step in the right direction.

• Nick Shirley eyes California: The upstart journalist who exposed the “Quality Learing Center” in Minnesota is turning his attention to California. His path is not easy. Nick Shirley’s home has been doxed, and his family has received calls from the public, forcing him to hire 24-hour security. Undeterred, Shirley has said he will pursue fraud cases in California to discover the truth. He specifically mentioned California’s high-speed rail project, which has been ongoing for decades and has produced no visible results so far. Earlier this year, First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli launched an investigation into the $24 billion the state had spent over the last five years to combat homelessness, an amount “no one can account for.” Blue states, it seems, provide fraud investigators like Shirley fertile ground with which to work.

• TPUSA sends cease-and-desist to Candace: She has been asking for it for months, and it finally happened: podcaster Candace Owens received a cease-and-desist letter from Turning Point USA. The final warning implores Owens to stop her ongoing smear campaign since the assassination of TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk, wherein she has been spinning increasingly outlandish and false conspiracies blaming members of TPUSA and even Charlie’s wife, Erika, for “somehow” being involved in his murder. An increasingly unhinged Owens responded to the letter by insisting that it was more “evidence” proving her wild conspiracy claims and then claimed, “Get your lawyer to send a cease-and-desist to the sun, and you will have better luck getting it to stop than getting me to look away from what happened to Charlie. That’s how I feel, uhkay?” Looks like Owens will soon be facing a lawsuit.

Headlines

• Trump revokes Canada’s spot on “Board of Peace” following Davos remarks (Fox News)

• Judge bars FBI from reviewing seized Washington Post reporter’s electronics (Washington Examiner)

• Trump aims to topple Cuba’s communist regime by the end of the year: report (NY Post)

• The Chinese spy machine infiltrating Taiwan’s military (WSJ)

• Satire: Minnesota arrests churchgoers for interrupting protest (Babylon Bee)

The Executive News Summary is compiled daily by Jordan Candler, Thomas Gallatin, Sterling Henry, and Sophie Starkova. For the archive, click here.