ABC agrees to settle Trump ‘rape’ defamation case for $15m as president-elect attends Army-Navy sport: Live

Donald Trump is seeking to potentially privatize the U.S. Postal Service once he takes office, according to The Washington Post, with the president-elect reportedly dismayed over the carrier’s financial losses.

“The government is slow, slow, slow — decades slow on adopting new ways of doing things, and there’s a lot of [other] carrier services that became legal in the ’70s that are doing things so much better with increased volumes and reduced costs,” said Casey Mulligan, a former top economist in the first Trump administration, told the paper. “We didn’t finish the job in the first term, but we should finish it now.”

During his previous term, the president publicly feuded with the postal carrier over rates and labor questions and repeatedly raised questions over the sanctity of mail-in ballots.

The U.S. has been in direct contact with the Syrian rebel group that overthrew the regime of dictator Bashar Assad, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed on Saturday.

The group, former al-Qaida affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), has been designated a foreign terror group by the U.S. since 2018.

“Yes, we have been in contact with HTS and with other parties,” Blinken said in Jordan on Saturday, adding, “our message to the Syrian people is this: We want them to succeed and we’re prepared to help them do so.”

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

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

“This has gone too far,” Hochul said in the statement, calling on Congress to pass the Counter-UAS Authority Security, Safety, and Reauthorization Act, a bill that would reform drone policy and hand more authority over to states.

“Until those powers are granted to state and local officials, the Biden Administration must step in by directing additional federal law enforcement to New York and the surrounding region to ensure the safety of our criitcal infrastructure and our people,” Hochul added.

Employers are worried Donald Trump’s immigration agenda could cut the workforce by millions of people if he follows through on slashing programs offering temporary work approval to immigrants in the country illegally or whose visas have expired.

The programs cover as many as 3.3 million people, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

“Though the numbers are small, these individuals play a key role in the success of a company like ours,” Nate Koetje, chief executive of an electrical contractor based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, told the Wall Street Journal on Saturday.

Elon Musk and Trump have been nearly inseparable since the election, and that looks set to continue at today’s Army-Navy football game.

Musk said on X he would be joining the president-elect in Maryland to take in the matchup.

Here’s more on the Trump-Musk friendship:

In Washington, a well-placed donation goes a long way.

The incoming Trump administration is set to be staffed with nearly three dozen individuals who donated to the Trump campaign or groups working to re-elect the Republican, according to a new CNN analysis.

Those donors include more well-known ones like Elon Musk, who spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the Trump effort, to others like Congress members Elise Stefanik and Mike Waltz, who transferred money from their campaigns to support Trump.

Donald Trump’s recent designation as Time magazine’s Person of the Year came with a unique addition: a lengthy post-interview fact-check.

The magazine said Friday no other Person of the Year has prompted a similar fact-check over the nearly 100 year history of the annual honor.

The fact-check probes 15 different statements made by the president-elect about immigration, vaccines, and crime.

Donald Trump is reportedly cooling on the idea of replacing his pick to lead the Pentagon, former Fox News anchor Pete Hegseth, with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

DeSantis’s name entered the picture as Hegseth faced a number of serious misconduct allegations, including rape and alcohol abuse, both of which he denies.

But Trump’s potential embrace of DeSantis for the position appears to have stalled, according to political reporter Maggie Haberman.

“What changed was a couple of things. One was… Trump could not find a single person in his orbit, or even really outside of it, who liked this idea of making Ron DeSantis — the governor of Florida — the Defense secretary choice,” she told CNN’s “AC360.”

Here’s more on the potential DeSantis nod:

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.