TVG Daily Brief 17 JAN 2025

17 JAN 2025

Stay informed and ahead of the curve with today’s top headlines, breaking stories, and the latest updates shaping our world. Get the BLUF (bottom line up front!) on defense, national security, economy, business development, technology, American manufacturing, school safety, 2A issues - and more. Prep for the whiplash and stay engaged. Know better - do better. Be the somebody!

DEFENSE

-Biden calls on troops to ‘remember your oath’ in final remarks to military: President Biden on Thursday continued his farewell tour of Washington, D.C., with wide-ranging final remarks to U.S. service members, touting his defense record while praising the military and urging them to remember their oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution. “Our commitment to honor, to integrity, to unity, to protecting and defending not a person or a party or a place, but an idea,” Biden said. “That’s the idea that generations of service members have fought for, an idea you have sworn an oath to defend as a nation. We’ve never fully lived up to that idea, but we’ve never, ever, ever walked away from it. Our country is counting on you to ensure that that will always be true.” (The Hill)

· Biden — addressing a crowd of service members and officials including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Charles Q. Brown Jr., Vice President Harris and first lady Jill Biden — moments earlier had received a Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Medal. He then took to the podium to praise troops, sailors and airmen for representing “America’s character, honesty, integrity, [and] commitment.”

· “Every time I’m here, it’s made me so damn proud to be an American,” Biden said at the farewell ceremony at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Fort Myer in Arlington, Va. “Serving as your commander in chief has been the greatest honor of my life. While I’m deeply grateful for your thanks and affection, I’m here to thank you. Thank you for your service to our nation, for allowing me to bear witness to your courage, your commitment, your character.”

· He went on to highlight myriad actions during his time in the White House, including investing “record resources to fight the scourge of military suicide,” bringing veteran homelessness to new lows, changes in the military justice system — which he said has reduced the rates of sexual assault for the first time in nearly a decade — ending President-elect Trump’s enacted ban on transgender service members, creating more economic opportunities for military spouses, and expanding opportunities for women in combat roles.

· Biden devoted several minutes to his administration’s effort to enact the PACT Act, legislation that increases access to medical care for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits and substances. The issue is particularly close to his heart given his eldest son, Beau Biden, died in 2015 after being diagnosed with brain cancer believed to be a consequence of exposure to military burn pits while serving in Iraq.

· He also praised troops for their role in the ending of the Afghanistan War in August 2021 — a chaotic and deadly withdrawal that his adversaries have often attacked his handling of. “When I asked you to end our nation’s longest war, you rose to the occasion … accomplishing the largest airlift in military history in any war,” he said. “I believe history will reflect it was right thing to do, but I know it was hard.” He noted that he carries the pain of losing 13 service members during the withdrawal “every single day.”

· And just six months after that war ended, when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and Biden called on the U.S. military to help Kyiv, “you didn’t hesitate. You kept Ukraine in the fight, trained Ukrainian soldiers and pilots, troops bolstered NATO’s eastern flank, and above all, you showed the world America stands up for freedom.”

-Austin, the first Black defense secretary, ends his term marred by Afghanistan but buoyed by Ukraine: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will bid farewell Friday to the forces and personnel he has led through a tumultuous term that had three major military crises, a global pandemic and a personal brush with cancer that became a flashpoint for the way it was mishandled. Austin, 71, spent 41 years of his life in a military uniform. He retired as a highly decorated four-star general who earned a Silver Star — an award given for gallantry in action — for leading troops from the front in the initial 2003 invasion of Iraq. (Stars and Stripes)

· He is one of the many Pentagon leaders who have served in combat and has “dust on his boots” — something President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has falsely claimed is his distinction and why he is needed to restore a military hollowed out by “woke” diversity initiatives. “There have been a lot of narratives out there about how capable, how weak our military is,” Austin said in an interview with The Associated Press. “You’ve just got to look at the things we have done, that we continue to do, at a moment’s notice.”

· Austin retired from the Army in 2016 only to be asked to return to the Pentagon by President Joe Biden in 2021, making history as the nation’s first Black defense secretary. He took the helm of the Pentagon at the height of COVID-19 and just weeks after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by a mob of Trump’s supporters. His early months saw the department working through a divisive COVID-19 vaccine mandate for the force and a deep dive to determine whether there was a wider extremism problem in the ranks. More than 230 people with a military background were arrested in connection with the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection.

· Austin repeatedly said he believed extremism was not a problem. Indeed, service members and veterans who radicalize make up a tiny fraction of a percentage point of the millions who have honorably served, though an Associated Press investigation last year found it was on the rise. But it would be the shocking collapse of the Afghan government to the Taliban that would forever mar Austin’s tenure. The U.S. withdrawal had been previously negotiated by Trump, and, because of that, there were only 2,500 U.S. forces in Afghanistan when Biden took office. To this day, there’s a deep sense of betrayal among some veterans over the loss of Afghanistan, which became a key part of Trump’s return to office.

-Democrats look to thwart another trans military ban under Trump: Two House Democrats are looking to block President-elect Trump from enacting another ban on transgender people serving openly in the military, reintroducing legislation Thursday that would prevent the armed forces from hiring or firing someone because of their gender identity or sex characteristics. (the Hill)

· Trump, who on the campaign trail last year promised to reinstate a 2017 ban on transgender military service that President Biden repealed in 2021, began drafting an executive order restoring and expanding the policy following his November election win, The Times reported. At a Turning Point USA event in December, Trump said he will sign an executive order “on day one” to “get transgender out of the military.”

· Reps. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) and Eric Sorensen’s (D-Ill.) proposal, titled the Ensuring Military Readiness Not Discrimination Act, comes just days before Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration. “Kicking nearly 15,000 service members out of the military solely because of their identity would be catastrophic to our military readiness and recruitment,” said Jacobs, a co-chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus’s Transgender Equality Task Force. Her brother, Dylan, is transgender, and another sibling is gender nonconforming. “Anyone willing and able to sacrifice to defend our country should be able to do so without fear of discrimination — period,” said Sorensen, one of 13 openly LGBTQ lawmakers in the House.

-OpenAI’s GPT-4o gets green light for top secret use in Microsoft’s Azure cloud: Federal agencies with top-secret workloads can now use OpenAI’s GPT-4o through Microsoft’s Azure for U.S. Government Top Secret cloud. Microsoft announced Thursday it received authorization for 26 additional products in its top-secret cloud environment, meeting Intelligence Community Directive (ICD) 503 standards and allowing agencies — particularly those in the intelligence community and Defense Department — to use them for the government’s most classified information. Those added tools include Azure OpenAI Service — which provides Azure customers access to OpenAI’s generative AI large language models — and Azure Machine Learning, among others. (DefenseScoop)

· Douglas Phillips, Microsoft corporate vice president, wrote a blog post announcing the news that Azure OpenAI “allows agencies and authorized partners operating in Microsoft’s Azure Government Top Secret cloud to benefit from multimodal generative AI models, such as GPT-4o, while meeting the rigorous security and compliance requirements necessary for the nation’s most sensitive data. Authorized users can easily access and integrate Azure OpenAI Service and further ground it on their data for more specialized and accurate intelligence.”

· GPT-4o is an OpenAI model that can be used for natural language understanding and processing, text summarization and classification, sentiment analysis, question answering, conversational agents and more. It is the foundational model that the popular commercial generative AI tool ChatGPT is built on.

-Pentagon’s overhaul of military relocations faces a skeptical moving industry: The Defense Department’s effort to streamline its global system of shipping service members’ household goods is meeting resistance from the moving industry and a federal lawsuit challenging the bidding process for a multibillion-dollar contract. The system overhaul would consolidate oversight and management to a single contractor that oversees and manages all domestic and international relocations for the military, Coast Guard and federal employees. (Stars and Stripes)

· Single oversight is intended to increase customer satisfaction and tamp down costs, but many in the moving industry have balked. They compare the contract terms unfavorably to the current system. In November 2021, U.S. Transportation Command awarded a $20 billion contract to Houston-based HomeSafe Alliance LLC to handle the work being done by more than 900 commercial entities for roughly 300,000 moves a year. More than three years later, the rollout of the so-called Global Household Goods Contract, or GHC, has made little headway, with growing resistance by much of the industry.

-Drones expected to remain a DOD priority under Trump, according to SecDef nominee Hegseth: Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be Pentagon chief, made it clear to lawmakers this week that, if confirmed, he plans to prioritize the military’s adoption and integration of autonomous technologies in modern operations and enhance its ability to counter drones that continue to disrupt U.S. national security. “Unmanned [platforms] will be a very important part of the way future wars are fought. Just the idea of survivability for human beings — to drive cost and time in ways that manned systems do not,” Hegseth said during his confirmation hearing Tuesday. (DefenseScoop)

· In responses to the Senate Armed Services Committee’s advanced policy questions (APQs) that were submitted to Congress ahead of that testimony, the secretary of defense nominee also made multiple statements pledging to support drone-enabling efforts across the individual military services and the joint force.

· Drones and swarms of unmanned systems are reshaping contemporary warfare and U.S. national security. Informed partly by lessons from the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, as well as still-emerging conflicts in the Middle East, Defense Department leadership during the Biden administration launched several high-dollar efforts to accelerate production and ultimately expand the military’s arsenal of such capabilities.

-Restoring Fort Bragg, other Confederate base names: Can Trump keep his campaign promise: President-elect Donald Trump has made no attempt to hide his disdain for the name changes to nine southern Army installations in 2023, which grew out of a yearslong, multimillion-dollar effort that began in his first administration. In October, at a Fayetteville, N.C., campaign event held less than 10 miles from the gates of the Army’s largest post, Fort Liberty, Trump promised a crowd of supporters that he would return the installation to its previous name — Fort Bragg. Until it was officially renamed Fort Liberty in a ceremony just off the 172,000-acre Army post’s main parade grounds on June 2, 2023, that base had carried the name of Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg since its inception as a small artillery training post in 1918. (Stars and Stripes)

· “Here’s what we do: We get elected [then] I’m doing it,” Trump told his supporters at the town hall event, drawing cheers and applause from the crowd. “I’m doing it. I’m doing it.” “We did win two world wars from Fort Bragg, right? So, this is not a time to be changing names, and we’re going to do that. We’re going to do everything we can, and we’re going to get it back.”

· Some of Trump’s supporters have long cheered his calls for Confederate names to remain on or return to Army posts, and some veterans who served at these installations have vowed to never recognize the official name changes that were conducted in ceremonies between March and October 2023, when Fort Pickett, Va., became Fort Barfoot; Fort Lee, Va., became Fort Gregg-Adams; Fort A.P. Hill, Va., became Fort Walker; Fort Hood, Texas, became Fort Cavazos; Fort Rucker, Ala., became Fort Novosel; Fort Polk, La., became Fort Johnson; Fort Bragg became Fort Liberty; Fort Benning, Ga., became Fort Moore; and Fort Gordon, Ga., became Fort Eisenhower.

-Trump selects Troy Meink as Air Force secretary: President-elect Donald Trump said on Thursday he has chosen as Troy Meink to lead the U.S. Air Force. "Troy will work with our incredible Secretary of Defense Nominee, Pete Hegseth, to ensure that our Nation’s Air Force is the most effective and deadly force in the World, as we secure PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH," Trump said in a post on Truth Social. (AP, Reuters)

· President-elect Donald Trump has named Troy Meink, a former Air Force KC-135 tanker aircraft navigator and former deputy of the National Reconnaissance Office, as his choice to serve as the top civilian leader for the Air Force. Meink has almost four decades of experience as both a military member and in government service in national security, including roles managing some of the nation’s most sensitive satellite intelligence capabilities and the military’s space portfolio.

· If confirmed, Meink would assume the role as the Air Force and U.S. Space Force, which was established by Trump during his first term and just hit its fifth year in existence — are hurriedly trying to reshape the nation's space capabilities. Many countries, including Russia, China, North Korea and the U.S. are developing new ways to disable or defend the tens of thousands of satellites that ring the Earth as a way to cripple a potential adversary without fighting a traditional land-based war.

· Meink is from Lemmon, South Dakota, and joined the Air Force as an ROTC cadet at South Dakota State University in 1988. In his previous role at the National Reconnaissance Office, Meink oversaw a more than $15 billion budget to acquire new satellite capabilities.

-Space Force procurement official removed amid investigation: The Department of the Air Force has removed Derek Tournear from his position as director of the U.S. Space Force’s Space Development Agency (SDA), SpaceNews has learned. A department spokesperson said Tournear was placed on administrative leave as of Jan. 16 pending the results of an investigation but did not elaborate on the circumstances and declined to provide additional details about the investigation. (SpaceNews)

· Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, commander of the Space Force’s Space Systems Command, will step in as acting director of the SDA while the investigation is underway. According to unofficial sources familiar with the situation, the investigation into Tournear may be linked to complaints from contractors about SDA’s unconventional procurement methods and alleged improper sharing of proprietary information.

-Money alone won’t fix the Navy’s shipbuilding woes, lawmaker says: Congress may need to “micromanage” the Navy’s efforts to boost the submarine industrial base going forward, after the service asked for billions of dollars in supplemental funding requests last year on top of the annual budget, said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. “Our oversight role is going to have to be more into…micromanaging this,” Kaine said during the Surface Naval Association’s national symposium on Wednesday, noting that sometimes lawmakers can assume, “if we just put the budget to it, we're going to solve the problem.” But in this case, he said, “That's not enough to solve the problem.” (Defense One)

· The Navy has repeatedly sought—and received—additional funding to bolster the submarine industrial base in recent years. Moreover, the Navy’s current shipbuilding plan will require production costs to increase in coming decades at the rate of about $40 billion a year, according to a recent Congressional Budget Office analysis.

· “You saw, for example, in the anomaly that we did a year in to continue to put more dollars into submarine production. That's a recognition that, OK, we have to do more. And we did that—even though we had put in millions of dollars for the very same priority during the supplemental building we passed in April,” he said. “So we put money into this workforce to advance production in April, and then we came back and did more, and that was on top of the base defense budget.”

-New strategy aims to get 80% of Navy ships deployable: Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti set a goal for the Navy last fall that she conceded might be a little aspirational: to have 80 percent of the Navy’s fleet ready to deploy at any given time by 2027. Monday, Naval Sea Systems Command released its strategy to support that effort: a five-part plan that includes getting new ships in the water on time while also creating more maintenance opportunities for existing ships. The second part will mean sticking to the schedule for maintenance periods, a continuous challenge for the service. (Defense One)

· “Bonus points for early,” Vice Adm. Jim Downey, head of Naval Sea Systems Command, said Thursday during a panel at the Surface Navy Association’s annual symposium outside Washington, D.C. “That is possible.” Getting there will take better planning, he added, including shorter maintenance periods with tight schedules to make sure needed repairs and upgrades are done—and no time for lollygagging. That might look like 100 or 150 days in dry dock rather than a year, as data shows scheduled year-long availabilities are four times as likely to run over on time than shorter ones, Downey said.

-Navy fired more than 200 missiles to fight off Red Sea shipping attacks, admiral says: The U.S. Navy has defended against nearly 400 attack drones and missiles in the Red Sea since Iranian-backed Houthi militants began their assault on commercial and military ships more than a year ago, a pace that has seen the service firing back at levels comparable to World War II battles. Navy forces have fired more than 200 missiles against those attacks since the Houthis began their campaign in the strategic waterway in November 2023. Destroyers and cruisers also have fired more than 150 artillery rounds, said Vice Adm. Brendan McLane, commander of Naval Surface Forces. (Stars and Stripes)

· Many of the munitions were fired in larger-scale battles, said McLane, speaking Tuesday during a panel discussion at the Surface Navy Association conference in Arlington, Va. “We’ve done the analysis with what we used to shoot in World War II, and we’re at about two rounds per incoming missile to shoot (Houthi strikes) down,” he said. That matches the current rates of fire to those of the historic battles fought more than 80 years ago, he added.

· Over the past 15 months, the Navy has fired 120 SM-2, 80 SM-6, and 20 Evolved Sea Sparrow and SM-3 missiles, as well as 160 rounds from its 5-inch guns. Those weapons defeated 380 Houthi attack drones and ballistic and cruise missiles, McLane said. Those missile expenditures have cost the Navy hundreds of millions of dollars. SM-2 missiles are priced at about $2.1 million apiece while the SM-6 missiles cost about $3.9 million each. SM-3 missiles range from $9.6 million to $27.9 million, according to Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance data.

-Navy fires commanding officer of Naval Information Warfare Training Group Norfolk: Navy Cmdr. Sarah M. Quemada has been fired as the commanding officer of Naval Information Warfare Training Group Norfolk in Virginia “due to a loss of confidence in her ability to command,” the service announced on Thursday. Rear Adm. Brian A. Harding, commander of Naval Information Warfighting Development Center, relieved Quemada on Thursday, a Navy news release says. No information was immediately available about the specific reason for her firing. (Task & Purpose)

-Marine Corps seeks input on efforts to curb suicide within the ranks: The Marine Corps is seeking feedback from active-duty troops about its programs to remove or secure the objects that facilitate suicide. The service released a survey on Jan. 13 seeking Marines’ comments on currently available “lethal means” safety programs and “preferences for safety devices and storage locations,” according to a Marine Corps administration message issued that day. (Stars and Stripes)

· Suicide remains a stubborn issue for the U.S. military. Last year, 62 Marines were among 363 active-duty service members who took their own lives, according to the Defense Suicide Prevention Office. The Pentagon in November reported an active-duty suicide rate in 2023 of 28 suicide deaths for every 100,000 service members. That was a 12% increase over the previous year. The report was calculated based on an active-duty force of 1.28 million troops.

· “Lethal means safety” refers to programs designed to remove access to objects that can be used to inflict self-harm, such as firearms, sharp objects, other weapons or medication, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Suicide Prevention Office.

· The voluntary survey is open to all active-duty Marines and Marines on active-duty operational support orders and aims to “to gauge awareness and preferences in messaging, safety devices, and location,” U.S. Marine Corps Headquarters’ Manpower and Reserve Affairs spokeswoman Maj. Melissa Spencer told Stars and Stripes by email Thursday. “Survey results will enable us to tailor suicide-prevention efforts and develop messaging and programs that will be most relevant and impactful to our Marines, Sailors, and families,” she wrote.

· The survey, which closes Jan. 31, is part of a larger effort by the Suicide Prevention Office to assess the effectiveness of its outreach and education on suicide prevention and lethal means safety, Spencer said. The service is aiming to develop “a tailored lethal means safety plan,” she said. “Results from this study will inform policies, programs, and practices to improve lethal means safety practices for Marines and inform prevention efforts,” Spencer said.

· “Suicide prevention efforts remain a top priority for the Marine Corps, and prevention efforts are ongoing to ensure the Marine Corps is implementing the best ways to support Marines, Sailors, and their families,” Spencer said Friday.

-Okinawa governor delivers protest letter over sex crime allegation against Marine: Okinawa’s governor has delivered official protest letters to two Japanese government officials over the latest sexual assault allegation against a U.S. service member. Gov. Denny Tamaki signed and personally delivered the letters to Manabu Miyagawa, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary, and Shinya Ito, director of the Okinawa Defense Bureau, on Thursday in Naha city. (Stars and Stripes)

· Okinawa Prefectural Police on Jan. 8 accused a Marine of injuring a woman during a sexual assault in November and forwarded the case to local prosecutors. “It is very regrettable and causes strong anger that this kind of crime happened five times in one year,” Tamaki wrote in the letter, a copy of which was provided to Stars and Stripes.

-In Her Final Days in Office, Army Secretary Formally Establishes Service's Command Review Program: The Army is doubling down on its centralized screening program, which was established in 2020 to reduce bias during the selection process for the service's command leadership. Army Secretary Christine Wormuth issued a directive Thursday permanently establishing the Command Assessment Program, introduced as a pilot nearly five years ago to review officers and senior enlisted personnel in line for command billets or sergeants major jobs. (Military.com)

· Eligible service members go through a series of physical, mental and professional assessments, as well as a blind interview before a diverse panel directed to consider the candidate without conscious or unconscious bias regarding race, gender, service branch or military experience. Army officials say the program provides a “deliberate approach to identify, assess and select” the most qualified candidates.

· “For the past five years, CAP has successfully demonstrated itself to be a critical component of the Army’s service selection process,” Wormuth wrote in Army Directive 2024-14. “This directive formally institutionalizes CAP as an enduring program.”

-Matthew Livelsberger's Widow Breaks Silence, Refutes 'Misinformation About My Family': The widow of Matthew Livelsberger — the Colorado Springs Green Beret who died by suicide in a rented Tesla Cybertruck seconds before the vehicle exploded on New Year’s Day in Las Vegas — has broken her silence to refute what she believes are false and slanderous narratives about her late husband and their family. In an interview with "Speak the Truth" podcast host Matt Tardio, Jennifer Davis recounted the days leading up to Livelsberger’s highly-publicized suicide, including what she called a “fabulous” Christmas, how she learned the devastating news about her husband and how she has been coping since. (Colorado Springs Gazette)

· “I wanted to ensure that I gave her a voice,” Tardio, based in the Dallas area, told The Gazette on Tuesday. “Matt did 19 years in the Army, with multiple deployments, and he did that for his country. Regardless of how this investigation turns out in the end, he served honorably, to my knowledge. I think it is important that her side of the story be told.”

· Tardio, a retired Green Beret who mentioned that he briefly served with Livelsberger, said Davis reached out to him through a “mutual contact,” and that he confirmed her identity through several avenues before releasing the interview on his YouTube channel. “There’s a lot of slanderous information that is out there that, in my opinion, is based on false information,” he said. “I do believe her statements to be true.”

-Students charged in TikTok plot targeting soldier plead not guilty: Five Massachusetts college students appeared in court Thursday, accused of plotting to lure an active-duty soldier to their campus through a dating app and then seizing him as part of a “Catch a Predator” trend on TikTok. The Assumption University students, all teenagers, were arraigned on conspiracy and kidnapping charges. Not-guilty pleas were entered for all of them, and they are due back in Worcester District Court on March 28 for a pre-trial conference. (AP)

· The defendants — Kelsy Brainard, 18; Easton Randall, 19; Kevin Carroll, 18; Isabella Trudeau, 18; and Joaquin Smith, 18 — stood stone-faced in court, showing little emotion and addressing a judge only through attorneys. A sixth defendant was being arraigned separately in juvenile court. Police said Brainard's Tinder account was used to lure the man to the private, Roman Catholic school in Worcester. She faces an additional charge of witness intimidation. A male student in the group also faces a charge of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.

· The 22-year-old service member told police he was in town for his grandmother’s funeral in October and “just wanted to be around people that were happy,” according to a campus police report. So he turned to Tinder, where a woman whose profile said she was 18 invited him over. She greeted him, led him into a basement lounge and then within minutes, “a group of people came out of nowhere and started calling him a pedophile,” accusing him of wanting sex with 17-year-old girls, according to the report.

-How California National Guard helicopter crews are fighting the LA wildfires: As thick black smoke rises past their canopy, the crew of a California National Guard Chinook dives through a scrubby canyon, 500 feet over a line of flames. A cloud of water falls from a bucket slung beneath it, and a plume of white vapor signals to the crew that they’ve hit their mark. For California National Guard pilots like Chief Warrant Officer 5 Joseph Rosamond, these kinds of maneuvers have been honed over many years and operations. (Task & Purpose)

· “Whether it’s our rescues or it’s our firefighting stuff, whenever you’re out helping the community, that is the most rewarding thing you can do, because it’s a selfless act of service,” Rosamond told Task & Purpose. “I think there is a work ethic that comes with that, and you are either the type of person that wants to go out there and get after it, or you’re not. If you’re not, you’re probably not in this organization.”

· In 2020, Rosamond and his crew rescued over 300 people and almost 30 pets after campers became trapped at an RV campground during another wildfire. As the Los Angeles wildfires continue to burn this week, National Guard helicopters and their crews have completed several drops in the fire zone this year, and thousands throughout their combined efforts over the past several years.

-U.S. Reveals Once-Secret Support for Ukraine’s Drone Industry: The Biden administration declassified one last piece of information about how it has helped Ukraine: an account of its once-secret support for the country’s military drone industry. U.S. officials said on Thursday that they had made big investments that helped Ukraine start and expand its production of drones as it battled Russia’s larger and better-equipped army. (NYT)

· Much of the U.S. assistance to the Ukrainian military, including billions of dollars in missiles, air defense systems, tanks, artillery and training, has been announced to the public. But other support has largely gone on in the shadows. That included helping Ukraine develop a new generation of drones and revolutionize how wars are fought, according to U.S. officials.

· The innovations in Ukraine’s drone industry have been hailed as transformative, but the U.S. support has been less well understood. In addition to technical support, the U.S. has spent significant money, including $1.5 billion sent last September, to boost Ukraine’s drone production, officials said.

· Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, said the support had “a real strategic impact” on the war. “We saw how UAVs were becoming increasingly central to the fight in Ukraine and will be central to all future fights,” Mr. Sullivan said in a statement on Thursday, referring to unmanned aerial vehicles.

-First Indian space startups picked for Indo-US defence programme, sources say: Seven Indian private companies have been chosen for a first-of-its-kind India-U.S. space and defence collaboration programme, unlocking a lucrative and strategic market for Indian firms, said three sources with knowledge of the matter. Under the programme, the companies - which the sources said included space imaging company KaleidEO and rocket makers EtherealX and Aadyah Space - will work with the U.S. Defense Innovation Unit, the Department of Defense and other government agencies on satellite observation and emerging space and defence technologies. (Reuters)

· In return, they get access to the world's biggest defence and space market, mentorship and paid clientele as they also work with U.S. defence industry leaders such as Northrop Grumman , RTX, and Lockheed Martin, two of the sources said. That could give them an edge against the competition as they compete for U.S. business in their niches worth about $1.5 billion annually, the first source said.

· The India-U.S. Defense Acceleration Ecosystem was launched in 2023 to create an innovation bridge between the two nations. The initiative comes as India pushes to expand its defence and space private industries while reducing its reliance on Russia, its traditional partner.

· Access to the U.S. defence and space market, the largest globally, could be transformative for Indian private players, generating annual revenues between $500 million and $1 billion, the source added. The second source said the main objective was for companies domiciled in India to be able to work with the U.S. Department of Defence and private industry leaders, as well to gain a foothold into the U.S. commercial space launch market.

VETERANS

-Multi-year outreach blitz helped bring more vets into VA services: Even for non-veterans, it has been hard to ignore the Department of Veterans Affairs over the last few years. There have been sponsorships for college football bowl games promoting VA services, partnerships with companies like CVS and USAA, and ads sprinkled throughout online music channels and video streaming sites. The department held events at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota and at Yankee Stadium last summer, just two of more than 500 high-profile outreach events that spanned all 50 states. And that list doesn’t include a blitz of more than 50 million emails and 5 million texts sent directly to veterans asking how the department can help. (Military Times)

· “Many veterans and many veteran families don’t know all of the different aspects of what VA can do for them, and we can’t expect them to know that,” said Adam Farina, assistant secretary for public and intergovernmental affairs at the department. “So much of this is about making the case why veterans should use VA; here’s how VA can make a difference in your life.” Now the question is whether that sales pitch will continue.

· As a new administration takes over the White House, VA’s future outreach efforts remain a key question for the community. President-elect Donald Trump has not signaled whether the outreach focus under President Joe Biden will move ahead unchanged or if the department will key in on other priorities and promotions. His pick to lead the department — former Georgia Rep. Doug Collins — is expected to be asked about his plans for outreach efforts during his confirmation hearing next Tuesday.

· Current department leaders have said the idea of selling VA to the public, instead of waiting for veterans to discover benefits on their own, is an intentional shift in philosophy sparked by the 2022 passage of the PACT Act, which provided new medical care and disability compensation for one in five living veterans across the country. It also included funding for outreach efforts, to make sure information about the new assistance wasn’t lost in bureaucratic filings.

-Republicans in Congress Try Again for Rules Allowing Expedited Firings of VA Employees: In one of their first concrete actions of the new congressional session, the chairmen of the committees that oversee the Department of Veterans Affairs introduced a bill Thursday aimed at making it easier to fire bad VA employees. The bill, called the Restore VA Accountability Act, would revive and retool expedited firing authorities that Congress first passed in 2017 but which were later gutted by court rulings and labor board decisions. (Military.com)

· "While VA employs some of the finest men and women, it only takes a few bad employees to disrupt the culture and service at the VA," Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jerry Moran, R-Kan., said in a statement. "This bill would restore the intent of Congress and help make certain that veterans receive the high-quality care and benefits they've earned and VA staff have the healthy workplace they deserve." Moran introduced the bill alongside House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Mike Bost, R-Ill. The bill also has seven co-sponsors in the Senate and 25 in the House, all Republicans.

-VA committee leaders target ‘1% of bad VA employees’ in fast-track firing bill: Top Republicans on the House and Senate VA Committees are leading a bill meant to help the Department of Veterans Affairs fire poor-performing employees more quickly. Congress passed a similar bill into law in 2017, but implementation fell short of some lawmakers’ expectations. Senate VA Committee Chairman Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and House VA Committee Chairman Mike Bost (R-Ill.) reintroduced the Restore VA Accountability Act on Thursday. The bill is cosponsored by 25 House lawmakers, and seven Republican senators. Lawmakers wrote in a fact sheet that the bill “would ultimately help VA remove the small percentage of employees who are hurting veterans in weeks or months, rather than years.” (Federal News Network)

· The bill didn’t make it through the House of Senate during the last session of Congress. But lawmakers are making the fast-track firing bill a legislative priority in a new session of Congress, as the incoming Trump administration is calling for policies making it easier to fire career federal employees.

· The VA fired thousands of employees through an expedited removal process created under the 2017 VA Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act. But federal judges and the Merit Systems Protection Board repeatedly blocked many of the legislation’s provisions from covering most VA employees.

· The department reinstated 120 employees — about 3% of the 4,000 employees fired under the widely challenged law paid about $134 million to other former employees the VA fired. The VA agreed to these actions, as part of a settlement it reached with the American Federation of Government Employees in July 2023. No employee fired for grievous misconduct has been rehired.

· Republican lawmakers said the reintroduced bill would “close the gaps that courts have created in the 2017 Accountability Act by reinstating Congress’s intent to provide the VA with the authority necessary to swiftly remove, demote and suspend employees who do not serve the interests of veterans.” The bill also seeks to hold VA managers accountable by holding them to the same disciplinary procedures as members of the Senior Executive Service.

-Veterans Can Now Tell Their Own Stories on the VA's Veterans Memorial Website: The Department of Veterans Affairs' website built to honor veterans who have served the country since the Revolutionary War will now allow former service members to tell their own stories before they die. The VA announced Thursday that it has expanded its Veterans Legacy Memorial, or VLM, a website that houses the names of millions of veterans and can be used to pay tribute to former service members. Veterans who are eligible for burial in a VA national cemetery will now be able to log into a secure site where they can upload images, autobiographies, military achievements and life milestones to their holding place. (Military.com)

-Veterans Affairs outreach aids local veterans with new log-in process: A Veterans Affairs outreach program assisted local veterans in navigating a new log-in credential process on Thursday. Staff from the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System hosted the event at the Belmont County VA Outpatient Clinic, helping veterans create ID.me and Login.gov accounts to replace their My HealtheVet credentials. "It went very smooth, given the fact that I'm not very computer literate," veteran David Rose said. "That's why I came out here instead of doing it on my own." (WTOV)

· Veterans are required to establish these new accounts by Jan. 31 to maintain access to important data. The updated log-in credentials are designed to enhance security for veterans. "After I have a doctor's appointment here or anywhere with the VA, I can go online and get my report quicker than having to wait for them to call me," Rose said.

-RI Veterans Home hiring more staffers so it can take in more vets: The Rhode Island Veterans Home wants to take in more veterans, but in order to do that, the center needs to hire more employees. Kasim Yarn, the state’s director of veterans affairs, says there are currently 144 residents at the community living center, but more than 200 veterans are on the waiting list. “Right now the waiting list is over 15 months,” Yarn told 12 News on Thursday. (WPRI)

· The R.I. Office of Veterans Services is hosting a career fair on Thursday and Friday at 480 Metacom Ave. in Bristol to try to hire up to 30 more staff members. According to Yarn, the veterans home is looking for licensed practical nurses (LPNs), certified nursing assistants (CNAs), and culinary professionals. Career fair attendees will be able to tour the facility, interact with veterans, and talk to people who already work there.

-Bourbon company owned in part by Virginia Beach veteran raises over $400K: A Virginia Beach man and three fellow veterans raised over $400,000 for veterans and first responders through their new bourbon company. U.S. Air Force veteran Michael Trott, U.S. Marine Corps veteran Alfredo Franco, U.S. Army veteran Robert Casey and U.S. Navy veteran Harold Underdown teamed up to create Four Branches Bourbon, a company focused on giving back to veterans and first responders. (WVEC)

· “The inspiration for Four Branches came from a fellow Marine and CIA contract officer, Greg Wright Jr. who sacrificed his life to help save others while on a mission in the Middle East,” said Rick Franco, co-founder of Four Branches Bourbon.

· Rick and Greg first met when they were classmates at the Virginia Military Institute before joining the Marines. “We are deeply inspired by his courage and giving back to veteran organizations. Helping to raise awareness about those like Greg who serve, and their families, was an important bond on which we built this company,” Franco said.

· The company donates a portion of its sales and has raised over $400,000 since May 2023 by auctioning bottles of Four Branches Bourbon and donating to non-profits that support veterans, first responders and their families.

-Woman researching hundreds of WWII veterans for "Reading's Boys" project: An Endicott College graduate is on a mission to learn and write about every World War II veteran in her community. It's already connecting people who never would have met. "I did not really consider myself a religious person when I started this project. But I think this project has made me spiritual in many ways," Autumn Hendrickson explains. Standing in Reading's Laurel Hill Cemetery, she acknowledges that she often feels surrounded by ghosts. (CBS Boston)

· Hendrickson is researching and writing about every WWII veteran in Reading and North Reading. It is an enormous, emotional undertaking. Nine hundred residents joined the war effort. Thirty-two made the ultimate sacrifice. She hopes that her work will preserve their stories and pique readers' interest in the important-but less dramatic-aspects of military service.

-CNN's Reporting Tactics on Display as Defamation Trial Heads to Jury: CNN has spent nearly two weeks in court defending itself against defamation allegations by a U.S. Navy veteran who helped evacuate people from Afghanistan in 2021. The network's newsgathering practices are in focus, but the trial is playing out against a backdrop of intensifying distrust in the legacy news media, writ large. The jury began deliberations Thursday afternoon in a case that could leave CNN on the hook for millions of dollars in damages and send ripples through the industry. "Send a message that our news organizations must be held accountable," Devin Freedman, a lawyer for plaintiff Zachary Young, told jurors. "I'm not gonna ask you today to send a message. I'm gonna ask you to find the truth," CNN's lead counsel, David Axelrod, told jurors in his closing argument. "You all didn't come and sit in this jury to deliver a message to big media." (WSJ)

· The five-minute segment at the center of the dispute aired in November 2021 and told viewers about the exploitation of Afghans trying to escape Taliban rule after the U.S.'s chaotic withdrawal. The back half of the story focused on Young, an Austria-based security and intelligence consultant who had stints in the Navy and the Central Intelligence Agency. Young, CNN's story said, posted messages on LinkedIn offering road evacuations from Kabul to Pakistan for $75,000 a vehicle, or $14,500-per-person flights to the United Arab Emirates. A headline on screen read: "Afghans trying to flee Taliban face black markets, exorbitant fees, no guarantee of safety or success." Young, who sued CNN in 2022, claimed that the story's portrayal rendered him an unemployable pariah in his industry and sent him into a spiral of depression and panic attacks.

· The story, first airing on CNN's "The Lead with Jake Tapper" and narrated by its chief national security correspondent, Alex Marquardt, included a response from Young saying that his services were for Afghans with sponsors that could bear the costs. Young alleged that CNN painted him as a villain illegally preying on people desperate to escape. The network, he said, failed to make it clear that his clients were corporations and nonprofits and that his prices reflected complex evacuation logistics. He said he conducted several operations—on behalf of Bloomberg, Audible and two nongovernmental groups—and found safe haven for nearly two dozen stranded Afghans. "I became an outcast, and that's what I felt like, and to a large degree, I still do," he testified.

GLOBAL

-US aid package funds $5.2 billion deal to bolster Israeli air defenses: Israel will upgrade the layered system shielding it from aerial attacks under a new contract made possible by American funding, according to a statement Thursday by the Israeli Defense Ministry. The $5.2 billion deal with defense technology firm Rafael Advanced Defense Systems is the first of its kind under a U.S. aid package approved by Congress last year. Israel will strengthen the Iron Dome and David’s Sling systems as a result of the contract, which the ministry announced Thursday on X, formerly known as Twitter. The deal also covers work on Iron Beam, a laser system Israel is developing to shoot down missiles. (Stars and Stripes)

· Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamir, director general of the Israeli Defense Ministry, thanked the United States, which he credited with making the contract possible through the aid package it provided. The defense system upgrades are part of a larger $8.7 billion U.S. aid package Israel secured last fall to support its ongoing military efforts. Israeli forces continue to use the defense systems against attacks from Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

-A Year of Empty Threats and a “Smokescreen” Policy: How the State Department Let Israel Get Away With Horrors in Gaza: In early November, a small group of senior U.S. human rights diplomats met with a top official in President Joe Biden’s State Department to make one final, emphatic plea: We must keep our word. Weeks before, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the administration delivered their most explicit ultimatum yet to Israel, demanding the Israel Defense Forces allow hundreds more trucksloads of food and medicine into Gaza every day — or else. American law and Biden’s own policies prohibit arms sales to countries that restrict humanitarian aid. Israel had 30 days to comply. (ProPublica)

· In the month that followed, the IDF was accused of roundly defying the U.S., its most important ally. The Israeli military tightened its grip, continued to restrict desperately needed aid trucks and displaced 100,000 Palestinians from North Gaza, humanitarian groups found, exacerbating what was already a dire crisis “to its worst point since the war began.”

· Several attendees at the November meeting — officials who help lead the State Department’s efforts to promote racial equity, religious freedom and other high-minded principles of democracy — said the United States’ international credibility had been severely damaged by Biden’s unstinting support of Israel. If there was ever a time to hold Israel accountable, one ambassador at the meeting told Tom Sullivan, the State Department’s counselor and a senior policy adviser to Blinken, it was now.

· But the decision had already been made. Sullivan said the deadline would likely pass without action and Biden would continue sending shipments of bombs uninterrupted, according to two people who were in the meeting. Those in the room deflated. “Don’t our law, policy and morals demand it?” an attendee told me later, reflecting on the decision to once again capitulate. “What is the rationale of this approach? There is no explanation they can articulate.”

-Biden says Netanyahu should accommodate 'legitimate concerns' of Palestinians: Outgoing Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden said on Thursday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "has to find a way to accommodate the legitimate concerns" of Palestinians for the long term sustainability of Israel. "And the idea that Israel is going to be able to sustain itself for the long term without accommodating the Palestinian question... It's not going to happen," Biden, who hands over to Republican President-elect Donald Trump on Monday, said in an interview on MSNBC. (Reuters)

· "And I kept reminding my friend, and he is a friend, although we don't agree a whole lot lately, Bibi Netanyahu, that he has to find a way to accommodate the legitimate concerns of a large group of people called Palestinians, who have no place to live independently."

-US envoys working to resolve last-minute dispute over Gaza deal, US official says: A last-minute glitch surfaced on Thursday in the details of the Gaza ceasefire-for-hostages deal and U.S. envoys are working to resolve it, a U.S. official said. The dispute was over the identities of several prisoners that Hamas is demanding to be released, the official said. The official said the issue is expected to be resolved soon. (Reuters)

· The Gaza Strip ceasefire should begin on Sunday as planned, despite the need for negotiators to tie up a "loose end" at the last minute, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday. With longstanding divisions apparent among ministers, Israel delayed cabinet meetings to ratify the ceasefire with Hamas, and media reports said voting could occur Friday or even Saturday, although the deal is expected to be approved.

-Israeli security cabinet meets on ceasefire deal: Israel's security cabinet met Friday to vote on a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal that should take effect this weekend. "The security cabinet meeting to discuss and vote on the deal has started," an Israeli official told AFP. "Subject to the approval of the cabinet and the government, and the implementation of the agreement, the release of the hostages can proceed according to the planned framework, with the hostages expected to be released as early as Sunday," the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. (AFP, AP)

· Israel’s security Cabinet recommended approval of a ceasefire that would pause the fighting in Gaza and release dozens of hostages held by militants. The deal will now go to the full Cabinet. The prime minister’s office said Friday that if a deal is passed, the ceasefire could start as soon as Sunday with the first hostages released then.

-Israel military says struck around 50 targets in Gaza over the last day: The Israeli military said Thursday that it had struck approximately 50 targets throughout the Gaza Strip over the last day. "The (Israeli air force) conducted strikes on approximately 50 terror targets across the Gaza Strip, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists, military compounds, weapons storage facilities, launch posts, weapons manufacturing sites, and observation posts", the military said in a statement following the announcement of a ceasefire deal the day before. (AFP)

-Hamas warns continuing Israeli 'aggression' endangers hostages: Hamas's armed wing warned on Thursday that Israel's continuing air strikes and shelling in Gaza after the announcement of a ceasefire deal was risking hostages meant to be released. "Any aggression and shelling at this stage by the enemy could turn the freedom of a prisoner into a tragedy," the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades said on Telegram, referring to the dozens of Israeli hostages held in Gaza since the October 7, 2023 attack that triggered the war. Without offering details, Abu Obeida, spokesman for the armed wing, said an Israeli strike had hit a place where one of the women to be freed "in the first stage of the ceasefire deal was located". (AFP)

-Fate of two child hostages grips Israel after Gaza deal: The fates of a baby and his four-year-old brother, taken hostage by Hamas on October 7, 2023, have been on everyone's mind in Israel since the announcement of a Gaza ceasefire. Kfir Bibas, whose second birthday falls on Saturday, is the youngest of the 251 people seized by militants during Hamas's unprecedented attack on southern Israel more than 15 months ago. Hamas said in November 2023 that Kfir, his brother Ariel and their mother Shiri were killed in an Israeli strike, but with the Israeli military yet to confirm their deaths, many are clinging to the hope they are still alive. The boys and their mother are on the list of 33 hostages to be released during the first stage of the ceasefire deal, as is the boys' father, Yarden Bibas, though that does not guarantee they are among the living. (AFP)

-Journalists berate Blinken over Gaza policy at his final press conference: Several journalists who are outspoken critics of U.S. support for Israel loudly lambasted U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken over the war in Gaza on Thursday, repeatedly interrupting his final press conference as he sought to defend his handling of the 15-month-old conflict. Israel's assault on Gaza is likely to define the foreign policy legacy of the outgoing Biden administration, despite a deal reached with Palestinian militant group Hamas on Wednesday on a ceasefire in exchange for the release of hostages. (Reuters)

· "Criminal! Why aren't you in The Hague," shouted Sam Husseini, an independent journalist and longtime critic of Washington's approach to the world. The Hague is where the International Criminal Court is located. The unusually confrontational scene in the State Department briefing room only ended when security personnel forcibly picked up Husseini and carried him out of the room as he continued to heckle Blinken.

-Rome's chief rabbi criticises Pope Francis over Israel remarks: Rome's chief Jewish rabbi on Thursday sharply criticised Pope Francis over the pontiff's recent ramping up of criticism against Israel's military campaign in Gaza, in an unusually forceful speech during an annual Catholic-Jewish dialogue event. Francis has unfairly focused his attention on Israel compared to other ongoing world conflicts, including those in Sudan, Yemen, Syria and Ethiopia, said Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni, spiritual leader of Rome's Jewish community since 2001. (Reuters)

· "Selective indignation … weakens the pope's strength," said Di Segni. "A pope cannot divide the world into children and stepchildren and must denounce the sufferings of all," he said. "This is exactly what the Pope does not do." Francis, leader of the 1.4-billion-member Roman Catholic Church, has recently been more outspoken about Israel's military campaign against Palestinian militant group Hamas. Last week, he called the humanitarian situation in Gaza "very serious and shameful".

-Yemen's Houthis to continue attacks if Gaza ceasefire breached: The leader of Yemen's Houthis said on Thursday that the Iran-aligned group would monitor the implementation of a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas aimed at ending the war in Gaza and continue its attacks on vessels or Israel if it is breached. The Houthi militia, which has targeted ships using ballistic missiles and drones in waters near Yemen's shores to show their solidarity with the Palestinians, had long said they would cease these operations if the 15-month conflict ended. The ceasefire is expected to take hold on Sunday. (Reuters)

· "We will continue to monitor developments in Palestine during the three days prior to the entry into force of the Gaza agreement. If the Israeli massacres continue, we will continue our operations," Abdul Malik al-Houthi said in a televised speech. "At any stage in which the aggression retreats from the agreement, we will be ready to provide military support to our Palestinian brothers," he said.

· The Houthis have carried out more than 100 attacks on ships since November 2023 and have sunk two vessels, seized another and killed at least four seafarers. The intensity of the attacks has disrupted global shipping and prompted route changes. Thursday's announcement was a setback after earlier expectations among some maritime security sources that the group would halt attacks on ships.

-'Heinous crimes' in Gaza conflict must be punished, regardless of truce: HRW: Human Rights Watch on Thursday called for punishment for the "heinous crimes" committed "on and since October 7, 2023," in Israel and Gaza, after the announcement of a fragile ceasefire deal in the conflict. "While yesterday Israeli officials and Hamas agreed to a multi-phase ceasefire, the heinous crimes committed on and since October 7, 2023, should not go unpunished," said HRW chief Tirana Hassan. Hassan was speaking at a press conference to launch the organization's annual report, in which it called out Israel for committing "crimes against humanity" and possibly "genocide" during the Gaza war. (AFP)

-U.S. pushed to keep Lebanese militant in French prison after 40 years, letter shows: The U.S. Department of Justice vigorously opposed at a French court hearing in December the release of a Lebanese militant jailed for attacks on American and Israeli diplomats in France more than 40 years ago, according to a letter seen by Reuters. The former head of the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Brigade (LARB), Georges Ibrahim Abdallah was sentenced to life in 1987 for his role in the 1982 murders in Paris of U.S. military attache Charles Ray and Israeli diplomat Yacov Barsimantov, and the attempted murder of U.S. Consul General Robert Homme in Strasbourg in 1984. (Reuters)

· "The United States of America submits that sending Mr Abdallah to Lebanon, and specifically to his hometown would be a destabilising influence in an already volatile region and would give rise to severe public disorder," the letter dated Dec. 16, just three days before an appeals court hearing in Paris, said. Requests for his release have been rejected and annulled eight times, including in 2003, 2012 and 2014, but a Paris court in November granted his release on condition that he leaves France and not return.

-France's Macron in Lebanon to back new leadership: France's President Emmanuel Macron was in Lebanon on Friday for a visit to meet his newly-elected counterpart and offer support to leaders seeking to open a new chapter in their country's turbulent history. After more than two years of a political vacuum at the top, Joseph Aoun was elected president on January 9 and chose Nawaf Salam as prime minister-designate. They now face the daunting task of leading Lebanon after a devastating Israel-Hezbollah war, years of economic crisis and decades of Syrian domination. (AFP)

· Macron is also expected to meet UN chief Antonio Guterres in the Lebanese capital as a January 26 deadline to fully implement a ceasefire deal between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group approaches. Macron's visit aims to "help" Aoun and Salam "to consolidate Lebanon's sovereignty, ensure its prosperity and maintain its unity", the French presidency said prior to his arrival.

-UN's Guterres in Lebanon on 'visit of solidarity': UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres arrived in Lebanon Thursday on a "visit of solidarity", he said, after a long-stalled presidential election and a devastating war between armed group Hezbollah and Israel. "I have arrived in Beirut on a visit of solidarity with the Lebanese people," Guterres posted on X. "A window has opened for a new era of institutional stability with a state fully able to protect its citizens and a system that would allow the tremendous potential of the Lebanese people to flourish," he added. "We will do everything to help keep that window open wide." His deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said Guterres would meet political officials and visit UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon during his trip which would last until Saturday. (AFP)

-Beirut blast investigator resumes work after two years: judicial official: Lebanese judge Tarek Bitar resumed his investigation into the deadly 2020 Beirut port blast on Thursday, charging 10 people including security, customs and military personnel, a judicial official said. The fresh charges come after a two-year hiatus in the investigation into the August 4, 2020 explosion that killed more than 220 people, injured thousands and devastated swathes of Lebanon's capital. Authorities said the explosion was triggered by a fire in a warehouse where a huge stockpile of ammonium nitrate fertiliser had been haphazardly stored for years. But nobody has been held responsible for the blast, one of history's largest non-nuclear explosions. (AFP)

-Visiting Qatar PM says to help Syria rehabilitate infrastructure: Qatar's prime minister vowed Thursday to support the rehabilitation of Syria's infrastructure, devastated by nearly 14 years of civil war, during his first visit to Damascus since Islamist-led forces seized power last month. "We will provide the necessary technical support to make the needed infrastructure operational again and provide support to the electricity sector," said Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani. "The agreement includes supplying power with a capacity of 200 megawatts and gradually increasing production," he said at a joint press conference with Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa. (AFP)

-Leaders from rival Kurdish groups look to mend ties during Syria upheaval: The leaders of two previously rival Kurdish groups met in northern Iraq on Thursday in an apparent step toward reconciliation at a time when the political upheaval in Syria has left Kurds in the region facing an uncertain future. Hoshyar Zebari, a senior Kurdistan Democratic Party official, described the meeting between KDP leader Masoud Barzani and Mazloum Abdi, commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, as a “significant achievement to strengthen Kurdish unity and position” during Syria’s transitional phase. The meeting in Irbil, the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq, came weeks after the fall of the government of former Syrian President Bashar Assad in a lightning offensive by insurgent groups and amid an intensified campaign by Turkey-backed armed groups against Kurdish forces in northeast Syria. (AP)

· A senior KDP member, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to brief journalists, said that the talks between Barzani and Abdi focused on unifying the Kurdish position within Syria and exploring ways to separate the SDF from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a Kurdish separatist militant group designated a terrorist organization by Turkey. He said that the KDP leader had argued that such a move could open doors for broader international support, particularly through KDP’s relationships with both the United States and Turkey.

· The official said that Barzani had also stressed the importance of presenting a united Kurdish front in Syria to negotiate with the new de facto Syrian government from a position of strength. He said that Kurdish political gains in Iraq, including constitutional recognition, could serve as a model for Syria’s Kurds.

-Iraq wants Iran-backed factions to lay down weapons, foreign minister says: Iraq is trying to convince powerful armed factions in the country that have fought U.S. forces and fired rockets and drones at Israel to lay down their weapons or join official security forces, Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein said. The push comes with a backdrop of seismic shifts in the Middle East that have seen Iran's armed allies in Gaza and Lebanon heavily degraded and Syria's government overthrown by rebels. (Reuters)

· The incoming U.S. Trump administration promises to pile more pressure on Tehran, which has long backed a number of political parties and an array of armed factions in Iraq. Some Baghdad officials are concerned the status quo there may be upended next, but Hussein played this down in an interview with Reuters during an official visit to London. “We don’t think that Iraq is the next,” Hussein said.

· The government was in talks to rein in the groups while continuing to walk the tightrope between its ties to both Washington and Tehran, he said. “Two or three years ago it was impossible to discuss this topic in our society,” he said. But now, having armed groups functioning outside the state was not acceptable. “Many political leaders, many political parties started to raise a discussion, and I hope that we can convince the leaders of these groups to lay down their arms, and then to be part of the armed forces under the responsibility of the government,” Hussein said.

· Baghdad was in talks with Syria's foreign minister over a visit to Iraq, he said. "We are worried about the ISIS, so we are in contact with the Syrian side to talk about these things, but at the end to have a stable Syria means to have the representative of all components in the political process."

· Baghdad and Washington last year agreed to end the U.S-led coalition's work by September 2026 and transition to bilateral military ties, but Hussein said that the developments in Syria would have to be watched. "In the first place, we are thinking about security of Iraq and stability in Iraq. If there will be a threat to our country, of course it will be a different story," he said. "But until this moment we don't see a threat."

-Imran Khan, Pakistan's playboy cricket star turned PM, jailed for 14 years: Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan's 14-year jail sentence in a land corruption case is the latest in a series of ups and downs for the charismatic cricket star who has been in prison for the last one-and-a-half years. Khan, 72, has been fighting dozens of cases since he was ousted from power in a parliamentary vote of no confidence in 2022. He was sentenced to three years jail in another corruption case in August 2023, which ruled him out of general elections held months later. (Reuters)

· The latest verdict is the biggest setback for Khan and his party since a surprisingly good showing in the 2024 general election when its candidates - who were forced to contest as independents - won the most seats, but fell short of the majority needed to form a government.

-Ukraine's economic growth to slow to 2.7% in 2025, says deputy economy minister: Ukraine's gross domestic product growth is expected to slow to 2.7% this year from probably around 3.6% in 2024, a deputy economy minister said on Thursday. Andrii Teliupa told a round table that the government would continue its programmes channeling billions of hryvnias to support Ukrainian businesses adapting to wartime challenges. Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022 devastated the Ukrainian economy as millions of people fled the fighting, cities and infrastructure were bombed, and exports, supply chains, and logistics were disrupted. (Reuters)

-Starmer pledges more work on security guarantees for Ukraine: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledged on Thursday to work with Ukraine and allies to offer Kyiv robust security guarantees if a ceasefire is negotiated with Russia, offering more support to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy with a 100-year partnership deal. In his first trip to Ukraine since becoming prime minister in July last year, Starmer was keen to underline Britain's support for the nation just days before Donald Trump returns to power in the United States. In talks punctuated by the sound of a loud explosion from Ukraine's air defences shooting down a Russian drone above the presidential palace, Zelenskiy said he had spoken to Starmer about Kyiv's desire for Western peacekeeping troops to be deployed in Ukraine in the event of peace. (Reuters)

· Zelenskiy, in his nightly video address, said Britain had undertaken to provide Ukraine with more than $3 billion in annual military aid. The pact, he said, included assistance in a wide variety of spheres, including education and technology. He added that there was a “secret section” of the agreement. “All things that add to our resilience and development potential”, he said.

· At an earlier press conference alongside Zelenskiy, Starmer said Britain would look at “the practical ways to get a just and lasting peace... that guarantees your security, your independence and your right to choose your own future”, but declined to go into any details of which measures he supported. “We will work with you and all of our allies on steps that would be robust enough to guarantee Ukraine’s security,” Starmer said. “Those conversations will continue for many months ahead.”

· Pressed in an interview with Sky News on whether Britain would contribute troops to any peacekeeping force, Starmer said: “I’ve been discussing this with a number of allies, including, of course, (French) President Macron, including President Zelenskiy here today, and we will play our full part.”

· Zelenskiy said he had also spoken to France, Poland and the Baltics about a possible peacekeeping deployment to deter Russia from mounting any future attack after a ceasefire and expressed frustration at opposition to Ukraine’s bid to become a member of the U.S.-led military NATO alliance. Starmer urged Ukraine and the West not to lose focus on the most pressing need to “ensure that Ukraine is in the strongest possible position” in 2025 to fight Russia. “We’re a long way into this conflict. We mustn't let up."

-France, Norway say jet fighter deliveries to Ukraine 'on schedule': France and Norway, two of the handful of countries that have pledged jet fighters to Ukraine, will meet their commitments on schedule, the two countries' defence ministers said Thursday in Oslo. Norway has promised Ukraine six US-made F-16s to help it fend off Russia's invasion, with deliveries spread out across 2024 and 2025. The two ministers also signed a letter of intent aimed at bolstering their military cooperation, notably regarding the protection of underwater infrastructure, amid the threat of so-called hybrid warfare posed by Russia. (AFP)

· France has meanwhile said it would provide an unspecified number of French-made Mirage 2000-5s during the first quarter of 2025. “The timetable I gave is being met,” said French Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu, declining to comment on reports that three aircraft were to be delivered by January 20. “The delivery of jet fighters to a country at war is, by definition, sensitive... What has been promised will be delivered,” he said. His Norwegian counterpart Bjorn Arild Gram meanwhile confirmed that Norway’s “first batch” of F-16s had been delivered, but refused to disclose any “operational details”. “We are on schedule,” he said.

-Trump the saviour? Anxious Ukrainians question president's power to end war: "Why is everyone putting their hopes in Trump?" Liudmyla Parybus isn't holding her breath for the incoming U.S. president to end the war in Ukraine. "I don't put any hope in him," the 20-year-old student told Reuters in Kyiv city centre. "In the end it depends on us." Her sense of scepticism is shared by many Ukrainians who have scant faith in Donald Trump's promises to swiftly strike a peace deal after he enters the White House on Monday. "Our fate is in our own hands," said Marharyta Deputat, a 29-year-old sales manager. "We can't rely on anyone else." (Reuters)

· While sceptical about the chances of a deal, she nonetheless believes the new American president has an outside chance to become a global peace icon if he delivers on his pledges. "Trump has the opportunity to go down in history as a saviour of a huge nation," Horbachova said.

· Indeed, not everyone dismisses the prospect of Trump helping speed a ceasefire; following his election, more than a third of Ukrainians believe the war will end by the close of 2025, according to a poll of around 1,100 people by research company Gradus Research in December, up from about a quarter six months earlier. That poll found that 31% of respondents expected the war to go on “for years” and another 31% said it was difficult to say.

· Oleksandr Merezhko, head of the Ukrainian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, also said Trump could cement his legacy by bringing peace and security to Ukraine. “Ukraine needs to become a success story for Trump,” Merezhko told Reuters. “He can enter history as a winner.”

· “They will build up their military capabilities to come back,” Oleksii Reznikov, a former defence minister and peace negotiator with Russia, told Reuters. “They will want to continue what they started in 2014 and continued in 2022.” While Putin has said he is open to discussing a ceasefire deal with Trump, he rules out making any major territorial concessions and insists Kyiv abandon ambitions to join NATO, five sources told Reuters in November.

· Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who signed the Minsk accords while in power and is now a political opponent of Zelenskiy’s, agreed with the current leader’s view that NATO membership for Ukraine was pivotal. “We’ve been there before and thus know that nothing would work as efficiently and surely this time around and in the future as Ukraine being invited and joining NATO,” he told Reuters. “This alone would avert a new military adventure by Russia and make peace, not force, reign.”

-Ukraine police conduct raids in draft evasion probe: Ukrainian police said Friday its officers were conducting 200 searches nationwide as part of an ongoing probe into the illegal exit of military-aged men from the country. Kyiv has been pushing a sweeping and divisive mobilisation campaign to boost its military, which is struggling to hold back Russia's significantly larger army that is advancing across at several sectors across the front. "The national police force is conducting more than 200 searches regarding cases of illegal border crossings" of Ukrainian men who are eligible for army service, the national police said in a statement. The raids announced on Friday are just the latest step in a country-wide probe launched by law enforcement last week when Kyiv said police were searching some 600 homes, offices and other sites. (AFP)

-Ukraine's air force says it downed 33 Russian drones launched overnight: Ukrainian air defences downed 33 of 50 drones launched by Russia overnight, the air force said on Friday. It said 9 drones were "lost", in reference to Ukraine's use of electronic warfare to redirect Russian drones, while one left Ukraine in the direction of Romania. "Hostile attack drones hit enterprises in Odesa region, and buildings of institutions, private businesses and households in Kharkiv, Cherkasy and Kyiv regions were damaged as a result of the fall of downed enemy drones," the military said on the Telegram messaging app. Port infrastructure in the Danube region came under attack, they added. (Reuters)

-Kyiv says Ukraine missiles hit army radars in Russia: Ukraine said Friday it had launched a missile strike one day earlier on the western Belgorod region targeting air defence systems and damaging military radars. Kyiv has stepped up its cross border drone and missile attacks on Russian territory and said this week it had launched its largest barrage of the war on military sites and energy installations over the border. The Ukrainian General Staff wrote on social media that missile units had carried out "precision strikes" on Russian military targets in Belgorod, which borders Ukraine. It said it had attacked air defence systems under the 568th anti-aircraft missile regiment and claimed that an S-400 radar had been damaged alongside equipment linked to another brigade. (AFP)

-Ukrainian brigade pioneers remote-controlled ground assaults: The boxy, machine gun-equipped vehicle lumbered across the snow-covered battlefield, with no crew aboard and marking what its remote Ukrainian operators described as a major milestone as Russian artillery fire rained around it. Sparing soldiers for the infantry assault that came later, the unmanned device was operated at a distance by Ukraine's Khartiia Brigade in the latest advance in a conflict that has been defined by a technology race on both sides. Khartiia released footage of last month's attack in the northeastern Kharkiv region, which combined assault and mine- laying and mine-clearing vehicles guided by drones hovering above. The unit said it was the first documented machine-only ground assault in Ukraine's war with Russia. (Reuters)

-Moscow, Kyiv rights officials discuss missing civilians: Russia's rights ombudswoman said Thursday that she had discussed with her Ukrainian counterpart the search for residents missing from Russia's Kursk border region after Ukrainian troops seized territory there last August. Ukraine has said that around 2,000 civilians remain in territory it controls, while Russia has put the number reported missing at less than 1,000. Russian ombudswoman Tatyana Moskalkova and Ukrainian human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets both posted on social media about the meeting. Moskalkova said they discussed "the search for missing residents of Kursk region", calling the talks "a big step towards strengthening trust and realising concrete joint actions". (AFP)

· Lubinets said he and Moskalkova discussed "the return of civilian citizens held in places of detention" and "agreed to continue the mutual exchange of information regarding the search for missing persons among prisoners of war".

-Indians lured to Russia for jobs or school are dying on front lines in Ukraine: The death of an Indian man working for the Russian army in Ukraine has brought renewed focus to the Kremlin's use of foreign nationals on the front lines - from North Koreans to Cubans - and revived a thorny issue in the otherwise thriving relationship between New Delhi and Moscow. Nearly 100 Indians have been lured to Russia by offers of jobs or education, only to find themselves forced into service by the army, according to Indian government statements and interviews with families of men sent to fight in Ukraine. This month, Binil Babu, a 32-year-old electrician from the southern state of Kerala, became at least the 10th Indian to die in the war, drawing a sharp response from officials here. (WP)

· “The matter has been strongly taken up with the Russian authorities in Moscow as well as with the Russian Embassy in New Delhi today,” a spokesman for India’s Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement Tuesday. “We have also reiterated our demand for the early discharge of the remaining Indian nationals.” Moscow has consistently denied any wrongdoing and has promised to release Indians from its armed forces. "The Russian Government has at no point of time been engaged in any public or obscure campaigns, more so in fraudulent schemes to recruit the Indian nationals for military service in Russia," the Russian Embassy in New Delhi said in an Aug. 10 statement.

-Russia and Iran to sign 'partnership' pact: Russia and Iran will sign a "comprehensive strategic partnership" treaty on Friday during a visit to Moscow by Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, cementing ties between two of the world's most heavily sanctioned countries. The agreement comes just three days before Iran-hawk Donald Trump enters the White House and as Moscow and Tehran seek to formalise their close relationship after years of deepening cooperation. The new treaty will strengthen Tehran and Moscow's "military-political and trade-economic" relations, the Kremlin said on Wednesday, without providing further detail. (AFP)

-Russia upholds jail term for ex-US consulate worker: A Russian court on Friday upheld the jail term of Robert Shonov, a former US consulate worker sentenced to almost five years for "secret collaboration with a foreign state". Shonov, a Russian citizen, worked for more than 25 years at the US consulate in the far eastern city of Vladivostok until 2021, when Moscow imposed restrictions on local staff working for foreign missions. He was arrested in 2023 on suspicion of passing secret information about Russia's military offensive against Ukraine to the United States in exchange for money, and sentenced to four years and ten months prison in November 2024. (AFP)

-How Ukraine inspired NATO’s new task force to deter Putin: How can NATO draw lessons from three years of war in Ukraine to be better prepared for an attack by Vladimir Putin? That’s the mission of a new center in Poland, to be inaugurated next month, where NATO officials, civilians and Ukrainians will study what has been learned in fields such as drone warfare, air defenses, artificial intelligence and the resilience of civilian populations. The center will be called the NATO-Ukraine Joint Analysis, Training, and Education Centre — or JATEC — and will be based in the northern city of Bydgoszcz. (Politico)

· “It’s been three years, and there’s a real question of what we’ve learned and what we’re going to change, knowing that the enemy is also adapting at speed and at scale,” NATO’s supreme allied commander transformation, Adm. Pierre Vandier, said in an interview with POLITICO.

· Vandier said one of the chief areas to explore centered on how the Ukrainian war merged space-age technology with brutal trench fighting and artillery bombardments — what he described as “the mix between World War I and the war of the future.” “Today, we have a better vision of the mix between legacy platforms — tanks, aircraft, ships — and new capabilities that use unmanned systems, that is to say robotics and IT,” he said.

-'Impossible' to protect all undersea infrastructure: NATO commander: NATO members face an "impossible task" trying to protect their vast network of critical undersea cables and pipelines from sabotage, the head of the alliance's centre for securing the infrastructure said Thursday. Nations around the Baltic Sea are scrambling to bolster their defences after the suspected sabotage of undersea cables in recent months. After several telecom and power cables were severed, experts and politicians accused Russia of orchestrating a hybrid war against the West as the two sides square off over Ukraine. NATO this week announced it was launching a new monitoring mission in the Baltic Sea involving patrol ships and aircraft, aimed at deterring any attempts to target undersea infrastructure in the region. (AFP)

· Danish Navy Captain Niels Markussen, director of NATO's Maritime Centre for Security of Critical Undersea Infrastructure warned that it was not possible to stop every act of sabotage. "You can't put a ship over every nautical mile of pipeline or cable -- it's an impossible task," Markussen told AFP. "There are approximately 50,000 big ships out there worldwide and they can drop anchors and drag them over infrastructure." Markussen said that while the Baltic mission would not be able to stop all incidents it "will bring much more focus on it, monitoring, and a better picture of what and who is operating out there." "It will have a deterrence."

-Finland's intelligence chief urges vigilance over planned Russian military build-up: Planned Russian military reforms that would increase Moscow's troop numbers by 30% are a threat to NATO and should be met with vigilance, the chief of Finland's military intelligence service Pekka Turunen said on Thursday. Finland, which shares the European Union's longest border with Russia, joined the Western military alliance NATO in 2023 and drew its Nordic neighbour Sweden to follow in March 2024, both in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. (Reuters)

· Finland's military intelligence service led by Turunen noted in an annual review published on Thursday that Moscow has announced plans to reform its military by the end of 2026. "Yes this is a threat to NATO, especially if the plan is executed," Turunen told Reuters, adding he thought Russia could realistically achieve its goals by 2030. "We need to react in the sense that we need to be vigilant."

· Turunen said Russia was targeting a 30% increase in the number of its troops, which would bring the total strength of its military to 1.5 million soldiers. The number of Russian troops based in Finland's vicinity could double or triple from the period before the Ukraine war, Turunen said, with a new corps to be deployed in Russia's adjacent Karelia region and existing units to be expanded in the Kola Peninsula and around St. Petersburg. "This will be very much affected by the situation in Ukraine, whether the war in Ukraine will end or possibly remain in some state of a frozen conflict," he said.

-UK's Starmer due in Poland after first Ukraine visit: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer was due in Warsaw on Friday for talks with his Polish counterpart Donald Tusk, a day after he made his first visit to Ukraine. The UK and Poland are expected to start work on a new defence and security agreement during the visit, Starmer's Downing Street office said. "With ever-increasing threats to Europe's security, now is the time to take our partnership to the next level, so we can ensure we're tackling the big issues that rebound on the British people at home -- from Putin's aggression to the vile people-smuggling gangs trading in human misery," Starmer said in a statement. (AFP)

· The planned agreement would also do more to tackle disinformation and hybrid threats, a reference to strategies combining military and non-military means to attack an enemy. "The UK and Poland are longstanding allies and our cooperation stretches back for generations," Starmer said.

-German foreign minister criticises Scholz for blocking more Ukraine aid, report says: German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock indirectly criticised Chancellor Olaf Scholz for his reluctance to approve a further 3 billion euros ($3.09 billion) in additional military aid for Ukraine. "To be honest, it hurts me a lot," she said without mentioning the chancellor's name in an interview with Politico released on Friday, adding that for some politicians gaining a few votes was more important than securing Europe's peace and freedom. Earlier this week, Scholz said he had suggested expanding the currently earmarked 12 billion euros for this year, but the additional money must not be provided at the cost of cutting social spending. (Reuters)

· Baerbock's Greens party and Scholz's SPD party are currently partners in the minority government after the ruling coalition collapsed in November, but both parties are also competing in the snap elections on Feb. 23. Baerbock said in the interview that for her, responsible politics means not to blow with the wind, then act the other way around in election campaigns, adding that Scholz's behaviour also harmed the trust of the European allies in Germany.

-Lithuania will boost defense spending to 5-6% of GDP because of threat of Russian aggression: Lithuania has decided to raise its spending on defense to between 5 and 6% of overall national economic output starting in 2026 due to the threat of Russian aggression in the region, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda said Friday. The Baltic nation, which borders Russia, currently spends a bit over 3%. With the president's pledge, it becomes the first NATO nation to vow to reach a 5% goal recently called for by President-elect Donald Trump. Nausėda said the “historic decision” was taken by the State Defense Council on Friday. (AP)

· Reaching that goal would make Lithuania the NATO country to spend the most on defense as a percentage of its economic output. The current leader is Poland, which already spends more than 4% and plans to go higher. “The possibility of Russian military aggression is still real, but not imminent. We need to increase our efforts to strengthen defence and deterrence significantly devoting more resources to this end. Our security is also assured by our membership of the NATO alliance, but it will only be effective if we are prepared to defend ourselves” Nausėda said.

-Estonia, Lithuania slam US curbs on AI chip exports: Estonia and Lithuania on Thursday criticised a US decision to curb exports of chips used for artificial intelligence to some allies, including the Baltic states. The outgoing US administration unveiled the new export rules on Monday in its latest effort to make it tough for China and other rivals to access the advanced technology. But the rules do not treat all members of NATO and the European Union equally, as certain countries including France and Germany are exempted while many others including Estonia, Lithuania and Poland are not. (AFP)

· "A decision made by the outgoing US administration to restrict advanced AI chip exports to some allies is completely thoughtless and harmful," Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said on X. "In developing AI, allies must expand cooperation instead of imposing restrictions on each other," he said. Lithuania's President Gitanas Nauseda condemned the decision to single out certain countries, saying "the European Union should be indivisible". "I hope that these decisions are not final and that they will change in our favour," he told reporters on Thursday.

-Military output doesn't help long-term growth, Italy's central bank chief says: Military production does not help long-term economic growth, Italy's central bank governor Fabio Panetta said on Thursday, as NATO countries debate whether to increase defence expenditure. At a speech delivered to a Catholic organisation in Bologna, Panetta cited data showing that conflicts in the world have been increasing over the last 15 years and in 2023 reached the highest number since World War Two. "War cannot bring prosperity," Panetta said, as any short-term economic boost from arms production was outweighed in the longer term by the damage to infrastructure, machinery, raw materials and social cohesion. (Reuters)

· Italy is among numerous members of the military alliance whose defence spending is significantly below the current target of 2% of GDP agreed a decade ago. "The manufacturing of war equipment does not help increase a country's growth potential. Development comes from productive investment, not from arms," said Panetta, a member of the European Central Bank's governing council. "Moreover, it is misleading to attribute technological progress to military expenditure," he added, calling war "a form of development in reverse."

-Italy's Meloni leads European efforts to charm Trump: Boasting a film night at Mar-a-Lago, an invitation to Monday's inauguration and good relations with Elon Musk, Italy's Giorgia Meloni has positioned herself as the closest mainstream European leader to Donald Trump. But analysts caution that the European Union -- anxious about the US president-elect's plans for trade tariffs and the war in Ukraine -- should not depend on the far-right prime minister as an effective or even reliable mediator. (AFP)

· Meloni has yet to confirm she will attend Monday’s swearing-in, but the personal invite is one of several indications of the “great respect” Trump has for her and Italy, an Italian official said. A spokesman for Hungary’s nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orban, who has long voiced his admiration for Trump, denied reports he would be attending, saying that foreign leaders by tradition do not attend US inaugurations. Meloni and Trump do not know each other well but share conservative values and have met twice since Trump’s re-election in November.

· Her post-Fascist Brothers of Italy party has long had ties with Steve Bannon, one of the masterminds behind Trump’s initial 2016 ascension to the presidency. And Meloni, unlike some of her peers, is friendly with Musk, the billionaire more often than not by Trump's side. As such, some of Meloni's allies have speculated she could act as a "bridge" between the White House and Brussels. But the nationalist premier has long been critical of the EU, leading many to question whether she would have its interests at heart.

-German far-right co-leader to attend Trump inauguration: The co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) said Thursday that he would attend the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump, as the party seeks to highlight its ties with the incoming administration. Key Trump ally and the world's richest man Elon Musk has been vocal in his support of the AfD ahead of February's snap general election, prompting accusations of meddling from other political parties. The AfD said its co-leader Tino Chrupalla had "accepted an invitation" to the January 20 event and would be accompanied by the party's deputy parliamentary group leader Beatrix von Storch. Chrupalla said that the Trump presidency would "change the world for a long time" and that his party "stands ready to be a strong partner in Europe". "Germany must maintain good and friendly relations with all countries," he added. (AFP)

-Novo Nordisk, other firms meet Danish PM to discuss Trump tariff threats: Danish businesses are concerned about a possible trade conflict with the United States over Greenland, a major lobby group said on Thursday after business leaders, including CEO of obesity drugmaker Novo Nordisk, met with the government. Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen had summoned business leaders after speaking on Wednesday with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who last week refused to rule out military or economic action to take control of Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark that is strategically important to Washington. (Reuters)

-Albania approves luxury resort project linked to Jared Kushner's company: Albania's government has granted strategic investor status to a company linked to Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner to build a luxury resort on an uninhabited Mediterranean island that was once a military outpost. The Balkan country's Strategic Investment Committee, headed by Prime Minister Edi Rama, on Dec. 30 accepted a proposal by Atlantic Incubation Partners LLC for the 45-hectare project on the small island of Sazan, involving a planned investment of 1.4 billion euros ($1.4 billion). (Reuters)

-Hungarian minister sanctioned by US 'strengthened' by the penalty, Prime Minister Orbán says: Sanctions issued by the United States last week against a powerful Hungarian official with close ties to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán have “strengthened” that official's standing within the populist government, Orbán said Friday. Speaking on state radio, Orbán said the U.S. sanctions against Antal Rogán, a senior government minister who leads the prime minister's Cabinet office and is believed by the U.S. Treasury Department to be involved in official corruption, had not shaken his confidence in the minister. (AP)

· The sanctions against Rogán “strengthened the minister’s position in Hungarian politics and in the government to an unprecedented extent," Orbán said. “He is the minister responsible for the national security services, the number one guardian of Hungarian national sovereignty, and being punished by a great power means that he is doing his job well.”

-French PM Bayrou survives no-confidence vote: French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou passed the first test of his new minority government on Thursday as he survived a vote of no-confidence called by the hard left after the centre-left Socialist Party did not back the motion. The far-right National Rally (RN) party of Marine Le Pen had already signalled it would not support the motion. (Reuters)

-Austrian far-right lawmakers win defamation case against newspaper over hymn: Three Austrian lawmakers from the far-right Freedom Party won a defamation case against newspaper Der Standard on Thursday over an article that said they attended a funeral where a Nazi song was sung, when in fact it could not be determined if it was. Der Standard published a video from the funeral in Vienna in September of a 90-year-old member of a right-wing fraternity, including a song sung there that the paper described as an SS hymn while explaining it was originally from the 19th century and SS troops sang a version with slightly different lyrics. (Reuters)

-Azerbaijan suspends cooperation with USAID, foreign minister says: Azerbaijan has refused to renew its cooperation agreement with The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov said on Thursday, accusing Washington of using USAID to pursue its political agenda. Bayramov, who was speaking at a news conference with his Georgian counterpart, said that Baku had suspended cooperation with USAID in June 2024. USAID was not immediately available for comment. (Reuters)

· Azerbaijan began criticising USAID in late 2023 after Samantha Power, the agency's head, said that Azerbaijan's military operation to return its breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh had "forced more than a hundred thousand people to leave their homes and move into neighbouring Armenia." In response to Power's statement, Hikmet Hajiyev, a foreign policy adviser to President Ilham Aliyev, said that USAID "has no place in Azerbaijan anymore."

-Former Karabakh official protests on eve of trial in Azerbaijan: A former top official in the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh protested on the eve of his trial before an Azerbaijani military court on Friday that he had not been given enough time to prepare his defence on 42 charges including terrorism. Ruben Vardanyan, a former billionaire banker who was born in Armenia before making his fortune in Russia, demanded that the case be halted. "I once again... state my complete innocence and the innocence of my Armenian compatriots also being held as political prisoners and demand an immediate end to this politically motivated case against us," he said in a statement released via his family. (Reuters)

· Vardanyan served as the number-two official in Karabakh from late 2022 until February 2023. Seven months later, Azerbaijan recaptured the enclave where ethnic Armenians had enjoyed three decades of de facto independence since breaking away from Baku's control in a war that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. Vardanyan was arrested when he fled as part of a mass exodus of some 100,000 Armenians from the mountainous territory. Fifteen other people, including several former Karabakh leaders, are also facing trial on various charges including genocide and war crimes, according to Azerbaijani prosecutors.

-Japan passes record defense budget, while still playing catch-up: While Japan’s Cabinet has approved a record defense budget for 2025, the 13th growth year in a row, Tokyo’s military posture vis-à-vis regional threats remains a work on progress, according a U.S. analyst. Grant Newsham, senior research fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies, told Defense News that “decades of pathological dependence” on the United States have left Japan’s military “a stunted force not really able to operate efficiently or effectively in most cases.” This is at a time when Japan perceives unprecedented external threats. The government’s 2024 iteration of its annual Defense of Japan white paper noted, “Japan is facing the most severe and complex security environment since the end of World War II.” (Defense News)

· Japan is alarmed by China intruding into its southwestern archipelago, and it regards Russia and North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs as serious risks. Newsham noted, “I think Japan recognizes and understands the seriousness of the threats it faces from China, North Korea and Russia. Ukraine really spurred Japanese awareness – figuring that Taiwan was next, with everything that would portend for Japan’s security.”

· Yet the former U.S. Marine Corps officer warned the threat perception has yet to manifest itself fully in defense programs. “This hasn’t, however, translated into a Japan Self-Defense Force that’s organized and capable of fighting a war – despite having some niche capabilities that would be very helpful if employed in support of U.S. forces,” he said.

-Japan launches independent mission to NATO as tensions with Russia, China and North Korea rise: Japan on Thursday formally inaugurated an independent mission to the NATO military alliance as Tokyo and NATO seek to bolster cooperation amid escalating tension from Russia, China and North Korea. Previously, the Japanese embassy in Belgium also covered NATO. The new mission is led by Osamu Izawa, who takes over the role currently filled by the ambassador to Belgium, Masahiro Mikami. (AP)

· In Tokyo on Thursday, Japan and NATO held high-level consultations to discuss regional security issues in East Asia and Europe, according to the Foreign Ministry. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and closer ties between Moscow and Beijing, NATO has deepened its links with Japan and three other Indo-Pacific partners, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea, though not as part of the military alliance.

· Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has advocated a NATO-like security framework in Asia, though he has not given details. Countries with shared security concerns are strengthening ties as competition escalates between the United States and China. Beijing has criticized NATO’s growing ties with the Indo-Pacific partners, worried that Washington may move to form a NATO-like alliance in the region.

-Japan eyes protecting U.K. aircraft carrier to be sent to Indo-Pacific: Japan is considering providing asset protection for the British military when it deploys an aircraft carrier strike group to the Indo-Pacific region later this year, under a bilateral agreement reached last year, Defense Minister Gen Nakatani said Wednesday. Nakatani told reporters in London, after meeting with his British counterpart John Healey, that Japan's envisaged "military asset protection" by its Self-Defense Forces for Britain, set to become the third country to receive such support, would "demonstrate the deepening security collaboration" between them. He fell short of providing the specific schedule for the dispatch of the British aircraft carrier strike group. (Kyodo)

-Japan foreign minister to highlight defence spending, investment at Trump inaugural: Japan's foreign minister said on Friday he would highlight the economic and national security value that the United States' key Asian ally offers during his visit to Washington for President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration on Monday. During his four-day stay beginning Sunday, Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya will be the first senior Japanese official to meet members of the incoming president's governing team. Iwaya said he was likely to meet with Trump's pick for secretary of state, Senator Marco Rubio, who is expected to be confirmed on Monday. (Reuters)

· Iwaya said Japan's commitment to allocating 2% of gross domestic product to defence by 2027, in line with its national security strategy, was steadily progressing. "Japan's status as the leading U.S. investor over the past five years also demonstrates our contributions," Iwaya said at a regular press briefing. "I will thoroughly explain and ensure understanding of these efforts," he added.

-North Korea denounces US for sending aircraft over Korean peninsula, KCNA reports: North Korea denounced the United States for sending military aircraft over the Korean peninsula several times this month, as well as the U.S., Japan and South Korea for holding an air military exercise, state media KCNA reported on Friday. North Korea also denounced the joint Nuclear Consultative Group (NCG) between the U.S. and South Korea that seeks to manage North Korea's nuclear threat, the report said. (Reuters)

· North Korea will "strongly curb any military provocations" by exercising its thorough right to self-defence, KCNA reported, citing the country's foreign ministry. During the latest NCG meeting held last week, the U.S. reaffirmed its commitment to enhance the regular visibility of U.S. strategic assets on the Korean peninsula, according to a joint statement from the U.S. and South Korea.

-North Korea warns of stronger action over South's drills with US, Japan: North Korea condemned on Friday joint military drills between South Korea, Japan and the United States held this week, threatening to respond by exercising its right to self-defence "more intensively". The trilateral exercise was held after Pyongyang launched in recent weeks what it claimed was a new hypersonic missile system and short-range ballistic missiles, ahead of President-elect Donald Trump's return to office on Monday. Pyongyang's remarks came after the allies staged joint air drills, involving two US B-1B heavy bombers over the Korean peninsula on Wednesday. (AFP)

· North Korea's foreign ministry expressed "serious concern over the provocations" by South Korea, Japan and the United States, Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Friday. The joint drills "clarifies once again" the North's need to exercise its sovereign rights and security interests "more intensively", it added. North Korea "will strongly deter any military provocation planned by the hostile forces and firmly defend the security interests of the state", the ministry added, according to KCNA. Such joint military exercises regularly infuriate the nuclear-armed North, which decries them as rehearsals for invasion.

-US will not abandon Pacific allies, former Vice President Pence says in Taipei: The United States will not abandon its allies in the Pacific and the incoming Trump administration should renew its commitment to providing Taiwan with the means to defend itself, former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said in Taipei on Friday. Trump's first administration, in which Pence served, offered strong support for Chinese-claimed Taiwan, including the regularisation of arms sales. But Trump, who takes office on Monday for a second term, unnerved Taiwan on the campaign trail by calling for the democratically-governed island to pay to be defended and accusing it of stealing U.S. semiconductor business. (Reuters)

· Making his first visit to Taiwan, Pence said he prayed for a peaceful future for the region. "I am convinced that America will never abandon our allies across the Pacific and I call on the new administration in Washington and freedom loving nations around the world to urgently renew our commitment for providing Taiwan with the support it needs to defend itself and its freedom," he said. In addition to military support, the Trump administration should also begin negotiations for a free trade pact with Taiwan, Pence added, a deal the government in Taipei has long sought.

· Pence, who arrived in Taiwan after a visit to Hong Kong, said there was broad, bipartisan agreement in Washington that China represented the greatest strategic and economic threat facing the United States and its allies in this century. "While America's perception of China has changed greatly in recent years, I can assure you one thing has not changed, and that is the deep respect and support of the American people for the people of Taiwan."

-China critic Jimmy Lai paid US general to advise on Taiwan, Hong Kong court hears: Hong Kong democrat Jimmy Lai on Thursday told a court trying him for colluding with foreign powers that he paid a former U.S. general to advise former Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen in late 2017, but denied seeking to endanger China's national security. On the first day of Lai's cross-examination by a government prosecutor, Lai admitted to a "project" in which he sought to bolster communication between the U.S. administration of President Donald Trump during his first term and the island democracy of Taiwan which was then led by Tsai. (Reuters)

· Prosecutor Anthony Chau showed WhatsApp messages which he said revealed that Lai helped arrange a meeting in Taipei between former U.S. army general Jack Keane, former U.S. deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz and then Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen, who wanted to know the Trump administration's stance towards Taiwan. The prosecutor asked whether Lai had sought to use Taiwan as leverage against China, and also to engage Keane and Wolfowitz to "give advice to Taiwan for a military upgrade". Lai denied this.

-Facing a Flurry of U.S. Sanctions, China Prepares to Hit Back: Days before President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office, China is gearing up for economic battle with the United States. It threatened a widespread investigation into American chipmakers. It zeroed in on one American retailer, accusing it of “inappropriate conduct” that could lead to sanctions usually reserved for weapons sellers. And it got ready to slap duties on imports of industrial plastics. The flurry of retaliatory gestures, all delivered this week, could have far-reaching implications for American companies. They join other measures by China in recent weeks with one objective: putting the incoming Trump administration on notice. (NYT)

· “It’s a warning shot to the new administration that we won’t sit back, and we have leverage also in the event of a deepening of the trade tech wars,” said Myron Brilliant, a senior counselor at Dentons Global Advisors-ASG, a business consulting firm. So far in the tit-for-tat between the world’s superpowers, Washington has set the tone for tough measures aimed at curbing China’s economic influence and stifling the development of industries that could give it a military edge.

-China says to launch probe into US exports of some chips: China said Thursday it would launch a probe into US exports of so-called "mature" chips, used in everything from cars to home appliances, over concerns about alleged dumping and subsidies. "Companies have been exporting related mature-process chip products to China at low prices, harming the legitimate interests of the domestic industry," Beijing's commerce ministry said in a statement. (AFP)

· Beijing said domestic firms had accused the US administration of President Joe Biden of having "provided substantial subsidies to the chip sector, giving US companies an unfair competitive advantage". "The concerns of China's domestic industry are reasonable, and they have the right to request a trade remedy investigation," a ministry spokesperson said. Beijing did not say when the probe would be launched, nor how long it would take.

-China's population falls for a third straight year, posing challenges for its government and economy: China's population fell last year for the third straight year, its government said Friday, pointing to further demographic challenges for the world's second most populous nation, which is now facing both an aging population and an emerging shortage of working age people. China's population stood at 1.408 billion at the end of 2024, a decline of 1.39 million from the previous year. (AP)

· The figures announced by the government in Beijing follow trends worldwide, but especially in East Asia, where Japan, South Korea and other nations have seen their birth rates plummet. China three years ago joined Japan and most of Eastern Europe among other nations whose population is falling. The reasons are in many cases similar: Rising costs of living are causing young people to put off or rule out marriage and child birth while pursuing higher education and careers. While people are living longer, that's not enough to keep up with rate of new births.

-China says will restart some group tours to Taiwan: China said Friday it would restart some group tours to Taiwan "in the near future", a boost to a travel industry still recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic. The culture and tourism ministry said residents of Shanghai and the southeastern province of Fujian -- which lies just across the strait from Taiwan -- would be able to travel to the self-ruled island, without giving a specific timeline. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has refused to rule out using force to unify with it one day. In recent years, Beijing has sought to diplomatically isolate Taipei and ramped up military pressure by staging major drills around the island. (AFP)

· Leaders from both sides have maintained restrictions on travel across the strait, even though their populations share strong social, cultural and family ties. The culture and tourism ministry said resuming some tours to Taiwan would "promote the interests and wellbeing of compatriots on both sides of the strait". It added that the move was in response to expectations from Taiwan's tourism industry and would "further promote the normalisation of cross-strait personnel exchanges".

-Philippine navy holds drills near contested South China Sea shoal: Philippine navy ships were holding drills near a contested shoal in the South China Sea on Friday, a day after Manila and Beijing agreed to seek common ground and find ways to cooperate despite ongoing maritime disputes. The exercise around the Scarborough shoal was aimed at enhancing the navy's capability to secure what it said were Philippine waters and the country's territorial integrity, the navy said in a statement. (Reuters)

-Brazil's Bolsonaro denied passport for Trump inauguration: Brazil's top court on Thursday refused to return the passport of right-wing former president Jair Bolsonaro, who had hoped to attend next week's inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump. The court said Bolsonaro still posed a flight risk almost a year since his passport was seized as part of an investigation into his alleged orchestration of a coup attempt to remain in power after elections in 2022. There was still the "possibility of an attempted evasion by the accused," said judge Alexandre de Moraes, who had frequently clashed with Bolsonaro. In a post on X, Bolsonaro said the judge's decision "diminishes Brazil's standing on the world stage and sends a worrying message about the state of democracy and justice in our country." (AFP)

-US issues sanctions on Sudanese army chief Burhan: The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on Sudan's leader, army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, accusing him of choosing war over negotiations to bring an end to the conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people and driven millions from their homes. The U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement that under Burhan's leadership, the army's war tactics have included indiscriminate bombing of civilian infrastructure, attacks on schools, markets and hospitals, and extrajudicial executions. (Reuters)

-Armies, jihadists kill civilians 'with impunity' in W.Africa: HRW: Jihadist groups and national armies have been killing civilians across west Africa with "impunity" in the past two years, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday. The worst affected countries were Burkina Faso and Mali, both riven by armed groups and led by officers who took power in military coups, an annual report published by the rights group said. "Armed groups and government forces in West Africa have committed atrocities with impunity in 2024," the HRW report said. (AFP)

· Burkina Faso's army and volunteer fighters had killed at least a thousand civilians in the first half of 2024, HRW said, citing figures from conflict monitoring group ACLED. Neighbouring Mali's security forces and their mercenary allies from Russia's paramilitary Wagner group were likewise responsible for "serious human rights violations against civilians as part of counterinsurgency operations against abusive Islamist armed groups". Mali's armed forces and its allies were responsible for 1,021 civilian deaths between January 1 and October 11, said HRW, again citing ACLED figures.

· Meanwhile, the desert borderlands straddling junta-led Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have become the scene of attacks by armed groups linked to the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda, the report added. Niger's neighbour Nigeria has not been spared jihadist and army violence, with HRW reporting numerous kidnappings and murderous attacks on civilians by Boko Haram and its Islamic State-aligned splinter group, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP).

-Nigerian army says 76 Islamist militants killed in Borno state: Nigerian troops have killed 76 Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) militants in the country's northeastern Borno state in recent weeks, a spokesperson said on Thursday. The militants were believed to belong to the armed group Boko Haram and its offshoot ISWAP, who have been waging a deadly insurgency in northeast Nigeria since 2009 that has displaced millions and killed thousands, with Borno at its epicenter. The militants have stepped up attacks in Borno since the turn of the year, including an assault on Dumba community on Sunday where at least 40 farmers were killed. (Reuters)

-Ghana and Mali vow to strengthen security ties: Ghana's president and Mali's junta-appointed prime minister on Thursday committed to strengthening relations in the face of rising jihadist violence and instability across west Africa. The northern part of Ghana, as well as nearby Togo and Benin, is increasingly faced with incursions by jihadist groups based in the Sahel. "Our security is a common objective, and we must work with each other to make sure our subregion is safe," Ghana's John Mahama told the press after his meeting with General Abdoulaye Maiga in the capital Accra. "If your neighbour's house is on fire, you must assist them to quench it; otherwise, it will spread to yours." (AFP)

· The Ghanaian leader also acknowledged the recent formation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) by Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, a defence pact formed after the three junta-led states withdrew from the regional west African bloc ECOWAS. “Despite the temporary setback that we’re facing, we must continue to keep our relationships strong. Ghana remains in strong solidarity with Mali,” Mahama added.

· Maiga praised Ghana’s essential role in promoting pan-Africanism—a central theme of the military leaders who have taken power in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, all of whom have turned away from former colonial ruler France. “The fight for African sovereignty aligns with the vision of President Mahama. We thank him... for Ghana’s unwavering support,” the general said.

· The visit is one sign of the normalisation of relations between the three AES states and their neighbours, after coups and their ECOWAS exit strained ties. It also came as Togo's foreign minister refused to rule out joining the AES, which would give the currently landlocked security and defence pact access to the Atlantic Ocean.

-Guinea's main opposition parties call for withdrawal from junta-led legislative body: The main opposition coalition in Guinea has called for its members to withdraw from the country's legislative body after the ruling junta missed a deadline for a return to democratic rule. The Forces Vives de Guinée coalition group, which includes the country's main opposition parties, called for its members to withdraw from the National Transitional Council in a statement late Wednesday. The council has served as the parliament since the military took power two years ago. (AP)

· Guinea is one of several West African countries where the military has taken power and delayed a return to civilian rule. The country’s leader, Col. Mamadi Doumbouya, in power since 2021, agreed in 2022 to launch a democratic transition after a Dec. 31, 2024, deadline.

· The ruling junta’s failure to meet the deadline led to opposition protests that paralyzed Guinea’s capital Conakry last week. But in his New Year’s message, Doumbouya said a decree for a constitutional referendum will be signed to launch the democratic process, without committing to a date. Activists and opposition groups condemned the announcement as a ploy to prolong military rule.

-C. African leader thanks Putin for support against rebels: The president of the Central African Republic (CAR) thanked Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Thursday for sending Russian military personnel to his country to help battle rebel factions. Moscow has close ties with the former French colony and has deployed hundreds of military "instructors" there to help President Faustin-Archange Touadera combat insurgents opposed to his rule. The civil war in the landlocked CAR began more than a decade ago. "I would like to take the opportunity of this official visit to reiterate to you my gratitude and thanks," Touadera told Putin at a meeting in Moscow. He praised the Russian "instructors" as "brave warriors". (AFP)

· Fighters from Russia's mercenary group Wagner have supported government forces in the CAR since 2018. Moscow also trains thousands of local soldiers. "The army trained by Russian instructors is a powerful force pursuing and destroying terrorists and other criminals on the territory of the Central African Republic," Touadera said. Putin told Touadera he planned to maintain the level of support. "We intend to act in this direction as we have done so far," the Kremlin chief said.

BORDER

-Senate panel votes in support of ‘Remain in Mexico’ border policy: A Senate panel voted Thursday to approve a resolution in support of the “Remain in Mexico” immigration policy, after a two-hour hearing about the border enforcement approach implemented in the first Trump administration. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted 8-6 along party lines to approve the measure on the policy, which requires asylum-seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border to stay outside of the United States as their claims are processed. (Roll Call)

· Chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., in his first hearing and markup leading the panel this Congress, condemned the Biden administration for reversing the immigration policies of the Trump administration. “President Biden discarded proven strategies like ‘Remain in Mexico,’ which was undeniably successful in deterring illegal entries,” Paul said. “The results were immediate and disastrous. During the last full month of [the] Trump administration when ‘Remain in Mexico’ was in effect, border encounters were under 70,000. After its repeal, the number surged to over 100,000 and continued to rise.”

· Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, the top Democrat on the committee, declined to offer support for the “Remain in Mexico” policy, cautioning against measures that would empower Mexican drug cartels, as some critics say happened with the Trump-era regulation. “Although billed as a means of deterring migrants, the policy’s real success was dumping fuel into the fire of cartel activity in Mexico,” Peters said. “This particular policy accelerated dangerous illegal activity led by cartels in Mexico even more. It is estimated that these cartels have raked in billions of dollars from this criminal activity through drug trafficking, extortion, human trafficking, and smuggling and ransom kidnappings of asylum seekers.”

-Noem to Face Questions on Immigration as Trump’s Homeland Security Pick: Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick to run the Homeland Security Department, will face questions from senators on Friday about an agency that will be critical to fulfilling the new administration’s promises to quickly crack down on immigration. While Ms. Noem, South Dakota’s governor since 2019, has largely avoided the scrutiny surrounding some of Mr. Trump’s other nominees, the agency she seeks to oversee runs the nation’s immigration system, including law enforcement at the southern border. The department also includes other critical agencies like the Secret Service, the Coast Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. (NYT)

· She will face lawmakers on the Senate Homeland Security Committee during a time of shifting perceptions of immigration. Mr. Trump’s vows to aggressively police the border and carry out mass deportations helped propel him to victory in November, and some Democrats have signaled support of increased enforcement. Ms. Noem, 53, favors the immigration restrictions that Mr. Trump campaigned on. She regularly criticized the Biden administration’s policies and as governor even sent the state’s National Guard to the southern border.

· The National Border Patrol Council, the union representing Border Patrol agents, has come out in support of Ms. Noem’s nomination. “We are confident that as secretary, Governor Noem will continue to ensure Border Patrol agents have the resources and manpower that we need to secure our border,” the union wrote in a letter to senators late last year. “We urge you to quickly begin consideration of this critical nomination and confirm Governor Noem as secretary once President Trump is sworn in.”

· The American Civil Liberties Union called on senators to probe Ms. Noem’s views on critical issues. “Given President-elect Trump’s promises, the stakes are even higher,” Sarah Mehta, the group’s senior policy counsel, said in a statement. “The Senate must take seriously its ‘advice and consent’ role and get Kristi Noem on the record on important issues that impact all our communities, including surveillance, religious and racial profiling, and use of force against protesters.”

-How the Man Behind Trump’s Deportation Plan Found MAGA: In 2016, Thomas D. Homan was a frustrated immigration bureaucrat ready to call it quits. A former border patrol agent with a lawman’s steely demeanor, he had been an odd fit for the Obama administration. Top officials would call on him when they wanted a hard-liner’s take. But his proposals — including an early version of the controversial family separation policy to deter migrants — were often rejected. (NYT)

· In the years since, Donald J. Trump’s rise has fully unleashed Mr. Homan and his ideas. In Mr. Trump’s first administration, Mr. Homan helped make the family separation policy a chaotic reality. And in the second, Mr. Homan is poised to be the White House “border czar,” tasked with making good on the incoming president’s promise to carry out the largest deportation campaign in American history.

· Mr. Homan’s ascent completes his transformation from dutiful official in a Democratic administration to full-throated Trump world fixture. Where he once signed off on transgender care guidelines and the Obama administration’s targeted immigration policy, he now endorses far-right theories about immigration and elections. He has boasted that he is completely unbothered by criticism of the family separation policy. When he was first approached about joining a second Trump administration, Mr. Homan says he told Mr. Trump that he was so angry about the border that “I’ll come back for free.”

-Trump to install Texas border czar as Border Patrol chief, sources say: The incoming Trump administration is planning to install Texas' border czar as head of U.S. Border Patrol, replacing the career official who currently leads the agency in charge of stopping the illicit movement of migrants and drugs. Mike Banks, who has spearheaded Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's border crackdown, is expected to be appointed Border Patrol chief after President-elect Donald Trump is sworn into office, two sources familiar with the move told CBS News Thursday. (CBS News)

· Banks would replace current Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens, a 28-year veteran career official at the agency. Owens is set to retire from government service in April, two U.S. officials told CBS News. In an internal message sent to agents Thursday and obtained by CBS News, Owens said the opportunity to serve as Border Patrol chief was "the highest honor I have ever received." "Looking ahead, I will leave with a profound sense of optimism about its future and that of our country," Owens wrote. "I will take comfort knowing that you are on our frontline, standing between the innocent and the evil."

-ICE estimates it would need $26.9 billion to enforce GOP deportation bill: The Homeland Security Department is warning lawmakers in Congress that a proposed immigration enforcement bill would cost $26.9 billion to implement in its first year and "would be impossible for [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] to execute within existing resources." The Senate is currently weighing amendments on the Laken Riley Act, which would direct federal immigration enforcement to detain and deport anyone in the U.S. without legal status if they have been charged, arrested or convicted of burglary, theft, larceny or shoplifting. (NPR)

· The bill passed the House last week with more Democratic support than the previous time the body voted on it. The bill has been broadly seen as a marker emphasizing Washington’s focus on immigration and border security as President-elect Donald Trump is about to be inaugurated. Some Senate Democrats are giving the measure a chance. This week, a bipartisan set of procedural votes opened up the measure to further debate and changes. But the agency in charge of carrying out the potential new law warns that it may physically not be able to.

· New estimates from an internal ICE document obtained and verified by NPR show that the agency would need 110,000 more detention beds and over 10,000 enforcement and removal operations personnel to increase apprehensions, detentions and removals. More than 7,000 additional attorneys and support personnel would also be needed to handle immigration proceedings, according to the estimates.

· The document notes that a figure of $3.2 billion “has been shared widely as a cost estimate,” but calls that number incorrect because it “does not represent the full cost of implementation.” The document says the previous estimate—outlined in a three-page memo from ICE sent in response to questions from one of the bill’s House sponsors—was based “on only 60,000 beds.”

-Border app that became 'a salvation' for migrants to legally enter the US may end: CBP One has brought nearly 1 million people to the U.S. on two-year permits with eligibility to work but could go away once President-elect Donald Trump takes office… Supporters say CBP One has helped bring order to the border and reduced illegal crossings. But Trump has said he would end it as part of a broader immigration crackdown. Critics say it prioritizes a lottery system over people who have long lived in the U.S. illegally while paying taxes and people who have waited years for visas. (AP)

· U.S. Customs and Border Protection debuted CBP One near the end of Trump’s first term as a way for customs brokers to schedule inspections and for visitors with short-term visas to extend stays. The Biden administration extended its use to migrants to replace an opaque patchwork of exemptions to a pandemic-related asylum ban that was then in place.

· CBP One is popular with Cubans, Venezuelans, Haitians and Mexicans, likely because advocates in their communities promote it. Illegal border crossings by Cubans plunged under CBP One from a peak of nearly 35,000 in April 2022 to just 97 in September.

· Demand for appointments has far outstripped supply, with an average of about 280,000 people competing for 1,450 daily slots toward the end of last year, according to CBP. Winners must report to a border crossing in three weeks. Migrant shelters along Mexico’s border with the U.S. are now occupied primarily by people seeking the online appointments.

-The migrants on the frontline of Trump’s mass deportation plan: Blanca Figueroa and Severiano Martinez have known from the start of their eight-year marriage that she was at risk of deportation because she entered the United States illegally. Now - with President-elect Donald Trump expected to issue a flurry of executive orders aimed at speeding the deportation process on the day he takes office on Jan. 20 - that risk has become an overwhelming source of anxiety and discussion in their central Florida home. (Reuters)

· Figueroa, who is from Guatemala, and Martinez, who is a U.S. citizen, live with their seven-year-old son who was born in the U.S., and a teenage son from an earlier relationship who has a green card. Figueroa says she is the family’s main breadwinner and Martinez’s caregiver after he was injured at his job on a horse ranch. “He worries a lot that if they deport me that he would not be able to manage the house and the boys,” she told Reuters.

· About a third of the 1.4 million people expected to be prime targets for deportation - those like Figueroa with “final orders of removal” - live in the Florida and Texas enforcement areas, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data obtained by Reuters. The two states have enacted their own laws cracking down on immigrants in the country illegally. At least another third of migrants living under final orders are in California and other “sanctuary” states that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

· Reuters spoke with half a dozen immigrants living in Florida and Texas with removal orders as well as immigration advocates and church leaders, who described rising anxiety and a scramble to meet with lawyers and make contingency plans for children and other dependents in case they are deported. They described their fear of being picked up by police indiscriminately or for driving without a license.

GUN

-More than a dozen Democratic AGs say they'll defend gun regulations ahead of Trump's 2nd term: More than a dozen Democratic state attorneys general said Thursday they plan to defend two gun regulations now being challenged in court, including one banning devices that enable semiautomatic guns to fire more quickly. New Jersey Democratic Attorney General Matt Platkin said his state and others with Democratic attorneys general, plan to intervene in cases already in the court system ahead of President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration Monday. (AP)

· One case involves devices known as forced reset triggers, or FRTs, which can be installed on weapons, functionally turning them into machine guns, according to Platkin. The other centers on a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives regulation that came out of a 2022 law. The rule aims to close what is sometimes called the “gun show loophole,” by requiring up to an estimated 95,500 firearm sellers to conduct background checks. Second Amendment advocacy groups and Republican-led states have challenged the rules in court. “The incoming Administration has threatened these common-sense protections, so States are stepping in,” Platkin said in a statement.

· The second case centers on a rule implementing the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law. The ATF rule expanded the category of people defined as “engaged in the business” of dealing firearms. It meant that an estimated 26,000 to 95,500 dealers would be required to get federally licensed and therefore be required to conduct background checks before sales. In May, 26 GOP attorneys general filed suits aiming to block the rule, arguing it violates the Second Amendment.

-Democratic AGs Rush Into Court to Save Biden Gun Rules: A band of blue-state top cops leaped into federal gun regulation litigation in Texas Thursday, asking two courts to fill defense vacuums after President Joe Biden leaves office next week. One of those efforts was instantly rebuffed. Attorneys general for 15 and Washington filed motions to intervene in a private gun group’s challenge to Biden’s ban on “forced reset triggers” before the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Texas’ challenge to the expanded registration rules for gun sellers currently before the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas. (Bloomberg)

· “And though Movant States could previously rely on federal defendants to represent their interests, the President-Elect promises to overturn the current Administration’s firearms policies swiftly,” the Democratic attorneys general, led by New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin said in their brief. The states are therefore “intervening to ensure the seamless transition” from the federal government’s defense of the policy to states impacted by it. With unusual speed the Fifth Circuit rejected the tactic, issuing an order Thursday denying their ability to intervene but saying they could participate by filing friend of the court briefs.

AMERICAN MANUFACTURING

-US defense contractor to build 4,000-worker advanced manufacturing facility in central Ohio: U.S. defense contractor Anduril Industries is preparing to build a massive advanced manufacturing facility in central Ohio, adding a planned 4,000 jobs to the area's burgeoning high-tech sector, state officials announced Thursday. (AP)

· The Cosa Mesa, California-based defense technology company plans to begin construction of what it’s calling “Arsenal 1” as soon as state and local approvals are secured. The 5 million-square-foot (464,515-square-meter) facility will be located on a 500-acre (202-hectare) site near Rickenbacker International Airport in rural Pickaway County, about 16 miles (26 kilometers) southeast of Columbus. Production of military drones and autonomous air vehicles would begin in July 2026 under the plan, said Christian Brose, Anduril’s chief strategy officer.

· Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said it is the largest single job creation and payroll project that Ohio has announced. The governor said winning Anduril's manufacturing plant marks a continuation of Ohio's history of advanced advanced aviation, which began with the Wright brothers and continues to grow surrounding the Dayton-area Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. “We are an aerospace state,” DeWine said. He called Ohio “the brains of the Air Force.”

-Canada Readies Billions of Dollars in Retaliatory Moves to Trump Tariff Threat: The Canadian government is preparing billions of dollars in retaliatory measures on U.S. exports to Canada if President-elect Donald J. Trump makes good on a threat to impose tariffs on Canadian goods, setting up a potential showdown between two countries that are each other’s largest trading partners. Canada is assembling a list of measures, including tariffs on U.S. exports to Canada and levies or other restrictions on key Canadian exports to the United States, if Mr. Trump imposes a sweeping 25 percent tariff on Canadian goods. But the government made clear that it will wait to see what Mr. Trump might do before responding. (NYT)

ECONOMY

-Oil prices climb on supply fears, Fed rate cut hopes: Oil prices climbed on Friday, heading for a fourth weekly gain, driven by concerns over tighter supply following U.S. sanctions on Russian oil producers and signals from a Federal Reserve official of potential interest rate cuts. Brent crude futures rose 13 cents, or 0.2%, to $81.42 per barrel by 0113 GMT, after declining 0.9% in the previous session. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures were up 27 cents, or 0.3%, to $78.95 a barrel after dropping 1.7% on Thursday. Both contracts fell on Thursday with Yemen’s Houthi militia expected to halt attacks on ships in the Red Sea. Still, they remain on course for a fourth weekly gain, with Brent up 9% and WTI rising 10% year-to-date. (Reuters)

· “Supply concerns from U.S. sanctions on Russian oil producers and tankers, combined with expectations of a demand recovery driven by potential U.S. interest rate cuts, are bolstering the crude market,” said Toshitaka Tazawa, an analyst at Fujitomi Securities. “The anticipated increase in kerosene demand due to cold weather in the U.S. is another supportive factor,” he added.

· Investors are assessing the Biden administration’s latest round of sanctions targeting Russia’s military-industrial base and sanctions-evasion efforts, following broader measures against Russian oil producers and tankers. Moscow’s top customers are now scouring the globe for replacement barrels, driving a surge in shipping rates.

· Inflation is likely to continue to ease and possibly allow the U.S. central bank to cut interest rates sooner and faster than expected, Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said on Thursday, countering recent market bets on a shallower rate path.

-US weekly jobless claims increase; labor market conditions still healthy: The number of Americans filing new applications for unemployment benefits increased more than expected last week, but remained at levels consistent with a healthy labor market. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 14,000 to a seasonally adjusted 217,000 for the week ended Jan. 11, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 210,000 claims for the latest week. (Reuters)

-Fed’s Waller Says Fresh Rate Cuts Possible in First Half of 2025: Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said the US central bank could lower interest rates again in the first half of 2025 if inflation data continue to be favorable. “The inflation data we got yesterday was very good,” Waller said Thursday in an appearance on CNBC, referring to fresh figures that showed a cooldown in underlying price pressures last month. “If we continue getting numbers like this, it’s reasonable to think rate cuts could happen in the first half of the year,” he said, adding that he wouldn’t entirely rule out a cut in March. (Bloomberg)

· If future inflation figures fall in-line with December’s positive report, Waller said the Fed may cut more this year and sooner than investors are currently expecting. “I’m optimistic that this disinflationary trend will continue and we’ll get back closer to 2% a little quicker than maybe others are thinking,” he said. The Fed aims for 2% inflation.

-‘We Still Have an Inflation Problem.’ A Fed Newcomer Wants to Go Slow on Rate Cuts: When Beth Hammack was selected last year to lead the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, one of her former colleagues on Wall Street predicted she would waste little time in leaving her stamp on monetary policy. Hammack didn’t disappoint. The former Goldman Sachs treasurer opposed the Fed’s decision to lower interest rates at its most recent meeting—and just her third at the central bank. (WSJ)

· Not only are prices much higher than they were a few years ago, “we still have an inflation problem. We still have a rate-of-change problem that we need to address,” Hammack said in an interview Tuesday. “We’ve made amazing progress on it, but we need to continue to finish the job.” Reflecting on last month’s rate cut, she added, “For me, that December conversation was really about, did you need to do it now, or could you be more patient and wait and see.”

-Biden Adviser Warns Trump Risks Inflation If He Meddles With Fed: A top economic adviser to President Joe Biden warned that Donald Trump’s incoming administration risks reigniting inflation if it interferes with the Federal Reserve’s policymaking on interest rates. Jared Bernstein, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said he is keeping an open mind about the president-elect’s team but alluded to Trump’s past musings that the executive branch should have greater say over the central bank’s rate-setting. (Bloomberg)

· “Let’s see what they do. They don’t want higher inflation or interest rates,” Bernstein told Bloomberg Television’s Balance of Power on Thursday. “But once you start messing around with Fed independence, I think you’re making a pretty fatal mistake in terms of controlling inflation.”

-Trump Treasury pick Bessent backs Fed independence, dollar, sanctions on Russian oil: President-elect Donald Trump's pick for Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said on Thursday that the dollar should remain the world's reserve currency, the Federal Reserve should stay independent, and that he is ready to impose tougher sanctions on Russia's oil sector. Bessent, testifying at a Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing, underscored an urgent need to extend Trump's 2017 individual tax cuts, saying that allowing them to expire at the end of this year would unleash a $4 trillion tax hike that could crush the U.S. economy. (Reuters)

-Pharma digs in on changes it wants from Trump administration: The pharmaceutical industry, grappling with new government limits on drug prices, is focusing its requests for president-elect Donald Trump and Congress on "fixing" a Biden-era law allowing the Medicare health plan to negotiate prices for its costliest medicines along with insurance changes. The industry, which argues that pharmacy benefit managers contribute to the high price of prescription drugs, is also pushing for curbs on the rebates they pay to PBMs in exchange for favorable placement on insurer coverage lists. (Reuters)

-Google Will Have to Face Search Engine Monopolization Claim: Alphabet Inc.‘s Google couldn’t escape an antitrust suit after a district court ruled Thursday it was sufficiently alleged that the company monopolized the internet search engine market. Twenty-six search engine users were able to adequately allege they suffered a direct injury due to their inability to access “high-quality search products” with increased privacy and less clogged with ads, Judge Rita F. Lin said in an order. Google’s motion to dismiss the consumers’ monopolization claim under Section 2 of the Sherman Act was denied in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. (Bloomberg)

-TikTok's fight against going dark gains support from key US lawmakers: TikTok's fortunes took a positive turn on Thursday as a growing number of U.S. officials said its Chinese owner should have more time to sell that app and stop it from being banned ahead of President-elect Donald Trump's return to the White House. Trump's incoming national security adviser said the new Republican administration will keep the social media app used by 170 million Americans alive in the U.S. if there is a viable deal and top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer urged President Joe Biden to extend by 90 days a looming deadline to shut it down on Sunday. (Bloomberg, Reuters)

· The ban is poised to be delayed, two Biden officials familiar with the planning said, speaking on condition of anonymity to detail the government’s approach. TikTok’s sell-or-ban deadline — coming on the eve of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend and one day before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration — essentially punts the issue of how to deal with the app to their White House successors. Trump has said he opposes the ban going into effect.

-TikTok Creators Turn to Lawyers to Navigate Looming US App Ban: Attorneys for creators profiting from posts on TikTok Inc.'s video-sharing app are developing strategies to renegotiate brand deals ahead of the Chinese-owned social media giant’s scheduled US ban this weekend. ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok faces a deadline of Jan. 19 to find a US buyer or cease operating in the country, and the Supreme Court last week signaled it’s unlikely to block the law signed by President Joe Biden in April imposing the ban. Barring an 11th-hour reprieve, tech companies starting this weekend would face massive fines for hosting the app, and TikTok’s attorney told the high court the platform would “go dark” if the law kicks in. (Bloomberg)

· Almost $5 billion was spent on US influencer marketing in 2022, according to Goldman Sachs. Influencers who rely on TikTok as a critical part of that massive economy are concerned about an immediate downturn in revenue, said Nixon Peabody LLP partner Christina Chang. She said she’s working to protect them in existing agreements by adding language to explicitly address what happens if the ban goes into effect, including repurposing content for other platforms and mapping out how parties would negotiate a contract amendment.

· Though creators’ paid posts intended for TikTok could easily publish on Meta Platform Inc.’s Instagram Reels, Google Inc.’s YouTube Shorts, or Snap Inc.'s Snapchat, brands might try to cut pay since those platforms don’t have TikTok’s prized algorithm, or smaller user bases. Shifting from TikTok to those platforms doesn’t deliver the same experience, said Nixon Peabody partner Ellie Heisler, who has represented creators including TikTok star Addison Rae and fashion designer and TV personality Tan France.

-FTC Finalizes Children’s Privacy Rule Minimizing Data Collection: The Federal Trade Commission will require companies to secure opt-in consent for targeting advertising to children and bar them from retaining kids’ data indefinitely under its children’s privacy rule. (Bloomberg)

· The finalized amendment, formally proposed just over a year ago, is the first change to the agency’s rules implementing the 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act since 2013. COPPA requires online service providers to obtain parental consent before collecting, using, or disclosing personal information from children under 13. The agency dropped proposals that would have prohibited businesses from sending kids push notifications without prior parental consent. It also pulled back on banning educational technology providers from using students’ data for commercial purposes.

· The Commission voted 5-0 to approve publication of the final rule, which will take effect after 60 days. Outgoing FTC Chair Lina Khan has brought COPPA enforcement actions against big tech companies, including Amazon.com, and referred ByteDance’s TikTok to the Justice Department. Incoming FTC chair and current Republican Commissioner Andrew Ferguson voted to approve the rules but criticized the timing.

-Chinese tech firm founded by Huawei veterans in the FBI's crosshairs: The U.S. Commerce Department and FBI are both investigating a little-known telecoms hardware firm founded by senior Huawei veterans in China over possible security risks, sources and documents show. Founded in 2014, Baicells Technologies opened a North American business the next year in Wisconsin and has since provided telecoms equipment for 700 commercial mobile networks across every U.S. state, according to its website. (Reuters)

· The Commerce Department is investigating Baicells on national security grounds and has sent subpoenas to the company, four people said. The U.S. telecoms regulator, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), is advising it on its review, two of the people said. The FBI's interest in its equipment and Chinese origins dates back to at least 2019.

· Reuters is the first to report the existence of the two investigations and the FBI's long-standing interest, based on interviews with more than 30 current and former government officials, eight former Baicells employees and FBI emails obtained through a records request. The investigations illustrate that years after sanctions decimated the U.S. businesses of fellow Chinese tech companies Huawei and ZTE, Washington's fears that Beijing is using telecoms equipment to spy remain strong, experts said.

-SpaceX loses spacecraft after catching rocket booster at the launch pad in latest Starship test: SpaceX has caught its Starship rocket back at the pad following liftoff. But the spacecraft launched on top Thursday was destroyed. Elon Musk’s company confirmed the loss just minutes into the flight from the southern tip of Texas. The spacecraft’s engines shut down one by one, and contact soon was lost. SpaceX says it will take time to figure out what went wrong. The trouble arose just a minute after the first-stage booster returned to the launch pad and was captured by giant mechanical arms. It was the seventh test flight for the world’s biggest and most powerful rocket. (AP)

GOVERNMENT NEWS OF NOTE

-Committees Consider How Much to Fit Into Reconciliation Bill: A wide range of House committees are deciding which specific provisions to include in a reconciliation bill, as GOP leaders aim for near unanimity for a major package of policies on taxes, immigration, and other measures. “Eight or nine” committees are working on various provisions of a reconciliation package — an increase compared to just a few panels when Republicans started early plans, House Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) told reporters yesterday. The next step for Republicans to craft a budget resolution is getting “the policy-making committees to work with the respective members on what their appetite is for the various policy provisions,” Arrington said. (Bloomberg)

· Republicans aim to mark up a budget resolution in early February. For his committee to meet that deadline, Arrington said he has to know what policies will be acceptable for GOP lawmakers from the relevant committees of jurisdiction. “When those guys are feeling comfortable about what is possible out of their committee” is when Republicans can “roll out the reconciliation instructions,” Arrington said.

· House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has laid out an ambitious timeline to get a sweeping reconciliation bill to President-elect Trump’s desk. House Republicans hope to pass the bill by April 20 and send the bill to the White House by May 26. Arrington said he expects Republicans will have a definitive list of “actual items that will be in there” in a matter of weeks before his committee marks up a budget resolution. He added he expects “there’ll be a report” on how committees of jurisdiction are making progress.

· On the debt ceiling, Arrington said he is still pushing to tie a debt limit measure to the reconciliation process as Republican leaders mull alternate vehicles to raise the nation’s borrowing authority. With the resolution mark-up date fast approaching, House Republicans have to decide soon if they want to include language directing them to raise the debt limit through reconciliation. Arrington didn’t indicate if such language would be included, saying “we have to negotiate that” and “what matters is what can the conference digest and what they can get comfortable with.”

-Top appropriators are still waiting on spending allocations for the 12 annual funding bills, as congressional leaders have yet to settle on a bipartisan, bicameral deal on defense and nondefense funding figures. The issue came up in a meeting among House Appropriations subcommittee chairs, or “cardinals,” yesterday, Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) said. Lawmakers face a March 14 deadline to fund the government. (Bloomberg)

· Despite the delay, the mood among House GOP cardinals isn’t too bad. After writing bills under low spending levels pushed by conservatives, they’ll likely get a little more breathing room under a compromise with the Senate, Womack said. “The good news is, whatever they come up with is going to have to be a compromise, and my number probably goes up because we wrote to the FRA,” Womack said, referring to the Fiscal Responsibility Act spending caps. “So I’m ready to go, no matter what.”

-US House leader picks Trump ally Crawford as intel panel chair: U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson named Representative Rick Crawford on Thursday to chair the House intelligence committee, the latest promotion of an ally of President-elect Donald Trump to a key national security post. The panel chairman is among eight congressional leaders, known as the Gang of Eight, briefed on the most classified U.S. intelligence matters. "I will aggressively uphold our mandate to provide credible and robust oversight of the Intelligence Community's funding and activities," Crawford said in a statement. Johnson tapped Crawford a day after removing Representative Mike Turner from the chairmanship he had held for nearly two years. The position is one of the few chosen by the House speaker at the start of a new Congress. (Reuters)

· A source familiar with the matter questioned whether an order for Turner's ouster came from Mar-a-Lago, saying it appeared the decision was made by Johnson, who "wanted his own person" as committee chair. The source also noted that Turner voted to certify outgoing President Joe Biden's victory over Trump in the 2020 election, while Crawford joined 139 Republican House members and eight senators in voting to overturn the result, a symbolic move backing Trump's unfounded claim of massive fraud. "This is a pattern for Johnson," said the source, pointing to the appointment of Brian Mast, who also opposed Biden's victory, as the new House Foreign Relations Committee chairman to replace Mike McCaul, who voted to confirm it.

· The departures of both Turner and McCaul were effectively demotions of senior House Republicans whose foreign policy views have not always aligned with Trump's "America First" priorities. Both lawmakers are conservative Republicans who rarely break with party leaders, but are known for their willingness to seek bipartisan support on major policy issues. They have taken foreign policy and national security positions that differ from some of Trump's more isolationist stances.

-Democrats Reeling on Inflation, Border Seek to Shift Message: When Democratic House Leader Hakeem Jeffries spoke on the first day of the new Congress, he immediately focused on the high prices that frustrated so many voters. “America is too expensive,” Jeffries (N.Y.) said in on the House floor after a vote confirming him as minority leader — rather than the speakership he had hoped to claim. The party’s Senate leader, Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), launched his time back in the minority by saying Democrats “will fight to bring down inflation.” And on their first major votes of the year, four dozen House Democrats voted for the Laken Riley Act, a bill requiring the detention of undocumented immigrants arrested for crimes such as theft. Another 33 Democratic senators supported a procedural steps on the proposal. (Bloomberg)

· Together, the early actions show how wounded congressional Democrats have at least started to recalibrate on some of the biggest issues that drove President-elect Donald Trump and fellow Republicans to victory. It’s a stark contrast from the start of Trump’s first term, when many Democrats saw his victory as a fluke, vowed to repudiate him, and opposed him at nearly every turn. After years of warning that Trump was a threat to democracy, some Democrats now say the election results — in which he won the popular vote and boosted his performance across many demographics — show the need for a more concrete focus on what voters think about in their everyday lives.

· “We gotta be focused on the things that people are talking about at home, around the kitchen table, and it tends to be their pocketbook or their kids,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) told Bloomberg Government. “If we’re not talking about one of those two things, we might be missing the mark.” Speaking as a senator from a state Trump won, Slotkin said at a separate news conference, her job “is to look for common cause anywhere I can,” adding that “leadership is about picking between the things you have to compromise on and the things you should never compromise on.”

-US Needs More Electricity to Win AI Race, Says Trump Energy Czar: The US could lose the AI race if it doesn’t build more electricity fast, Doug Burgum told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Thursday. Fossil fuel-generated energy should fill that need, President-elect Donald Trump’s expected nominee for Interior Department secretary testified. Renewable power supplies are intermittent and “unreliable,” while coal and natural gas can be burned around the clock as baseload electricity, Burgum said. (Bloomberg)

· “Without baseload, we’re going to lose the AI arms race to China,” said Burgum, who has also been tapped to help chart Trump’s energy policy. “AI is manufacturing intelligence, and if we don’t manufacture more intelligence than our adversaries, that affects every job, every company and every industry.”

-Zeldin Promises to Scrutinize EPA’s Grants from Biden Laws: President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the EPA promised to scrutinize billions of dollars the agency’s issued in grant funding under President Joe Biden’s signature infrastructure and climate laws, if confirmed. (Bloomberg)

· “I just want to be in a position to account to all of you, as far as the dollars being spent by EPA,” Lee Zeldin, the nominee, said at his Thursday confirmation hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. He made these comments in response to a request from Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) that he go into work with the assumption that the grants were issued appropriately.

-New Florida Senator Moody Faces First Election Test in 2026: Ashley Moody, Florida’s Republican attorney general who’s about to take a seat in the Senate, will have almost two years in her new job to burnish her statewide political profile before she has to face the voters. Moody, 49, appointed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) Thursday to the Senate seat Secretary of State-designate Marco Rubio will soon vacate, is a proven vote-getter and an early favorite in a 2026 special election to complete the remainder of the six-year term Rubio won in 2022. (Bloomberg)

· She will benefit from advantages of incumbency and her state’s rightward trend. As a reliable vote for President-elect Donald Trump’s priorities this year and next, Moody could ward off potentially threatening opposition in the 2026 Republican primary, the key contest in a now GOP-dominant state Trump carried by 13 percentage points last November.

-Biden seeks last-minute moves that could be hard for Trump to undo: He's designated national monuments in California and removed Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. He's blocked a Japanese company's takeover of U.S. Steel and extended temporary protected status to nearly 1 million immigrants. He's commuted the sentences of nearly everyone who was on federal death row, and he's granted to his son Hunter a sweeping pardon. President Joe Biden is ending his time in office as he began, with a burst of executive actions meant to differentiate him from the man who preceded him and will succeed him: President-elect Donald Trump. (WP)

· Biden’s actions have been far-reaching, touching nearly every area of government, and are likely to continue up until his final hours in office, according to administration officials. Even as many at the White House were packing up their offices — planning to vacate at the end of the day on Friday — there were still last-minute preparations for additional executive actions.

· The president has been weighing action aimed at advancing the Equal Rights Amendment, which would prohibit discrimination based on sex, according to people familiar with the discussions, speaking on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal plans. And Biden has been considering issuing preemptive pardons for figures who might face the hostility of the incoming Trump administration.

· Outgoing presidents often conclude their tenure with a flurry of activity, such as pardons or proclamations, but Biden’s efforts have been unusually wide-ranging, reflecting his conviction that Trump represents a unique threat to American traditions.

-Biden weighing action aimed at prohibiting discrimination based on sex, Washington Post reports: U.S. President Joe Biden is weighing action aimed at advancing the Equal Rights Amendment, which would prohibit discrimination based on sex, before he leaves office on Monday, the Washington Post reported on Thursday citing people familiar with discussions. (Reuters)

-Biden commutes the sentences of nearly 2,500 non-violent drug offenders: President Biden on Friday announced he would commute the sentences of nearly 2,500 people convicted of non-violent drug offenses as one of his last major moves just days before leaving office. Biden said the individuals receiving commutations are “serving disproportionately long sentences compared to the sentences they would receive today under current law, policy, and practice” in a Friday statement. (The Hill)

-FBI Warned Agents It Believes Phone Logs Hacked Last Year: FBI leaders have warned that they believe hackers who broke into AT&T Inc.’s system last year stole months of their agents’ call and text logs, setting off a race within the bureau to protect the identities of confidential informants, a document reviewed by Bloomberg News shows. (Bloomberg)

· FBI officials told agents across the country that details about their use on the telecom carrier’s network were believed to be among the billions of records stolen, according to the document and interviews with a current and a former law enforcement official. They asked not to be named to discuss sensitive information. Data from all FBI devices under the bureau’s AT&T service for public safety agencies were presumed taken, the document shows.

· The cache of hacked AT&T records didn’t reveal the substance of communications but, according to the document, could link investigators to their secret sources. The data was believed to include agents’ mobile phone numbers and the numbers with which they called and texted, the document shows. Records for calls and texts that weren’t on the AT&T network, such as through encrypted messaging apps, weren’t part of the stolen data.

-Drug used in federal executions under Trump may cause 'unnecessary pain and suffering,' Garland says: The Justice Department is rescinding its protocol for federal executions that allowed for single-drug lethal injections with pentobarbital, after a government review raised concerns about the potential for “unnecessary pain and suffering.” Attorney General Merrick Garland's order to withdraw the lethal injection policy comes days before President-elect Donald Trump, who is expected to restart federal executions, is set to return to the White House. Trump’s Justice Department could reinstate the protocol to use pentobarbital as a single drug to carry out executions. (AP)

· A moratorium on federal executions has been in place since 2021, and only three defendants remain on federal death row after Democratic President Joe Biden converted 37 of their sentences to life in prison. The governments’ findings about the potential risks of unnecessary pain could have broader implications. Legal challenges have been brought in several states where pentobarbital is the primary method of execution, potentially leading to reviews of execution protocols nationwide. The department's review of scientific and medical research found there remains “significant uncertainty about whether the use of pentobarbital as a single drug lethal injection causes unnecessary pain and suffering," according to a report published Wednesday.

-US settles anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian bias complaint against Emory University: The U.S. Education Department on Thursday noted concerns about discrimination against Muslim, Arab and Palestinian students at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia and reached a settlement with the institution to resolve the issue. The university agreed to revise its nondiscrimination policies and procedures, including pertaining to protests and a definition of harassment that includes harassment based on actual or perceived shared ancestry. The university also agreed to develop training and surveys while assessing its response to campus protests that erupted last year against U.S. support for Israel's war in Gaza, the Education Department said. (Reuters)

-Justice Department sues Georgia county, saying elections violate rights of Black voters: The U.S. Justice Department sued a Georgia county Thursday, alleging that its method of electing county commissioners discriminates against Black voters. Houston County, home to 163,000 people south of Macon, uses countywide elections to fill each of its five commission seats. The civil lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court says those at-large elections violate the Voting Rights Act by unfairly diluting the influence of Black voters, who make up nearly one-third of the Houston County's electorate. “White voters cast their ballots sufficiently as a bloc to defeat Black voters’ preferred candidate” in countywide elections for Houston County commissioner, the lawsuit said. (AP)

OTHER DOMESTIC NEWS OF NOTE

-Trump offered a bountiful batch of campaign promises that come due on Day 1: After Donald Trump becomes president again on Monday, he is on the hook for achieving a hefty chunk of his promises even before the day is out. One of those promises is to make you dizzy. “Your head will spin when you see what’s going to happen," he said of Day 1. Steady yourself. This is some of what the Republican promised voters he would get done on his first day in office: (AP)

· Launch the largest deportation in U.S. history to remove all people in the country illegally.

· Close the border.

· End automatic citizenship for everyone born in the U.S., known as birthright citizenship.

· Sign pardons for some or many of those convicted or charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol.

· Impose a 25% tariff on everything imported from Mexico and Canada and add a 10% tariff to duties already imposed on goods from China.

· Even before Monday, end the Russia-Ukraine war.

· End what he calls the “electric vehicle mandate.”

· Declare a national energy emergency to spur the approval of more drilling, pipelines, refineries, power plants and reactors.

· Cut federal money to schools that push “critical race theory, transgender insanity and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content onto the shoulders of our children.” Also cut money to any schools that have a vaccine or mask mandate.

· Take steps to uproot the “deep state.”

· All of that on Monday? Not likely. Trump simply can’t accomplish all he said he will do on Day 1 because there are two more branches of government — Congress and the courts. The constitutional right to birthright citizenship, for example, cannot be ended with a stroke of his pen. (Moreover, in 2017 he considered Jan. 21 — his first full day on the job after the Jan. 20 inauguration — to be his Day 1.) But as other presidents have done — and as Trump did aggressively and with decidedly mixed results in his first term — he will quickly test the limits of his executive power.

· The power to pardon is within his grasp, and he can steer border enforcement efforts, tweak tariffs and find ways to spur energy production without Congress necessarily having to pass a law. Yet many of his executive orders will essentially be statements of intent — stage setters for struggles to come.

-Trump Ready to Bypass Congress on Border and Tariffs: Days before his inauguration, President-elect Donald Trump made clear in a two-hour private meeting with Senate Republicans that he wouldn't wait on them to start implementing his biggest policy priorities: overhauling the immigration system and dramatically reshaping the country's relationship with its economic allies and adversaries. (WSJ)

· With the experience of governing and a better knowledge of the levers of power, Trump has drafted expansive plans for tariffs and border restrictions, the centerpieces of his 2024 campaign. He has already prepared roughly 100 executive orders, Trump told lawmakers in the meeting, and said he would press the limits of his presidential authority at times to go it alone on those issues, according to people who attended.

· Trump’s emphasis on immigration and trade reforms—the North Stars of his “America First” worldview—catapulted him to the presidency in 2016 and drove his historic return to the White House in the latest election. It sustained his fervent base of supporters over the past four years after he was defeated by President Biden in 2020 and admonished by many in his party over his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

· Now, as he returns to power, Trump is betting he can turbocharge his nationalist trade and immigration agenda into a legacy-cementing policy record, powered by a more decisive electoral mandate than he had the last time. In his first administration, Trump, who was new to politics and governing, faced resistance from the establishment wing of the Republican Party inside and outside the White House. His own advisers were able to block some of his proposals, and the president was more tentative about legal risks.

-Top Trump Diplomat to Share Foreign-Policy Role With Army of Envoys: As Marco Rubio testified Wednesday at his confirmation hearing to be secretary of state, President-elect Donald Trump's Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, was in Qatar, where he had helped to negotiate a long-sought Gaza cease-fire. The split-screen moment underscored the novel way Trump is organizing his foreign-policy team—with the customary national-security cabinet members sharing the spotlight with half a dozen envoys and advisers assigned to deal directly with hot spots and foreign capitals. (WSJ)

· The emerging structure reflects Trump’s determination to tighten control of the policy process with loyalists who will execute his priorities alongside more conventional members of his team. But instead of more nimble diplomacy there is also a risk the multiheaded organization chart could lead to a more chaotic process, analysts said.

· Trump seems intent on avoiding the situation he encountered during his first term when several of his top national-security officials pushed back on some of his most unorthodox foreign-policy decisions, including orders to remove troops from Syria and Afghanistan.

· “Donald Trump likes an informal policy process where he is the hub and there is any number of spokes,” said Richard Haass, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations who has served in the State Department, at the National Security Council and in the Pentagon. “I think this will be a challenging environment for any secretary of state.”

-Inside the Early Days of DOGE: Their work has been shrouded in secrecy, conducted on Signal and at SpaceX offices a few blocks from the White House. Team members have been dispatched to federal agencies to review them for cuts. And Elon Musk, their leader and the world's richest man, continues to be at President-elect Donald Trump's side. The so-called Department of Government Efficiency, led by the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive, has functioned in its early day as a government-reform task force, with DOGE breakout teams looking for ways to reduce spending, pare back the federal workforce and reorganize and downsize agencies. (WSJ)

· DOGE is expected to work closely with the Office of Management and Budget, making recommendations to Congress and the Trump administration on ways to bring down spending and cut regulations. DOGE officials have focused on ways that their goals can be accomplished through executive action as opposed to legislatively, people familiar with the matter said. Some of DOGE's early work has involved reviewing past audits of federal agencies, to help guide the work and identify potential cuts and inefficiencies, one of the people said. The Defense Department, for example, has failed several audits in a row and struggled to fully account for its budget.

-Musk’s DOGE Inspires State Copycats: Some Republican state leaders want to make DOGE happen locally, following on the buzz around Elon Musk’s role at President-elect Donald Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency for the federal government. Governors in Iowa, Louisiana, and New Hampshire have announced initiatives to tighten budgets and streamline government. Legislators in Arizona, Kansas, Missouri, and Wisconsin have created committees with similar goals. (Bloomberg)

· Backers said they took inspiration from Trump’s focus on slashing federal spending through the effort led by Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. States this year will need to make difficult decisions to balance their budgets, with pandemic-era tax cuts and spending increases pointing to challenges in the future. “Government, just like many things, we gradually expand, and sometimes you need to take a real look at it,” Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson (R), who created a government efficiency committee in his chamber, said in an interview.

-California Chief Justice Says Social Media Harms Civic Discourse: Social media has politicized discourse about the judiciary’s role as the third branch of government and has harmed the public’s ability to understand the legal reasons behind a court’s ruling, California Supreme Court Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero said in wide-ranging conversation with reporters Thursday. “Frankly, I think social media contributes to” rising criticisms of the judiciary, said Guererro, who is just over two years into her tenure as chief justice of the seven-seat court. “People being able to really attack one another in ways that are not productive isn’t helpful, and then it may carry over into actual physical violence.” (Bloomberg)

-Republican states can move ahead with abortion pill lawsuit in Texas: The Republican-led states of Idaho, Missouri and Kansas can proceed with a lawsuit seeking to restrict the availability of the abortion pill mifepristone in the United States, a federal judge in Texas ruled on Thursday. U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo decided that the three states can continue their case against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in his court, where they last year joined a lawsuit originally brought by anti-abortion groups and doctors. (Reuters)

-Giuliani gets to keep property, agrees to stop defaming Georgia election workers: Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who served as Donald Trump's personal lawyer, agreed to stop defaming two Georgia election workers he falsely accused of helping steal the 2020 election as part of a legal settlement on Thursday that lets him keep his Florida condominium and Manhattan apartment. The election workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea Moss, said they also were compensated as part of the settlement but did not offer specifics. They won a $148 million judgment after a judge ruled that Giuliani had defamed them by claiming they helped Democrat Joe Biden defeat the Republican Trump with illegal ballots. Trump returns to the presidency on Monday. (Reuters)

-Los Angeles evacuees told stay away from home at least another week: Los Angeles officials told most evacuees from the wildfires on Thursday to stay away from their homes at least another week as emergency responders remove toxic waste from incinerated neighborhoods and cut off electricity and gas lines posing a hazard amid the ruins. Landslides further endangered the devastated hillsides, where leveled structures no longer hold earth in place and water from fire hoses and broken pipes has saturated the ground, adding more stress and heartache to people suffering the worst natural disaster in Los Angeles history. (Reuters)

-Gov. Josh Stein calls on FEMA to extend hotel vouchers for Helene victims in western NC: Gov. Josh Stein has asked FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell to extend the agency’s Transition Sheltering Assistance (TSA) program for eligible North Carolinians for an additional six months. After a presidentially-declared disaster, the TSA program allows for temporary, short-term accommodations for disaster survivors when other housing options are not available. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has extended hotel stays for more than 3,000 western North Carolina residents displaced by Hurricane Helene until Jan. 25. The extension is the third FEMA has granted to displaced residents using the TSA program. (NC Newsline)

· An extension through September 30, 2025, is needed to provide people displaced by Hurricane Helene “certainty about a safe place to live as they rebuild,” Stein said. “The people of western North Carolina are experiencing chaos and uncertainty that is untenable,” Stein said. “That is why I am urging FEMA to extend its Transitional Sheltering Assistance program for six months to get folks through the winter in safe, secure shelter as they rebuild their homes.”

· Stein noted in his letter to Criswell that residents in North Carolina’s mountains are facing below freezing temperatures this week. He said the state will experience another cold snap that may bring more winter weather. “I know that you agree that people are entitled to pass the winter safely and securely as they rebuild their damaged or destroyed homes,” Stein wrote to Criswell. “The shock of the damage Hurricane Helene caused is still very real for the people of western North Carolina. They need assurance that they will have shelter during this time so long as their home is still uninhabitable. We owe them support, not fear or confusion.”

· In recent days, North Carolina Senators Ted Budd and Thom Tillis have expressed frustration over Hurricane Helene victims who were forced to leave hotels in western North Carolina after their vouchers expired. The two Republicans said on the social media platform X that their offices had received dozens of calls from residents of western North Carolina who had been kicked out of hotels.

· “My office has been helping dozens of Helene victims today who have been told their hotel vouchers expired despite not having a safe and livable home to go back to,” Tillis wrote Tuesday. “Their homes have mold and broken windows … it’s 20 degrees tonight. Hotels are trying to help them, and a number of nonprofits are stepping up to pay for victims to stay in their hotels, so FEMA has another day to get its act together.”