President-elect Trump will hold a rally in Washington the day before he is set to be inaugurated for a second term.
The president-elect will hold what is being dubbed a “victory rally” at Capital One Arena on Jan. 19, according to an announcement from his inauguration committee sent out Wednesday.
Trump is expected to speak, as are others, though a list of additional speakers was not immediately available.
Trump’s inauguration will take place Jan. 20. He will be sworn in at the Capitol, and there will be multiple events throughout the day to mark the beginning of his second term.
The president-elect has not held a rally in the District of Columbia since he delivered a speech on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021, which preceded a violent attack on the Capitol by supporters attempting to stop the certification of the 2020 election results.
Trump met earlier this week with D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who called it a “great meeting to discuss our shared priorities” for Trump’s second term.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill (R) said she believes the Sugar Bowl should have been postponed until Friday as New Orleans grapples with the aftermath of the New Year’s Day terror attack.
Murrill, speaking Wednesday evening to NBC’s Lester Holt, was asked about the College Football Playoff game between the University of Georgia and University of Notre Dame, which was scheduled for Wednesday night but was postponed until 4 p.m. EST Thursday after a man identified as Shamsud-Din Jabbar plowed a pickup truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street early New Year’s Day, killing at least 15 people and injuring many more.
Officials have not yet released the names of the victims, but families and friends have begun sharing information about them online.
“You know, [it’s] not my decision, but I would like to see it delayed at least another day,” she said. “If they asked my opinion, I would tell them that I think it was a wise decision to delay it at least a day.”
Sugar Bowl CEO Jeff Hundley announced in a press conference Wednesday that the college football game between Georgia and Notre Dame was postponed 24 hours — but eventually a Thursday afternoon start time was decided upon, about 19 hours after the originally scheduled kickoff.
The Caesars Superdome in New Orleans — also set to host the Super Bowl next month — went on lockdown Wednesday and authorities conducted a security sweep. New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said Thursday that security for the college football quarterfinal will be at the same level as the upcoming NFL championship.
Still, Murrill thinks it’s too soon.
“This is an active crime scene, and they just finished removing some of the bodies and they still haven’t removed all of them,” she said in the interview from Bourbon Street.
“I still think that we probably need to wait an extra day,” Murrill continued, noting there is no further threat to the community.
President-elect Trump’s incoming national security adviser argued Monday that the attack in New Orleans that killed 14 people underscored the need to quickly confirm a slew of Cabinet nominees.
Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) said on “Fox & Friends” that the attack in the early hours of New Year’s Day showed how critical it would be for Trump to have his national security team in place, including some more controversial nominees to lead the FBI and Pentagon.
“That has to be in place day one, guys, because this is a — this is a moment in transition, of vulnerability, and President Trump is going to project because he is a leader of strength, the narrative that we project on day one will be … important, and that’s having our people in place,” Waltz said.
Gabbard and Patel in particular are expected to face tough confirmation hearings, with Democrats raising questions about their fitness for their respective roles. Democrats and some Republicans have especially raised questions about Gabbard, who has been accused of parroting Russian propaganda about the war in Ukraine.
Waltz, whose position does not require Senate confirmation, was far from the only Trump ally to use the New Orleans attack to push for swift confirmation of Trump’s nominees.
Sen.-elect Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) posted on the social platform X that “every single national security nominee” should be confirmed by Jan. 20, and Donald Trump Jr. called on Democrats to prioritize “the safety and security of the American people ahead of their Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
Sen.Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) doubled down on a conservative plan toreduce government spendingwith new proposals outlined in an op-ed published by The Wall Street Journal.
“Federal spending is out of control,” Johnson began in the Wednesday commentary, urging his colleagues on Capitol Hill to revert back to pre-COVID-19 pandemic spending that is “adjusted for population growth and inflation.”
“In fiscal 2019, which ran from Oct. 1, 2018, to Sept. 30, 2019, federal outlays totaled $4.447 trillion. In fiscal 2020, federal outlays jumped to $6.554 trillion because of the pandemic spending spree,” he added. “Businesses closed, cities locked down and unemployment soared.”
In the piece, the Wisconsin Republican detailed his frustrations with high-level spending sparked by the pandemic.
“In a sane world, Covid spending levels would have been an extreme aberration, and we would have already returned to a more reasonable level of spending,” Johnson wrote before proposing inflationary budget caps.
Johnson also took a swipe at the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a $961 million program established as part of the 2020 Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act. The initiative, designed to help small businesses stay afloat, was also targeted for fraudulent loan payments.
Fraudsters across multiple states were able to obtain PPP loans worth millions of dollars by misrepresenting the number of employees they had or even the very existence of their businesses. The program ended in late May 2021.
The GOP senator argued that the loans weren’t awarded based on financial need and were “simply forgiven.”
“The exact amount of waste, fraud, and abuse of Covid relief spending will never be known —we’re seeing only the tip of the iceberg,” Johnson wrote. “Instead of targeting relief with laser precision, we used a shotgun and fired money out the door as fast as the federal government could print it.”
“The result was 40-year high inflation,” he added.
In response, he pushed for an increase in spending to account for population growth and then inflating those numbers by the change in the consumer price index using fiscal 1998 as a base.
“Dollars you held in 1998, 2014 and 2019 are now worth only 51, 74 and 80 cents, respectively,” he continued. “I don’t believe we spent too little in any of those years.”
“Big spenders in Washington should explain why they’ve allowed this devaluation to occur, and why setting baseline spending to one of those budget years isn’t only reasonable but doable,” the senator concluded.
Authorities assessed no “credible threat” to New Orleans’ New Year’s events prior to an attack early on Wednesday that killed at least 15 people, according to a joint Louisiana and New Orleans police threat assessment obtained by Reuters.
The document is dated December 2024 and notes there was no credible threat from international terrorists, homegrown violent extremists or domestic violent extremists.
The document notes that “unaffiliated lone offenders and homegrown violent extremists” are of particular concern because of their ability to “remain undetected until operational.”
The police departments also say that foreign terrorist organizations and their affiliates “continue to call on individuals to conduct independent attacks in the U.S” using improvised explosive devices and vehicles.
The New Orleans Police Department and the Louisiana State Police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A federal judge in California has rejected an effort by Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) to overturn a jury verdict that awarded $7.8 million to six former employees who were fired for refusing to comply with the agency’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate on religious grounds.
In a Dec. 30 order, Judge William A. Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California acknowledged minor “imperfections” in the jury trial—including flawed instructions to the jurors—and determined they were not severe enough to invalidate the jury’s October decision requiring BART to pay each of the six former workers between $1.2 million and $1.5 million.
Alsup denied BART’s post-trial motions to overturn the verdict and seek a new trial, saying that the agency failed to demonstrate that accommodating the employees’ religious objections would have posed an undue hardship.
“Simply put, on the instructions given and evidence received, a reasonable jury could have found that BART had not carried its burden of proving its affirmative defense,” Alsup wrote, referring to the fact that, in order to prevail in the case, BART had to prove that granting accommodations such as masking, testing, or remote work in lieu of vaccination would have imposed an undue burden on the agency.
BART’s defense relied heavily on expert testimony to argue that no alternative measures were as effective as vaccination against COVID-19, with the judge noting that the agency claimed it had presented “‘unrebutted’ scientific expert testimony” to that effect. However, Alsup noted that the jury was entitled to weigh the credibility of the experts, particularly given their financial ties to the agency.
“In light of the large sums paid to the experts by BART, our jury was entitled to find that they were ‘bought and paid for,’ were merely parroting the ‘company line,’ and were not credible in light of their bias, common sense, and other evidence,” the judge wrote. “An expert witness is like any other witness, and it is up to the jury to decide how much weight their testimony deserves.”
Alsup also highlighted inconsistencies in BART’s evidence. For instance, he pointed to one BART supervisor’s admission under cross-examination that pre-vaccine precautions such as masking and social distancing had been effective, contradicting the testimony of BART’s own experts. Additionally, BART failed to present clear documentation of the evidence it relied upon when implementing its vaccine mandate.
“Curiously, BART presented zero evidence of the information actually relied upon by the BART board in adopting its mandatory vaccine requirement,” the judge wrote. “We saw no decision memorandum presented to the board. We saw no resolution adopted by the board reciting any evidence. We heard no testimony from anyone who presented scientific evidence to the BART board or who made the decision.”
Despite rejecting BART’s motions to overturn the verdict and seek a new trial, the judge acknowledged minor flaws in the trial. One issue involved a gap in the jury instructions, which failed to explicitly rule out unpaid leave as a legally acceptable accommodation. However, the judge noted that BART had ample opportunity to address this issue during the trial but failed to do so.
Another issue noted by the judge was when the plaintiffs’ counsel violated a pretrial order by referencing other employees’ denied religious exemptions. Alsup described the violation as intentional but noted that it occurred during the second phase of the trial, after the jury had already ruled on BART’s undue hardship defense. The judge concluded that the misconduct did not prejudice the verdict.
“The judge regrets these flaws but they, even in combination, did not result in a miscarriage of justice,” Alsup wrote. “The trial was still fair enough to stand.”
Alsup’s ruling upholds the jury trial’s finding that BART had failed to prove that it would have suffered undue hardship by granting the vaccine exemptions, and that the six former employees met the burden of showing that there was a conflict between their religious beliefs and the vaccine mandate. This means that the jury’s award of $7,825,859 in damages to the six former employees stands.
BART spokesman James Allison told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement that the agency had no comment on the verdict.
President Joe Biden will awardtwo members of the January 6th Committee - Liz Cheney and Rep. Bennie Thompson (R-MS) with the second-highest civilian honor for their roles in the carefully controlled witch hunt.
According to the Associated Press, whoever is running the country decided that Cheney, Thompson, and 18 other individuals will receive the Presidential Citizens Medal on Thursday.
"President Biden believes these Americans are bonded by their common decency and commitment to serving others," the White House said in a statement. "The country is better because of their dedication and sacrifice."
That said, we all know it was a sham from the beginning...
The J6 Committee was controversial and heavily partisan from the beginning. When it was first announced, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) gave then-Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) a chance to seat the conventional number of Republicans on the committee. However, she rejected two of his choices, Congressmen Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Jim Banks (R-Ind.), for being too conservative, which led to McCarthy refusing to name any Republicans to the committee.
Pelosi herself then chose just two Republicans for the committee, both of whom were known for being radically anti-Trump: Cheney and Congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.). Both Cheney and Kinzinger became extremely unpopular as a result of their involvement, with Kinzinger choosing to retire ahead of the 2022 midterms, while Cheney was defeated by primary challenger Harriet Hageman in one of the biggest landslides against an incumbent in the history of the House of Representatives. -American Greatness
Meanwhile, as Julie Kelly noted last week, it appears that Cheney is preparing to fight any Trump-era federal and/or congressional probe into her 'demonstrably corrupt role' as vice chairman of the J6 committee.
Text messages obtained by Representative Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga), chair of a House subcommittee looking into the J6 committee, prove that Cheney colluded behind the scenes with star witness Cassidy Hutchinson, who dramatically changed her testimony after connecting with Cheney. The communications could represent witness tampering, subornation of perjury—every former White House official including the driver of the presidential vehicle on January 6 has refuted Hutchinson’s account of Trump’s behavior that day—and obstruction.
Based on the results of his ongoing inquiry, Loudermilk determined that “numerous federal laws were likely broken by Liz Cheney” and called for the FBI to investigate her.
Cheney immediately responded by playing the victim and, of course, by blaming Donald Trump. But the American people appear uninterested in Cheney’s excuses; a new Rasmussen poll shows strong public support, including three-quarters of Republicans, for an FBI investigation into the bitter and defeated nepobaby.
If Trump’s Department of Justice decides to proceed, Cheney undoubtedly will seek immunity protections in an attempt to keep records away from federal investigators; members of Congress are entitled to immunity under the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution, which shields lawmakers from criminal liability related to their legislative duties.
