President-elect Donald Trump refused to wish federal death-row inmates granted clemency by President Biden a merry Christmas on Wednesday – telling them to “go to Hell.”
“[T]o the 37 most violent criminals, who killed, raped, and plundered like virtually no one before them, but were just given, incredibly, a pardon by Sleepy Joe Biden,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“I refuse to wish a Merry Christmas to those lucky ‘souls’ but, instead, will say, GO TO HELL!” he added.
Biden, 82, commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 men on federal death row Monday — a list that includes at least five child killers and several mass murderers.
The lame-duck president issued the reprieve, which reduced the inmates’ sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole, as part of his effort at “ensuring a fair and effective justice system,” the White House said. Trump, 78, also took aim at China, Canada and “Radical Left Lunatics” in his Christmas Day message, and reupped his support for US control of the Panama Canal and Greenland.
“Merry Christmas to all, including to the wonderful soldiers of China, who are lovingly, but illegally, operating the Panama Canal (where we lost 38,000 people in its building 110 years ago), always making certain that the United States puts in Billions of Dollars in “repair” money, but will have absolutely nothing to say about ‘anything,’” the president-elect wrote.
Meek played the younger version of Ansel Elgort’s character in Edgar Wright’s 2017 action film, among other credits.
Hudson Meek, the 16-year-old actor who appeared in “Baby Driver,” died last week after falling from a moving vehicle in Vestavia Hills, Alabama, according to CNN affiliate WVTM.
The teen sustained blunt force trauma in the fall on December 19 and was admitted to the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital, where he died from his injuries on December 21, the Jefferson County Coroner’s office told CNN affiliate WVTM.
“His 16 years on this earth were far too short, but he accomplished so much and significantly impacted everyone he met,” reads a post on his Instagram account.
The teen actor had various acting and voice over credits, most notably playing a younger version of Ansel Elgort’s character Baby in 2017 movie “Baby Driver.”
Meek also voiced the lead in “Bada Namu Stories” –– a children’s show that examines themes relevant to preschoolers, according to IMDb. He also appeared in shows including NBC’s “Found” and The CW’s “Legacies,” as well as the recently released thriller “The School Duel.” Meek’s obituary described the teenager as a “reflective and thoughtful” avid traveler and fan of the outdoors.
“He loved snow-skiing and could easily navigate the hardest trails that no one else in the family would dare attempt,” the obituary read. “One of his favorite places to be at the lake, tubing and wakeboarding.”
The Vestavia Hills Police Department is still investigating the circumstances surrounding Meek’s death, WTVM reported. CNN has reached out to Vestavia Hills police for more information on the incident.
In the waning days of 2024, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his company Meta took on 91 senators, a bipartisan group of representatives, President-elect Donald Trump’s son, Trump ally Elon Musk, and a coalition of parents who thought this would be the year Congress passed legislation to protect kids online.
Zuckerberg and Meta won.
Congress left Washington without passing the Kids Online Safety Act after coming closer than ever to imposing rules on social media to prevent the addiction and mental health harms the sites are widely agreed to cause. Zuckerberg can thank House Speaker Mike Johnson for closing the door on it this Congress. Once reviled by Republicans for kicking Trump off Facebook, the outcome shows how well Zuckerberg and Meta have restored a rapport.
“At the end of the day, we see the influence of these platforms is really powerful and they want to stop this legislation and any other tech legislation by any means necessary,” said Alix Fraser, vice president of technology reform at Issue One, an advocacy group that supports the Kids Online Safety Act.
Meta’s largesse
Perhaps the loudest way that the tech industry has made the case that bills like KOSA violate free speech is by suing states with similar laws.
NetChoice and another trade group, the Computer & Communications Industry Association, of which Meta is also a member, have sued nine states that enacted social media laws, winning several cases where states implemented age verification rules.
Litigation has also so far successfully stopped California from fully implementing a law that would limit how much data social platforms can collect on kids and require impact assessments.
Besides its gift to Trump’s inaugural fund, Meta spent nearly $19 million on federal lobbying in the first nine months of this year. Meta lobbied on many issues and the federal disclosure law does not require it to break out how much it spent on each.
In addition to its own in-house lobbyists, Meta paid $180,000 to lobbying firm S-3 Group in part to work with Bravo, a former director of floor operations for Scalise. NetChoice has also paid the S-3 Group $180,000 this year through September.
In July, shortly after the Senate vote, conservative members of Congress were sent an unattributed memo that called the bill a threat to the “pro-life movement” — a previously unheard of narrative. The memo has since been connected to Bravo, according to The Wall Street Journal.
In addition to lobbying, Meta also donated to members.
Its PAC donations favored Republican candidates and their leadership funds in 2023 and 2024, donating $162,350 across the House and Senate.
In the last two years, Meta’s corporate political action committee also put $5,000 into Scalise-run political fundraising committees. It also donated $2,000 to Johnson in 2023 and another $3,000 in September. Meta made its first contribution to Johnson and Scalise campaign funds in 2020.
The social media titan is investing heavily in Louisiana. The company is about to break ground on a $10 billion data center to house its artificial intelligence infrastructure in Richland Parish at a rural site four hours drive north of New Orleans. The state purchased the land almost two decades ago in an attempt to woo manufacturers.
Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, signed off on new tax incentives for data centers earlier this year. A press release from his office said the project is the largest capital investment in the state’s history.
Two spokespeople for Meta declined to share what other sites for the data center were considered, but said the company started talking to partners in Louisiana earlier this year. They said Meta selected the site because it has great access to infrastructure, a reliable grid, a business-friendly climate, and community partners that helped move the project forward.
Meta has data centers in several other states, including Blackburn’s Tennessee.
Speaker Johnson has often expressed sympathy for parents trying to protect their kids from harmful content online. He joined Democrats three years ago in proposing a resolution calling on tech companies to give parents more tools to monitor and protect their kids.
In April, he met with Maurine Molak, a mother whose son ended his life after intense cyberbullying. Johnson told her he was committed to getting the Kids Online Safety Act passed.
According to Fox News senior congressional correspondent Chad Pergram, should unhappy House Republicans depose House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) that could put in place a delay in certifying Donald Trump as the next president.
According to the journalist, that is the “doomsday scenario” GOP lawmakers need to confront if there is coup led by what one Republican lawmaker called a “mob” in the House.
In an interview on Christmas Eve, Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN) admitted Johnson’s re-election was nowhere close to a done deal, telling reporters Johnson is a good person, before adding, “We’re dealing the mob here so I’m not sure how tough he is.” That led Pergram to tell the hosts, “So if the House fails to elect a speaker on the first vote, it must vote repeatedly until it elects a speaker.”
“Now in 2023 that process consumed five days,” he continued. “It was the longest speaker election since 1859. President Trump could be a difference maker.”
After sharing a clip of Johnson claiming he has been in constant contact with the president-elect, Pergram pointed out, “But Mr. Trump is said to be frustrated with Johnson. Here is the doomsday scenario: Say the House takes as long as it did two years ago to elect the speaker. That means it cannot certify the Electoral College on Jan 6. That House can’t do anything including swearing in the members until it picks a new speaker.”
Donald Trump complaining about critical coverage says that “we have to straighten out the press. Our press is very corrupt” as though the government will be correcting the press. He has it exactly backward, as it is the free press that corrects and straightens out corrupt government.
Look no further than the reporting of Daily News correspondents Graham Rayman, Rocco Parascandola and Tom Tracy who last month uncovered the NYPD overtime scandal that OT is being directed to a large number of cops at HQs, not police out in the field.
Their work blew open the dirty inside secrets, showing that the No. 1 highest earner among 35,000 uniformed cops was Lt. Special Assignment Quathisha Epps, who just happened to be an aide to Jeff Maddrey, who was chief of the department until a few days ago.
The salacious details ascribed to Maddrey are horrid. And so is the scandal that OT is apparently being funneled, not to crime fighting and hardworking cops freezing their behinds off patrolling the streets and subways, but to paper-pushers like Epps with cushy jobs back at 1 Police Plaza. There are hundreds of OT recipients who need to be carefully reviewed.
New York, cette ville qui ne dort jamais… semée de gratte-ciel grandioses et vertigineux, menace de disparaître, enfoncée sous son propre poids.
Dans une étude scientifique publiée dans la revue Earth’s Future, des chercheurs “tentent d’évaluer comment la masse cumulée des infrastructures de la mégapole influe sur son affaissement”, ce phénomène étant directement provoqué par l’activité humaine et l’érosion des sols.
La ville sous 762 millions de tonnes de constructions
Celle qu’on surnomme la Grosse pomme subit une pression énorme. En effet, les géologues estiment à 762 millions de tonnes la masse totale que représentent le million de bâtiments, gratte-ciel et tours, présents sur le sol new-yorkais. “Soit l’équivalent de plus de 75 000 tours Eiffel.” indique La Presse. Une force impressionnante qui fait s’enfoncer la capitale culturelle et économique des Etats-Unis de un à deux millimètres par an. Un affaissement qui, toujours selon l’étude, pourrait atteindre les 4,5 mm par an, dans des quartiers où les bâtiments ont été érigés sur des terrains artificiels.
Tom Parsons, géophysicien américain et co-auteur de l’étude, affirme qu’une réduction des tours de béton ne changerait rien au phénomène. “La cause première de l’affaissement de New York et de la côte Est est tectonique et ne peut pas être endiguée.” souligne-t-il. Un “enfoncement” qui serait responsable de l’accélération de la montée des eaux, conséquence du dérèglement climatique et de la fonte des glaces. “D’après l’organisation Sea Level Rise.org, le niveau des eaux à New York a monté de 23 centimètres par rapport à 1950 et la municipalité prédit qu’il augmentera encore de 20 à 75 cm d’ici 2050, voire 1,8 m avant 2100 et des tempêtes à répétition.” rapporte La Presse.
Le plan “résilience climatique”
Pour lutter contre la menace et se protéger de la montée des eaux, la métropole a élaboré un plan de grande envergure, de fortification de ses 836 km de côtes. Coût total ? 20 milliards de dollars, rien que ça. C’est qu’il en faut de l’argent pour préserver les 8,5 millions d’âmes arpentant chaque jour les artères de la ville aux 251 gratte-ciel.
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Des chercheurs ont déterminé la date précise à laquelle un astéroïde pourrait potentiellement percuter la Terre, criant dans cette collision une puissance équivalente à celle de 22 bombes atomiques. Cet objet céleste, baptisé Bénou, s’approche de notre planète tous les six ans. Cependant, les scientifiques estiment que le 24 septembre 2182 pourrait être la date à laquelle le risque de collision entre la Terre et l’astéroïde pourrait être réel.
Bien que la date potentielle de l’événement apocalyptique soit encore lointaine, la NASA déploie actuellement d’intenses efforts pour dévier l’astéroïde Bénou et se trouve dans la phase finale de sa mission. Il y a sept ans, l’agence spatiale américaine a lancé une sonde vers l’astéroïde dans le but de collecter des échantillons, dans l’espoir que les informations recueillies puissent aider à prévenir une éventuelle rencontre catastrophique.
Les astéroïdes ont frappé la Terre à de nombreuses reprises au fil des ans. La galerie suivante présente quelques-uns des impacts les plus significatifs.
Vladimir Poutine a suggéré ce jeudi, dans un trait d’ironie, d’organiser un “duel de haute technologie” entre les soutiens de l’Ukraine et l’armée russe, pour démontrer la puissance de son nouveau missile “Orechnik”.
“Qu’ils déterminent une cible, disons Kiev”, a-t-il lancé. “Qu’ils concentrent toutes leurs défenses aériennes là-bas. On lancera une frappe là-bas, et on verra ce qui se passe”, a-t-il ajouté dans un sourire.
Dans cette séance en direct de questions-réponses venant de journalistes ou de citoyens russes, soigneusement mise en scène, le chef du Kremlin a longuement discuté de son invasion de l’Ukraine, indiquant être prêt à rencontrer Donald Trump “à n’importe quel moment” pour résoudre le conflit et estimant que la Russie aurait dû lancer son “opération spéciale” contre Kiev “plus tôt”.
Une multitude de drones, pour certains aux origines indéterminées, survolent depuis près d’un mois le ciel des États-Unis créant un vent de panique parmi les citoyens.
Les Américains ont l’impression que le ciel leur fait quelques farces. Depuis le mois de novembre, les habitants de plusieurs états du nord-est des États-Unis ont constaté plusieurs drones survolant leurs habitations pendant la nuit. Plus de 5.000 signalements ont alerté les forces de l’ordre américaines de l’ampleur du phénomène. Les objets volants ont notamment été aperçus près d’infrastructures critiques soulevant des craintes d’espionnage.
Des drones observés dans six États depuis le 18 novembre
Les premiers drones ont été observés le 18 novembre dans le New Jersey. Des habitants se sont plaints de la présence quotidienne de drones, parfois même en groupe, au-dessus de quartiers résidentiels selon le média local news12. Depuis, les Américains ont aperçu d’autres drones dans cinq autres États du nord-est des États-Unis: New York, le Connecticut, la Pennsylvanie, la Virginie et le Massachusetts.
Le 13 décembre, la police de New York annonce sur X avoir reçu de nombreux signalements de drones en moins de 24 heures. Elle précise néanmoins n’avoir “aucune évidence à ce niveau qu’un de ces signalements pourrait représenter une menace publique”. Selon la BBC, les autorités américaines ont déployé un système de détection de drones à la demande de la gouverneure Kathy Hochul, cette dernière encourage les autres états concernés à faire de même.
