Taegan Goddard

FBI Director Christopher Wray told bureau employees on Wednesday that he intends to resign in January, bowing to the reality that President-elect Donald Trump had publicly declared his desire to replace him, the New York Times reports.

Politico: “Russell Taylor spent weeks planning for chaos on Jan. 6, 2021. He recruited anti-government activists to join him in Washington, and, when he arrived, surged to the U.S. Capitol with a knife and a tactical vest as a mob of Donald Trump’s supporters overran police lines.”

“One of President Joe Biden’s former top communications advisers ravaged the president’s messaging rollout strategy around his decision to pardon his son, Hunter Biden, lambasting the situation as ‘exceptionally poor timing’ in a major public rebuke of her former boss,” CNN reports.

Adrienne LaFrance: “The brazen murder of a CEO in Midtown Manhattan—and the cheering reaction to his execution—amounts to a blinking-and-blaring warning signal for a society that has become already too inured to bloodshed.”

“With North Carolina Republicans set to lose their veto-proof supermajority come 2025, state lawmakers took their final vote Wednesday on a bill that takes away power from incoming Democrats in the executive branch, overturning a veto with a party-line 72-46 vote,” the Raleigh News & Observer reports.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) “is poised to become the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, punctuating a huge generational shift in the party’s power centers amid a sudden overthrow of senior leaders,” Politico reports.

“President-elect Donald Trump has invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to attend his inauguration next month and inauguration officials are making plans for additional foreign dignitaries to attend the swearing-in ceremony,” CBS News reports.

President-elect Donald Trump chose Kari Lake, the former TV news anchor turned election denier who lost races for senator and governor of Arizona, to lead Voice of America, a federally funded broadcaster that aims to offer unbiased news to audiences around the world, the New York Times reports.

“Meta Platforms has donated $1 million to president-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, the latest step by CEO Mark Zuckerberg to bolster his once-fraught relationship with the incoming president,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

New York Times: “By stepping down now, as the conservative writer Erick Erickson observed, Wray has created a ‘legal obstacle to Trump trying to bypass the Senate confirmation process.’”