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'Vigorously pursue': Trump vows to ramp up executions after Biden commuted death sentences

Donald Trump vowed to "vigorously pursue the death penalty" immediately upon his inauguration.

The president-elect reacted to President Joe Biden commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 federal prisoners on death row with a social media attack Tuesday morning, saying Biden's decision "makes no sense."

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Presidential run eyed for 'relentless' Dem gov who beat brutal GOP opposition in key state

With Democrats stuck out of power for at least two years, wrote The Washington Post's Karen Tumulty, they could do worse than to look to the example of one "relentless" Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, who spent eight years in charge of a state that backed President-elect Donald Trump three times — and didn't just win, but stared down a state legislature determined to destroy him.

"North Carolina voters are almost evenly split among those who consider themselves Democrats, Republicans or neither. But as Cooper entered office, after serving as attorney general and state Senate majority leader, epically aggressive gerrymandering had produced a legislature in which Republicans had enough seats to override a gubernatorial veto," wrote Tumulty.

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'Very big risk for Republicans': Trump appointee seen as already engaged in 'overreach'

Donald Trump's incoming chairman of the Federal Communications Commission sent a stern letter to Disney CEO Bob Iger that's seen as a threat to other news media outlets, and Democratic strategist Maria Cardona warned that these preemptive moves could alienate voters.

Trump appointee Brendan Carr signaled that he would take a more active role policing the media industry, pointing to the $15 million defamation settlement ABC News reached with the president-elect, and Cardona expressed alarm that the incoming administration was already pursuing his perceived political enemies.

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On this day in 1865: Confederate Army veterans form the Ku Klux Klan

The Ku Klux Klan began on Christmas Eve in 1865.

Months after the fall of the Confederacy and the end of slavery, a half dozen veterans of the Confederate Army formed a private social club in Pulaski, Tennessee, called the Ku Klux Klan. The KKK soon became a terrorist organization, brutalizing and killing Black Americans, immigrants, sympathetic whites and others.

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'He would make me cringe': Longtime anti-Trump conservative tells why he voted for him

Michael Brendan Dougherty of the right-wing National Review began like many other analysts at that outlet: repulsed by Donald Trump. But he went from rejecting Trump in 2016 and 2020, to voting for him in 2024 — making him one of the voters decisive in giving Trump a narrow popular vote plurality.

In a conversation with Shadi Hamid for The Washington Post, he explained how that journey happened.

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'Impulsive, manipulable and jealous': Conservative says Trump is whiffing with Congress

Democrats' fears that President-elect Donald Trump will govern as a dictator — something he himself suggested on the campaign trail — may ultimately never come to pass, conservative analyst Ramesh Ponnuru wrote for The Washington Post Tuesday. Not because he wouldn't want to, but because he is too impulsive and scrambled to be able to get even his own party in Congress to bend the knee.

Ponnuru is a frequent critic from the right of Trump, particularly on matters where he bucks traditional Republican orthodoxy like trade protectionism.

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'We need Greenland!' CNN conservative sparks clash over Trump's 'amazing idea'

Donald Trump has raised eyebrows by once again suggesting the U.S. should buy Greenland — and CNN's Scott Jennings applauded that as "an amazing idea."

The president-elect has talked about taking control of the autonomous Danish territory in the past, and he's also recently suggested taking back the Panama Canal and joked about Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau being the "governor" of the “Great State of Canada."

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‘Unsettling’: Columnist sounds alarm as Elon Musk demands Democrat be booted from Congress

Elon Musk has demanded a Democratic congresswoman be kicked out of Congress because she dared question his motives during last week’s spending bill votes — and it’s set off alarm bells for a columnist.

MSNBC’s Steve Benen flagged the billionaire’s latest outburst as highly concerning.

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'This is not what he ran on!' Trump blasted for veering wildly away from campaign promises

Donald Trump assured voters during his campaign that he would lower prices on groceries and other items — but a former congressman called him out for already abandoning that promise.

Tech tycoons Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos have donated $1 million each to Trump's inauguration despite his past attacks on them, and former Democratic lawmaker Max Rose said the president-elect is already siding with the rich and walking away from the policies he promised to voters.

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'Makes no sense!' Trump has Christmas Eve meltdown over latest Biden action

President-elect Donald Trump hit out at Joe Biden Tuesday in a Christmas Eve meltdown over his commutation of the sentences of almost every American federal prisoner on death row.

Biden announced Monday he would remove the death sentences from 37 of 40 prisoners, replacing them with life imprisonment.

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American Airlines grounds all flights nationwide as technical issue hits on Christmas Eve

Update: American Airlines reported that flights resumed shortly before 8 a.m. Tuesday.

American Airlines has grounded all of its flights amid a “technical issue,” sparking widespread travel chaos on Christmas Eve.

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Trump’s chief of staff had scheme to control Musk — its failure could blow up GOP: analyst

Donald Trump’s nominee for chief of staff worried that Elon Musk’s connection to the president-elect was bad news and she worked to keep the billionaire’s power under control, a columnist wrote Tuesday.

But Salon’s Amanda Marcotte wrote that Susie Wiles’ plot failed. And it now threatens to tear apart the GOP.

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'I don't buy it!' Dem clashes with GOP strategist lashing out at Biden over 'cynical play'

A pair of CNN commentators debated President Joe Biden's motives for commuting the sentences of nearly every federal inmate on death row.

The outgoing president commuted the sentences of 37 of 40 death row prisoners to life in prison without the chance for parole, and Republican strategist Brad Todd argued that his decision was a cynical political ploy to distract from the pardon of his son Hunter Biden.

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