Latest Headlines

With President-elect Donald Trump poised to assume power after he is sworn in next January, federal officials overseeing reforms in multiple police departments and how they conduct sex crimes investigations are fearful their work will be shunted aside and their work shut down.

According to a report from the New York Times, two years ago the Department of Justice opened inquiries into 12 different police departments, including, "the New York Police Department’s storied, but scandal-scarred sex crimes unit" and, while the DOJ's investigations are ongoing, there are now worries the plug will be pulled by the incoming administration.

According to a report from the New York Times, President-elect Donald Trump is rushing quickly to pick future members of his cabinet based on how they look during any TV appearances they may have had, with input from some of his closest advisers and little attention paid to vetting the potential candidates.

That, in turn, has led to some unforced errors such as picking a Fox News host to become secretary of defense without being aware he was accused of sexual assault in California while he attended a GOP women's conference.

An off-color joke by media executive Tom Rogers on MSNBC’s “The 11^th Hour” jolted other guests on set and caused the show’s host to shriek with laughter.

The moment came Friday night during a discussion about the controversy swirling around former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz’s selection as President-elect Donald Trump’s next Attorney General.

A Republican strategist’s defense of President-elect Donald Trump’s next rumored pick of MAGA enthusiast Kash Patel to join his administration left a Washington Post columnist flabbergasted as she refused to move on without airing her concerns.

“The Constitution still matters! I’m sorry I can't get past the locking up of all of the enemies, whether they're journalists or otherwise, that matters,” columnist Catherine Rampell said during an appearance on CNN’s “NewsNight” with host Abby Phillip. “I don't think the voters get a say on whether the First Amendment still exists.”

Comedian Bill Maher used his opening monologue Friday night to mock President-elect Donald Trump's most controversial Cabinet nominations, including one whom he joked was only chosen because the rapper Diddy "was not available."

Beginning his show, "Real Time" on Friday night, Maher led off by noting that women are now pledging to deny sex as a rebuke to the nation electing Donald Trump.

A former assistant homeland security secretary said Friday night that she expects more "chaos" to return to the United States' national defense agency after President-Elect Donald Trump nominated Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) to be its next head.

Elizabeth Neumann, a prominent national security expert and homeland security official who has served across three presidential administrations, told CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins that the chaos will be "definitely the same" as it was during Donald Trump's first term.

Right-wing conspiracy theories about the election being stolen largely dried up after Trump emerged the victor in the 2024 election — but some liberal ones have arisen in response, even if not with the same planned and calculated violence that arose on Jan. 6.

According to Molly Olmstead in Slate, one of those theories concerns tech billionaire Elon Musk, who poured tens of millions of dollars into the election to help Trump through his America PAC — but the thinking goes, without any basis, that he might have directly altered votes.

The fall of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani took new heights on Friday after reports surfaced that his new attorneys launched a legal battle over a refrigerator caught up in his $148 million judgment for defamation.

And the reality that Giuliani, a one-time federal prosecutor who rose to fame as “America’s mayor” after 9/11, is fighting over an appliance seemed to fascinate and concern CNN anchor Anderson Cooper.

CNN’s Jake Tapper on Friday shamed a Democratic election board official in Pennsylvania after she voted to willingly violate a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling regarding undated and misdated ballots in Bucks County, PA.

Bucks County chairman Robert Harviie Jr. and commissioner Diane Marseglia on Tuesday voted against a third colleague to count ballots that were misdated or undated, in defiance of a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that considered undated ballots “invalid as a matter of law,” Bucks County Courier Times reports.

Pennsylvania is in the middle of an automatic recount for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Bob Casey. The Associated Press has called the race for Republican businessman Dave McCormick, making it one of at least three Senate seats the GOP flipped in 2024. CNN has yet to call the race.

ALSO READ: A second reign of terror: Inside Trump’s blueprint for home raids

Former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) on Friday night sharply criticized Donald Trump's selection of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) to serve as attorney general — and gave his fellow commentators on Fox News a piece of his mind.

Gowdy, who ran the House's controversial investigation into the 2012 Benghazi consulate attack, has a history of enmity with Gaetz, who has himself lashed out at Gowdy on Fox News.

A Republican Senator is pushing back after House Speaker Mike Johnson announced his opposition to the Ethics Committee releasing the report on its years-long investigation into Matt Gaetz, who resigned abruptly from Congress Wednesday in what appears to be an attempt to block the report’s publication. Gaetz’s resignation came almost immediately after President-elect Donald Trump announced he would nominate the Florida Republican to become Attorney General, the nation’s top law enforcement officer.

Friday afternoon, Speaker Johnson repeatedly stressed his opposition to the release of the report, claiming releasing it to the public “doesn’t follow our rules and traditions,” and doing so “would open a pandora’s box.”

A CNN anchor and the former Democratic lawmaker she was interviewing suggested Friday that the release of what was expected to be a damning ethics report into former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) might be made public in a less than formal way.

The moment happened during an appearance on CNN by former Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY) when anchor Brianna Keiler asked if he believes the report will come out “either by the committee releasing it or someone leaking it?”

The House Ethics Committee received testimony from someone who claimed to have witnessed former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) engage in sexual misconduct with a high school girl, ABC News reported Friday.

This follows a development earlier in the week when the attorney for a woman who claims she and Gaetz had sexual contact when she was 17 — beneath the age of consent in Florida — called on the House Ethics Committee to release its report on the matter, which is expected to contain further damning information.