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U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday will award Liz Cheney, a former Republican congresswoman and fierce critic of Donald Trump, with a citizens service medal, after the incoming president warned that she "could be in a lot of trouble" with the law once he takes office.

The ex-House representative from Wyoming, along with 19 other prominent figures, will be awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal for "exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens," the White House said in a statement.

The celebratory atmosphere of Bourbon Street in New Orleans, long an American byword for indulgence and revelry, was dimmed Wednesday as residents and visitors alike reeled from a deadly truck attack on New Year's crowds.

Several square blocks of the main entertainment district were blocked off after the attack, in which authorities said a US military veteran plowed a pickup truck into pedestrians, killing at least 15 people and leaving a tear in the heart of the city known as the Big Easy.

House Republicans are moving to rewrite the rules of Congress to serve their own majority at the expense of any functional government, House Rules Committee ranking member Jim McGovern (D-MA) warned in a furious thread posted to X on Wednesday evening.

"Today the @HouseGOP put out their rules for the next two years of Congress. If you thought their dysfunction, disorganization, and disarray was bad before, buckle up, because it’s about to get even worse," wrote McGovern. "You’d think House Republicans might look at their failures and try to change course by working with Democrats, as we’ve been asking, to address the major problems facing our country. You’d think. But you’d be wrong."

A child reportedly fell about 50 feet into a missile silo in Colorado and had to be rescued Wednesday.

The Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office said dispatchers were called around 3:45 p.m. for a report that a youth fell into a silo near a reservoir in Aurora, Colorado, CBS News reported.

One of the key features of tech billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy's "Department of Government Efficiency" task force is to fire thousands of federal workers — something Ramaswamy has even gone so far as to say can be good for them.

This is an issue on which Democrats should plant a clear flag, and fight for a group of people who for decades have lacked a voice, wrote Bryan Williams for Salon.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts took an "unmistakable" "swipe" this week at Vice-president-elect J.D. Vance, a Washington Post columnist opined Wednesday.

Roberts on New Year's Eve published his year-end report that one expert argued appeared to be more of a tongue-lashing at critics of the high court than a reasoned report. Roberts' report included a stern warning to reject “dangerous," "open disregard” for federal court rulings from both sides of the political spectrum. He also warned about the threat of violence and intimidation that judges across the country face, and of officials who defy their rulings.

Tech billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk says he has evidence that the Cybertruck explosion at the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas that killed one person and injured more than half a dozen others was an intentional terrorist act.

That incident, which was captured in footage by hotel guests, occurred in the valet area. The immediate reaction of many people was to call it on-the-nose symbolism for Musk's controversial relationship with President-elect Donald Trump — but it may not have been a coincidence at all.

Tech billionaires have run many facets of the economy as we know it into the ground — and now President-elect Donald Trump is putting them in charge of doing the same to the government, wrote Jason Linkins for The New Republic.

This comes amid mounting criticism of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as their "Department of Government Efficiency" initiative takes shape as a plan to slash government services and purge the federal workforce — and it comes as Trump is reportedly considering a scheme to privatize the U.S. Postal Service, a constitutionally-guaranteed service essential to basic American life.

President Joe Biden on Wednesday evening called the deadly vehicle attack in New Orleans "despicable" but urged Americans not to jump to any conclusions, even as he said the suspect shared just before the attack he was inspired by ISIS.

Biden's remarks came after the death toll climbed to 15 in what authorities were investigating as a terrorist attack in the city's famed French Quarter. Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, of Texas, drove into a crowd of revelers on Bourbon Street, authorities said.

Three people have died and more than 20 were injured when a cache of illegal fireworks exploded in Hawaii, according to a report.

First responders were called to Aliamanu in Honolulu County just after the clock struck midnight, marking the start of New Year's Day, the Star-Advertiser reported Wednesday. Paramedics found 22 patients, Honolulu Emergency Medical Services said, according to the report.

President-elect Donald Trump once again toyed with the idea on Tuesday of not just implementing large-scale tariffs on foreign imports, but using them to replace the income tax system outright.

"The Tariffs, and Tariffs alone, created this vast wealth for our Country," wrote Trump on his Truth Social platform. "Then we switched over to Income Tax. We were never so wealthy as during this period. Tariffs will pay off our debt and, MAKE AMERICA WEALTHY AGAIN!"

Former Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich sounded off an urgent warning in a lengthy post to Facebook for the New Year: President-elect Donald Trump and his ally, tech billionaire Elon Musk, will propagandize the meaning of "economic growth" into meaning whatever benefits them personally, even if American workers suffer as a result.

All of this comes as Musk, along with fellow right-wing billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, heads up Trump's "Department of Government Efficiency" task force, which seeks to cut an all-but-impossible amount of government spending on a broad variety of programs and services that benefit millions of Americans.

A 1,100-pound piece of rocket debris plummeted to the Earth this week and smashed into a village in Kenya, officials in that country said on New Year's Day.

A metallic ring measuring about 8 feet "fell from the skies" and landed in Mukuku Village in Makueni County on Monday, the Kenya Space Agency said in a statement. Agency officials raced to the scene Tuesday morning to secure the area and retrieve the space debris, which is now in the agency's custody for investigation.