Cain Momentum Continues; South Could Be Key

Continuing the string of MAGA loyalist picks to serve in his administration, President-elect Donald Trump on Friday evening tapped Russell Vought to serve as director of the Office of Management and Budget—again. Vought, a self-avowed Christian Nationalist and key contributor to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 agenda for a conservative presidency, led OMB during Trump’s first term, transforming the powerful agency—charged with developing and executing the federal budget, and reviewing executive branch regulations—into a vehicle to deliver on the president’s wildest dreams. In a recent appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show on X, in which the former Fox News host said he was “very likely to run OMB again,” Vought described the agency as the “nerve center of the federal government, particularly the executive branch.” He recounted having provided Trump with a plan to divert funding from the Department of Defense to fund his border wall without congressional approval, a move disavowed by the White House counsel and later ruled illegal.

Denver Sen. Chris Hansen’s decision to leave the state Capitol for a job in southwestern Colorado while endorsing two Democrats to ascend the political ladder behind him has frustrated party officials and sparked fresh criticism of the process that’s served as a gateway for a third of the state legislature. “The optics are (expletive),” summarized one Denver Democratic official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal party frustrations.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis on Friday created new oversight for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation in the wake of a sweeping DNA testing scandal at the statewide law enforcement agency. The governor established a 14-member oversight committee for CBI’s forensic services division that will review “quality incidents” in the division, offer feedback on policies and procedures, and propose improvements, according to a three-page executive order. The new oversight committee comes in the wake of revelations that a longtime scientist at CBI, Yvonne “Missy” Woods, manipulated DNA testing results for years even as her colleagues repeatedly raised concerns about the quality of her work during her nearly 30-year career. CBI has so far identified problems in 809 of Woods’ cases between 1994 and 2023.

This story was originally published by Yale E360 and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In the fall of 2023, the Biden administration announced $7 billion in funding for seven hydrogen hubs, slated to be built across the country over the next eight to 12 years. If all goes as planned, one of those hubs, the Mid-Atlantic Clean Hydrogen Hub (MACH2)—a network of more than a dozen interconnected hydrogen production centers, storage facilities, pipelines, and new solar farms that will power these operations—will stretch from southeastern Pennsylvania and neighboring southern New Jersey into Delaware.

In the bathroom wars, Nancy Mace has picked the winning side of an argument that goes far beyond bathrooms.

“I’m not going to allow biological men into women’s private spaces. I will stand in the brink and stand in the way of anyone on the radical left who thinks that it’s ok for a penis to be in a women’s locker room or a bathroom or a changing room."