The Hill's 12:30 Report

“Advisers to President-elect Donald Trump now concede that the Ukraine war will take months or even longer to resolve, a sharp reality check on his biggest foreign policy promise – to strike a peace deal on his first day in the White House,” Reuters reports. As NOTUS reports, Trump said 33 times he would end the war on his first day as president. Rep.

“Vice President Kamala Harris has a lot of options for her next act — including possible runs for governor of California in 2026 and president in 2028 — but writing a book may be first up,” NBC News reports. Said literary agent Keith Urbahn: “Kamala Harris is poised to land the biggest book deal of any vice president in history.

Peter Baker: “President Biden ran for the White House promising to be a transitional figure, then once he got there began thinking of himself as a transformational one. But after a tumultuous four years in office, it turns out he was really neither.” “Instead, Mr. Biden will end up in the history books as an interregnum between two terms of Donald Trump, a break in the middle of a chaotic period of change, for good or ill.

Jonathan Chait: “At his confirmation hearing, the defense-secretary nominee looked like a man who understood that the fix was in…” “Hegseth’s strategy today was to evade these problems altogether. In this, he had the full cooperation of the committee’s Republican majority. If you’ve ever had media training for a television appearance, a common piece of advice is to use the prompt to get to whatever point you wish to make, rather than focus on answering the question.

Vanity Fair: “All this ring-kissing and public pomp mark a stark departure for Silicon Valley, which has traditionally served as a Democratic stronghold—and largely shunned Trump before his first term.” “But a lot has changed in the past eight years, for both Trump and corporate America. For one thing, tech CEOs have learned that the president-elect tends to favor companies with whom he has personal relationships, inspiring many to cozy up.

A new CNN Poll finds President Biden will leave office with a 36% approval rating, matching his previous low. “Americans broadly view Biden’s four years in office more as a failure than as a success, with his administration doing little to turn around persistent negativity about the state of the country generally or about its economy.” For comparison, the FiveThirtyEight polling average also shows Biden at a record low approval rate. This Associated Press headline says it all: “Biden promised to turn the page on Trump.