Obama, Boehner Trade Barbs

“President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural committee is no longer selling tickets for major donors to attend his swearing-in and accompanying private events in Washington,“ the New York Times reports. “The committee has raised over $170 million… The haul is so big that some seven-figure donors have been placed on wait lists or have been told they probably will not receive V.

“Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito spoke to President-elect Donald Trump by phone Tuesday to recommend one of his former law clerks for a job in the new administration,” ABC News reports. “The call occurred just hours before Trump’s lawyers on Wednesday morning filed an emergency request with the justices asking them to block a New York judge from moving forward with sentencing Trump on Friday in his criminal hush money case.”

Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum clapped back at President-elect Trump and said parts of the U. S. should be called “América Mexicana,” in response to Trump’s proposal to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” at a press conference, Axios reports. “The response, using a troubled history of the U.

“Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro claimed Wednesday that President-elect Trump invited him to attend the inauguration — but it may be difficult for Bolsonaro to attend amid his ongoing his legal turmoil,” Axios reports.

Punchbowl News: “We got our hands on the House Republicans’ legislative plans for the next two weeks. All of these controversial measures were approved by the House during the last Congress, but now with the GOP in charge of the Senate, Republican leaders want to push them again. And this time, Senate Democrats will be forced to vote on them as well…” “It’s very clear that House Republicans are looking to put Democrats in tough spots.

Henry Farrell: “We tend to think of the problem of social media as a problem of disinformation – that is, of people receiving erroneous information and being convinced that false things are in fact true. Hence, we can try to make social media better through factchecking, through educating people to see falsehoods and similar.