U.s. Officials Dismiss North Korea Missile Threat

Associated Press: “The signing of the doctrine, which says that any massive aerial attack on Russia could trigger a nuclear response, demonstrates Putin’s readiness to tap the country’s nuclear arsenal to force the West to back down as Moscow presses a slow-moving offensive in Ukraine.”

“Hakeem Jeffries nearly became House speaker. Instead, he’s steering the Democratic Party through an identity crisis and hoping to avoid an ugly intraparty civil war,” CNN reports. “Even without the gavel, many Democrats across Washington say House Minority Leader Jeffries — a 54-year-old New Yorker with centrist roots and messaging chops — is about to become the de facto voice of the party’s future and the face of resistance to Donald Trump.”

“Dan Osborn, an industrial mechanic who ran as an independent Senate candidate in Nebraska, came up short in his quest to unseat Senator Deb Fischer, a low-profile Republican whose closer-than-expected victory in a red state clinched Senate control for her party on election night,” the New York Times reports. “But Mr.

“In his private conversations over the past few days, President-elect Donald Trump has admitted that his besieged choice for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, has less than even odds of being confirmed by the Senate,” the New York Times reports. “But Mr. Trump has shown no sign of withdrawing the nomination, which speaks volumes about his mind-set as he staffs his second administration.

“The working-class voters Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign needed were not moved by talk of joy. They were too angry about feeling broke,” the New York Times reports. “For decades, Democrats had been the party of labor and of the working class, the choice for voters who looked to government to increase the minimum wage or provide a safety net for the poor, the old and the sick.

Denver City Council members cut down on how many rezoning hearings they will have to preside over and brought the city into compliance — mostly — with a new state law on Monday when they voted to allow accessory dwelling units in residential neighborhoods citywide. The housing units, often referred to as ADUs, are smaller, secondary residential structures that can be built on the same lots as traditional single-family homes.