Collin Anderson

When angry voters confronted Rep. Rich McCormick over DOGE at a town hall held in the Georgia Republican's deep-red district, the New York Times, Washington Post, and CBS News cited the scene as proof of emerging bipartisan "backlash" over Elon Musk's efforts to slash government spending. CBS included a quote from one of the protest's organizers, Maggie Goldman, describing her only as a McCormick constituent.

As a prospective Senate candidate, Pete Buttigieg is denouncing the diversity trainings that have become synonymous with the Democratic Party's liberal wing, saying they look "like something straight out of Portlandia." As mayor of South Bend, Ind., he championed such training, with his administration implementing a series of diversity sessions that lectured cops on "sizeism" and "languageism" amid a surge in violent crime.

Days after President Donald Trump's National Institute of Health moved to cap government funding for so-called indirect research costs—that is, money tacked on to a research grant that universities use to fund administrative salaries and other expenses—Harvard Medical School sent concerned students and faculty a message encouraging them to "take advantage" of the school's "Countway Cuddles" pet therapy program.

The historic defamation settlement that President-elect Donald Trump won from ABC News on Saturday is a major embarrassment for George Stephanopoulos, the former whiz kid Clinton aide and ABC star whose on-air remarks led to the settlement—and whose outsized compensation has long caused disgruntlement at ABC amid an accelerating ratings decline.

When police searched the home of two Students for Justice in Palestine leaders, a pair of sisters at George Mason University, their allies painted a sympathetic picture. The students were targeted, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), for engaging in "anti-genocide events on campus." The Intercept reported that police found "antique firearms" registered to the students' brother and brought gun-related charges of his family's "pro-Palestine activism." Excluded from those descriptions was the crime the sisters are suspected of committing.

Last November, University of Minnesota vice provost Harvey Charles traveled to Guangdong, China, to tour Sun Yat-sen University, the Chinese Communist Party-controlled college known for its top business school. It marked the first time a University of Minnesota delegation had visited the school since COVID, though Charles made clear that any geopolitical tensions stemming from the pandemic did not weaken his relationship with his Chinese counterparts.

Longtime Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell officially has a replacement: South Dakota's John Thune, who bested Texas's John Cornyn and Florida's Rick Scott in the race to succeed the outgoing Kentuckian.

When President-elect Donald Trump leaned into rumors that Haitian migrants in the Ohio city of Springfield were eating pets, some mainstream media outlets predicted the move could alienate loyal Republican voters.

Republicans have officially flipped control of the Senate, an outcome that was long expected thanks to a favorable electoral map that included Democrat-held seats in Trump-friendly West Virginia, Montana, and Ohio. Republicans went into Election Day with a two-seat deficit in the upper chamber, one that election analysts widely expected the party to erase by flipping West Virginia and Montana. Former Democrat Joe Manchin (W.V.) effectively handed his seat to Republican coal magnate Jim Justice when he declined to run for reelection in November, while polls showed Montana's Jon Tester consistently trailing his GOP opponent, former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy. Justice won by more than 40 points, while Sheehy led by 6 points early Wednesday morning.

Over the past three months, an avowed left-wing organization has spent more than $9 million on Facebook ads boosting Vice President Kamala Harris and attacking former president Donald Trump. The spots have reached scores of swing state voters using a Facebook feature that allows advertisers to submit their own data—for political groups, that is, data they've compiled on voters—to reach a precise audience. The practice is considered standard operating procedure for campaigns and PACs. But the group behind the $9 million digital ad blitz is neither a campaign nor a PAC—at least not on paper. Instead, it's Courier Newsroom, liberal operative Tara McGowan's organization that pushes Democratic talking points under the guise of local "news" outlets.