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$445 million
Big oil spent a stunning $445 million throughout the last election cycle to influence Donald Trump and Congress, The Guardian reports.
58%
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 58% of Americans are not in favor of President Trump pardoning all of the people who were convicted of crimes related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol just over four years ago.
24.6 million
The TV viewership for President Trump’s historic second inauguration fell far short of the audience for his first ceremony in 2017 and former President Biden’s 2021 event, the L.A. Times reported. Nielsen data showed Trump’s festivities averaged 24.6 million viewers across 15 networks from 10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Eastern, a decline of 27% from four years ago. The figure was also down 20% from Trump’s first inauguration.
$15 trillion
“Billionaire wealth surged in 2024, as the world’s richest people increasingly benefited from inheritance and powerful connections, Oxfam said Monday in its annual inequality report,” NBC News reports. “The combined wealth of the world’s most wealthy rose from $13 trillion to $15 trillion in just 12 months, the global charity said Sunday. It marks the second-largest annual increase in billionaire wealth since Oxfam records started.”
$25 billion
“President-elect Trump launched his own cryptocurrency overnight and swiftly appeared to make more than $25 billion on paper for himself and his companies,” Axios reports. “The stunning launch of $TRUMP caught the entire industry off-guard, and speaks to both his personal influence and the ascendancy of cryptocurrency in his administration. It also speaks to the nature of the crypto industry that someone could have $25 billion worth of something that literally did not exist 24 hours previously.”
$26 billion
“The Biden administration has distributed at least $26 billion of dollars in financing to clean-energy companies in its final days before President-elect Donald Trump takes office,” Bloomberg reports.
$31 million
The U.S. government clawed back more than $31 million in federal payments that improperly went to dead people, a recovery that one official said Wednesday was “just the tip of the iceberg,” the AP reports.
19%
A new AP-NORC poll finds just 19% of Americans approve of Pete Hegseth being nominated as the secretary of defense.
$83 billion
“Senate Democrats are warning that the Laken Riley Act is unworkable in its current form, requiring tens of billions in new spending and enforcement resources that are ‘not feasible’ to detain undocumented immigrants accused of theft,” Semafor reports.
~40%
A recent poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that about 4 in 10 Democrats said it’s “not very likely” or “not at all likely” that a woman will be elected to the nation’s highest office in their lifetime. That’s compared with about one-quarter of Republicans who feel the same.
