Today's top stories in US news, politics, government, and world affairs:
Special Counsel Jack Smith moved Monday to dismiss two landmark criminal cases against President Donald Trump, on the grounds that Justice Department policy prohibits prosecuting a sitting president. Both Republicans and Democrats have seized on the news; conservative influencers heralded the move as vindicating Trump's innocence, while liberal commentators and supporters of Kamala Harirs decried the move as an affront to democracy. Does Jack Smith's decision bring this legal saga to its final conclusion?
Our election systems are run by arcane methods which move at a glacial pace, meaning that millions of votes are not counted on Election Day, and are rather counted in the subsequent days and weeks. Due to this delay, the preliminary vote totals on November 7th showed Trump with a far greater margin of victory over Harris than is currently tabulated: Trump currently stands at 76 million votes, or 49.86%, while Kamala Harris is at 74 million votes, or 48.26% - a closer difference of 1.6%. Is Trump's win in the Presidential Election still considered a mandate?
Joe Rogan – whose podcast is among the most popular shows in the world - caused some international controversy when he made comments disparaging President Biden and the Ukrainian army. Rogan had criticized Joe Biden’s recent decision to allow Ukraine to strike Russian soil with US-supplied missiles, and said of Zelensky's comments regarding Putin's desperate position that he was trying to "start World War III". Is Rogan's assessment of the Ukraine War correct?