NATION IN BRIEF
Biden’s State of the Union Address draws 32 million TV viewers, topping last year’s speech
President Joe Biden’s feisty State of the Union address Thursday saw a substantial lift in viewing compared with last year’s speech.
Nielsen data showed the average TV audience across 14 networks carrying the event was 32.2 million viewers, an 18% increase over the 27.3 million who watched in 2023.
The number fell short of Biden’s most watched State of the Union address in 2022, which averaged 38.2 million viewers.
The speech before a joint session of Congress was highly anticipated as Biden,
81, has been plagued by questions about whether he is physically and cognitively up for another term. He faces a bruising re-election contest this fall against his predecessor, and presumptive Republican nominee, former President Trump.
Biden appeared robust and combative throughout the address that went slightly over an hour. Even the president’s critics said the performance was likely to silence any calls to replace him at the top of the Democratic ticket.
Fox News had the most TV viewers with an average of 5.8 million watching from 9:15 to 10:45 p.m. Eastern. The figure was up 20% from last year’s coverage on the network.
It was the third consecutive year that Fox News had the largest audience for the annual address.
No evidence of extraterrestrial technology, report finds
WASHINGTON — A
Pentagon office responsible for investigating and analyzing reports of unidentified aerial phenomena has found no evidence of any confirmed sighting of extraterrestrial technology, according to a newly released report.
The Department of Defense last week sent Congress the first volume of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office’s Historical Record report, a requirement lawmakers included in the fiscal 2023 defense policy bill.
Lawmakers established AARO within the fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization Act to serve as a central office for UAP matters.
The review encompasses all UAP investigations conducted by the U.S. government since 1945 and includes materials from classified and unclassified archives as well as interviews.
“AARO has approached this project with the widest possible aperture, thoroughly investigating these assertions and claims without any particular pre-conceived conclusion or hypothesis,” said Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder in a statement on Friday.
The AARO review also found no evidence that
U.S. government or private companies have access to extraterrestrial technology. According to AARO’S assessment, most UAP sightings are ordinary objects that are misidentified.
Trump ally, daughter-in-law snag top two posts at RNC
WASHINGTON — Close allies of Donald Trump were named to the two top jobs at the Republican National Committee after the previous chair stepped down amid dissatisfaction with fundraising and coordination with the former president’s
2024 presidential campaign.
North Carolina Republican Committee Chair Michael Whatley and Trump’s daughterin-law Lara Trump will take over leadership of the organization after a voice vote.
“The change in leadership at the Republican National Committee is going to energize the base, who has unfortunately thought that there has been a division between the RNC and the Trump campaign,” said David Bossie, a Trump ally and RNC member.
The new leadership essentially fuses the RNC with the Trump campaign. They are expected to act interchangeably for the duration of the general election.
Trump publicly backed both candidates weeks before former chairwoman Ronna Mcdaniel stepped down. Mcdaniel came under scrutiny over lackluster fundraising and a string of electoral losses in the role she held since 2017.
In her farewell speech, Mcdaniel said Republicans need to figure out a better way to talk about abortion in 2024. “We can not put our head in the sand and ignore abortion,” she told a ballroom of RNC members.
NY appeals court reinstates bribery charges against former Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin
NEW YORK — The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday revived bribery charges against former New York Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin that were dismissed after a lower court found the feds failed to establish sufficient evidence of a quid pro quo between him and a campaign donor.
“We conclude that the indictment sufficiently alleged an explicit quid pro quo,” the three-judge panel found unanimously. “Therefore, we reverse the judgment of the district court and remand for further proceedings.”
The decision reinstates the bulk of the case against Benjamin, dismissed by Manhattan Federal Court Judge Paul Oetken in December
2022, who found prosecutors had failed to show the fallen politician steered $50,000 in state funds to a nonprofit controlled by the late real estate developer Jerry Migdol in a quid pro quo scheme to generate fraudulent straw donations.
Benjamin stepped down as deputy governor within hours of facing charges in April
2022, alleging that as a state senator, he abused his authority to allocate state grant funds to funnel money to Migdol’s nonprofit, Friends of Public School Harlem.
That organization, in turn, steered the money back to his failed New York City comptroller campaign in the form of illegal small-dollar straw donations totaling no more than $250 in others’ names, including a 2-year-old, the charges alleged.
Among other allegations, the feds say Benjamin tried to hide the 2019 arrangement with Migdol by falsifying campaign forms, lying during a background check after Gov. Kathy Hochul handpicked him as her second-in-command and misleading regulators.
Texas school shooting victims’ families outraged over report that clears officers
The families of the victims of the 2022 massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., expressed outrage and dismay after an independent report found that the local law enforcement officers who stood by while the shooting was ongoing did not violate policy.
Nineteen students and two teachers were killed in the May 2022 shooting.
Jesse Prado, a retired Austin police detective, offered the report to the Uvalde city council during a meeting on Thursday. The report is contrary to many other reports about the shooting, including a scathing 2024 Department of Justice report which pointed to “cascading failures” by officers on the scene as well as the cowardice of waiting more than an hour to confront the shooter. A 2022 preliminary report from the Texas House said the officers’ “lackadaisical approach” may have cost the victims’ their lives.
Prado’s report claims none of the officers on the scene violated Uvalde Police Department policy and acted in good faith. The report found “many failures” in the law enforcement response, but did not identify a specific police officer who was responsible for those failures. However, he does cite Border Patrol tactical commander Paul Guerrero, who led the team that killed the gunman, for calling off a move that could have stopped the shooting a half hour earlier because he feared it would take too long too force open the locked classroom door.
Prado did not investigate response from the Border Patrol or the Texas Department of Public Safety for the report. More than 370 law enforcement officers responded.
Source: Tribune News Service