US House Speaker Mike Johnson has appointed Congressman Rick Crawford as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, another promotion of an ally of President-elect Donald Trump to a key national security post, Reuters reported, quoted by BTA.
The committee chairman is among eight congressional leaders, known as the “Gang of Eight”, who are briefed on the most secret US intelligence matters.
“I will aggressively defend our mandate to ensure reliable and robust oversight of the funding and activities of the intelligence community,“ said Crawford in a statement.
Johnson appointed Crawford a day after removing Rep. Mike Turner from the chairmanship, which he had held for nearly two years. The position is one of the few that is chosen by the House speaker at the start of a new Congress.
Turner, a staunch supporter of aid to Ukraine, announced late Wednesday that he was being removed from the committee, telling CBS News that Johnson had cited "concerns at Mar-a-Lago," Trump's Florida estate, as the reason for his decision.
Donald Trump wants to make Hollywood "bigger, better and stronger" and has chosen Mel Gibson, Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone as his “special ambassadors in a great but very troubled place - Hollywood, California“, the Associated Press reported, quoted by BTA.
The newly elected president announced on his social network “Truth Social” that the three actors would be his eyes and ears in the movie city. “The Golden Age of Hollywood will come again, as will the United States of America itself!“, Trump wrote.
He also called the trio special envoys. Special ambassadors and envoys are usually chosen to respond to troubled hot spots such as the Middle East, not California.
Gibson said in a statement that he learned the news from the media and that he was surprised. “Nevertheless, I heeded the call. "It's my duty as a citizen to provide any help and assistance that I can," he added. Gibson, who lost his home in the Palisades fire, added: "Is there any chance that the position will go with an ambassadorial residence?"
Film and television production in the United States has been hampered in recent years, with setbacks related to the Covid pandemic, the 2023 Hollywood Guild strikes and, in the past week, the ongoing wildfires in the Los Angeles area.
Stallone, a 78-year-old New Yorker who played Rambo and Rocky, hosted a party for the president-elect in mid-November at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. During Donald Trump's first term, Jon Voight, 86, was awarded the National Medal of Arts. In the film industry, where the majority are Democrats, Voight has been known for his support of Donald Trump from the beginning. Actor and director Mel Gibson, 69, has been an outspoken ultraconservative for decades, AFP notes.
The US capital Washington is frozen by sub-zero temperatures, and Donald Trump's inauguration ceremony on Monday could go down in history as the coldest swearing-in ceremony in decades, DPA reported, quoted by BTA.
Although it is not expected to be as cold as Ronald Reagan's inauguration for a second term in 1985, when the mercury on thermometers showed almost minus 14 degrees Celsius at noon, according to the National Weather Service, Monday's forecast is for a high of minus 6 degrees, but it could feel significantly colder.
Traditionally, the ceremony is held outdoors on the west side of the Capitol. For many people who will attend the ceremony but are not among the most prominent guests, the prospects are not good, because they have to take their seats long before the ceremony begins.
Trump often uses such cold snaps to mockingly ask where global warming has gone.
Due to low temperatures in 1985, the ceremony had to be held indoors, in the Capitol rotunda. According to the weather service, it was the "coldest inauguration" since 1871, when records were kept.