When a trio of young girls, the "USA Freedom Kids," performed an original song at a Donald Trump rally in Florida earlier this year, Trump "took the 'free' part literally," neglecting to give them a table to sell CDs, as agreed, after already negotiating zero pay with the girls' manager, Stephen Colbert said on Thursday's Late Show. This isn't the first time Trump has been accused of stiffing contractors, but Colbert drew the line at a group of kids who "sounded like a bald eagle marching on a Casio keyboard."

"Well folks, Donald Trump thinks he can get away with this, but I'm going to hold him accountable and get his attention with a flashy song-and-dance number," Colbert said. "And because I don't think children should be involved in the dirty world of politics, here with a new song for Donald Trump, please welcome the USA Freedom Grown-Ups." The new group is decidedly older, and has more Y chromosomes, than the USA Freedom Kids, but their song is equally catchy, with the same "Over There"-meets-Blondie sound and awkward syllabic emphasis, if slightly different lyrics. "That might be your real hair, but you're a fake billionaire," the USA Freedom Grown-Ups sing. "Pay people what they've earned, and release your tax returns!" You can watch below. Peter Weber

New York City schools are shutting down — but the rest of the city is not.

NYC's public school system was set to shut down if the city's coronavirus positivity rate passed three percent. That happened on Wednesday, prompting NYC schools chancellor Richard Carrenza to announce Wednesday schools would temporarily shutter starting Thursday.

Getting that news wasn't easy, as New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio left reporters waiting for nearly four hours after the scheduled start of a press conference before tweeting to confirm the shutdown. He also didn't acknowledge whether New York would close indoor dining and other businesses as case counts grew — things European countries have shut down instead of schools.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) meanwhile confusingly said Wednesday that NYC's positivity rate had actually been 2.9 percent the day before, implying schools wouldn't close. But he wouldn't asnwer straightforward questions about the fate of schools, instead getting angry with reporters — and by extension, parents — just trying to get a straight answer. Even State Sen. Jessica Ramos (D), whose children are in NYC schools, had no idea what was happening. Kathryn Krawczyk

Staffers in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have reportedly been told to make this presidential transition even harder.

President Trump and his administration have so far refused to cooperate with President-elect Joe Biden's transition team, or even acknowledge that a new administration is headed to the White House. That's especially problematic considering the U.S. has been fighting a deadly pandemic for months, and Biden's health officials need to start working on an eventual vaccine distribution plan. But as CNN's Kristen Holmes reports via an administration official, members of Trump's HHS were told Wednesday not to respond if they're contacted by Biden's team, and to flag such communications to a higher-up.

An official transition should've started shortly after the election, but Trump's team is still insistent its long-shot legal challenges will change the president's fate. Biden has warned that "more people may die" if Trump's team doesn't start cooperating as soon as possible. Kathryn Krawczyk

Republican senators don't seem to agree with President Trump's decision to fire Christopher Krebs, who until Tuesday was serving as the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

Writes Politico, several GOP lawmakers were critical of the move, or at least supportive of the work Krebs had done. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), unsurprisingly, let it fly, calling Trump's decision a "terrible mistake," while Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.V.) said she was "disappointed" and couldn't explain Trump's reasoning. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told Politico "it just adds to the chaos and confusion," adding that he doesn't "even know what's normal anymore."

Even some of Trump's more staunch supporters, like Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), offered high praise for Krebs, although they refrained from directly questioning the president's choice

Trump also recently dismissed Defense Secretary Mark Esper, and some other officials not known for their loyalty are reportedly on the hot seat, prompting Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) to acknowledge that "if it looks like there's just a flurry of [firings], it will raise more questions." Read more at Politico. Tim O'Donnell

President Trump's campaign is spending $3 million on a recount that won't change his fate.

Trump's campaign shifted from requesting a full recount in Wisconsin to paying for a recount in just Milwaukee and Dane counties on Wednesday. The Trump campaign said it chose those counties as they were home to the "worst irregularities" in the vote count, though there's no evidence that's true.

Even before President-elect Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 election, Trump and his campaign began launching legal challenges and demanding recounts across states Biden won. That included in Wisconsin, a state Trump won in 2016 but Biden flipped by more than 20,000 votes this time around. A good portion of Biden's majority came from the Democratic strongholds of Milwaukee and Dane counties, home to Milwaukee and Madison, respectively.

The Trump campaign claims those counties were home to "illegally altered absentee ballots, illegally issued absentee ballots, and illegal advice given by government officials allowing Wisconsin’s Voter ID laws to be circumvented." State and local elections officials say there's no sign of the widespread fraud Trump's team is alleging.Trump's campaign is more likely zeroing on these counties because they contain a big chunk of the state's votes, went significantly for Biden this year, and are home to most of the state's Black voters.

Trump needs to flip more than 20,000 votes to put Wisconsin in his favor — a number a recount has never seen before. But even without Wisconsin's 10 electoral votes, Biden still has more than the 270 votes he needs to win the election. Kathryn Krawczyk

There is some concern from within Afghanistan's government and general populace, as well as NATO leadership, that President Trump's push to withdraw troops from the country before he leaves the White House is too hasty, NPR reports. Subsequently, there's some hope that President-elect Joe Biden will reverse, or at least slow the course.

But some experts in the U.S. are warning those folks not to keep their hopes up too high since Biden has long supported significantly scaling back U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. Andrew Watkins, a senior analyst for Afghanistan at the International Crisis Group, said Biden has "remained insistent throughout the last decade that bringing American troop numbers down to just a few thousand and really only focusing on targeted strikes of the very worst of the very worst threats to regional and American security was the only thing that the U.S. should be doing in Afghanistan."

Elizabeth Threlkeld, the South Asia deputy director at the Washington-based Stimson Center, told NPR the Biden administration will probably bring about a "change of tone" that's more "multilateral and measured" since their decision-making won't be dependent "on the tweets of the morning." But, ultimately, she thinks "those hopes for a change in direction are likely to be short-lived." Read more at NPR. Tim O'Donnell

Apple says it's cutting App Store fees for the "vast majority" of developers — a move one critic argues shows that "they're sweating."

Apple on Wednesday said developers that made up to $1 million in annual revenue on their apps in 2020 can pay a reduced commission of 15 percent on sales of "digital goods and services," rather than the current level of 30 percent, beginning on Jan. 1, Bloomberg and The New York Times report. Bigger developers will still have to pay the 30 percent fee, however.

This App Store fee has faced heavy criticism from companies like Spotify and Epic Games, and antitrust regulators have examined Apple's "'gatekeeper' role" in the distribution of apps through the App Store. Spotify argues that the fee gives Apple an "unfair advantage," and Epic Games, the developer of the video game Fortnite, also sued Apple after getting itself kicked off the App Store for trying to get around the fee. In a subsequent lawsuit, Epic accused Apple of "unfair and anti-competitive actions."

Apple CEO Tim Cook said cutting the fee would "help small business owners," and the company cited an Analysis Group study it said found that its commission structure "is in the mainstream for app distribution and gaming platforms." But critics from bigger companies blasted the move, with Basecamp CTO David Heinemeier Hansson arguing that the "only good thing about this cynical, Machiavellian ploy by Apple to split developers with selective handouts, is that it shows they're sweating," per the Times.

Spotify also described the move as "window dressing," while Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney argued to the Times that Apple is "hoping to remove enough critics that they can get away with their blockade on competition," but "consumers will still pay inflated prices marked up by the Apple tax." Brendan Morrow