Holiday retail sales rose at their best pace since 2011, thanks to strong consumer confidence and a healthy job market, Mastercard SpendingPulse reported. "It started with a bang in the week leading up to Black Friday," said Sarah Quinlan, a senior vice president of marketing insights at Mastercard, which tracks spending online and in stores.
Retailers got help from the calendar, with shoppers getting a full weekend for last-minute buys because Christmas fell on a Monday. Sales, excluding automobiles, rose by 4.9 percent over the Nov. 1 to Christmas Eve season, up from a 3.7 percent gain last year. Online sales continued to be the driving force, increasing by 18.1 percent. Harold Maass
The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal said Thursday night that instead of impeaching President Trump or removing him under the 25th Amendment, it would be "best for everyone" if Trump "goes away quietly" on his own.
There are 13 days left in Trump's term, but after "Wednesday's disgrace" on the Capitol, the editorial board said, immediate action is necessary. "This was an assault on the constitutional process of transferring power after an election," the board said, and it went beyond "merely refusing to concede defeat. In our view it crosses a constitutional line that Mr. Trump hasn't previously crossed. It is impeachable."
The editorialists argued that Trump's actions were "a far greater dereliction of duty than his ham-handed Ukrainian interventions in 2019," but an impeachment this late in the presidency "won't be easy or without rancor" and would "further enrage" Trump supporters. If Trump was ousted under the 25th Amendment, that would "smack of a Beltway coup and give Mr. Trump more cause to play the political victim," the board added.
To avoid all of this, Trump's "best path would be to take personal responsibility and resign," the Journal's editorial board determined. "This would be the cleanest solution since it would immediately turn presidential duties over to [Vice President Mike] Pence. And it would give Mr. Trump agency, a la Richard Nixon, over his own fate." While an "act of grace by Mr. Trump isn't likely," the board lamented, it would be "best for everyone, himself included, if he goes away quietly." Catherine Garcia
John Danforth, one of the biggest names in the Missouri Republican Party, now says he wishes he never mentored Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).
Danforth served in the Senate from 1976 to 1995, and in an interview Thursday with St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Tony Messenger, he said seeing supporters of President Trump break into the Capitol on Wednesday was "awful. It was unimaginable."
The rioters, repeating the false claim that the election had been stolen from Trump, arrived as lawmakers were recording the Electoral College votes. Hawley was the first senator to say he would object to the votes, legitimizing the unfounded conspiracies that the election was rigged. Danforth said Hawley told him constituents had been questioning the results, and "my thought when he said that was, 'Josh, what did you say in response? Did you push back at all?'"
There have long been rumblings that Hawley wants to run for president in the near future, and he needs to have the support of constituents who not only will vote for him, but will also send money to his campaign. That's dangerous, Danforth said. "This guy is doing real harm," he told Messenger. "What he's doing to his party is one thing. What he's doing to the country is much worse."
Hawley isn't the "special talent" he thought he was, Danforth lamented, adding that "supporting Josh and trying so hard to get him elected to the Senate was the worst mistake I ever made in my life. Yesterday was the physical culmination of the long attempt to foment a lack of public confidence in our democratic system. It is very dangerous to America to continue pushing this idea that government doesn't work and that voting was fraudulent." Catherine Garcia
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos resigned on Thursday night, becoming the second Cabinet member to do so following Wednesday's violence in Washington, D.C.
As lawmakers voted to certify the election results, supporters of President Trump stormed the Capitol, smashing glass, breaking into offices, and ripping down signs. In her resignation letter to Trump, DeVos said they should be "highlighting and celebrating your administration's many accomplishments on behalf of the American people," but instead "we are left to clean up the mess caused by violent protesters overrunning the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undermine the people's business."
This behavior "was unconscionable for our country," DeVos said. "There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me. Impressionable children are watching all this, and they are learning from us."
Earlier in the day, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao resigned from her post. In a statement, Chao said she was "tremendously proud" of the department's accomplishments, but was "deeply troubled" by the "entirely avoidable" situation at the Capitol. Catherine Garcia
Gus Papathanasiou, chairman of the Capitol Police Officers' Union, said on Thursday evening he spoke too soon when he announced the death of a Capitol Police officer.
Papathanasiou had said the officer died from a stroke after being on duty Wednesday during the pro-Trump riot on Capitol Hill. When he made the announcement, the union chair said the 40-year-old officer, whose name was not released, was a 15-year veteran of the Capitol Police. He did not share any details on where the officer was stationed during the riot.
About 30 minutes after the announcement was made, WUSA reporter Bruce Leshan tweeted that Papathanasiou "now says the officer has NOT passed away, but is still on life support, until his family can arrive. He and I deeply regret getting ahead of the story."
On Wednesday, authorities said four people who participated in the riot had died: one woman was shot while climbing into the House Chamber and three others died from medical emergencies. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund submitted his resignation, effective Jan. 16, on Thursday, following intense criticism over the force's response to the mob. Video shows there were clearly not enough officers on the scene to deal with the crowd, with people pushing past barricades and barreling into the Capitol building.
UPDATE 8:55 PM: The text and headline of this article have been changed to reflect the revised statement of the chairman of the Capitol Police Officers' Union. Catherine Garcia
A spokeswoman for the Capitol Police announced on Thursday evening that Chief Steven Sund is resigning, effective Jan. 16, NBC News reports.
Sund has come under fire for the Capitol Police's botched response to Wednesday's pro-Trump riot at the Capitol, which resulted in the mob storming the building and forcing lawmakers to evacuate as they attempted to certify the election. On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called on Sund to resign, saying there was "a failure of leadership at the top."
The Capitol Police Officers' Union agreed, saying rank and file officers are "frustrated and demoralized by the lack of leadership that undermined the response of law enforcement to the violent events" at the Capitol. The union said it was time for "leadership change at the highest level, including the Chief of Police of USCP Steven Sund and his senior command staff to include his assistant chiefs of police." Catherine Garcia