Members of President Trump's re-election campaign either never saw Avengers: Endgame — or they did, and could only see similarities between Trump and Thanos, the genocidal villain who wanted to wipe out half of the universe's population.

On Tuesday, not long after House Democrats introduced two articles of impeachment against Trump, his campaign tweeted a video showing Trump's face superimposed over Thanos. "House Democrats can push their sham impeachment all they want," the caption reads. "President Trump's re-election is inevitable." This is a riff on Thanos' famous line from the movie, which he says right before he thinks he's about to kill a bunch of people with a snap of his finger.

In the Trump campaign's clip, after the snap several Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), disintegrate. In the actual movie, however — spoiler alert! — Iron Man was able to defeat Thanos by taking back the Infinity Stones he needed to go through with his plan. Thanos then turned to dust.

Comic book writer and artist Jim Starlin, who created Thanos in 1973, told The Hollywood Reporter that the tweet irked him. "After my initial feeling of being violated, seeing that pompous fool using my creation to stroke his infantile ego, it finally struck me that the leader of my country and the free world actually enjoys comparing himself to a mass murderer," he said. "How sick is that? These are sad and strange times we are going through. Fortunately, all things, even national nightmares, eventually come to an end."

Avengers: Endgame is the highest-grossing film of all time, and for the few who still haven't seen it — astronauts just back from the International Space Station, people who recently escaped doomsday cults, Trump campaign officials — it is now streaming on Disney+. Catherine Garcia

The Bureau of Land Management said on Thursday that it will hold an auction in early January for drilling rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

As part of tax legislation passed by the GOP-led Congress in 2017, the Bureau of Land Management is required to hold two lease sales for drilling rights in the refuge's coastal plain within seven years, with the first one having to take place by December 2021. The auction is set for Jan. 6, just a few weeks before President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration. Biden has said he will take steps to ensure the 19.64-million-acre refuge, the pristine home to migrating caribou and polar bears, is permanently protected.

NPR reports that the Trump administration has accelerated the sale, with the Bureau of Land Management not waiting the required 30 days for oil companies to tell the government the land they want included in the lease sale. The coastal plain covers 1.6 million acres, and is believed to hold billions of barrels of oil.

Conservation groups say drilling in the area could cause irreparable damage to the refuge and wildlife, with Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune telling CBS News auctioning off the leases is "a shameful attempt by Donald Trump to give one last handout to the fossil fuel industry on his way out the door, at the expense of our public lands and our climate." Six banks, including Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citi, have told the Sierra Club they will not finance drilling in the refuge. Catherine Garcia

Mahinda Dasanayaka wants all kids to have access to books, and to make this happen, he turned his motorbike into a library on two wheels.

Dasanayaka, a 32-year-old father of two, is a child protection officer for the Sri Lankan government. Three years ago, he launched a program called Book and Me, and once or twice a week he travels to about 20 villages across Kegalle, a mountainous region northeast of Sri Lanka's capital, to distribute books. He goes to villages that do not have libraries, and Dasanayaka told The Associated Press kids are "always eagerly waiting for me, always looking for new books."

He brings everything from biographies to detective stories, which he carefully packs in a steel box attached to his bike. His collection has grown to about 3,000 books — some he bought with his modest salary, others donated. Dasanayaka said there are "some kids who hadn't seen even a children's storybook until I went to their villages," and he continues the program because he wants to bring people together and "change the way kids look at society, to change their perspectives and broaden their imagination."

Dasanayaka talks to the kids about the books, and hopes to soon form reading clubs in the villages. He told AP seeing the children read brings him joy, and he is "delighted to hear the kids say that books helped them to change their lives." That, he added, is "my ultimate happiness." Catherine Garcia

Juan Williams, one of the co-hosts of the Fox News talk show The Five, confirmed to The Hill on Thursday that he has tested positive for COVID-19.

Williams said he has been tested weekly, and on Thursday, he was notified that his Monday test came back positive. A second test conducted on Thursday also came back positive. Williams told The Hill he is experiencing flu-like symptoms, including chills and headaches, and is isolating at a hotel in Washington, D.C.

On Wednesday, Williams taped a live episode of The Five from the studio in New York, with the co-hosts all sitting about seven feet apart. A Fox News spokesperson told The Hill that the network "will continue to take all necessary precautions to ensure the safety of our staff, including broadcasting The Five via home studios for the foreseeable future."

The spokesperson added that Fox News has implemented "strict company-wide protocols adhering to all CDC and state guidelines, including regular testing of all in-studio, on-air personalities, mask mandates, and daily health assessments for all employees entering the building." Catherine Garcia

As recently as this summer, the Department of Justice investigated the roles of Elliott Broidy, a Republican fundraiser, and Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, in an alleged scheme to pay a bribe in exchange for a pardon, two people familiar with the matter told The New York Times.

On Tuesday, redacted court documents were unsealed that showed the existence of the investigation into possible unregistered lobbying and bribery. People familiar with the case told the Times that Sanford Diller, a billionaire real estate developer from the San Francisco area, solicited help from Broidy and Lowell in an attempt to get clemency for Hugh Baras, a psychologist from Berkeley who received a 30-month prison sentence after being convicted of tax evasion and improperly claiming Social Security benefits.

The Times reports that Diller was set to make "a substantial political contribution" to an unspecified recipient in order for the pardon to be made, and the court documents state that as part of the effort, the White House Counsel's Office was approached by someone who wanted to make sure the "clemency petition reached the targeted officials." Diller died in February 2018, and the Times says there is no evidence that the plan moved ahead following his death.

No one has been charged in this inquiry, and a Justice Department official said no member of the government is "currently a subject or target of the investigation disclosed in this filing." Reid Weingarten, a lawyer for Lowell, confirmed to the Times that his client did represent Baras, who never received clemency. Broidy's attorney, William Burck, told the Times his client was asked by Diller to assist on a clemency petition, and it was not a lobbying effort. Both Weingarten and Burck downplayed the investigation, with Weingarten saying it was "much ado about precious little."

Broidy was a top fundraising official for Trump's inauguration and later became the deputy finance chair of the Republican National Committee. In October, he pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act in connection with another case involving an attempt to influence the Trump administration on behalf of Chinese and Malaysian interests. Catherine Garcia

Alyssa Farah, the White House communications director, resigned on Thursday.

Farah, a former spokeswoman for the conservative House Freedom Caucus, was part of the Trump administration for more than three years, starting as press secretary under Vice President Mike Pence before moving over to the same role at the Defense Department. She became White House communications director in April.

Farah, 31, submitted her resignation letter on Thursday, The Washington Post reports, and wrote that being able to work in the White House was "the honor of a lifetime." Farah also said she is "deeply proud of the incredible things we were able to accomplish to make our country stronger, safer, and more secure." Farah, whose last day is Friday, plans on launching a consulting firm. Catherine Garcia

President-elect Joe Biden said when it comes to the Department of Justice, he is "not going to be telling them what they have to do and don't have to do."

Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris were interviewed by CNN's Jake Tapper on Thursday, and the discussion turned to reports that President Trump is contemplating preemptively pardoning his adult children, son-in-law Jared Kushner, and personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Biden said this "concerns me in terms of what kind of precedent it sets and how the rest of the world looks [at] us as a nation of laws and justice."

Biden promised that he is "not going to be saying, 'Go prosecute A, B, or C,' I'm not going to be telling them. That's not the role, it's not my Justice Department, it's the people's Justice Department. So the persons or person I pick to run that department are going to be people who are going to have the independent capacity to decide who gets prosecuted, who doesn't."

Harris, who once served as California's attorney general, added that the administration will assume that "any decision coming out of the Justice Department ... should be based on the law, it should not be influence by politics, period." Catherine Garcia