Morning Report

TODAY’S JUSTICE story

Jack Smith tells House of ‘proof’ of Trump’s crimes

What happened
Former special counsel Jack Smith yesterday told members of the House Judiciary Committee that his investigators had uncovered “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that President Donald Trump “engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election,” according to his prepared remarks for the closed-door deposition. Smith said his team also found “powerful evidence” that Trump had illegally hoarded classified documents and “repeatedly tried to obstruct justice.” Due to Justice Department policy, both investigations were dropped after Trump won last year’s election.

Who said what
Yesterday’s “day-long deposition” gave lawmakers their “first chance, albeit in private, to question Smith” about his twin criminal investigations of Trump, The Associated Press said. It “unfolded against the backdrop of a broader retribution campaign by the Trump administration against former officials involved in investigating Trump and his allies.”

Smith himself faces a “renewed wave of Republican attacks,” said NBC News. He had repeatedly requested a “public forum for his testimony to set the record straight” about his investigations and their nonpartisan nature, Politico said, but committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) “declined that request.” Jordan told reporters after the interview that he had “learned some interesting things,” but declined to elaborate.

What next?
Jordan said “he had not ruled out the possibility of Smith appearing in a public venue,” Politico said, and Democrats supported that idea. Had Smith testified publicly yesterday, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) told reporters, “it would have been absolutely devastating to the president.” Trump previously “told reporters that he supported the idea of an open hearing,” the AP said.

TODAY’S CULTURE Story

Oscars jump to YouTube in 2029 after decades at ABC

What happened
The Academy Awards will be broadcast worldwide on YouTube beginning in 2029, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced yesterday. ABC, which has broadcast the Oscars exclusively since 1976, will continue doing so until the 100th Academy Awards in 2028.

Who said what
The Oscars will be the first major award show to “completely jettison broadcast television,” The Associated Press said. Putting “one of the most watched non-NFL broadcasts in the hands of Google” is a “seismic shift” for Hollywood and the media industry. YouTube “secured Oscars rights in a bidding war that reportedly included competitors such as ABC, NBC and, at one point, Netflix,” The Washington Post said.

ABC “did not want to overpay,” after finding it “harder in recent years to turn a profit from the show,” Reuters said. This year’s Oscars drew 19.7 million viewers on ABC, a “five-year high” but far fewer than the record 57 million in 1998. YouTube is believed to have “shelled out over nine figures for the Oscars,” Variety said, citing insiders. Disney was “surprised” the “sole streamer” won the bidding war, but losing to YouTube “doesn’t sting as hard” as if a “direct competitor” like NBC had prevailed.

What next?
YouTube will stream the Oscars, “including red carpet coverage, behind-the-scenes content and Governors Ball,” live and “free of charge” from 2029 through at least 2033, Variety said. “There will continue to be commercials.” Nominations for the 2026 Oscars, hosted by Conan O’Brien, will be announced Jan. 22. Without ABC’s production control, the Academy “can do whatever they want” in 2029, one insider told Variety. “You can have a six-hour Oscars hosted by MrBeast.”

It’s not all bad

Grandmothers in Colorado, Nebraska and Texas are setting up tables in public spaces and inviting strangers to stop and chat or ask for advice. Grandma Stand is a volunteer network founded by Mike Matthews, whose own grandmother, Eileen Wilkinson, was the first grandma to participate; he estimates she spoke with at least 1,000 people before her death in 2018. It’s “refreshing” to sit down for a “true face-to-face connection,” Nancy McClendon, a volunteer from McKinney, Texas, told the CBC.

Under the radar

The curious history of hanging coffins

Ancient peoples in southern China practiced a funeral tradition of “hanging coffins” for thousands of years, and according to a study published in the journal Nature Communications, their descendants still live in the region today. The findings “provide valuable insights into the genetic, cultural and historical roots of this burial custom,” said the study’s authors.

For millennia, inhabitants of modern-day Yunnan and Fujian provinces carried their dead high into the mountains and “pegged” their wooden coffins into crevices in “exposed cliffs,” said Live Science. It’s thought that they used wooden scaffolding, rope pulleys or man-made trails to ascend the rocky cliffs.

Hanging coffins are “considered auspicious,” wrote a Yuan dynasty chronicler sometime between 1279 and 1368. “The higher they are, the more propitious they are for the dead. Furthermore, those whose coffins fell to the ground were considered more fortunate.”

The new study examined 11 bodies dating back as far as 2,000 years and used genome sequencing to confirm them as belonging to the Bo people, known in regional folklore by “names such as ‘Subjugators of the Sky' and 'Sons of the Cliffs,'” the study said. Several thousand people of Bo descent still live in Yunnan province.

But the practice of suspending remains on a cliff face can also be found in other Southeast Asian cultures. Hanging coffins are one of the burial customs of the Kankanaey people of Sagada, on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. And in Indonesia, shaped coffins known as erong, guarded by carved wooden representations of the dead, were placed in high caves and cliffside niches by the Toraja people until the 1960s.

On this day

December 18, 1957

The world’s first full-scale nuclear power plant for peacetime use, the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania, began generating electricity. The plant helped power the Keystone State until its decommissioning in 1989. Today, there are about 440 nuclear power plants worldwide, according to the World Nuclear Association.

TODAY’S newspaperS

‘Revolt in GOP’

“U.S. to disband premier weather research hub” as White House “cites the lab’s climate work as ‘alarmism,’” The New York Times says on Thursday’s front page. “Bill with Hegseth penalty prevails” as “Pentagon budget clears Senate, heads to Trump,” The Washington Post says. “4 Republicans defy speaker, force vote on ACA subsidies,” the Chicago Tribune says. “Revolt in GOP on health exposes party rift,” The Wall Street Journal says. GOP Sen. Ted Cruz “grills FCC chief,” warns “pulling licenses would violate free speech,” The Dallas Morning News says. “And the Oscars go to … YouTube,” the Los Angeles Times, while “Paramount’s hostile bid rejected” by Warner Bros. Discovery.

► See the newspaper front pages

Tall tale

High-fructose high-tops

Denny’s is branching out from serving pancakes to selling footwear. The diner chain’s $195 Sticky Kicks high-tops are filled with “real Denny’s syrup” that’s inedible and for “style only,” the company cautioned. Designed by shoe artist Mache, Sticky Kicks were created in honor of National Syrup Day (Dec. 17). The sneakers are “impractical, unnecessary and completely over the top,” said Denny’s Chief Brand Officer Ellie Doty, “which is exactly why we love them.”

Morning Report was written and edited by Nadia Croes, Catherine Garcia, Scott Hocker, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Justin Klawans, Chas Newkey-Burden, Rafi Schwartz, Peter Weber and Kari Wilkin, with illustrations by Stephen Kelly and Julia Wytrazek.