The Senate voted on Wednesday to confirm former Rep. Lee Zeldin to head the government's leading agency on environmental rules and regulations.
President Donald Trump tapped Zeldin, who previously served as a congressman from New York's 1st Congressional District from 2015 to 2023, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under his administration. During his tenure in Congress, Zeldin, an Army Reserve lieutenant colonel, launched a campaign for governor in New York, when he trailed only five percentage points in the largely Democratic state.
Zeldin underwent a confirmation hearing earlier this month, when he was questioned on climate change by members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
In a 56 to 42 vote on Wednesday, the senate confirmed Zeldin to head the EPA in a final floor vote on his nomination.
If confirmed on Wednesday, Zeldin will head the agency that surveys environmental issues, provides assistance to wide-ranging environmental projects, and establishes rules that align with the administration's views on environmental protection and climate change.
During his confirmation hearing, Zeldin pledged that if confirmed, he would "foster a collaborative culture within the agency, supporting career staff who have dedicated themselves to this mission. I strongly believe we have a moral responsibility to be good stewards of our environment for generations to come."
The latest round of voting comes as Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., continues to advance the confirmation process to push through Trump's Cabinet nominees.
The NFL team that wins the Super Bowl at the end of the season is handed the Vince Lombardi Trophy.
Lombardi was the head coach of the Green Bay Packers when he led the team to two straight victories over the American Football League champions – the Kansas City Chiefs and Oakland Raiders, respectively. It wasn’t until the third NFL-AFL championship game that the term Super Bowl was used.
Lombardi’s Packers were one of the most dominant teams of the era. He had led Green Bay to three other NFL championships before the idea of an NFL vs. AFL was conceived.
Because of the history, the Super Bowl trophy was named after Lombardi. It’s one of the most prestigious trophies in sports, next to Lord Stanley’s Cup and the FIFA World Cup Trophy.
Legendary head coach Bill Belichick discussed the Super Bowl with Jim Gray on the "Let’s Go!" podcast. He told Gray it was the players who really deserve the credit for the Super Bowl victory. The legendary sportscaster reminded Belichick that it was Lombardi who the trophy was named for and not Bart Starr, who was the MVP of the first two games.
"Maybe they should name it the Brady Trophy," Belichick joked, referencing New England Patriots legend Tom Brady. "He won seven of them."
Belichick said teams can’t win without good players. He said he learned that when he was a defensive coordinator under Bill Parcells with the New York Giants and when he helped put together a tremendous Hall of Fame defense with the Patriots.
"You can't win games without good players. I don't care who the coach is. It's impossible. You can't win without good players," he said. "I found that out when I had (Lawrence) Taylor, (Carl) Banks, Harry Carson, Jim Burt, Everson Walls, all those guys with the Giants.
"Same thing when we got good at Cleveland and at New England it’s (Willie) McGinest, it's (Mike) Vrabel, it's (Tedy) Bruschi, it's Corey Dillon, it's Randy Moss, Troy Brown, Lawyer Malloy, Ty Law, Rodney Harrison. Those are guys that won the games, man. I didn't make any tackles. I didn't make any kicks. That was (Adam) Vinatieri, made that kick in four inches of snow."
Brady and Belichick won six Super Bowl titles together with the Patriots. The star quarterback then won one more with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
The Philadelphia Eagles earned a trip to the Super Bowl, and many of the city's residents have had to pay a steep price for the ensuing chaos.
A 20-year-old man was shot during chaotic incidents that ensued in the city following the team's NFC championship victory over the Washington Commanders last Sunday. An 18-year-old suspect named Amre Wright has since been taken into custody, according to FOX 29.
The shooting is just one of many incidents that involved harm to a local. The Philadelphia Police Department is investigating one stabbing, two shootings, one act of vandalism and a vehicle striking several pedestrians, per FOX 29. So far, a total of 30 adults and one juvenile were cited for Disorderly Conduct or Failure to Disperse, and three adults were charged.
The individuals who have been charged reportedly include 34-year-old Tramayne Davis-Blockson, who was arrested and charged with Aggravated Assault, Possession of an Instrument of Crime and Recklessly Endangering Another Person in connection to a stabbing; and 32-year-old Jose Moya and 44-year-old Eugene Dennis, who were both charged with aggravated assault in connection to the assault of a police officer.
Additionally, a 26-year-old woman was reportedly taken into custody after striking eight pedestrians in the street, and thePhiladelphia District Attorney's Office was reportedly vandalized with a shattered front glass door and two cracked glass windows.
A Temple University student even died after climbing up a flag pole and falling to his death. Tyler Sabapathy, 18, was a student and gymnast from Toronto, Canada with more than 120 medals in provincial, regional and international competitions. He attempted to climb a flag pole in the city in celebration of the team's win, and was taken to the hospital and was in very critical condition before he eventually died.
Eagles fans have been the subject of national scrutiny throughout the team's playoff run this season.
The fanbase garnered negative national attention after one of their own, New Jersey man Ryan Caldwell, was seen in a viral video verbally berating a woman with vulgar slurs during the team's first playoff game against the Green Bay Packers on Jan. 12. Caldwell was later fired from his job and released a statement apologizing for his actions.
Los Angeles Rams defensive end Jared Verse says Eagles fans hurled snowballs at him after his team's divisional round playoff loss in Philadelphia on Jan. 19. Verse made comments about "hating" the fans to reporters in the week leading up to the game.
Amidst the widespread criticism, former Dallas Cowboys star linebacker DeMarcus Ware told Fox News Digital that Eagles fans once hurled snowballs stuffed with batteries at his mother during a game his rookie year in 2005.
"My rookie season when my mom was in the stands, I told her not to wear my jersey, and she was in the front row, and we're up there in Philly. They were putting batteries in snowballs and throwing them, and one of them hit my mom," Ware said. "I turned around at the time, and I didn't care about football anymore. I wanted to go get the guy who was in the stands. But I didn't."
Tavia Hunt, the wife of Kansas City Chiefs CEO Clark Hunt, has entered the conversations regarding "referee favoritism" ahead of Super Bowl LIX.
NFL referees calling games in favor of the Chiefs has been a subject of debate among football fans and experts alike, but Hunt doesn’t want to hear any of it.
She posted on Instagram following her Chiefs’ 32-29 win over the Buffalo Bills to secure three straight AFC Championships, and discussed her initial emotions about the team’s success.
"Overwhelmed," she wrote. "That’s the word that comes to mind when we reflect on the lavish grace, favor, and faithfulness of God. I’ve said it before: I don’t think God cares about football, but He cares deeply about people."
Hunt would go on to reflect on the struggles the team had over a decade ago, bringing up the 2012 season where they went 2-14. But it ultimately led to the decision to hire head coach Andy Reid, and the rest is history as he built a winning program.
Now, the Chiefs are on the cusp of NFL history, as they could become the first team ever to win three straight Super Bowls.
But Hunt added "hard work, belief, and purpose" are the reasons why – not a conspiracy that referees favor them during this playoff run.
"By God’s grace we’ve had success, but it’s not ‘black magic’ or referee favoritism (look at the stats on this) – it’s lots of hard work, belief, and purpose. Patrick Mahomes leads with humility and puts God first."
Hunt has been very vocal about her faith, and mentioned others like Harrison Butker, Drue Tranquill, Chris Jones, Nick Bolton and more doing so as well.
The Chiefs will be heading to New Orleans to face the Philadelphia Eagles once again in the "Big Game," as this current streak began with a Super Bowl LVII win over them in Arizona two seasons ago.
DORAL, Fla. — The House GOP’s three-day annual retreat has ended without public progress on Republicans’ budget reconciliation plans, and some lawmakers are getting nervous about falling behind schedule.
"After two days at our House Republican winter retreat, we still do not have a plan on budget reconciliation and our Speaker and his team have not offered one," Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., wrote on X Wednesday morning.
"Basically, just get started doing something. We have only been presented with the same policy and budget cut proposals that we have been presented with for a month now at all our meetings and at a full Saturday conference meeting earlier this month."
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters on Tuesday that an initial "blueprint" would be "prepared by tomorrow, by the time we leave."
The budget reconciliation process allows the majority party in the House and Senate, in this case Republicans, to pass a broad-ranging conservative policy overhaul, provided the contents are relevant to the budget and other fiscal matters. It does so by lowering the threshold for passage in the Senate from 60 votes to 51.
It starts with a budget resolution that includes instructions for specific committees to work toward changes to fiscal policy law under their respective jurisdictions, including topline numbers.
When asked by reporters about whether he expects those broad toplines to emerge on Wednesday morning, Johnson said, "We'll be getting to that final number. What we've emphasized, with our group, is that we want to have some flexibility in the how the instructions are given to the committees."
"Stay tuned for the number. It will be substantial, because it has to be. I mean, we have a $36 trillion federal debt, and we're committing that in this process. Anything we do is going to be deficit neutral at least or deficit-reducing," he said.
Johnson said later in the press conference, "The objective is to, by the time we leave here today, to have a blueprint that will inform the budget committee for when they work on that budget resolution."
The details and parameters of that blueprint are not immediately clear.
By Wednesday afternoon, however, a majority of lawmakers who were staying at President Donald Trump’s golf resort in Doral, Florida left without a sense of their next steps.
"I think the general feeling is leadership needs to make a play call and start executing on it," one House GOP lawmaker told Fox News Digital.
Asked if they were optimistic about leaders making that call soon, the lawmaker said, "They better if they want to get this done."
Another House Republican said the meetings were "productive" but with a caveat — "as long as leadership takes our input, ideas and concerns seriously."
Other GOP lawmakers signaled they were exasperated by weeks of "listening sessions" among Republicans that have not led to specific directives from House leaders.
But Johnson was confident that the House Budget Committee would have its "blueprint" to work from when Congress is back "when we return to the hill" – which is next week.
"That's going to happen, and we'll get it through the whole chamber, and we'll be voting on that by late February," he said.
A declassified World War II-era CIA guide to “simple sabotage” is currently one of the most popular open source books on the internet. The book, called “Simple Sabotage Field Manual,” was declassified in 2008 by the CIA and “describes ways to train normal people to be purposefully annoying telephone operators, dysfunctional train conductors, befuddling middle managers, blundering factory workers, unruly movie theater patrons, and so on. In other words, teaching people to do their jobs badly.”
Over the last week, the guide has surged to become the 5th-most-accessed book on Project Gutenberg, an open source repository of free and public domain ebooks. It is also the fifth most popular ebook on the site over the last 30 days, having been accessed nearly 60,000 times over the last month (just behind Romeo and Juliet).
“Sabotage varies from highly technical coup de main acts that require detailed planning and the use of specially-trained operatives, to innumerable simple acts which the ordinary individual citizen-saboteur can perform,” the guide begins. “Simple sabotage does not require specially prepared tools or equipment; it is executed by an ordinary citizen who may or may not act individually and without the necessity for active connection with an organized group; and it is carried out in such a way as to involve a minimum danger of injury, detection, and reprisal.”
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The guide’s intro was written by William “Wild Bill” Donovan, who was the head of the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, which later became the CIA. The motivating factor for writing the guide, according to a passage within it, is that citizen saboteurs were highly effective at resisting the Nazis during World War II, and the Office of Strategic Services wanted to detail other ways sabotage could be done: “Acts of simple sabotage are occurring throughout Europe. An effort should be made to add to their efficiency, lessen their detectability, and increase their number,” the guide states. “Widespread practice of simple sabotage will harass and demoralize enemy administrators and police,” the guide states, adding that citizens often undertake acts of sabotage not for their own immediate personal gain, but to resist “particularly obnoxious decrees.”
Because it was written during active wartime, the book includes various suggestions for causing physical violence and destruction, such as starting fires, flooding warehouses, breaking tools, etc. But it also includes many suggestions for how to just generally be annoying within a bureaucracy or office setting. Simple sabotage ideas include:
“Insist on doing everything through ‘channels.’ Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.”
“Make ‘speeches.’ Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your ‘points’ by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate ‘patriotic’ comments.”
“Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.”
“Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.”
“‘Misunderstand’ orders. Ask endless questions or engage in long correspondence about such orders. Quibble over them when you can.”
“In making work assignments, always sign out the unimportant jobs first. See that the important jobs are assigned to inefficient workers of poor machines.”
“To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient workers; complain unjustly about their work.”
“Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.”
“Multiply paperwork in plausible ways.”
“Make mistakes in quantities of material when you are copying orders. Confuse similar names. Use wrong addresses.”
“Work slowly. Think out ways to increase the number of movements necessary on your job”
“Pretend that instructions are hard to understand, and ask to have them repeated more than once. Or pretend that you are particularly anxious to do your work, and pester the foreman with unnecessary questions.”
“Snarl up administration in every possible way. Fill out forms illegibly so that they will have to be done over; make mistakes or omit requested information in forms.”
The guide also suggests “general devices for lowering morale and creating confusion,” which include “Report imaginary spies or danger to the Gestapo or police,” “act stupid,” “Be as irritable and quarrelsome as possible without getting yourself into trouble,” “Stop all conversation when axis nationals or quislings enter a cafe,” “Cry and sob hysterically at every occasion, especially when confronted by government clerks.”
Together, the wealthy couple have seven children from previous marriages.
On Wednesday, Cheryl Hines accompanied her husband, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., during his first Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing.
Kennedy is President Donald Trump's nominee for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Hines, whom he married in 2014, had a long run as Cheryl David on HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm."
As of 2023, Hines' and Kennedy's combined net worth is valued at about $15 million, according to a Forbes analysis of the couple's earnings, properties, and debt.
Over the past few years, the pair has weathered several public storms, from Kennedy's vaccine skepticism to infidelity rumors.
Here's how a Hollywood actor became a part of the Kennedy family.
Hines was an assistant to director Rob Reiner
Originally from Florida, Hines studied theater at the University of Central Florida but had to change her major to radio and television production because acting in plays conflicted with her part-time job, she told the college's The Charge in 2022.
After appearing in the 1993 TV show "Swamp Thing," she moved to Los Angeles. She worked for Rob Reiner, the actor and director behind "The Princess Bride," "When Harry Met Sally," and other hits, according to The Los Angeles Times.
Hines appeared in episodes of "Unsolved Mysteries" and "The Wayans Bros." in the late 1990s before landing her big break on "Curb Your Enthusiasm." She played Cheryl David, the often-exasperated wife (later ex-wife) of Larry David.
While working on over 100 episodes of "Curb," Hines appeared on shows such as "The Flight Attendant," "The Conners," and "Fresh Off the Boat." She also had a role in the movie "Waitress," among others.
Hines met Kennedy through her "Curb" co-star
In 2002, Hines married Paul Young. Four years later, the couple's daughter Catherine Rose Young was born. Hines and Young filed for divorce in 2010.
Young and Hines remained friends, continuing to celebrate Thanksgiving together.
Larry David helped introduce Hines and Kennedy in 2004 at a ski event fundraiser in Banff, Alberta. David knew Kennedy through his former wife, climate activist Laurie David, The Hollywood Reporter reported in 2024.
Both Kennedy and Hines were married to other people at the time but started dating in 2010. Kennedy is 12 years older than Hines, who turned 59 in September 2024.
In 2014, the couple wed at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. Kennedy has six children from previous marriages to Emily Ruth Black and Mary Kathleen Richardson.
When Hines got a star on Hollywood Boulevard, she joked that all three of her husbands were there — Kennedy, Young, and David — Fox News reported in 2018.
Hines has said she and Kennedy disagree about politics sometimes
Hines has openly voiced her disapproval of Trump. In August, she told The Hollywood Reporter about her reaction when Trump was elected in 2016.
"Even when Trump was elected, I had to really have a long talk with myself because I thought, 'I'm not going to make it through these four years,'" Hines told THR.
Despite her opinion of Trump, she's accompanied her husband to multiple political events lately including his first Senate confirmation hearing, Inauguration Day, and his "Make America Healthy Again Ball."
In the past, Hines has said she doesn't always agree with her husband's political perspective. In 2022, Kennedy compared US vaccination policies to Nazi rule, implying that Anne Frank had more freedom in hiding than present-day Americans.
Soon after his remark, Hines wrote on X "My husband's opinions are not a reflection of my own. While we love each other, we differ on many current issues." Kennedy apologized for his remarks soon after.
In October 2024, People reported that a source close to Hines said she was considering divorcing Kennedy after reports came out of his alleged sexting affair with New York Magazine correspondent Olivia Nuzzi.
"She's been talking about filing for divorce, but he's begging her not to file," the source told People. A rep for Kennedy said he only met Nuzzi once.
Last year I reviewed the ViewFinity S9, Samsung’s 5K monitor that competes directly with . In my own words, “the ViewFinity S9’s big selling point is price.” But what about the Studio Display? Is it still a good monitor two years after its launch? Is it worth the price? That’s what I’ve been trying to find out for the last few months.
Gaming on Vision Pro isn’t yet the device’s strong suit, but one recent launch should start to change that. Gamers will now find a massive expansion of new games available—more than 2,000 total—thanks to NVIDIA GeForce NOW coming to visionOS.
The drubbing of the Michelle Yeoh-led streaming film now holds a dubious title—one that reflects something much more interesting than simple schadenfreude.