Good morning, and welcome to The Epoch Times News Brief for Thursday, Dec. 5, 2024. I’m Bill Thomas, we have some compelling stories to share with you right now, and here’s what’s going on.
The CEO of a leading health care firm is shot dead in Manhattan, the mayor of New York says he’s willing to change the city’s policy regarding illegal immigrants, and the winner of the final House race in this year’s general election has just been determined—we’ll tell you what it means.
Also, an embattled Trump nominee vows to stay in the fight, and the French government is in turmoil following a no-confidence vote.
UnitedHealthcare CEO Killed in Manhattan
The commissioner of the NYPD says that the CEO of UnitedHealthcare’s insurance unit, Brian Thompson, was shot and killed yesterday by a masked gunman outside of a hotel in New York City, and that it appears to be a “brazen, targeted attack.”She called the shooting “premeditated” and “preplanned,” and said the suspect waited for his intended target for several minutes before shooting Thompson multiple times in the back.
Following the incident, the suspect took off on foot, hopped onto an e-bike, and was last seen in Central Park. So far, he has not been identified or captured, and officials say the motive is not clear.
The NYPD described the suspect as a “light-skinned male” who was wearing a “cream-colored jacket” and a ski mask. Additionally, a pair of photos of the suspect were circulated online, including one showing him holding a gun with what appears to be a silencer.
As part of their investigation, law enforcement officials say they’re now interviewing family members, UnitedHealth employees, and others in Minnesota, where the company is based.
You should know that a few years ago, the victim took over as the leader of the company’s insurance unit, and prior to that, he was in charge of the company’s Medicaid and Medicare division. Additionally, Thompson’s wife told NBC News that he had recently been receiving a number of threats.
By the way, UnitedHealthcare is a part of UnitedHealth Group, and yesterday, the company was hosting its investor day in Manhattan the day the killing took place.
New York Mayor Seeks to Change Sanctuary Law
New York City Mayor Eric Adams now says he wants to reform the city’s sanctuary law in an effort to allow police officers to assist federal agents in deporting criminal immigrants. Adams also said that he’ll soon meet with Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, to discuss the issue.Adams said he wants to find out what Homan’s plans are and where they can find common ground, and that he believes they can work together to address the problem.
In case you’re not aware, Homan is a former acting director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). He’s known for his advocacy of enforcing border security and deporting illegal immigrants, particularly criminals and those who have been issued a deportation order by a federal judge.
The mayor said that he’s “open to anything to get criminals” out of New York City, and he emphasized his belief in the need to modify the current laws dealing with the problem.
So you know, sanctuary laws prevent police and city employees from cooperating with many ICE efforts, and in the past, Adams has expressed frustration with being unable to deport illegal immigrants who commit crimes.
However, you should know that previously, Adams has opposed the mass deportations that both Trump and Homan have promised, and that New York City has already spent more than $6 billion on more than 200,000 recently arrived illegal immigrants.
House Republicans Will Have 3-Seat Majority After Final Race Called
Republicans will now have 220 seats in the House of Representatives when the 119th Congress convenes next month, compared to 215 for the Democrats. The House majority will be razor-thin, at just three seats, a decline from five seats after 2022’s midterm election.Yesterday, the last remaining undecided election for the U.S. House of Representatives was called in favor of a Democrat in the San Francisco Bay area of California, Adam Gray, who flipped a seat when he defeated Republican Rep. John Duarte by 187 votes.
In a few races, the differences between candidates were hundreds of votes, and they remained too close to call until all of the recounts and legal proceedings were completed yesterday.
So you know, Democrats also recently flipped another GOP-held seat in California, this one in the Los Angeles area, when that race’s Democratic nominee, lawyer Derek Tran, defeated two-term Rep. Michelle Steel (R-Calif.) by a narrow margin of 613 votes.
Meanwhile, in Iowa’s First Congressional District, two-term Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks defeated Democratic nominee Christina Bohannan by 798 votes.
By the way, despite their advantage, Republicans will not begin next year’s Congress with a full majority. Several members of the conference have been selected by President-elect Donald Trump for executive branch positions, and they’ll have to resign their seats in the House in order to assume them.
However, it’s highly likely that the special elections to fill these vacancies will yield Republican winners, given their electoral history.
Trump Defense Nominee Hegseth Says He Won’t Back Down
Fox News host Pete Hegseth is vowing to remain in contention to be Trump’s secretary of defense in the face of increasing scrutiny from a number of Republican senators.To refresh your memory, the president-elect chose Hegseth, who’s a former Army National Guard officer and the former director of several veterans groups, to lead the Pentagon. However, a number of new allegations are threatening his nomination.
Yesterday on X, Hegseth refuted those allegations, saying that they’re attempts to smear him with fake, anonymous sources. He said that “the Left is afraid of disrupters and change agents,” like both himself and Trump, and that “our warriors never back down, & neither will I.”
So you know, the allegations include a 2017 police report from a city in California that details an alleged assault, as well as a recent media report that claims he was drinking at work during his time at Fox News.
Additionally, earlier this week, The New Yorker cited a whistleblower report and other documents that alleged Hegseth was drinking at work-related events, behaving inappropriately around female staffers, and mismanaging finances when he was leading one veterans group.
You should know that a senior adviser who worked with Hegseth at the veterans group told the New York Post that the claims in The New Yorker article are “not reflective” of Hegseth, and The Epoch Times has not been able to independently verify those claims.
Meanwhile, earlier this week, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who’s considered a longtime foreign policy hawk, called some of the reports “disturbing,” while Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said he’d wait until Hegseth’s confirmation hearing to address the issues.
French Government Ousted in No-Confidence Vote
Yesterday, France’s government was ousted when its National Assembly passed the no-confidence motion by a significant margin, and this is the first time in six decades that a government of the Fifth Republic has fallen in such fashion.The result removed Michel Barnier from his role as prime minister, only a few months after French President Emmanuel Macron appointed him to the position.
So you know, the former prime minister has been facing pushback due to a proposed financial plan aimed at curbing France’s budget deficit, which he said will not magically disappear if he’s voted out of office.
In an unusual turn of events, both the left and right united in their efforts to topple the government, and they accused the prime minister of failing to address the needs of the country’s citizens while imposing austerity measures.
Now that the Barnier government has fallen, Macron must appoint a new prime minister. However, the divided Parliament will still have the same fractured makeup, and no new legislative elections can be held until next summer at the earliest.
The move is expected to rattle the financial markets and further damage the already fraught economic situation in the eurozone’s second-biggest economy.
And now, it looks like our time is just about up for today, so we’re going to call it a wrap for the Thursday edition of The Epoch Times News Brief.
Don’t forget the News Brief Motto: We’re portable, affordable, and always on-demand.
And finally, as we do each and every day on this program, we wrap everything up with a very notable quote, and this timely one comes to us from American humorist and writer Sam Levenson, who said: “Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.”
And now, I must be going, so for all of us here at The Epoch Times News Brief, I’m Bill Thomas.
The Epoch Times News Brief program is written each day by David Ross.
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Enjoy the remainder of your day, and we’ll see you right back here next time for another edition of The Epoch Times News Brief.
For now, let’s all continue to watch out for one another, and have an absolutely superb day today. Bye for now.
