a fortunately After delay, Trump signs agreement with Biden White House to begin formal transition handoffSafety advocates fear Trump will drop long-sought rules to reduce fatal truck crashes

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It was supposed to be the gender-gap election. In Iowa, pollster Ann Selzer had Vice President Kamala Harris beating former president Donald Trump by more than 20 points among women, which wouldn't have been that far off the 15-point margin President Joe Biden won them by in 2020 . And Seltzer's margin was largely in line with the predictions of news outlets—with CBS reporting 12 points, NBC 16, and USA Today 17. But all of these prognostications turned out to be horribly wrong. The overall gender gap actually narrowed in 2024, with just 53 percent of women choosing Harris and 45 percent favoring Trump. But focusing on gender alone obscures a bigger picture, a story that not only explains the most recent election, but the leftward drift of the Democratic Party generally, and possibly future electorates to come. While women overall moved towards Trump, his support among unmarried women fell from 46 percent in 2020 to just 38 percent in 2024. He was saved by winning married women, extending his lead among married men, and flipping unmarried men to his side, 49 to 47 percent. By holding his ground among married women and adding to his lead among married men, Trump was able to expand his lead among all married voters from just seven points in 2020 to 13 points in 2024. Donald Trump is president thanks to the votes of married Americans. This was the marriage-gap election. As strong as Trump was among married Americans, and despite his gains among unmarried men, the exit polls did contain some troubling news for the Republican Party . For the first time ever, unmarried women outnumbered married women at the polls. Not only are unmarried women the nation's fastest-growing voting demographic, they are also the only demographic moving further to the Left. Unless Trump does something to stop our nation's falling marriage rate, the Left-leaning politics of unmarried women will only grow in strength at the ballot box. From the first census of the United States in 1790 through 1960, about 80 percent of households were led by a married couple. That percentage started falling in the 1960s. It dipped below 50 percent in 2010, and has fallen to near 45 percent today. Culture and technology are both culprits in the decline of marriage, but public policy is as well. While the number of households receiving direct cash benefits through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program has waned, the percentage of working-class families that use other means-tested safety-net programs—like Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, Food Stamps, and Section 8 housing—has grown dramatically. All together, federal and state governments spend over $1 trillion a year on programs that punish marriage through means-testing. It is exactly among these families that marriage has declined the most. The federal government is perfectly capable of ending the marriage penalties built into its programs. Another reason marriage rates have fallen among the working class is the relative decline in wages for non-college educated men. While wages for all American workers have risen since 1970, women and college-educated men have benefited the most. The bottom 10 percent of male earners saw their wages decline more than 7 percent . Since women tend to seek men who make as much or more than they do, this decline in low-skill male wages means fewer men will be considered marriage-eligible by working women who have seen their income rise. The answer to this problem is obviously not lower pay or less work for women, but rather policies that boost the wages of lower-skilled male workers. Trump's efforts to secure the border and deport illegal immigrants will help do that. But even more can be achieved. Trump needs to make America a country that builds again. That means working with Congress on real permitting reform, including a thorough rewrite of the National Environmental Policy Act, which adds costs, delays, and uncertainty to every infrastructure project in the country that requires federal-agency approval. More construction projects means more construction jobs and therefore higher pay for more men. More men with higher-paying jobs means more marriages. More marriages means more married women voting Republican and in turn fewer unmarried women voting for Democrats . Partisan electoral advantage is not the primary reason Republicans should build an agenda around addressing the decline of marriage in the United States, however. Marriage is good in itself. It benefits not just husband and wife, not just the children of a stable marriage, but entire communities and ultimately the whole country. To reverse rising income inequality, the disintegration of civil society, and falling birth rates—all issues rooted in the decline of marriage—we must change course on public policy. Fortunately, it appears Trump intends on doing exactly that. Conn Carroll is commentary editor for Washington Examiner. He is the author of Sex and the Citizen: How the Assault on Marriage is Destroying Democracy. The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.Saudi 2025 budget sees lower deficit on spending trims

CHATHAM, N.J. (AP) — That buzzing coming out of New Jersey? It’s unclear if it’s drones or something else, but for sure the nighttime sightings are producing tons of talk, a raft of conspiracy theories and craned necks looking skyward. Cropping up on local news and social media sites around Thanksgiving, reported over New Jersey has reached incredible heights. This week seems to have begun a new, higher-profile chapter: (but so far not getting) explanations from federal and state authorities about what’s behind them. Gov. Phil Murphy asking for answers. New Jersey’s new senator, Andy Kim, spent Thursday night on a drone hunt in rural northern New Jersey, and posted about it on X. But perhaps the most fantastic development is the dizzying proliferation of conspiracies — none of which has been confirmed or suggested by federal and state officials who say they’re looking into what’s happening. It has become shorthand to refer to the flying machines as drones, but there are questions about whether what people are seeing are unmanned aircraft or something else. Some theorize the drones came from an Iranian mothership. Others think they are the Secret Service making sure President-elect Donald Trump’s Bedminster property is secure. Others worry about China. The deep state. And on. In the face of uncertainty, people have done what they do in 2024: Create a social media group. The Facebook page, , has nearly 44,000 members, up from 39,000 late Thursday. People are posting their photo and video sightings, and the online commenters take it from there. One video shows a whitish light flying in a darkened sky, and one commenter concludes it’s otherworldly. “Straight up orbs,” the person says. Others weigh in to say it’s a plane or maybe a satellite. Another group called for hunting the drones literally, shooting them down like turkeys. (Do not shoot at anything in the sky, experts warn.) Trisha Bushey, 48, of Lebanon Township, New Jersey, lives near Round Valley Reservoir where there have been numerous sightings. She said she first posted photos online last month wondering what the objects were and became convinced they were drones when she saw how they moved and when her son showed her on a flight tracking site that no planes were around. Now she’s glued to the Mystery Drones page, she said. “I find myself — instead of Christmas shopping or cleaning my house — checking it,” she said. She doesn’t buy what the governor said, that Murphy told Biden on Friday that residents need answers. The federal Homeland Security Department and FBI also said in a joint statement they have no evidence that the sightings pose “a national security or public safety threat or have a foreign nexus.” “How can you say it’s not posing a threat if you don’t know what it is?” she said. “I think that’s why so many people are uneasy.” Then there’s the notion that people could misunderstand what they’re seeing. William Austin is the president of Warren County Community College, which has a drone technology degree program, and is coincidentally located in one of the sighting hotspots. Austin says he has looked at videos of purported drones and that airplanes are being misidentified as drones. He cited an optical effect called parallax, which is the apparent shift of an object when viewed from different perspectives. Austin encouraged people to download flight and drone tracker apps so they can better understand what they’re looking at. Nonetheless, people continue to come up with their own theories. “It represents the United States of America in 2024,” Austin said. “We’ve lost trust in our institutions, and we need it.” Federal officials echo Austin’s view that many of the sightings are piloted aircraft such as planes and helicopters being mistaken for drones, according to lawmakers and Murphy. That’s not really convincing for many, though, who are homing in on the sightings beyond just New Jersey and the East Coast, where others have reported seeing the objects. For Seph Divine, 34, another member of the drone hunting group who lives in Eugene, Oregon, it feels as if it’s up to citizen sleuths to solve the mystery. He said he tries to be a voice of reason, encouraging people to fact check their information, while also asking probing questions. “My main goal is I don’t want people to be caught up in the hysteria and I also want people to not just ignore it at the same time,” he said. “Whether or not it’s foreign military or some secret access program or something otherworldly, whatever it is, all I’m saying is it’s alarming that this is happening so suddenly and so consistently for hours at a time,” he added. ___ Associated Press reporter Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed to this report. Mike Catalini, The Associated PressTrudeau told Trump Americans would also suffer if tariffs are imposed, a Canadian minister says

Legal hurdles ahead for Google's forced sale of ChromeA majority of Supreme Court justices didn't seem convinced Monday that federal regulators misled companies before refusing to allow them to sell sweet-flavored vaping products following a surge in teen e-cigarette use. The conservative-majority court did raise questions about the Food and Drug Administration crackdown that included denials of more than a million nicotine products formulated to taste like fruit, dessert or candy. Teen vaping use has since dropped to its lowest level in a decade, but the agency could change its approach after the inauguration next month of President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to “save” vaping. Vape companies have long marketed their products as a way to help adults quit traditional cigarettes, and say the FDA changed its standards with little warning and blocked the sale of over a million new flavored products. Justice Elena Kagan, though, was skeptical. “I guess I’m not really seeing what the surprise is here,” she said. “You knew what the FDA’s point of view was ... that blueberry vapes are really problematic in terms of youth smoking." RELATED STORY | Supreme Court decision could have endless impact on transgender medical care The FDA was slow to regulate the now multibillion-dollar vaping market, and even years into the crackdown flavored vapes that are technically illegal nevertheless remain widely available. The agency says the companies were denied because they couldn't show flavored vapes had a net public benefit, as laid out in the law. It has approved some tobacco-flavored vapes, and recently allowed its first menthol-flavored electronic cigarettes for adult smokers after the company provided data showing the product was more helpful in quitting, Deputy Solicitor General Curtis Gannon said. The issue came before the high court when the agency appealed a decision from the conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals tossing out one of its denials. While other lower courts rebuffed vaping company lawsuits, the 5th Circuit sided with Dallas-based company Triton Distribution. The decision allowed the sale of e-juices like “Jimmy The Juice Man in Peachy Strawberry" and “Suicide Bunny Mother's Milk and Cookies” which are heated by an e-cigarette to create an inhalable aerosol. RELATED STORY | Could Democrats pressure Justice Sotomayor to step down for replacement? Justice Neil Gorsuch questioned whether the FDA process had given the companies a fair chance to make their claims, given that their businesses were at stake. Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh expressed concern about what recourse companies have if agencies issue misleading guidance, though he also elicited that the FDA wasn't required to issue the guidance it gave in the vaping case. “I'm trying to figure out what the legal error is here,” he said. The vape companies, he said, can reapply for sales authorization even if they don't win in court. Triton attorney Eric Heyer said that process would take so long that the company could be forced to close. The court has overall been skeptical of the power of federal regulators, including by striking down the so-called Chevron doctrine that had judges deferring to agencies' interpretation of the law. Justice Amy Coney Barrett questioned whether the vaping companies wanted the court to take that concept a step further. “It’s almost a reverse Chevron deference, except we're deferring to the applicant," she said. The court is expected to decide the case in the coming months.

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