Neither Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi nor President Trump has any real competitor for influence on their side. Each sees themselves as a master dealmaker. Both run in coastal-elite circles.
The bottom line: Their chilly relationship is now the most consequential in American public life.
In an interview to air on NBC's "Today," co-anchor Savannah Guthrie asks Nancy Pelosi, who will become House speaker at around 1:30 pm Thursday: "Do you believe the special counsel should honor and observe the Department of Justice guidance that states a sitting president cannot be indicted?"
The big picture: Pelosi replied, according to an excerpt from NBC: "No, I mean I don't think — I do not think that that is conclusive. No, I do not." With that response, she becomes the highest ranking official to suggest President Trump could be indicted while in office.
Most Americans think the economy is growing now, but they're worried that a recession could be coming this year, according to a new Axios/SurveyMonkey poll.
Between the lines: Democrats are more pessimistic than Republicans and independents, but majorities across the board say a recession could happen, including a slight majority of Republicans. That suggests an emerging economic anxiety that President Trump hasn't had to deal with until now.
The private sector added 271,000 jobs in December, according to ADP's national employment report released on Thursday — significantly more than the 178,000 economists expected.
Why it matters: It's good news ahead of Friday’s jobs report. November's miss in ADP's report, coupled with the Labor Department's weaker-than-expected payrolls in November, stoked concerns that job growth was beginning to retreat from its strong pace. "At the current pace of job growth, low unemployment will get even lower," Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said in the release.
Bristol-Myers Squibb is acquiring Celgene in a stock-and-cash deal worth $74 billion, creating a pharmaceutical giant with roughly $37 billion in annual drug sales.
Why it matters: This is one of the largest drug company buyouts ever. It combines two firms that are still very profitable, but Celgene in particular has struggled to evolve over the past few years as its top product, the blood cancer drug Revlimid, loses patent protection.
While Apple grabbed headlines after the tech giant warned of a revenue miss thanks to the Chinese market, they're not the only company facing the consequences of China's economic slowdown and its ongoing trade war with the U.S., Bloomberg reports.
The big picture: From coffee suppliers to delivery giants, major corporations are struggling to sell in the world's second-largest economy. FedEx cited trade tensions between the U.S. and China as a primary culprit in pulling back its profit estimates in late December. And, despite Starbucks' rapid expansion in China, the company said long-term sales growth there could be as low as 1% — compared to 3% to 4% in the U.S.
Go deeper: Starbucks stares down a buzzy, homegrown Chinese competitor
China's space agency said on Thursday that it landed a probe, Chang'e-4, on the far side of the moon for the first time in history, reports the New York Times.
Why it matters: China's space program is a late bloomer, but its recent achievements indicate that it's quickly catching up to the U.S., marking a potential "challenge ... for supremacy in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and other fields," per the Times.
A job posting by Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee says it all about the party's new reality beginning today. The committee is seeking an Investigative Counsel — "an attorney with several years of investigative or litigation experience," according to the listing on Tom Manatos Jobs, a popular Capitol Hill jobs board.
Between the lines: "Litigation experience" is at least partly in anticipation of the possibility of impeachment proceedings, a Hill source tells me.
Look at this slide in how activist Congress was in 2010 and 2018 —both second years of presidential terms, with the president's party controlling both chambers.
What's happened: Dr. Robert Browning, executive director of the C-SPAN archives and a Purdue University professor, found in his end-of-year congressional statistics that Congress is meeting less, taking fewer votes and passing fewer laws.
Scientists are seeing signs that global weather patterns toward the latter half of January and into February may shift significantly to usher in severe winter weather for parts of the U.S. and Europe.
How it works: The possible changes are being triggered by a sudden and drastic warming of the air in the stratosphere, some 100,000 feet above the Arctic, and by a resulting disruption of the polar vortex — an area of low pressure at high altitudes near the pole that, when disrupted, can wobble like a spinning top and send cold air to the south. In this case, it could split into three pieces, and those pieces would determine who gets hit the hardest.
