NewsNation Chief Washington Anchor and On Balance host Leland Vittert was a foreign correspondent for four years in Jerusalem. He gives you an early look at tonight’s 7 p.m. ET show. Subscribe to War Notes here.  

Breaking today: The assassin who gunned down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City fled on a GPS-equipped “Citi Bike.”

• Lots to unpack on the show, including the almost immediate focus on accusations that UnitedHealthcare makes its money by denying care to the sick and dying — the CEO’s wife told NBC he was getting threats. 

Verdict watch: The Daniel Penny verdict could come at any minute. Today, the jury watched back testimony from the good Samaritan who restrained a crazed and threatening homeless man on the New York City subway.

• Read more about the “prosecutor” in the case, Dafna Yoran, here. 
• Fair question: Who in their right mind would ever help anyone on the subway again?
• If Yoran and her boss, Alvin Bragg, want to fight for restorative justice, fine, but they have to provide peace and safety first. 

Scalp Hunting 

We told you over and over there was more to come on Pete Hegseth — and the betting markets now give his confirmation less than a 20% chance. 

• Hegseth’s answer about his drinking on “The Megyn Kelly Show” earlier today might cause more problems than it solves.
• Lifeline: The Kelly question comes after an NBC News report citing ten anonymous sources who said that Hegseth has/had a drinking problem and came on the air at Fox News while intoxicated.
  • Hegseth’s colleagues fired back with multiple on-the-record statements vociferously disputing the accusations.
    • The NBC report (and NBC’s lack of basic journalistic integrity) gives Hegseth something to fight over …

• Hegseth told Kelly that he’s being “Kavanaughed,” referring to the allegations made against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his nomination process. 
• “I’ve faced fire before,” Hegseth wrote in The Wall Street Journal today. 

We told you from the beginning that Gaetz and Hegseth would face a very, very difficult time — not just because of their personal indiscretions and character — but because of their lack of experience to lead major organizations. 

BE SMART: The issue isn’t whether Hegseth gets confirmed or not — it’s what the fight means for the rest of Trump’s picks.

• Hegseth said today that Trump told him to “keep fighting” — duh — the longer Hegseth fights, the more time reporters spend chasing him around Congress.
  • In the meantime, Trump’s nominees for other positions in his Cabinet, such as Kristi Noem and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., get passes and make Kash Patel suddenly seem normal — I could go on. 

The thoroughly loathsome “Lincoln Project” speaks for much of the media when it says, “We are going to fight these appointments. Every one of them.”

RFK Jr. might be next: The Free Press points out that much of what RFK Jr. gets shellacked for preaching in the United States is conventional wisdom in Europe.

Watch tonight: Chris Cillizza will be on how many scalps are enough – and why Trump wants Hegseth to keep fighting even if he is never going to make it to a Senate hearing. 

Is the Anti-Trump Movement Dying?

The Beltway media still lives in the 2017 world of attacking Trump no matter what. They still believe that much of America is with them — and a lot of Democrats on cable news are with them.

• BUT: Across America, the reflexively anti-Trump movement is dying, and as usual, the Beltway media is the last to figure it out. 
• Even Jimmy Kimmel understands that Gavin Newsom’s brand of Trump-proofing California is worthy of a skit. 
• James Clyburn, the famously anti-Trump congressman, encouraged President Joe Biden to pardon Trump.
• Chicago residents now wear MAGA shirts and hats to City Council meetings to berate the ultra-progressive mayor – it’s worth a watch! 

New York City Mayor Eric Adams is now all in on deportation. To be fair, he’s also all in on getting the Trump Department of Justice to drop the indictments against himself.

Bro Culture

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, you might have missed the wildest New York Times op-ed I’ve ever read: “How Our Messed-Up Dating Culture Leads to Loneliness, Anger and Donald Trump,” by Sarah Bernstein.

• My favorite paragraph:
  • “In 2017 researchers at the University of Utah found that in unbalanced populations, ‘the more common sex must cater to the preferences of the rarer sex in order to acquire a mate.’ This could explain why today social media is rife with male fantasies, from beautiful, submissive tradwives to the hyperfeminine sorority pledges of ‘Bama Rush.’ It could also explain why, alongside popular hashtags like #marryup and #richmen, another trending topic for women is celibacy.”

• Watch the other side from Scott Galloway here. 
• What I am thinking: Maybe the college-educated women now complaining there aren’t good men to date should have spoken up in all the college classes that demonized men who act like men. 

End of the Trans Movement? 

Today, the transgender rights movement jumped the shark — well, actually last night — when the ACLU lawyer poised to argue before the Supreme Court tried launching this trial balloon on CNN.

• Best line: 2-year-olds are able to know they are girls trapped in a “boy’s” body … wow. 

It’s not just the ACLU. The Biden administration argued today against the Tennessee law that bans “gender-affirming” hormone treatment for anybody under 18 years of age. 

• Hold my beer: If 2-year-olds knowing that they are the wrong sex isn’t enough …
  • Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson compared restricting the castration of kids to restricting the interracial marriage of adults.
    • Flashback: She is the same person who couldn’t or wouldn’t define a woman in her confirmation hearings. 

Pro tip: A softball interview with Jake Tapper doesn’t prepare you for Justice Samuel Alito. Watch more here.

• Alarm bells: Slate says it’s about so much more, writing, “Everyone’s freedom to reject gender stereotypes without fear of state oppression is at stake.”

Common sense: The chemical castration of 9-year-olds is a bad idea. 

Jumping the shark: The girls in boys’ sports crew demand the rest of us change our values so they can have their rights. It’s the opposite of the civil rights or gay rights movements, which demanded equal rights for people with the same values. 

• Today, the Biden administration and ACLU argued that protecting kids from life-altering hormone therapy is bigoted — that doesn’t fly. 

The Cincinnati Bridge

You haven’t heard of the massive bridge in Cincinnati that will be closed for months, maybe years, because of a massive fire that possibly started from a homeless encampment — that’s because the bridge isn’t on I-95 in the Democratic stronghold of Philadelphia. 

• When a fire consumed that bridge in Philadelphia, President Biden promised all hands on deck and 12 days later attended the reopening celebration. 

But no: Nobody covered the Big Mac Bridge fire on November 1, even though it burned hot enough to warp the steel supports. 

No Answers: A month later, the fire department can’t figure out why the fire started. 

The I-471 bridge carries not only rush hour traffic between Cincinnati and the bedroom communities of Kentucky but massive amounts of truck and freight traffic. 

Color us shocked that there is no interest in Washington figuring out why the fire started or getting the bridge fixed. 

Tune into “On Balance with Leland Vittert” weeknights at 7/6C on NewsNation. Find your channel here. 

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily of NewsNation.