America

Submitted by Michael Lucci via IllinoisPolicy.org,

Illinois has record loss of 114,000 residents to other states in 2016 as population shrinks by 37,500.

Millennials finally get to claim a trophy for an achievement they actually earned (no participation medals here)...that's right, Millennials have officially set a 75-year record for highest percentage of young adults living at home with mom.  At just under 40%, Millennials are barely shy of the all-time record of 40.9% set in 1940, after the end of the Great Depression.  For once, we have every confidence that our young snowflakes will excel in crushing this longstanding record.  Per the Wall Street Journal:

Another day, another shot across the bow from Donald Trump aimed squarely at China.

Having already participated (and in the case of one, precipitated) two mini diplomatic snafus with Beijing in just the past two weeks, Trump is sending a clear message to Beijing that US-China trade under his administration will be anything but business as usual, by creating a National Trade Council inside the White House to oversee industrial policy and has decided to appoint a hard core China hawk to run it.

While it will hardly come as a surprise to anyone following the ongoing additions to Trump's cabinet, one can now effectively cross off "draining the swamp" from the list of Trump's stated intentions.

Speaking in an NPR interview on Wednesday, former Speaker Newt Gingrich said that Trump has taken a different tone as president-elect and may be leaving behind his campaign promise to “drain the swamp.” Gingrich told "Morning Edition" that he was told Trump “now says [the phrase] was cute, but he doesn’t want to use it anymore.”

A leaked communication between the Trump transition team's Undersecretary of Defense for policy Brian McKeon, and the Pentagon, has revealed the four biggest defense priorities for the president-elect. Among the top four items listed in the memo from are: 1) developing a strategy to defeat/destroy ISIS; 2) build a strong defense by eliminating budget caps/the sequester, 3) develop a comprehensive cyber strategy, and 4) eliminate wasteful spending by finding greater efficiencies.