📌 Full Control, FBI Raid, More

Republicans have won enough seats to control the US House and the Senate alongside President-elect Donald Trump.

A House Republican victory in Arizona, alongside a win in slow-counting California earlier Wednesday, gave the GOP the 218 House victories that make up the majority. Republicans earlier gained control of the Senate from Democrats.

The GOP election victories ensure that Congress will support the incoming president’s agenda and that Democrats will be almost powerless to stop it.

When Trump was elected president in 2016, Republicans also swept Congress, but he still encountered Republican leaders resistant to his policy ideas and a Supreme Court with a liberal majority.

When he returns to the White House, Trump will be working with a Republican Party that has been completely transformed by his “Make America Great Again” movement and a Supreme Court dominated by conservative justices, including three that he appointed.

Federal law enforcement agents raided the downtown New York home of Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan on Wednesday.

The company confirmed an early-morning raid of Coplan's SoHo apartment following the presidential election in which bettors on Polymarket, an offshore, crypto-fueled election gambling website, had for weeks put Donald Trump's odds much higher than those of Kamala Harris, in sharp divergence from opinion polls.

Coplan, Polymarket's 26-year-old founder, was roused from his bed at 6 a.m. by FBI agents demanding he give them his electronic devices. The DOJ is investigating Polymarket for allegedly allowing US-based users to bet on the site.

Polymarket declined to comment on the allegation, but a spokesperson said the FBI raid was “obvious political retribution by the outgoing administration against Polymarket for providing a market that correctly called the 2024 presidential election.”

Polymarket, which does not allow trading in the US, gained scrutiny after a mystery French trader, known as the “Polymarket Whale,” made large bets on Trump winning the election. The trader's huge wagers came with a dramatic rise in Trump's chances on the exchanges.

He walked away with more than $46 million in profit. Last week, France's gambling regulator was examining whether Polymarket complies with French laws.

Glucagon-like peptide 1 drugs such as semaglutide and liraglutide can be effective at curbing alcohol abuse, says a study.

Researchers in Sweden examined over 250,000 people with alcohol-use disorder and found those who had taken GLP-1 drugs cut their risk for hospitalization.

Researchers identified over 133,000 people hospitalized for alcohol addiction in Jan. 2006 – Dec. 2023. About 4,500 patients who took semaglutide, sold as Ozempic and Wegovy, had the lowest risk of hospitalization. Another 2,500 taking liraglutide, sold as Victoza and Saxenda, had the second lowest risk.

Researchers not involved in the study described it as an important finding. However, they warned that Ozempic is not yet ready to replace the three medications approved by the Food and Drug Administration for alcohol abuse.

A clinical investigator said more research, screening and treatment are needed to address alcohol addiction.

Nearly 29 million Americans have alcohol use disorder as of 2023, according to estimates. That represents about 1 in 10 Americans over the age of 12. But only 2% of people with alcohol addiction are treated for the disease, the investigator said.

The Women's Professional Baseball League (WPBL) may launch in 2026 as a six-team circuit for female players.

If and when it debuts, it will be the first professional league for women since the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League — the one shown in “A League of Their Own” — dissolved in 1954.

Heightened interest in women's sports in recent years made this an ideal time to launch a women's baseball league, said co-founder Justine Siegal, the first woman to coach for an MLB team with the Oakland Athletics in 2015.

The consulting firm Deloitte estimated that women's sports will generate a billion dollars in global revenue in 2024 for the first time because of skyrocketing popularity and marketing deals.

The WNBA had its most-watched regular season in 24 years, thanks primarily to its star rookie class led by Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese. The inaugural season of the Professional Women’s Hockey League brought in record crowds.

The WPBL will hold a scouting camp in spring 2025, with a draft in the last quarter of the year. The WPBL will launch with six teams, though it is estimated that could later increase to eight. The teams will be confined to northeast cities in 2026 so that they can travel by bus to compete.

Donald Trump’s return to the White House may provide a lifeline for TikTok and its CEO, Shou Zi Chew.

Although both Republicans and Democrats supported the Biden TikTok ban in April, Trump voiced opposition to the ban during his candidacy. In March, Trump acknowledged the national security and data privacy concerns with TikTok, but he also said, “There’s a lot of good and a lot of bad” with the app.

“We’re not doing anything with TikTok, but the other side is going to close it up, so if you like TikTok, go out and vote for Trump,” the president-elect said in a September post on his Truth Social service.

If ByteDance doesn’t sell TikTok by the January deadline, Trump could call on Congress to repeal the law, or he can introduce a more “selective enforcement” that would allow TikTok to continue operating in the US without facing penalties, said Sarah Kreps, a Cornell University professor of government.

She said “selective enforcement” would be akin to police officers not always enforcing every single instance of jaywalking. At TikTok, Chew has remained quiet since Trump’s victory, just as he had been in the lead-up to Election Day.

A Paris prosecutor wants far-right leader Marine Le Pen jailed for five years and banned from office for illegal party funding.

Nicolas Barret asked for a five-year ban to become effective immediately after the verdict, even if the defense team appeals, ruling Le Pen out of standing again for president in 2027.

She and over 20 other senior party figures are accused of hiring assistants who worked on party business rather than for the European Parliament, which paid them.

Le Pen, who denies the charges, told reporters the requested sentence was an “outrage” and accused the prosecution of trying to "ruin" her National Rally party.

“The prosecution's wish is to deprive the French people of the ability to vote for whom they want," she said after the hearing in the French capital, where she is on trial with 24 other defendants.

A clampdown has been enforced in Henan, China, to curb a trend in which thousands of students rent bikes to buy soup dumplings.

Police in Henan province closed bike lanes connecting Zhengzhou and Kaifeng to limit the number of students making the 37-mile journey.

Local outlets estimated that up to 200,000 young people had rented bikes — which cost as little as £1.51 for a month — to travel to Kaifeng for guantangbao, a soup dumpling.

Pictures showed that the students, called the Night Riding Army by some taking part, had blocked a highway in central China by sheer numbers. The origin can be traced to four young women from Zhengzhou making a bike journey in June for the dumplings. Chinese social media users made it a trend.

While the Kaifeng government said “youth needs passion,” it called on the Zhengzhou students to avoid riding in large groups and consider public safety.