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🎧 McMahon is a surprise for the role as she wasn't one of the education candidates with real conservative credentials, NPR’s Cory Turner tells Up First. She served on the Connecticut State Board of Education for about a year. She told the committee after she was nominated that she had gone to college with plans to become a teacher. More recently she chaired the board for the America First Policy Institute, which supports school choice. When it comes to closing the Education Department, Turner says a bipartisan group informed him that is one wrestling match McMahon — or any Education secretary —  probably can't win. The department was created by Congress and only Congress can abolish it.

🎧 Criswell was pressed specifically on FEMA’s response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton, which hit the Southeast back-to-back, NPR’s Debbie Elliott says. In a particular incident that caused scrutiny, a now-fired FEMA supervisor directed workers to skip houses in Florida with Trump campaign signs during the aftermath of Milton. That former crew lead claimed she was following the standard protocol to avoid hostility that workers faced in the field after disinformation spread in the wake of Helene. Criswell denied any wider issue in the way FEMA provides disaster aid and said that the employee’s actions aren’t indicative of any widespread cultural issues at FEMA.

🎧 "After Trump won, many on X noted an uptick in Trump content," NPR's Bobby Allyn says. Leading up to the election, Musk tinkered with the algorithm to give his posts a boost. The app has always had conservative content, but users noted it stopped being a mix of views. Bluesky is still a small social network, but its CEO, Jay Graber, says it has been growing by about a million users a day since the election. Allyn says it is too early to say if Bluesky will be the new Twitter mostly because its infrastructure and staff are limited right now.