THE EVIDENCE SHOWS: Investigators have matched the bullet casings found on the sidewalk where UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was murdered to the gun found in the possession of 26-year-old Luigi Mangione in Altoona, Pennsylvania.  They also found his fingerprints on a cellphone, water bottle, and Kind bar wrapper.

  Mangione has inspired a cultural phenomenon of people angry with healthcare selling t-shirts, merchandise, and posting comments on the internet unsympathetic to the victim, Brian Thompson.

  Graeme Wood writes for The Atlantic s that, “From his actions, and the glee that they have elicited, one learns not that the health-care system is broken but that many people are.” 

POWER AT PLAY: Former Fox News host Pete Hegseth left another senator on the fence about confirming him to Secretary of Defense after sitting down with Maine’s Susan Collins. She has been one of few senators to openly question Hegseth’s fitness for the position, but said after their meeting that she would make up her mind after the completion of an FBI background check and a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

  Hegseth has been accused of sexual assault, harassment of women in the workplace, public drunkenness, and fiscal mismanagement of two veterans’ organizations. Collins is reported to have “grilled” him.

  Also holding her cards tight is Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa who wouldn’t say how she would vote but, that she would  “support Pete through this process.

  Also in Washington, FBI Director Christopher Wray announced that he will resign in January ahead of certain firing by Donald Trump, three years short of his full 10-year term. Trump is furious that Wray presided over investigations of the president-elect and authorized the classified documents raid on Mar-a-Lago.

BRO CULTURE: Oren and Tal Alexander, stars of New York’s high-end real estate trade and Oren’s twin brother Alon, were all arrested at homes in or near Miami Beach yesterday on federal charges of running a sex trafficking scheme.

 Working with other men, the Alexanders arranged events and travel as bait to recruit, entice and transport women, whom they later raped,” the indictment says.

  “At times, the defendants physically restrained and held down their victims during the rapes and sexual assaults and ignored screams and explicit requests to stop,” the indictment says. Immediately after the assaults, the document says, the brothers sometimes offered their victims concert tickets, travel, and other luxuries to keep them quiet.

  The brothers are accused of surreptitiously drugging women, causing the victims to have “symptoms of impaired physical and mental capacity, including limitations of movement and speech and incomplete memories of events,” the indictment says. 

  The indictment accuses the brothers of committing rapes since they were in high school. Dozens of women have since come forward.

  Oren and Tal Alexander, 38, rose to the top ranks of salesmen at Douglas Elliman, one of the largest real estate brokerages in the country, before founding their own brokerage. Alon, 37, did not work in real estate, but socialized with his brothers. 

ECON 101: The Consumer Price Index climbed 2.7 percent in the year from  November to November, just slightly above the October reading of 2.6 percent. 

  Economists and reporters like to strip out the volatile costs of food and fuel costs for a better read of underlying inflation, but it’s the costs of food and fuel that are the biggest concern for everyday Americans and, as we’ve seen, it can turn elections.

THE OBIT PAGE: George Joseph Kresge Jr., the mentalist trickster performing as “The Amazing Kreskin” who could appear to make objects move or guess what card you were holding, and was for a time a fixture on late-night talk shows, has died at age 89.

  One Facebook poster asked, “I wonder if he could see it coming?” 

  Kreskin reached his peak popularity in the 1970s and 80s.  At live shows he would have audience members hide his paycheck in the auditorium then promise to find it or go without payment for the night. He admitted failing at least 10 times.

  Doing a trick with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, he steered his foil into selecting two envelopes out of 10 containing mismatching socks that were the mates to the socks Kreskin revealed he was wearing. 

  Kreskin didn’t claim to be psychic or to have supernatural powers. He said he was able to read cues, like body language, and use the power of suggestion to guide people’s actions. He said, “It’s possible to influence the mind unconsciously.”

THE SPIN RACK: President Biden is commuting the sentences of nearly 1,500 people and pardoning 39 convicted of nonviolent federal crimes, including possession of marijuana, the largest grant of clemency by an American president in a single day. — Former Rep. Matt Gaetz , whose nomination to Attorney general crashed on the rocks of his reputation for sexual abuse and drug use, has been offered his own show on the right wing One America News Network to start in January. — Harvard, Penn, Cornell, and USC are among  the universities that advised foreign students to arrive on campus before Donald Trump is inaugurated January 20^th in case he invokes a travel ban for citizens from some countries. Cornell warned that, “The ban is likely to include citizens of the countries targeted in the first Trump administration: Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Myanmar, Sudan, Tanzania, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen, and Somalia. New countries could be added to this list, particularly China and India.” — FIFA, the world governing body of soccer, awarded hosting of the 2034 men’s cup to Saudi Arabia over the objections of human rights groups who said that country is no place for migrant laborers to live and work building the venues. 

BELOW THE FOLD: Former New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, 72, who won six Super Bowls, has taken the job coaching at the University of North Carolina and his 24-year-old girlfriend, a former Patriots cheerleader, is going with him. She’s his personal cheerleader now. 

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