Daily Briefing: Shouting in the US Capitol

Things grew heated as the Secret Service’s acting director addressed a House of Representatives panel this week. Californians are feeling the ripple effects of a magnitude 7 earthquake. Why so many Americans consider themselves as living "paycheck to paycheck."

🙋🏼‍♀️ I'm Nicole Fallert, Daily Briefing author. Here's how to send a letter to the North Pole.

High tensions at Capitol panel

The Secret Service’s Acting Director Ronald Rowe told a House of Representatives panel on Thursday that he overhauled the agency's security practices after a gunman shot President-elect Donald Trump in July.

But not everyone was impressed. Rowe earned praise from many Republican lawmakers for cooperating with the investigation, but he erupted at Representative Pat Fallon, R-Texas, after the congressman questioned Rowe's appearance at a ceremony this year commemorating the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

• "Do not invoke 9/11 for political purposes!" Rowe yelled at Fallon, who accused Rowe of putting lives in danger to stand behind Vice President Kamala Harris for prestige, angrily telling Rowe he put agents "out of position" as a result. Fallon said he was asking "serious questions" about whether Rowe was there to provide protection for high-level officials at the ceremony.
• Why we're all here again: This week's hearing is the last session of a bipartisan House task force investigating security lapses that led to the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, which left Trump and two others wounded and one man killed.

What happens next? The group will submit their final report of the incident by Dec. 13, according to the approved resolution establishing the task force.

Magnitude 7 earthquake, aftershocks rock California

“It wasn’t that big of a violent shake. But my apartment was swaying back and forth for a bit. It was kind of scary, like I was on a raft in the middle of the sea.”

~ Jared Mitchell, 25, an assistant manager at Los Bagels, a bagel shop in Arcata, California. A magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck near the town of Petrolia on Thursday at 10:44 a.m. local time, generating a temporary tsunami warning that stretched from southern Oregon to San Francisco.

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• Why China's ban on exports like gallium could cost the U.S. billions.

What's the weather today? Check your local forecast here.

If you're sending green texts from your iPhone:

Hackers could be after your text messages. Especially vulnerable: texts between Android and Apple devices. Three weeks ago the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) revealed that hackers connected with the People's Republic of China had infiltrated the U.S. telecom infrastructure as part of "a broad and significant cyber espionage campaign." However, the hackers are apparently still at work and cybersecurity officials said this week they haven't been able to evict them from the networks of some telecom and internet firms. Here's what to know.

Living paycheck to paycheck? You're not alone.

“Paycheck to paycheck” means different things to different people. Nearly half of Americans believe they are living from paycheck to paycheck, according to a recent report from Bank of America Institute. Yet, when experts applied a strict definition of “paycheck to paycheck” to actual bank accounts, researchers found that only about a quarter of households were actually subsisting from one payday to the next. Read more and here's how to prepare your finances for a Trump world.

Today's talkers

• Here are the college football signing day winners and losers.
• Bluesky continues to be the biggest new thing on social media.
• Shohei Ohtani gave Paste BN exclusive insights about the Dodgers' World Series title.
• These are the 12 books Paste BN reporters love to give.

The end of an era ✨🎸

Will Taylor Swift play every song from her studio albums before the Eras Tour wraps up on Sunday in Vancouver, Canada? Will she bring out special guests? Will she sing "You're On Your Own, Kid" one more time?

These questions swirl as fans prepare for the pop star's long-awaited final shows of her career-spanning Eras Tour beginning Friday night. Across more than 150 shows across five continents, the three and a half hour show has delivered (sometimes seismic) energy, surprises and passion to fans new and old around the world, changing the music industry one friendship bracelet at a time.

Photo of the day: The color of 2024 is oh, so rich

Brat Summer's neon green and "Wicked's" watermelon-chic aesthetic are so 2024, with the color company announcing Thursday morning that the shade for 2025 is a more demure Mocha Mousse.

Nicole Fallert is a newsletter writer at Paste BN, sign up for the email here. Want to send Nicole a note? Shoot her an email at NFallert@usatoday.com.