Welcome to Tuesday, December 24th, Scrooges and Tiny Tims...

It's launched...

That's the official placeholder emblem of the sixth branch of the U.S. Armed Services, the first since the Air Force was created in 1947.

"Space is the world's newest war-fighting domain," President Donald Trump said during the signing ceremony of the defense spending bill which triggered the Force’s creation.

"Amid grave threats to our national security, American superiority in space is absolutely vital. And we're leading, but we're not leading by enough. But very shortly we'll be leading by a lot."

China has called the Space Force “a threat to space peace and security.”

Do you salute America's newest military service?

On the Radar

Barren Witness

Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that “explosive” new emails about the president’s interaction with Ukraine reinforce the need for White House witnesses in the upcoming Senate impeachment trial.

The New York lawmaker urged Trump and his GOP allies to submit documents and witnesses so the Senate could hold a "full, fair and honest" trial.

"What is a trial with no witnesses and no documents? It's a sham trial. And that's why [I] feel so strongly that there ought to be witnesses and documents."

Emails released over the weekend reveal that a senior White House official contacted the Pentagon about withholding Ukraine's aid about an hour-and-a-half after Trump ended his now-infamous July 25 phone call with Vladomyr Zelensky.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has repeatedly dismissed efforts to call witnesses.

"Do you think Chuck Schumer is impartial? Do you think Elizabeth Warren is impartial? Bernie Sanders is impartial? So let's quit the charade. This is a political exercise," McConnell said.

Should the Senate call witnesses in Trump's impeachment trial?

Under the Radar

Measuring Unemployment

America’s unemployment rate returned to a 50-year low of 3.5% in November.

There are several different unemployment rates used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to offer insights into the state of the U.S. labor force, but the official unemployment rate most commonly reported is known as the U-3 unemployment rate. It’s calculated by 1) taking the total number of unemployed people who are actively looking for work, 2) dividing that number by the total civilian labor force, 3) multiplying that number by 100 to make it a percentage.

Don't worry. To help eliminate some of the confusion around the various unemployment-related metrics tracked by the federal government, we break down the numbers here.

But here's a peek:

PIC-U