An Elector’s Rebellion, Pentagon Waste, Remembering Pearl Harbor

Coming up on today’s show:

• A report commissioned by Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work to investigate waste within the Pentagon shows that more than $125 billion was wasted over the course of five years. Tina Jonas, senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who served as the comptroller undersecretary of defense for the Department of Defense from 2004 to 2008, weighs in on the report. How are lawmakers on Capitol Hill responding to this report? Takeaway Washington Correspondent Todd Zwillich answers. 

• Donald Trump’s new Washington hotel will host an event for the Kingdom of Bahrain on Wednesday, something that’s raising questions about potential conflicts of interest. Meredith McGehee, a strategic adviser at the Campaign Legal Center, explains. 

• Ahead of the December 19th vote in the Electoral College, some electors are considering uniting against a different candidate in order to change the course of the presidency. Jerad Sutton, presidential elector for Colorado’s 4th congressional district, has the details. 

• Voters in California legalized recreational marijuana back in November, but it is unclear how things will move forward in the state over the next four years, according to David Downs, cannabis editor for the San Francisco Chronicle.

• The archival restoration group Indie Collect has been working recently to restore Cane River, a little-seen work by Horace Jenkins, a black director who died months after his film’s premiere in 1982. As part of our weeklong series on African-Americans in entertainment, we speak with Jenkins’ son, Sacha Jenkins, who is himself a writer and filmmaker.

• Wednesday marks the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. We look back at the leadership of President Roosevelt during this period with Paul Sparrow, director of the FDR Library and Museum.