CNN 5 Things

Hi from CNN, this is Madeleine Thompson with five things you need to know for Monday, November 25th. A significant chapter of President elect Donald Trump's legal woes has closed, now that special counsel Jack Smith announced he's dropping all federal charges against him. The cases were related to alleged election subversion and the alleged mishandling of classified documents. But Smith left the door open just a crack for charges to be brought against Trump in the future. CNN's Paula Reid explains how Trump might quash even that effort.

I'm pretty sure that Trump's attorneys are going to advise him to pardon himself. There is a belief that that pardon power is absolute and that a president could preemptively pardon themselves. So, yes, there's always a possibility. Of course, there's no pardon he can give himself that will protect him from any state cases that are still lingering once he's out of office.

Just hours after Smith's announcement, the federal judge overseeing Trump's January 6th criminal prosecution in Washington, D.C., formally dismissed that case on Smith's recommendation.

'Meanwhile, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York will resign on December 13th. Damien Williams has overseen charges against Senator Bob Menendez, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, music mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs and the fraud conviction of cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried. The announcement came soon after President elect Donald Trump said he would nominate Attorney Jay Clayton for the position. Williams was chosen to serve as U.S. attorney by President Joe Biden and has been on the job since October 2021.

President elect Donald Trump's incoming administration will face several regulatory and legal decisions concerning national abortion policy. Chief among them are two cases involving the federal government that have both already been up to the Supreme Court once and could land before the justices again during Trump's second term. One of them is a challenge to federal regulations that have made abortion pills easier to obtain. The second deals with whether an emergency room patient is entitled to an abortion, even in states that ban the procedure if a pregnancy complication is putting their health in danger. CNN asked a spokesperson for Trump's transition about these two issues and some of the others and got the following response: quote, "President Trump has long been consistent in supporting the rights of states to make decisions on abortion." But it may not be that simple.

'Vaping has an immediate effect on how well the user's blood vessels work, even if the e-cigarette doesn't contain nicotine. That's according to new research, soon to be presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America. CNN's Jacqueline Howard explains.

'Hi, Madeleine. There are two main findings in this new research. One, researchers saw decreased blood flow in the arteries immediately after vaping, to another effect was a decrease in the uptake of oxygen by the lungs. This is based on research that's being presented next week. And what the researchers did is they looked at 31 healthy smokers and vapers who underwent exams before and immediately after smoking or vaping. The idea here is that even if you are not vaping nicotine, it's the ingredients in the e-cigarettes themselves that could be tied to these outcomes. Now, this research has not been published in a peer reviewed journal, but the authors are calling for more study in this space to corroborate their findings.

Coming up, wasting our nuclear potential.

'You might think America's nuclear waste is buried in a mountain or at the bottom of a cave. It's actually sealed away in coffin-like casks and spread out among more than 50 locations around the country. And there's no plan to create a permanent home for these spent fuel canisters. CNN's Bill Weir explains.

It's been about 15 years since Congress killed a plan to bury the nation's spent nuclear fuel under Yucca Mountain, Nevada. And it has been piling up in secure canisters around the nation ever since. Each year, the federal government pays hundreds of millions of dollars to states utilities for not picking it up. One idea now is to give all that money to one community willing to host the nation's waste under a mountain or deep underground. And starting next year, the Department of Energy will seek nominations as they build the world's safest railcar to move it with humanity. Thirsty for clean energy, Madeleine, nuclear is having a green renaissance, with Microsoft even planning to reopen Three Mile Island, site of the nation's most notorious nuclear accident.

That's a wrap. We'll be back tomorrow at 6 a.m. Eastern.