January 4, 2017 (Wednesday)
Disasters and accidents
- 2017 Brooklyn train crash
- A commuter train from the Long Island Rail Road derails during the morning rush hour in Brooklyn, New York, injuring 103 people. (CBS)
Politics and elections
- Presidential transition of Donald Trump
- President-elect Donald Trump fills in more of his White House staff. (The Hill):
- Trump nominates Katie Walsh, former Republican National Committee (RNC) chief of staff, as Deputy White House Chief of Staff.
- Trump nominates Joe Hagin, former Deputy Chief of Staff for President George W. Bush, as Deputy White House chief of staff for operations.
- Trump nominates Rajiv Shah, former RNC Deputy Research Director, as White House research director.
- Trump nominates Rick Dearborn, United States Attorney General designee and Senator Jeff Sessions' former chief of staff, as head of the White House legislative affairs office.
- Trump nominates Omarosa Manigault, former contestant on The Apprentice, as an assistant to the president and director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison. (USA Today)
- Trump nominates Wall Street lawyer Jay Clayton to head the Securities and Exchange Commission. (The Washington Post)
- President-elect Donald Trump fills in more of his White House staff. (The Hill):
Law and crime
- 2017 Chicago torture incident
- Chicago Police arrest four African-American suspects after they stream a video on Facebook showing themselves torturing and scalping a bound and gagged, kidnapped, white man with a mental disorder. The four suspects will face elevated hate crime charges. (The Guardian) (AP)
Science and technology
- The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announces the selection of two new Discovery Program space exploration missions: Lucy, a mission to several Jupiter trojan asteroids, and Psyche, a mission to the asteroid 16 Psyche, which is believed to be the exposed core of an early protoplanet. Both missions are scheduled for launch in the early 2020s. (NASA) (Spaceflight101)