The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit a little earlier today seeking basic details on how the federal government would carry out a program to deport millions of people from the US, which President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to begin on “day one” of his new administration.
As part of the federal action, the ACLU demanded to be given information about the government’s current relationships with, for example, private airlines, ground transportation facilities and other elements that would be involved in arranging deportation flights for undocumented people. The lawsuit was first reported by the Washington Post this afternoon.
The suit was filed in Los Angeles by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California and accuses the government of keeping the mechanisms used to deport people “shrouded in secrecy”.
Trump has pledged to begin deporting millions of people despite the legal, financial, economic and human rights implications, also confirming today that he would be prepared to shred norms and harness the US military to enforce his policy, despite the threat to democracy and due process.
As the Trump administration continues to take form, the field of potential appointees to lead the treasury department has widened to include Marc Rowan who founded and runs one of the nation’s largest public equity firms, and Kevin Warsh a central banker who from 2006 to 2011 served as a governor for the Federal Reserve, Reuters reports.
Two others in the running for the seat are Scott Bessent, the founder of the capital management firm Key Square who has said he wants the US dollar to remain the world’s reserve currency and use tariffs as a negotiating tactic, and Howard Lutnick who leads Cantor Fitzgerald.
Trump ally Elon Musk publicly threw his support behind Lutnick in a post on X that argues that Lutnick “will actually enact change”.
A lawyer who is representing two women who gave testimony to the ethics committee of the House of Representatives investigating Matt Gaetz has said in an interview that the former congressman paid the women to have sex with him.
The two women were adults at the time but also told lawmakers that she witnessed Gaetz having sex with a 17-year-old at the same party she attended, ABC News reported.
Gaetz resigned from his position as a Republican representative for Florida last week immediately on being nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to become US attorney general. That immediately shut down the congressional investigation and, despite pressure, the House has not yet agreed to release the report of the investigation to the public or the US Senate, the body that will have the job of confirming Gaetz’s appointment.
Florida-based lawyer Joel Leppard spoke to ABC News earlier today.
“Just to be clear, both of your clients testified that they were paid by [then] Representative Gaetz to have sex?” interviewer Juju Chang asked Leppard.
“That’s correct. The House was very clear about that and went through each. They essentially put the Venmo payments on the screen and asked about them. And my clients repeatedly testified, ‘What was this payment for?’ ‘That was for sex,’” Leppard told Chang.
One of the clients, Leppard said, also told the House committee that at the party she was at in July 2017 as she went to the pool area she saw Gaetz having sex with a friend of hers, who was 17.
Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing throughout various investigations into his behavior amid allegations of sexual misconduct. The names of Leppard’s clients have not been disclosed.
Donald Trump appears to be planning to attend a SpaceX Starship rocket launch tomorrow, in the latest indication of influence of the company’s founder, Elon Musk, on the president-elect and his orbit.
The Federal Aviation Administration has issued temporary flight restrictions over the area of Brownsville and Boca Chica, at the eastern end of the Texas-Mexico border, for a VIP visit that coincides with the SpaceX launch window for a test of its massive Starship rocket from its launch facility on the Gulf of Mexico, the Associated Press reports.
Tuesday’s 30-minute launch window opens at 4pm central time (5pm ET), according to the company, with the company again looking to test the landing capture system of the booster in Texas, which it debuted last month and about which Trump has been complimentary, while the upper stage continues to a splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
Musk pumped an estimated $200m through his political action committee to help elect Trump.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit a little earlier today seeking basic details on how the federal government would carry out a program to deport millions of people from the US, which President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to begin on “day one” of his new administration.
As part of the federal action, the ACLU demanded to be given information about the government’s current relationships with, for example, private airlines, ground transportation facilities and other elements that would be involved in arranging deportation flights for undocumented people. The lawsuit was first reported by the Washington Post this afternoon.
The suit was filed in Los Angeles by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California and accuses the government of keeping the mechanisms used to deport people “shrouded in secrecy”.
Trump has pledged to begin deporting millions of people despite the legal, financial, economic and human rights implications, also confirming today that he would be prepared to shred norms and harness the US military to enforce his policy, despite the threat to democracy and due process.
Mikie Sherrill has represented New Jersey’s 11th District, which includes parts of Essex, Morris and Passaic counties, since her 2018 election during president-elect Donald Trump’s first administration’s midterm. Sherrill flipped the district from Republican control with former Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen’s retirement and has been reelected three times since.
Before getting elected to Congress, she was a prosecutor for the US attorney for the district of New Jersey. She served in the Navy from 1994 to 2003, the AP writes.
Sherrill joins fellow Democratic US House member Josh Gottheimer, who announced his run for governor last week. Also seeking the Democratic nod are Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, Jersey City mayor Steven Fulop, teachers union president Sean Spiller and former state Senate President Steve Sweeney.
Republicans are also lining up to run. Among them are state senator Jon Bramnick, former state legislator Jack Ciattarelli, former state senator Ed Durr and radio host Bill Spadea.
New Jersey Democratic congresswoman Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey has announced today that she’s running for governor, saying it’s time to fix the state’s economy and make it more affordable.
Sherrill, a former federal prosecutor and US Navy helicopter pilot, joins a crowded field of Democrats vying to succeed Democratic governor Phil Murphy, whose second term expires after next year’s election. Murphy is barred by term limits from running again, the Associated Press reports.
In a video announcing her run, Sherrill introduced herself as a US Naval Academy graduate and chopper pilot and leaned on her military experience.
I learned early on: In a crisis, the worst thing you can do is freeze. You have to choose to lead, to follow, or get out of the way.”
She went on to say in the video that the state’s economy needs to be fixed.
“Let’s make life more affordable for hardworking New Jerseyans, from health care to groceries to childcare. These challenges aren’t new and it’s time to confront them head on.”
Tom Fitton, the president of the influential conservative group Judicial Watch, has had a little more to say today, after his social media post prompted Donald Trump this morning to confirm that he is prepared to utilize the US military to conduct mass deportations when he takes office.
Fitton popped up on the hard-right Newsmax cable channel a little earlier. He said that his social media post that Trump 2.0 would be prepared to declare a national emergency in order to use military assets was not derived from any insider knowledge but just from stories that were around. Trump has caused a stir by reposting the message today with the endorsement “True!”
He told Newsmax: “Does anyone dispute the invasion is not a national emergency? It’s got to be a whole government approach.”
Rightwingers such as Fitton, Trump and Texas’s anti-immigration hardline governor, Greg Abbott, often invoke an “invasion” of undocumented people seeking refuge in the US and crossing the border from Mexico without authorization as and invasion.
“They cut the line and they need to be sent home,” he said.
The House ethics committee is reportedly set to meet on Wednesday to discuss its report into Matt Gaetz, according to NBC News.
The committee has been looking into allegations that Gaetz engaged in sexual misconduct, illicit drug use and other ethical breaches.
Last week, Gaetz was nominated by president-elect Donald Trump to serve as his Attorney General. Gaetz then resigned from the House of Representatives, which effectively ended the ethics inquiry.
The news of the meeting on Wednesday comes as an increasing number of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have said that they would like to review the Ethics committee report.
Eric Hovde, the Republican Senate candidate in Wisconsin, has conceded the race to Democratic incumbent Tammy Baldwin in a video message.
In the message, Hovde, who lost to Baldwin by about 29,000 votes, said that he would not request a recount of the vote but expressed concerns about the election process and alleged “many troubling issues” related to absentee ballots in Milwaukee.
His claims of impropriety have been refuted by Republicans, Democrats and non-partisan election leaders.
In the video message Hovde said that “without a detailed review of all the ballots and their legitimacy, which will be difficult to obtain in the courts, a request for a recount would serve no purpose, because you will just be recounting the same ballots, regardless of their integrity”.
The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, said that the process of selecting someone to fill Florida senator Marco Rubio’s seat has begun and that a selection will likely be made by the beginning of January.
In a statement on Monday, DeSantis said that Rubio is expected to resign from the Senate to assume duties as secretary of state when the Trump administration takes power on January 20th.
Under Florida law, DeSantis is tasked with appointing Rubio’s successor.
“We have already received strong interest from several possible candidates, and we continue to gather names of additional candidates and conduct preliminary vetting” DeSantis said. “More extensive vetting and candidate interviews will be conducted over the next few weeks.”
Donald Trump gave the nod on social media this morning to the notion that he wants to use the military to enforce his previously-stated intentions for the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants from the US once he gets into office.
Conservative strategist Steve Bannon was due to go to trial next month on state charges in New York of conspiring to dupe donors to build a border wall but a judge said this morning that Bannon won’t face trial until February.
There are reports of clashes among top Trump insiders over leadership picks.
According to reports, Linda McMahon, a former Small Business Administration (SBA) director, is expected to be announced as Trump’s secretary of commerce.
Trump picked Brendan Carr, Project 2025 co-author, to lead FCC as speculation over treasury secretary appointment mounts.
Steve Bannon did not turn up in person to attend the latest hearing in his court case in New York City today, on state charges of conspiring to dupe donors to build a wall on the US-Mexico border.
Instead, he listened in virtually as the judge, April Newbauer, set 25 February for jury selection, postponing it from December.
Bannon did not speak except to say, “yes, ma’am” when asked whether he understood he must be in court on the new date, the Associated Press reported.
The judge delayed the trial date from 9 December after deciding to let the future jurors hear evidence that some of the wall charity’s money went to pay a more than $600,000 credit card debt that a separate Bannon-related not-for-profit organization had racked up in 2019.
Prosecutors wanted to introduce it and defense lawyers argued unsuccessfully that it was irrelevant.
Bannon denies the charges, including conspiracy and money laundering. Manhattan prosecutors brought the case after Donald Trump pardoned Bannon in a similar federal prosecution that was in its early stages, where Bannon had denied pocketing over $1m from the We Build the Wall outfit.
Newbauer has yet to rule on whether jurors’ names will be kept confidential, as the prosecution has requested.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
