The Wall Street Journal is reporting, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, that Trump has chosen Florida congressman Mike Waltz as his national security adviser.
The post does not require Senate confirmation and is highly influential.
Here are the key recent developments:
Democratic Representative Mark Takano won reelection to a US House seat representing California on Monday. Takano defeated Republican David Serpa, the Associated Press reports. The congressman is a longtime incumbent, the ranking member on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs and also sits on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Takano was previously a classroom teacher and a community college trustee.
The Wall Street Journal and CNN reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, that Trump has chosen Florida congressman Mike Waltz as his national security adviser. The post does not require Senate confirmation and is highly influential. Waltz is also on the Republican’s China taskforce and has argued the US military is not as prepared as it needs to be if there is conflict in the Indo-Pacific region.
Trump is reportedly expected to name Marco Rubio as secretary of state. The New York Times reports that Trump is expected to name Florida senator Marco Rubio his secretary of state. The paper cites three unnamed sources “familiar with [Trump’s] thinking”.
Donald Trump has announced that he will nominate Lee Zeldin to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, saying the former New York congressman and gubernatorial candidate will focus on cutting regulations.
Stephen Miller, an architect of the hardline immigration policies Donald Trump enacted during his first term, appears to be heading back to the White House.
The president-elect has also appointed Tom Homan, who was one of the main officials behind Trump’s family separation policy, as his “border czar”.
Kamala Harris made her first public appearance since her concession speech at a Veterans Day ceremony. The vice-president did not speak at the event, and has since ended her public itinerary for the day after returning to Washington DC.
Oklahoma senator Markwayne Mullin is reportedly being considered for a position to lead the Department of Interior or Veterans Affairs under Donald Trump’s administration.
Trump’s new “border czar” Tom Homan made clear in an interview he is prepared to pursue hardline immigration policies. He told Fox News: “If sanctuary cities don’t want to help us, then get the hell out of the way, because we’re coming.”
Democrat Cleo Fields has won Louisiana’s congressional race in a recently redrawn second majority-Black district. That flips a once reliably Republican seat blue, according to the Associated Press.
Juan Merchan, the judge presiding over Trump’s business fraud trial in New York that saw him convicted of 34 felonies earlier this year, will decide on Tuesday whether to overturn the verdict, Reuters reports. The case is the only one of Trump’s four criminal indictments to reach a verdict, and Trump is scheduled to be sentenced on 26 November – though now that he is headed back to the White House, it is unclear if that will happen.
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Democratic Representative Mark Takano won reelection to a US House seat representing California on Monday. Takano defeated Republican David Serpa, the Associated Press reports.
The congressman is a longtime incumbent, the ranking member on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs and also sits on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Takano was previously a classroom teacher and a community college trustee.
The 39th congressional District covers communities in Riverside County southeast of Los Angeles. The Associated Press declared Takano the winner at 9.08pm EST.
Vietnam’s Communist Party head To Lam congratulated Donald Trump in a phone call on Monday and the two discussed ways their countries could boost economic ties, the country’s communist party said.
The US is Vietnam’s largest export market, and in September last year the two countries upgraded their relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership, the highest level in Vietnam’s ranking.
“Vietnam is ready to promote stable and long-term development of bilateral relations for the benefit of the people of the two countries,” Lam said during the call, according to a statement posted on the communist party’s website.
The statement said Trump expressed his respect for the relationship with Vietnam and Vietnam-US economic cooperation, and wanted to further promote it.
While the New York Times has reported that Donald Trump has picked Marco Rubio to be his secretary of state, the report also says “Mr. Trump could still change his mind at the last minute.”
Rubio is arguably the most hawkish option on Trump’s shortlist for secretary of state, Reuters reports, and he has in years past advocated for a muscular foreign policy with respect to America’s geopolitical foes, including China, Iran and Cuba.
Over recent years he has softened some of his stances to align more closely with Trump’s views. The president-elect accuses past US presidents of leading America into costly and futile wars and has pushed for a more restrained foreign policy.
Rubio has said in recent interviews that Ukraine needs to seek a negotiated settlement with Russia rather than focus on regaining all territory that Russia has taken in the last decade. He was also one of 15 Republican senators to vote against a $95 billion military aid package for Ukraine, passed in April.
Rubio is also a top China hawk in the Senate. Most notably, he called on the Treasury Department in 2019 to launch a national security review of popular Chinese social media app TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly, prompting an investigation and troubled divestment order.
As shell-shocked Democrats try to understand why working-class Americans – once the cornerstone of their political base – chose a billionaire over them, progressives argue the path forward is to champion “popular and populist” economic policies.
Democratic recriminations have intensified in the nearly seven days since their devastating electoral losses, which may yet deliver a new era of unified Republican governance in Washington, after Donald Trump stormed to a second term while his party easily flipped the Senate and is on the verge of winning a majority in the House. Divisions have deepened, with progressives blaming the party’s embrace of corporate America and swing-state Democrats accusing the left of tarnishing its appeal with ex-urban and rural voters.
“Clearly not enough voters knew what Democrats were going to do to make their lives better, particularly poor and working-class Americans across this country,” Representative Pramila Jayapal, chair of the congressional Progressive Caucus, told reporters on Capitol Hill on Monday:
The New York Times reports that Trump is expected to name Florida senator Marco Rubio his secretary of state. The paper cites three unnamed sources “familiar with [Trump’s] thinking”.
Axios reports that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cenvoy, Ron Dermer, met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Sunday, and that Dermer also met with Trump’s son in law, Jared Kushner.
Axios cites to unnamed two Israeli officials and two US officials with knowledge of the meeting, reporting:
An Israeli official said the meeting was aimed at passing messages from Netanyahu to Trump and briefing the president-elect on Israel’s plans in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran for the next two months before Trump takes office.
“One of the things the Israelis wanted to sort out with Trump is what are the issues he prefers to see solved before 20 January and what are the issues he prefers the Israelis to wait for him,” a US official said.
The US officials mentioned the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire efforts, the plan for Gaza after the war ends and Israeli-Saudi normalization efforts as issues the Israelis want to take Trump’s pulse on.
Dermer also met with Jared Kushner, a source with knowledge of the meeting said.
On Ukraine, Waltz has said his views have evolved, Reuters reports.
After Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, he called for the Biden administration to provide more weapons to Kyiv to help them push back Russian forces.
But during an event last month, Waltz said there had to be a reassessment of the United States’ aims in Ukraine.
“Is it in America’s interest, are we going to put in the time, the treasure, the resources that we need in the Pacific right now badly?” Waltz asked.
Waltz has praised Trump for pushing Nato allies to spend more on defense, but unlike the president-elect has not suggested the United States pull out of the alliance.
“Look we can be allies and friends and have tough conversations,” Waltz said last month
Reuters has more information about Mike Waltz, who is reportedly Trump’s pick for national security adviser.
If selected, Waltz will be responsible for briefing Trump on key national security issues and coordinating with different agencies.
While slamming the Biden administration for a disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Waltz has publicly praised Trump’s foreign policy views.
“Disruptors are often not nice … frankly our national security establishment and certainly a lot of people that are dug into bad old habits in the Pentagon need that disruption,” Waltz said during an event earlier this year.
“Donald Trump is that disruptor,” he said.
Waltz was a defense policy director for defense secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates and was elected to Congress in 2018. He is the chair of the House Armed Services subcommittee overseeing military logistics and also on the select committee on intelligence.
Waltz is also on the Republican’s China taskforce and has argued the US military is not as prepared as it needs to be if there is conflict in the Indo-Pacific region.
In a book published earlier this year titled “Hard Truths: Think and Lead Like a Green Beret,” Waltz laid out a five part strategy to preventing war with China, including arming Taiwan faster, re-assuring allies in the Pacific, and modernizing planes and ships.
Decision Desk HQ, an organisation that uses models to project how the vote count will unfold, is predicting that the Republicans will win a majority in the House.
With a Republican Senate majority already won, this would mean Trump controls both houses of Congress when he takes office in January, making it significantly easier to pass legislation.
The Associated Press, which the Guardian relies on to call races, has not yet confirmed that the Republicans have won the four seats needed for a House majority.
There is more information now about California Governor Gavin Newsom’s plans to meet with the Biden administration this week to discuss zero-emission vehicles and disaster relief.
The Democratic governor is leaving for Washington on Monday and will return home Wednesday, his office said. Newsom will also meet with California’s congressional delegation, the Associated Press reports.
He is seeking federal approval for state climate rules, a $5.2bn reimbursement for emergency funding during the Covid-19 pandemic and updates to the state’s Medicaid program, along with other priorities.
The trip comes days after Newsom called for state lawmakers to convene a special session in December to protect California’s liberal policies ahead of Trump’s return to office in January.
Trump then criticized the governor on social media, calling out the high cost of living in California and the state’s homelessness crisis. He said Newsom was “stopping all of the GREAT things that can be done to ‘Make California Great Again.’”
California won against most of the Trump administration’s legal challenges over the state’s environmental and other progressive policies during the Republican’s first term, said Thad Kousser, a political science professor at the University of California San Diego.
“The question is: Has Donald Trump changed the legal playing field so much through the court appointments of his first term that he’ll be able to win on policies in his second term?” he said.
As president, Trump appointed more than 230 federal judges, including three justices to the US Supreme Court.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
