White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that Donald Trump will inherit a good economy, thanks to Joe Biden’s policies over the past four years.
She also announced that Biden would promote his economic accomplishments in a speech on Tuesday, after government data released today showed that hiring remained strong in November.
“Just today, we learned more than 220,000 jobs were created last month, making this the only presidency in 50 years to have job growth every single month,” Jean-Pierre said.
“Over the last four years, the president has rejected trickle-down economics and written a new economic playbook that builds the economy from the middle out and bottom up, not the top down. This is a strong foundation for years to come … Trump will inherit an economy primed for growth.”
Vice president-elect JD Vance backed Kash Patel’s nomination for FBI director, saying he is in a “very good spot” for Senate approval.
Still, Vance was unsure whether he would join Patel on Capitol Hill next week, according to CNN, where Patel is expected to meet with senators.
“I don’t know what I’ll be doing next week. We’re fully behind Kash’s nomination, and I’m not even sure if— I’m not sure where I’m gonna be tomorrow, much less next week, but we’re fully supportive of Kash’s nomination. I actually think he’s in a very good spot for his nomination,” Vance said.
Melania Trump called her husband’s win “incredible” during her first post-election interview with Fox & Friends.
“We are very, very busy … I’m establishing my transition team. And also, working on my office, putting my office together, and also, you know, organizing the residence and packing,” Melania Trump, who is set to return to the White House as first lady in January, said during the interview.
She also announced her new Christmas ornament collection during an appearance on Fox News on Friday. One of the ornaments is priced at $90, while the other ornaments are $75 each.
“After I left the White House, I established my Web3 and Web2 platforms where I design and offer collectibles like ornaments each season,” she said. “This is the third season, and there are many other collectibles available now.”
The 2024 collection, titled Merry Christmas, America!, has four designs: a golden star with “USA” in the center, a golden Lady Liberty, a red-white-and blue snowflake, and a golden clover. Each ornament has Melania Trump’s signature.
JD Vance defended Pete Hegseth after he toured western North Carolina, which was ravaged by Hurricane Helene in September.
Vance said that Donald Trump’s defense secretary pick deserved a Senate confirmation hearing rather than a “sham hearing before the American media” over allegations of sexual assault and excessive drinking of alcohol.
“Pete Hegseth is going to get his hearing before the Senate armed services committee, not a sham hearing before the American media. We believe that Pete Hegseth is the right guy to lead the Department of Defense,” Vance said. “We’re not abandoning this nomination.”
North Carolina Democrats have filed a lawsuit in federal court to block a Republican candidate’s effort to throw out 60,000 votes in a state supreme court race that a Democrat leads by just a few hundred votes.
Allison Riggs, a Democrat on the state supreme court, appears to have defeated Republican Jefferson Griffin by a little more than 700 votes in the race. A recount has already confirmed Riggs’ victory once, and a second recount tallying a sampling of precincts in each county is ongoing.
Democrats are closely watching the race because they need to win it to have a chance at retaking control of the court in a few years. Republicans currently have a 5-2 majority on the court.
After the election, Griffin’s campaign challenged the validity of 60,000 voters. The challenged voters include those whose voter registration lacked either a driver’s license or Social Security number, those who are the adult children of North Carolinians living abroad, and overseas voters who submitted ballots without voter ID. Many of the challenges rely on legal theories that have already been rejected by the courts.
Several eligible voters have already spoken out in frustration against the challenges, saying they are eligible voters and have been casting a ballot without issue for years. Riggs’ parents are among those whose votes are being challenged.
“Instead of respecting the results of the election, Jefferson Griffin and Republicans are attempting to throw out over 60,000 votes. Those 60,000 voters are Republicans, Democrats, veterans, seniors, teachers, our neighbors. No North Carolinian deserves to have their vote thrown out in a callous power grab – but this is no surprise from the party of insurrectionists,” Anderson Clayton, the chair of the North Carolina Democratic party, said in a statement.
Among other issues, the lawsuit says that Griffin’s mass challenges are essentially an effort to conduct a mass purge of voters after election day. Doing so would violate a federal law that prohibits purging voters within 90 days of a federal election.
“North Carolina Republicans’ attempts to throw out 60,000 lawful votes to overturn Justice Allison Riggs’ victory is a brazen and callous attack on the rule of law and North Carolinians’ right to vote, but it isn’t surprising. From trying to take power away from the newly elected Democratic governor to threatening to overturn the will of the voters, Republicans will stop at nothing in their quest for power,” said Sam Cornale, executive director of the Democratic National Committee.
Austin Tice, an American freelance journalist who was kidnapped in Syria early into the country’s civil war, is alive, his mother said following a meeting with Biden administration officials at the White House.
“The best thing that we want to share with you is that we have from a significant source that has already been vetted all over our government, Austin Tice is alive. Austin Tice is treated well, and there is no doubt about that, and so I think that is the most important thing,” Debra Tice said at the National Press Club.
The press conference was held as rebels have swept across Syria in recent days, seizing major cities from president Bashar al-Assad’s forces. It is unclear who was behind Tice’s kidnapping in August 2012, but the Biden administration believes Syria’s government is holding him. Here’s more on what we know about Tice’s captivity, and the efforts to free him.
Donald Trump will head to Paris this weekend to attend the reopening of Notre Dame.
Joe Biden will not be there, but first lady Jill Biden will be in attendance at the ceremony to mark the church’s return after it nearly burned down in a fire five years ago.
“The president has had a scheduling conflict, which is why he was not able to attend,” Jean-Pierre said, when asked about why Joe Biden would not attend.
Here’s more on Trump’s trip in the midst of political chaos in France:
White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that Donald Trump will inherit a good economy, thanks to Joe Biden’s policies over the past four years.
She also announced that Biden would promote his economic accomplishments in a speech on Tuesday, after government data released today showed that hiring remained strong in November.
“Just today, we learned more than 220,000 jobs were created last month, making this the only presidency in 50 years to have job growth every single month,” Jean-Pierre said.
“Over the last four years, the president has rejected trickle-down economics and written a new economic playbook that builds the economy from the middle out and bottom up, not the top down. This is a strong foundation for years to come … Trump will inherit an economy primed for growth.”
Former Biden administration official Jesse Lee pointed out on X that if Donald Trump stops the US Postal Service from electrifying their fleet, it will likely cost jobs.
Fox Carolina reports that a manufacturer of the new electric vehicles for the postal service planned to hire 1,000 people to make them. That hiring would presumably be in jeopardy if Trump cancels the plan.
“Trump planning to kill 1,000 jobs in South Carolina right off the bat,” Lee wrote.
Donald Trump is considering canceling efforts to electrify the United State Postal Service’s fleet once he takes office, Reuters reports.
The president-elect campaigned on killing electric vehicle incentives enacted during Joe Biden’s term to combat the climate crisis, and Reuters says his transition team is looking for ways to cancel contracts with vehicle manufacturers for electric vehicles that will be used by the postal service to move mail.
Here’s more on the potential plan, from Reuters:
The move, which could be unveiled in the early days of Trump’s administration that begins on Jan 20, is in line with Trump’s campaign promises to roll back President Joe Biden’s efforts to decarbonize US transportation to fight climate change – an agenda Trump has said is unnecessary and potentially damaging to the economy.
Reuters has previously reported that Trump is planning to kill a $7,500 consumer tax credit for electric-vehicle purchases, and plans to roll back Biden’s stricter fuel-efficiency standards.
The sources told Reuters that Trump’s transition team is now reviewing how it can unwind the postal service’s multibillion-dollar contracts, including with Oshkosh Corp (OSK.N) and Ford (F.N), for tens of thousands of battery-driven delivery trucks and charging stations.
Oshkosh shares fell by roughly 5% to 105.65 per share after the Reuters report.
Oshkosh and Ford did not respond to requests for comment.
In 2023, Congress gave USPS $3 billion as part of a $430 billion climate bill to buy EVs and charging infrastructure. It plans to buy some 66,000 electric vehicles to build one of the largest electric vehicle fleets in the nation by 2028.
As part of that, Oshkosh is expected to deliver about 45,000 electric vehicles, with the remaining coming from mainstream automakers like Ford, according to the USPS. The initial batch of 14,000 chargers are being supplied by Siemens, ChargePoint and Blink, according to the USPS.
JD Vance on Friday surveyed damage from Hurricane Helene and talked to first responders in western North Carolina in one of his first public appearances since the November election.
The hurricane struck in September and caused at least $53bn in damage in North Carolina, according to government estimates.
Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, visited the Fairview volunteer fire department. There, he learned that the building had flooded with 4-6ins of water and that roughly a dozen people contracted walking pneumonia as they responded to the hurricane’s destruction.
“At the height of it, I imagine y’all were working nonstop,” Vance said.
After the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the US economy added more jobs than forecast in November, President Joe Biden said that “America’s comeback continues.” The unemployment rate, on the other hand, ticked higher last month.
“This has been a hard-fought recovery, but we are making progress for working families,” Biden said in a statement.
“While there is more to do to lower costs, we’ve taken action to lower prescription drug prices, health insurance premiums, utility bills, and gas prices that will pay dividends for years to come.”
New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez officially announced her bid to serve as ranking member on the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, the key investigative arm of the legislature.
“The responsibility of leading Democrats on the House Oversight Committee during Donald Trump’s second term in the White House is a profound and consequential one,” the progressive lawmaker said in a letter released Friday.
Ocasio-Cortez seeks one of the most influential positions in the House as Democrats work to counter the incoming Trump administration and monitor the president-elect and his allies.
These allies have pledged to retaliate against opponents and disregard political norms in Washington.
“We must do all that we can, now, to mark a different future for the American people,” reads Ocasio-Cortez’s letter, “one that inspires us to reject the siren calls of division, corruption, and authoritarianism through a shining example of a government that works for the people, by the people – one that sees their struggles and fights for them, not just the powerful and the wealthy.”
If Democrats regain control of the House in the 2026 midterms, the new Oversight chairperson would have significant authority to issue subpoenas and investigate the Trump administration.
Democratic representative for South Carolina, James Clyburn, said President Joe Biden should issue preemptive pardons for some of the people who have attacked President-elect Donald Trump, although it is not how the pardon power was intended.
“We have to use the pardon system, or the clemency system, to get everything in order to address the current situation that we live in,” Clyburn told CNN.
These comments come as the Biden administration considers the possibility of him granting mass pardons to a broad range of public officials to protect them against the possibility of retribution and revenge from Donald Trump when he assumes power.
After a federal appeals court upheld a law banning TikTok across the US unless the it was sold off by its China-based parent company, the viral video app posted the following statement on X:
“The Supreme Court has an established historical record of protecting Americans’ right to free speech, and we expect they will do just that on this important constitutional issue. Unfortunately, the TikTok ban was conceived and pushed through based upon inaccurate, flawed and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American people. The TikTok ban, unless stopped, will silence the voices of over 170 million Americans here in the US and around the world on January 19th, 2025.”
Donald Trump and JD Vance have gone to bat for defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, who has faced allegations of sexual assault, excessive drinking and financial mismanagement that could imperil his Senate confirmation. Trump said Hegseth “is doing very well”, while Vance said he and the president-elect have “got his back”. We’ll see if those statements move any wary senators. Meanwhile, TikTok suffered a setback when an appeals court rejected its attempt to block a law that will force its Chinese parent company to cut ties with the popular social media app by mid-January or face a ban. However, the story is far from finished: TikTok is expected to appeal to the supreme court, and Trump has made an about-face on the issue, saying he supports keeping TikTok available.
Here’s what else is going on today:
Trump aides believe that Hegseth is on track for confirmation, despite several Republicans saying the stories about his personal conduct make them hesitant to support him.
Hakeem Jeffries, the top House Democrat, says his lawmakers will find ways to work with the “Department of Government Efficiency”, so long as what it proposes is a good idea.
Joe Biden is reportedly considering preemptive pardons for potential targets of retaliation, once Trump takes office. At least one Democratic senator thinks such a move would be a bad idea.
At his press conference today, Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said his party is willing to work with the new “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), as long as what it proposes is reasonable.
“It’s unclear to me what exactly the objective is related to this so-called DOGE initiative. From our perspective, we want a federal government that is effective and efficient in equilibrium. And, to the extent the other side of the aisle shares that objective, which is what is right for the American people, then we’ll see if there’s common ground as possible,” Jeffries told reporters.
The GOP will remain the majority party in the House of Representatives beginning next year, but only by a mere two seats. Jeffries implied that their slim control of the chamber will make working with the Democrats essential:
It’s clear that the incoming House Republican majority will not be able to do much without us.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
