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    Hegseth vows to stay sober if confirmed as defense secretary; Trump signals pro-crypto stance with SEC pick Paul Atkins – live

    Pete Hegseth is back on Capitol Hill as he seeks to reassure Republican senators of his ability to lead the defense department despite a steady trickle of troubling reports about his personal conduct.Over the weekend, the New Yorker reported that Hegseth, a former Fox News host, was known to drink excessively. It quoted a former staffer at a veterans non-profit that he led saying: “I’ve seen him drunk so many times. I’ve seen him dragged away not a few times but multiple times. To have him at the Pentagon would be scary.”The Hill reports that Hegseth told Roger Wicker, a Republican senator who will chair the armed services committee, that he will stay sober if he gets the defense secretary job. Speaking to reporters, Wicker said: “I think that’s probably a good idea.”Donald Trump will sit down for an interview with Kristen Welker, host of NBC’s Meet the Press, for an interview that will air on 8 December, NBCUniversal announced in a press release on Wednesday. The interview will be filmed this Friday and will be the president-elect’s first network interview since the election, NBC’s press release added.Trump has been notoriously antagonistic toward mainstream American news networks like NBC in the past. In September 2023, he threatened to sue Comcast, NBC’s parent company, over what he described as “Country Threatening Treason”.In a post on Truth Social on 24 September 2023, Trump said:
    I say up front, openly, and proudly, that when I WIN the Presidency of the United States, they and others of the LameStream Media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and event.
    Several people close to Donald Trump, including some he has chosen to serve in his cabinet, are encouraging the president-elect to pardon Edward Snowden, the Washington Post reports.A former National Security Agency contractor, Snowden fled to Hong Kong in 2013 and handed over tens of thousands of top-secret documents to media outlets, including the Guardian. He has since been in exile in Russia. Trump almost pardoned Snowden before leaving office in 2021, but ultimately decided not to.Here’s more on his latest thinking on the matter, from the Post:“I decided to let that one ride, let the courts work it out,” Trump said 10 months after leaving office, when asked about pardons for Snowden and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. “I was very close to going the other way.”But advocates for clemency for Snowden, including several of Trump’s picks for top Cabinet posts, are hopeful that Trump is now closer to pardoning the former spy, who has been living in Moscow for more than a decade to avoid a 2013 Justice Department indictment.Matt Gaetz, the former congressman who withdrew last month as Trump’s nominee for attorney general, said the Snowden pardon has been a topic of discussion among people working on Trump’s presidential transition since the election, though he said he had not spoken about it with Trump during that time. Gaetz is hopeful that the future president will deliver.“I advocated for a pardon for Mr Snowden extensively. That did not give Mr Trump any apprehension in his nominating me. I would have recommended that as attorney general,” Gaetz said Monday. “I have discussed the matter with others in and around the transition, and there seemed to be pretty broad support for a pardon.”Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary pick, Robert F Kennedy Jr., campaigned for president on the promise of a “day one” pardon of Snowden and building a Washington monument in his honor. Director of National Intelligence pick Tulsi Gabbard sponsored a 2020 House resolution with Gaetz calling for the government to drop charges against Snowden.Kenneth Chesebro, a little-known lawyer who played a key role in developing the fake electors scheme, is asking a Georgia judge to withdraw his guilty plea in the wide-ranging election interference case filed by Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney.Chesebro pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to file false documents, agreeing to serve five years of probation, serve 100 hours of community service, pay $5,000 in restitution and write an apology to the citizens of Georgia. He also agreed to turn over all evidence in his possession and serve as a witness in the case.But in September, Fulton county superior court judge Scott McAfee threw out the charges that Chesebro had pleaded guilty to, which were related to filing false statements in federal court. State-level prosecutors did not have the authority to file those charges, McAfee ruled in September.“In Georgia, a defendant cannot plead guilty to a charge that does not constitute a crime,” Chesebro’s lawyer wrote in a court filing on Wednesday.The Georgia case has been on hold since earlier this year when the defendants in the case sought to have Willis removed from it over her romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the case’s lead prosecutor. McAfee ruled that Willis could continue as long as Wade resigned, which he did. Trump and other defendants appealed that ruling.The case is not expected to go to trial any time soon and it is unclear whether it will be dismissed entirely after Trump won the presidency.Pete Hegseth’s chances of becoming defense secretary will likely be determined by Joni Ernst, a Republican senator from Iowa who is also the first female combat veteran to serve in the chamber, the New York Times reports.Hegseth is expected to meet today with Ernst, a victim of sexual assault who has supported a bill to change how the military handles such attacks.The former Fox News host was investigated in connection with a sexual assault in Monterey, California, in 2017. Though no charges were brought, it has been reported that he reached a financial settlement with his female accuser. Hegseth has also faced allegations of creating a hostile workplace environment for women when he was involved in veterans non-profits.Pete Hegseth is back on Capitol Hill as he seeks to reassure Republican senators of his ability to lead the defense department despite a steady trickle of troubling reports about his personal conduct.Over the weekend, the New Yorker reported that Hegseth, a former Fox News host, was known to drink excessively. It quoted a former staffer at a veterans non-profit that he led saying: “I’ve seen him drunk so many times. I’ve seen him dragged away not a few times but multiple times. To have him at the Pentagon would be scary.”The Hill reports that Hegseth told Roger Wicker, a Republican senator who will chair the armed services committee, that he will stay sober if he gets the defense secretary job. Speaking to reporters, Wicker said: “I think that’s probably a good idea.”Donald Trump has nominated cryptocurrency lobbyist Paul Atkins to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission, a sign that his administration will take a friendlier approach to the digital assets that have boomed in value in recent years despite concerns about their financial risks.In a post on Truth Social announcing the appointment, Trump wrote:
    Paul is a proven leader for common sense regulations. He believes in the promise of robust, innovative capital markets that are responsive to the needs of Investors, & that provide capital to make our Economy the best in the World. He also recognizes that digital assets & other innovations are crucial to Making America Greater than Ever Before.
    Atkins served as an SEC commissioner during George W Bush’s presidency, and currently co-chairs the Token Alliance, an initiative of the Chamber of Digital Commerce intended to inform policymakers about digital assets. He also runs Patomak Global Partners, a risk management firm.Under Joe Biden, the SEC has been chaired by Gary Gensler, a critic of cryptocurrencies who will step down when Trump is inaugurated – a day the digital asset industry is very much looking forward to.Donald Trump announced Bill McGinley as White House counsel only three weeks ago, but today assigned him the new position in the “department of government efficiency”, swapping him for David Warrington instead. No reason was given for the switch-up.Warrington, a partner at Dhillon Law Group, represented Trump on cases such as those involving the effort to remove him from the ballot due to the role he played in the 6 Jananuary 2021 attack on the US Capitol.Warrington is the latest of Trump’s personal attorneys to take up a role in the administration. The veteran marine also led the Republican National Lawyers Association and worked on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.“He is an esteemed lawyer and Conservative leader,” Trump said.Trump appointed William “Bill” Joseph McGinley as counsel to a newly created non-government agency, the “department of government efficiency” (“Doge”), headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Doge, named after the Dogecoin meme cryptocurrency, is meant to “dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies”, according to Trump.McGinley was White House cabinet secretary during Trump’s first term, a role meant for coordinating policy and communications strategy.“Bill will play a crucial role in liberating our Economy from burdensome Regulations, excess spending, and Government waste,” Trump said in a statement announcing the new appointment. “He will partner with the White House and the Office of Management and Budget to provide advice and guidance to end the bloated Federal Bureaucracy. Bill is a great addition to a stellar team that is focused on making life better for all Americans. He will be at the forefront of my Administration’s efforts to make our Government more efficient and more accountable.”Adam Boheler will serve as lead hostage negotiator for the administration, a role which will come into focus during future conversations with Israel and Hamas.Trump said yesterday on Truth Social there will be “HELL TO PAY” if the hostages in Gaza are not released by the time of his inauguration.Negotiations over a ceasefire in Gaza have not been met with success. At least 44,466 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by Israeli forces, according to the Gaza health ministry, many of whom are women, children and elderly people.Donald Trump nominated healthcare executive Adam Boehler as special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, “with the personal rank of Ambassador”.“Adam worked for me as a Lead Negotiator on the Abraham Accords team. He has negotiated with some of the toughest people in the World, including the Taliban, but Adam knows that NO ONE is tougher than the United States of America, at least when President Trump is its Leader. Adam will work tirelessly to bring our Great American Citizens HOME,” Trump said in a statement.“Adam was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the first CEO of the United States Development Finance Corporation. He went to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.“Congratulations to Adam, his wife, Shira, and their four beautiful children, Ruth, Abraham, Esther, and Rachel!”The supreme court spent two and a half hours hearing oral arguments over Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care, which members of the court’s six-justice supermajority appear inclined to uphold. An attorney for the state argued that the law protects “minors from risky, unproven medical interventions”, while the Biden administration’s top lawyer said: “Tennessee made no attempt to tailor its law to its stated health concerns.” The American Civil Liberties Union also spoke against the law, with its lawyer Chase Strangio making history as the first openly transgender person to argue before the supreme court. A decision is expected in the coming months.Here’s what else has gone on today so far:

    Pete Hegseth’s nomination as defense secretary is reportedly teetering amid reports of excessive drinking, financial mismanagement and a sexual assault allegation. Donald Trump is said to be considering Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, to replace him for the job of leading the Pentagon, but has announced no decision yet.

    Hegseth’s mother, Penelope Hegseth, defended her son in an interview with his former employer Fox News, saying: “He doesn’t misuse women.”

    Trump announced a slew of new appointments to top administration jobs, including army secretary and Nasa administrator. Among those picked was former federal inmate Peter Navarro, who will be a top White House trade adviser.
    Members of the supreme court’s conservative supermajority appeared willing to uphold Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors in just-concluded oral arguments.Biden administration solicitor general Elizabeth Prelogar as well as American Civil Liberties Union attorney Chase Strangio argued that the Tennessee law, known as SB 1, ran afoul of constitutional protections against sex discrimination, and that it jeopardizes the mental health of minors by forcing them to go through puberty before they can access gender-affirming care once they turn 18.But conservative justices questioned whether by rejecting the law, they would create a situation whereby a young person would use the care to transition genders, then regret it later on. They also questioned whether the constitution addressed the sort of situation that the Tennessee law deals with.“You say there are benefits from allowing these treatments, but there are also harms, right, from allowing these treatments, at least the state says so, including lost fertility, the physical and psychological effects on those who later change their mind and want to detransition, which I don’t think we can ignore,” said Brett Kavanaugh, a conservative justice.Other members of the six-justice conservative bloc made similar points, which is more than enough to issue a ruling upholding Tennessee’s law, and likely those of the more than two dozen other states with similar measures on the books.As the arguments wrapped up, conservative supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh asked Tennessee solicitor general Matthew Rice about how the state’s law should be viewed in the context of state’s rights.“You are not arguing that the constitution take sides on this question … you are arguing that each state can make its own choice on this question. So, from your perspective, as I understand it, it’s perfectly fine for a state to make a different choice, as many states have, than Tennessee did and to allow these treatments,” Kavanaugh asked.“That’s correct,” Rice replied, arguing that the question of how to regulate such care is one best left to legislatures to determine, not the courts.“We think that’s because of what your honor has pointed out, that no matter how you draw these lines, there are risk and benefit, potential benefits and harms to people on both sides, and the question of how to balance those harms is not a question for the judiciary, it’s a question for the legislature,” he said.Liberal supreme court justices were openly skeptical of the Tennessee law.The state’s solicitor general Matthew Rice began by arguing that there are risks to gender-affirming care, leading justice Sonia Sotomayor to cut in: “I’m sorry, councilor, every medical treatment has a risk, even taking aspirin. There is always going to be a percentage of the population under any medical treatment that’s going to suffer a harm.”Sotomayor argued that the law creates a “sex-based difference” in who can receive medical care, but Rice said he disagreed, arguing that the law is instead regulating different medical procedures.“We do not think that giving puberty blockers to a six-year-old that has started precocious puberty is the same medical treatment as giving it to a minor who wants to transition. Those are not the same medical treatment,” he said.Currently before the court is Tennessee’s solicitor general, Matthew Rice, who is arguing in favor of the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors.“Tennessee lawmakers enacted SB 1 to protect minors from risky, unproven medical interventions. The law imposes an across-the-board rule that allows the use of drugs and surgeries for some medical purposes, but not for others. Its application turns entirely on medical purpose, not a patient’s sex. That is not sex discrimination,” he began.“The challengers try to make the law seem sex-based this morning by using terms like masculinizing and feminizing, but their arguments can … conflate fundamentally different treatments, just as using morphine to manage pain differs from using it to assist suicide, using hormones and puberty blockers to address a physical condition is far different from using it to address psychological distress associated with one’s body.”Back at the supreme court, liberal justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said she was concerned that if the court upheld the Tennessee ban on gender-affirming care, it would undermine decisions that outlawed forms of racial discrimination.She specifically cited the landmark Loving v Virginia decision of 1967, which found laws against interracial marriage were unconstitutional.“We’re just sort of doing what the state is encouraging here in Loving, where you just sort of say, well, there are lots of good reasons for this policy, and who are we, as the court, to say otherwise? I’m worried that we’re undermining the foundations of some of our bedrock equal protection cases,” Jackson said.“I share your concerns,” ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio replied. “If Tennessee can have an end run around heightened scrutiny by asserting at the outset that biology justifies the sex-based differential in the law, that would undermine decades of this court’s precedent.”Donald Trump has announced nominees for several top administration roles, including army secretary, Nasa administrator and advisers dealing with trade and hostages held overseas.Among those selected was Peter Navarro, who served four months in prison earlier this year after being convicted of contempt of Congress. Trump appointed Navarro as senior counsel for trade and manufacturing, a role similar to one he held during the first Trump administration. Here’s what the president-elect said in making the appointment:
    I am pleased to announce that Peter Navarro, a man who was treated horribly by the Deep State, or whatever else you would like to call it, will serve as my Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing. During my First Term, few were more effective or tenacious than Peter in enforcing my two sacred rules, Buy American, Hire American. He helped me renegotiate unfair Trade Deals like NAFTA and the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS), and moved every one of my Tariff and Trade actions FAST …
    The Senior Counselor position leverages Peter’s broad range of White House experience, while harnessing his extensive Policy analytic and Media skills. His mission will be to help successfully advance and communicate the Trump Manufacturing, Tariff, and Trade Agendas.
    The president-elect announced three other appointments:

    Daniel Driscoll to serve as army secretary. An Iraq war veteran, Driscoll was most recently serving as an adviser to vice-president-elect JD Vance.

    Adam Boehler as special envoy for hostage affairs. Boehler was involved in negotiating the Abraham accords that normalized relations between Israel and some Arab states, and Trump said he “will work tirelessly to bring our Great American Citizens HOME”.

    Jared Isaacman as Nasa administrator. The billionaire was earlier this year the first private citizen to perform a spacewalk from a capsule from Elon Musk’s firm SpaceX.
    The justices are now hearing from Chase Strangio of the American Civil Liberties Union, who is also the first openly transgender attorney to argue before the supreme court.Strangio said that the court should rule against the Tennessee ban on gender-affirming care for minors. Here’s his opening statement:
    On its face, SB 1 bans medical care only when it is inconsistent with a person’s birth sex. An adolescent can receive medical treatment to live and identify as a boy if his birth sex is male, but not female, and an adolescent can receive medical treatment to live and identify as a girl if her birth sex is female, but not male.
    Tennessee claims the sex-based line drawing is justified to protect children, but SB 1 has taken away the only treatment that relieved years of suffering for each of the … plaintiffs, and, critically, Tennessee’s arguments that SB 1 is sex-neutral would apply if the state banned this care for adults too, by banning treatment only when it allows an adolescent to live, identify or appear inconsistent with their birth sex. SB 1 warrants heightened scrutiny under decades of precedent because the sixth circuit failed to apply that standard, this court should vacate and remand. More

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    Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense should alarm all of us | Moira Donegan

    It takes a lot to get a man’s mother to declare him an “abuser of women”. Mothers, as a rule, are not known for their ungenerous assessments of their sons’ behavior. But Penelope Hegseth, the mother of the Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Defense, once did just that in an email to her son.“I have no respect for a man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego,” Hegseth’s mother wrote to him. “You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains and embarrasses me to say that, but it’s the sad, sad truth.” The email – which Hegseth’s mother later disavowed – appears to have come around the time of the dissolution of Hegseth’s second marriage; during Hegseth’s first marriage, according to a new report by Vanity Fair, he confessed to no fewer than five affairs.The April 2018 email from Hegseth’s mother came just months after an October 2017 incident in which a woman alleges that Hegseth raped her at a Republican women’s conference in the seaside town of Monterey, California. In a police report, the woman said that while she was intoxicated at the time of the incident and believed she may have been drugged, she “remembered saying no a lot” and claimed that Hegseth had blocked her from a hotel room door with his body when she had tried to leave. The woman subsequently went to the hospital; Hegseth later paid her a settlement, and she signed a non-disclosure agreement. Hegseth denies any misconduct and has not been charged with a crime.That 2017 incident, in which heavy drinking at a work event allegedly culminated in Hegseth committing sexual assault, is in line with another slew of allegations against the defense secretary nominee published last Sunday by the New Yorker, in which whistleblowers at not one, but two of Hegseth’s former employers compiled allegations of his drinking, financial mismanagement, and disrespectful, lewd and abusive behavior towards women, going so far as to risk their own careers in order to report Hegseth to management.During his three-year tenure as the president of the conservative group Concerned Veterans for America (CVA), Hegseth was repeatedly so intoxicated at work events that he had to be carried out, according to a report compiled by multiple former CVA employees that was sent to management in February 2015. That report also claims Hegseth took employees to a strip club in Louisiana as part of a work event and was almost thrown out of the venue by security when he tried to climb on stage with the dancers. A separate letter sent to CVA management – there seem to have been many letters about him sent to management – claims that when Hegseth was at an Ohio bar in May 2015, he drunkenly chanted: “Kill all Muslims! Kill all Muslims!”According to the New Yorker, Hegseth’s alleged misbehavior at the CVA was consistent with drunken impropriety that Hegseth is alleged to have engaged in as the head of another conservative non-profit, Vets for Freedom, which was dissolved after Hegseth’s leadership drove it to insolvency amid many work parties that were described by one insider as “trysts”.Hegseth was pushed out as president of CVA in 2016, and landed his Fox News gig shortly thereafter. But his heavy drinking appears to have continued. NBC News interviewed 10 current and former employees of Fox News who reported that Hegseth smelled of alcohol at work and complained of being hungover before going on the air. One of them said they had smelled alcohol on him at work as recently as last month.Together, the allegations paint a picture of a drunken, incompetent and sexually entitled man, prone to over-indulgence and short on self-discipline, who abuses alcohol, is habitually unprofessional, mismanages other people’s money and treats women as one might a Kleenex. He comes off as ineffectual, disrespectful, wasteful and unworthy of respect. Trump wants to put him in charge of 3 million civilian and military employees, one of the largest budgets of any government agency in human history and the nation’s security and military readiness.Incompetence has never been a disqualifying quality in Trump’s orbit, and abuse of women, at times, has seemed like it counts, in Trump world, almost as a virtue. Trump’s is a masculinity of domination and swagger, in which women’s bodies are a theater on which men prove their own strength; respect or kindness towards others is a sign of weakness; and good governance is for nerds and losers who simply don’t have the balls for self-dealing.By that metric, allegations that Hegseth sexually abused women, cheated former employers out of money and was habitually drunk may not even be seen as negatives. They may be interpreted, in Maga world, as signs of a man with the kind of baseless self-assurance, disregard for others and determination to dominate that the Trump administration has always prized most highly, not least of all in Trump himself.But there are signs that some Republicans, at least, remain capable of something like embarrassment. NBC News reported on Tuesday that as many as six Republican senators are cooling on the prospect of voting to confirm Hegseth; in the narrowly divided Senate that will convene next year, he can afford to lose only three.Perhaps the senators are put off by the allegations of Hegseth’s alcohol abuse in a way they were not by his allegations of sexual abuse. But ultimately, the senators will only withhold their votes from a Trump nominee if they feel they can politically afford to do so. Like many of Hegseth’s alleged encounters with women, the vote will come down to an exercise in domination – and that is the kind of contest that Trump has always aimed to win.

    Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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    Trump makes U-turn on top White House lawyer pick

    Donald Trump announced on Wednesday he was appointing David Warrington to serve as the White House counsel, abruptly changing his mind about who will be the top lawyer in the incoming administration as he moves his original pick to the new department of government efficiency.The move means Warrington, a longtime Trump lawyer who was also the Trump campaign’s general counsel, will effectively be the most prominent legal adviser to Trump in the day-to-day running of the West Wing.“Dave will lead the office of the White House counsel, and serve as the top attorney in the White House. Dave has represented me well as my personal attorney, and as general counsel for my presidential campaign,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.Warrington has been a low-profile but consistent fixture in Trump’s legal orbit for years, leading the campaign’s pre-election litigation with the federal election commission and civil cases, including efforts to ban Trump from the ballot over the January 6 Capitol attack.Warrington had been in contention to be White House counsel in the days after the election – it is typical for the general counsel on the presidential campaign to get the White House counsel job – until Trump decided he wanted the Republican lawyer Bill McGinley instead.The precise details about why Trump changed his mind are unclear.The Trump transition team’s “War Room” account said in a post on X that McGinley was moved to the department of government efficiency because the agency, which is expected to be part of the Office of Management and Budget, needed its own lawyer to oversee efforts to cut millions in government spending.“President Trump knows reforming the federal government won’t be easy – and that’s why he needs a solid, experienced pro like Bill McGinley at DOGE,” the post said, using the acronym for the efficiency department.But the decision also comes after Warrington, in the lead-up to the Thanksgiving holiday last week, attempted what was widely seen as an effort to force the exile of top Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn over an alleged pay-to-play scheme for potential cabinet nominees.The apparent ouster attempt failed and Epshteyn has remained inside Trump’s orbit. Several Trump aides suggested Warrington might have been offered the White House counsel job as part of a detente inside the Trump legal teams, so that Warrington got what he wanted and Epshteyn retained his influence.“Bill will play a crucial role in liberating our economy from burdensome regulations, excess spending, and government waste. He will partner with the White House and the Office of Management and Budget to provide advice and guidance to end the bloated federal bureaucracy,” Trump said.The White House counsel role is not a Senate-confirmed position. Warrington would be part of a West Wing senior staff led by the White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, the co-chair of the Trump campaign with whom he has worked closely. More

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    Commonly used defense tactic strongly correlates with acceptance of rape myths – study

    A new study, released amid controversy over allegations of sexual misconduct against several nominees for Donald Trump’s cabinet, reveals a positive correlation between people accused of wrongdoing who use Darvo (“deny, attack, reverse victim and offender”) defense tactics and sexual harassment perpetration and acceptance of rape myths.“These findings suggest Darvo isn’t just a response,” said Dr Sarah Harsey, assistant professor of psychology at the Oregon State University-Cascades and study lead author. “It reflects a broader perspective that condones victim-blaming and minimizes accountability.”Published on Wednesday in PLOS One, the study involved surveys of one group of 602 university students and another group of 325 “community members” – “regular folk”, Harsey said, found through Mechanical Turk, Amazon’s crowdsourcing service.Among students, researchers “found a positive correlation between Darvo use and both sexual harassment perpetration and acceptance of rape myths”. The community group showed “very strong correlations”.Harsey’s co-authors were Alexis Adams-Clark, a University of Oregon doctoral student, and Jennifer Freyd, professor emerit of psychology at Oregon and founder of the nonprofit Center for Institutional Courage.Freyd coined the term Darvo in the 1990s. She said the idea grew from watching “the hearings for Clarence Thomas and the response to Anita Hill”, the law professor who in 1991 said the then supreme court nominee sexually harassed her, only to see her own reputation dragged through the mud.“Clarence Thomas had a leadership role” in the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Freyd said. “So it seemed to me like if there’s anyone who would have had a different response to the accusation, it was him. He would have said something like, ‘My memory is very different than yours. I’m disturbed to hear this is how you experienced things. I know these are very difficult conversations to have, and I want to understand what leads you to say this.’ But instead he and the other people who enabled him, it was a gang that attacked Anita Hill … and then I was seeing it all over.”Introducing their study, Freyd and her co-authors write that they aimed “to extend research on the connections between Darvo and sexual violence. We examined whether people who use Darvo as a means of responding to confrontations involving a range of wrongdoings also engage in behaviors and ascribe to beliefs that contribute to sexual violence.“Findings offer further confirmation of a link between Darvo and sexual violence and suggest this defensive response is part of a larger worldview that justifies participation in sexual violence and blames victims,” they added.The study is published amid new Washington scandal about sexual misconduct, not just regarding the blizzard of allegations against Donald Trump himself but also over accusations against Trump’s first pick for attorney general, Matt Gaetz; his pick for secretary of health, Robert F Kennedy Jr; and Pete Hegseth, the nominee for secretary of defense who was accused of sexual assault in 2017.On Sunday, the New Yorker reported a lawyer’s use of Darvo: insisting Hegseth “was completely innocent” and that his accuser “was the aggressor”, had “tried to blackmail him”, and “had previously brought a false rape charge against someone else, thus undermining her credibility”. The lawyer also demanded the release of investigative records on Hegseth’s accuser. The New Yorker said it asked authorities for such records, but none existed.Harsey said: “It is easy to find examples of Darvo in the context of sexual misconduct in the news nowadays. We started this project after the first Trump presidency, and now we are about to be faced with a second one. And so I think it’s relevance is pretty noticeable right now.“I hope that after reading the report, people will have words to put to things they already noticed. By naming Darvo, by knowing its associations with things like rape myth acceptance and sexual harassment perpetration … it sort of empowers people to take a step back and think, ‘Wait, this is Darvo. This is something research has looked at.’“Maybe we don’t have to take what [those using Darvo are] saying so seriously, because we know that this is a common tactic. We know that it’s connected to these other sort of undesirable constructs. Maybe we don’t have to believe and endorse these statements when we see Darvo out in the wild.’” More

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    Trump names Peter Navarro, jailed for contempt of Congress, trade adviser

    Donald Trump said he would name former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro as senior counselor for trade and manufacturing.Navarro made headlines earlier this year when, in March, he was jailed for contempt of Congress.The president-elect made the announcement along with several other positions on Truth Social, as he continues an unconventional rollout of cabinet and secretary nominations.“I am pleased to announce that Peter Navarro, a man who was treated horribly by the Deep State, or whatever else you would like to call it, will serve as my Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing,” Trump said in a social media post.He called Navarro “tenacious”, said he helped renegotiate free trade deals, and that his focus would be on tariffs – a major campaign promise from Trump.Navarro’s jail sentence came in the aftermath of his refusal to cooperate with the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. He appealed his case all the way to the supreme court, though the case was rejected at every level. Navarro said his case was not about congressional authority, but an assault on executive power.“This is not about me,” Navarro said upon turning himself into a Miami jail. He claimed his prosecution was, “an unprecedented assault on the constitutional separation of powers and the doctrine of executive privilege as a critical tool dating back to George Washington for effective presidential decision-making”.Also on Truth Social on Wednesday, Trump named Daniel P Driscoll as the secretary of the army, Jared Isaacman as administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa), Michael William Faulkender as the deputy secretary of the US Department of the Treasury, and several others for various positions.He also named Adam Boehler as special envoy for hostage affairs with ambassador rank. Boehler is currently the chief executive of Rubicon Founders, a healthcare investment firm.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBoehler was confirmed by the Senate as the first chief executive of the United States Development Finance Corporation, a federal agency created during the Trump administration. He also helped negotiate the Abraham accords, treaties that normalized relations between Israel and several Arab nations.Additionally, Trump said he asked Michael Whatley, a political attorney, to return to chair the Republican National Committee. Whatley co-chaired the committee with Lara Trump, the president-elect’s daughter-in-law. He previously served as a federal law clerk and in the Bush administration. More

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    Trump taps billionaire and private astronaut Jared Isaacman to lead Nasa

    A billionaire entrepreneur who led the first flight of an all-private crew of astronauts, and became the first civilian to walk in space earlier this year, has been nominated by Donald Trump to be the next leader of Nasa.If confirmed by the Senate, Jared Isaacman, also an experienced jet pilot with his own display team, will guide the space agency at a pivotal moment in its 76-year history as it moves closer to returning humans to the moon for the first time since 1972 and sending the first crews to Mars.The 41-year-old founder of the commercial aerospace defense company Draken International said in a tweet he was “honored” to receive Trump’s nomination, and would be “grateful” to serve.“Having been fortunate to see our amazing planet from space, I am passionate about America leading the most incredible adventure in human history,” he wrote.“On my last mission to space, my crew and I traveled farther from Earth than anyone in over half a century. I can confidently say this second space age has only just begun.“Space holds unparalleled potential for breakthroughs in manufacturing, biotechnology, mining, and perhaps even pathways to new sources of energy. There will inevitably be a thriving space economy … that will create opportunities for countless people to live and work in space. At Nasa we will passionately pursue these possibilities and usher in an era where humanity becomes a true spacefaring civilization.”Isaacman was the commander of September’s five-day orbital Polaris Dawn mission that saw him make the first spacewalk by a civilian, nearly 460 miles (740km) above Earth. He would succeed outgoing Nasa administrator Bill Nelson, a former space shuttle astronaut and Democratic senator for Florida who was appointed by Joe Biden in 2021.Nelson oversaw crucial advances in the Artemis program, including the pioneering November 2022 flight of the Artemis 1 moon rocket, which is scheduled to land the first woman and person of color on the lunar surface by the end of 2026.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut the nomination of Isaacman, who is a close friend of the SpaceX founder and Trump acolyte Elon Musk, will raise questions over the future of a key government-funded component of the Artemis program, namely the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.Musk’s company has been progressing its own Starship heavy lift rocket in recent months, also designed for long-duration human spaceflight to the moon and Mars, and the commercial space industry is expected to become much more prominent during the second Trump administration.In a statement announcing his pick on Wednesday, Trump praised Isaacman as “an accomplished business leader, philanthropist, pilot, and astronaut”.“Jared’s passion for space, astronaut experience, and dedication to pushing the boundaries of exploration, unlocking the mysteries of the universe, and advancing the new space economy, make him ideally suited to lead Nasa into a bold new era,” Trump said.Lori Garver, who was deputy administrator of Nasa from 2009 to 2013 during the Obama administration, said in a post to X that Isaacman’s nomination was “terrific news”.“[He] has the opportunity to build on Nasa’s amazing accomplishments to pave our way to an even brighter future,” she said. More

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    ‘This is not time for retreat or apathy’: Black women dissect Harris loss

    Misogynoir, the intersection of racism and sexism, was the main reason behind Kamala Harris’s loss in the 2024 general election, a panel of Black female experts argued, noting how post-election coverage has failed to contend with how white supremacy undergirded the election results.In a conversation titled “Views from the 92%: Black Women Reflect on 2024 Election and Road Ahead”, several academics dissected how and why the vice-president lost, particularly given Trump’s problematic history.The panel was hosted by the African American Policy Forum, a social justice thinktank co-founded by Kimberlé Crenshaw, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and Columbia University.“Racism is designed in such a way to make you question your humanity, but sexism is also. Sexism is really a power move,” said LaTosha Brown, co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund. “When you combine those two things together, I think that that best explains what [Harris] experienced.”Throughout the 2024 election campaign, Trump and other conservatives launched an onslaught of racist and sexist attacks against Harris: repeatedly claiming that Harris “slept her way” into political power, was unintelligent and that she was not a Black woman.Such attacks are unsurprising given American’s history with racism against Black women, the call participants said. But what was especially frustrating were platforms Trump was given to spread disinformation, Crenshaw argued, specifically calling out Trump being featured at the 2024 National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) convention.Karen Attiah, the former co-chair of the convention, who stepped down after the announcement that Trump would be interviewed, said the interview was a “viscerally painful experience” which was excused by many “white liberals”. During the contentious interview, Trump questioned Harris’s race, saying she suddenly “became a Black woman”. “Is she Indian or is she Black? I respect either one but she obviously doesn’t because she was Indian all the way and then all of sudden she became a Black woman.” Trump was also repeatedly combative with the interviewer Rachel Scott, the senior congressional correspondent for ABC News, accusing her of being “rude”.“The responses that I personally got for stepping down from white allies or people who are white leaders, was, ‘Well, he was racist and he destroyed your conference, but we needed to see that’ and I was like, ‘At the expense of our dignity[?]’,” she said.Following the general election on 6 November, exit polling showed that 53% of white women voters still supported Trump, calling into question who the legitimate allies of Black women’s interests are, said Melanie Campbell, president and CEO of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation.“After going through this last presidential election, we really have to reassess and have real deep conversations about when these people say they’re your allies. What does that really mean?” she said, arguing that internal organizing of Black women needed to continue taking place.“There was a majority of white women who voted against democracy, against women’s interests, for a racist, for somebody who is proud to have taken away our right to choose.”Crenshaw also called out the mainstream media for failing to hold Trump accountable, as well as post-election coverage that ignored voter suppression tactics carried out by Trump supporters, including a multimillion-dollar initiative led by the billionaire Elon Musk.“Donald Trump was the biggest beneficiary of identity-based preferential treatment in terms of his media coverage,” she said. “He was like a Teflon-coated pan. Unlike Kamala, who was rendered by the media like a static, clean repository, anything would stick to her over and over again. It’s hard to imagine anybody other than a wealthy white male claiming he could shoot someone in broad daylight and get away with it, and then prove to us that this is, in fact, virtually true.”In light of Trump’s win, Black women – who voted for Harris more than any other demographic, need to be prepared to deal with racist attacks from far-right Republicans, argued Barbara Arnwine, president and founder of Transformative Justice Coalition.“It is critical for Black women to not just talk about our magic … We gotta talk about how we fight, how we become a fighting formation, how we are able to know that these battles are going to come, that these kind of things are going to be said, that these kind of attacks are going to be launched.”Looking forward, experts emphasized the importance of continuing to organize internally despite feelings of despondency.Rebuilding freedom schools – educational programs in marginalized communities – creating spaces of communication on social media, akin to “Black Twitter”, targeting disinformation being spread by artificial intelligence, and addressing ongoing attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion are just some of the potential strategies, said the speaker Fran Phillips-Calhoun, an Atlanta Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta.“This really is not time for retreat or apathy,” said Phillips-Calhoun. “We really do have to turn inwards so we can build again.” More

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    Georgia’s payback machine: Fani Willis resists subpoenas by state lawmakers over Trump prosecution

    Even before Project 2025 made it a Republican goal to use federal power to bring progressive prosecutors to heel, the Fulton county, Georgia, district attorney, Fani Willis, found herself in the crosshairs of conservative state legislators angered by her prosecution of Donald Trump.That conflict found its way into yet another courtroom on Tuesday. Willis’s office defended itself against a subpoena by a state senate committee, which had demanded her appearance to explain how she might have spent money on Nathan Wade, her former special prosecutor and paramour, in the prosecution of now president-elect Trump and others charged in the election interference case. She rejected two subpoenas issued by the Senate special committee on investigations demanding her testimony and a barrel full of documents about the relationship, her office’s finances and the case.The future of the Trump election interference case in Georgia remains unclear. The state appeals court canceled a hearing scheduled for this week, in which Trump and other defendants had sought to remove Willis as prosecutor on the case. The appeal cited Willis’s relationship with Wade, arguing that the financial entanglement between the two created a conflict of interest that should force a recusal.The appeals court could – and often does – rule without hearing oral arguments. It could scuttle the case entirely, order Willis to be removed as prosecutor, sever Trump from the trial or allow the case to move forward as is.Federal prosecutors rolled up their cases after Trump won election to a second term, noting that the federal government cannot prosecute a sitting president. The Georgia case remains the only one left to prosecute against Trump, with 14 co-defendants still in legal jeopardy.Anger over that prosecution has come from multiple flanks within the Republican party. Even as the former Georgia governor Roy Barnes argued on behalf of Willis before the Fulton superior court judge Shukura Ingram on Tuesday that the state senate subpoenas were unconstitutional, another judge issued an order declaring her office in violation of the state’s Open Records Act in another case.Conservative legal activists from Judicial Watch sued Fulton county after Willis’s office refused to turn over records of her communications with the special counsel Jack Smith and the House January 6 committee. The Fulton county superior court judge Robert McBurney ordered her office to turn the records over within five days.View image in fullscreenRepublicans want to know how Willis might have coordinated Trump’s prosecution with the Department of Justice and, ultimately, the Biden White House. But they are also contemplating how the results of the committee investigation may lead legislators to rewrite laws to take authority away from district attorneys, to cut Willis’s budget or to otherwise limit her authority to prosecute wayward Republicans.Willis has said she views this as political harassment and is fighting them all the way down, likening it to the legislative movement that created a state panel that could remove local prosecutors.Willis’s office argued before that committees representing only the statehouse or the state senate do not have subpoena power: both chambers must issue a subpoena as a joint act under the Georgia state constitution.“The operative word is ‘general assembly’,” argued Barnes. The term refers to both chambers of the Georgia legislature together, he said. “Only the general assembly has the right of subpoena. Not the senate. Not the house.”Willis’s office argued that a subpoena cannot be issued when the general assembly is not in session, as the committee did in this case, and that the subpoenas are overbroad relative to limitations made in Georgia’s Open Records Act and a common-law sense of separation of powers. Barnes argued that legislative oversight over state spending is being used by hostile politicians on a fishing expedition-as-harassment, citing the Mazars decision by the US supreme court seeking Trump’s financial records from his accountants.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This wrought committee created by one set of the general assembly says, ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be fun for us to just drag the district attorney down and see what she’s got on old Donald Trump,’” Barnes said. “Well, Fani Willis had an affair with Nathan Wade. This is a pretext. We would be blind not to see what all of us see. This was nothing but singling out one person who’s been duly elected in this circuit, and duly re-elected, to embarrass her. It’s not for any legitimate legislative reason.”Josh Belinfante, representing the senate committee, argued that the district attorney is challenging the constitutionality of subpoena power for all legislative committees, and that doing so gets between lawmakers and their duty.“They’re investigating … these allegations that may show that existing state laws – including those establishing the processes for selecting, hiring and compensating special assistant district attorneys – are inadequate,” Belinfante said. “It is necessary to determine whether the alleged conduct of District Attorney Willis, if proven to be true in whole or in part, should be addressed by the enactment of new laws or prompt some change in state appropriations, or both.”Legislators began looking at the actions of district attorney before the Trump case rocketed to the top of their attention, Belinfante said. Arguments were made that one provision of state statute could be used to limit the authority of the legislature that passed that statute in the first place.“It is presumed that the general assembly can act unless the constitution says otherwise,” Belinfante said. “There is no constitutional prohibition against investigations.”Belinfante noted that the state constitution empowers each chamber to establish legislative committees, and that – in the absence of an expressed prohibition – that gives each chamber the power to issue subpoenas without consulting the other chamber.No Georgia court has ever examined the subpoena power of the state legislature as Ingram has been asked to do on Tuesday, legal experts say. More