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      Why does McKinsey still get hired? | Peter O’Toole

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      In late 2005, I was in a Tokyo meeting room with some top GE executives. As the company’s corporate director of public relations at the time, I was helping sort through a corporate initiative we were planning to announce with some important Japanese customers. A few minutes later, a handful of people I’d never met came into the room. Most were not from Japan; all of them, I was told, were from McKinsey, perhaps the world’s most famous management consulting firm. Following the 15-minute meeting they had probably flown in from all over the world to attend, they left.The firm McKinsey, of course, remains, dispensing advice to thousands of companies like GE and to governments and institutions in more than 65 countries. But as the company approaches a $600m settlement with the US government over its role helping opioid makers boost sales and drag out the painkiller epidemic, you might ask: why does McKinsey still get hired?There are reasons why it shouldn’t.In 2018, McKinsey agreed to repay $74m in fees to the government of South Africa after a judicial inquiry found evidence of contract abnormalities surrounding its work. This came soon after McKinsey was forced to pay back more than $66m for its work alongside a contract-looting partner who later fled the country. And just last week it was confirmed that the firm’s South African subsidiary will pay more than $122m “to resolve an investigation by the Justice Department into a scheme” to bribe South African government officials between 2012 and 2016.Chasing a Mongolian railroads contract in 2010, McKinsey ignored a US state department corruption warning and signed an agreement with the government even as the government rainmaker who connected McKinsey to the contract signed his own contract with the same government entity. By 2015, Mongolian anti-corruption investigators were snooping and McKinsey was eventually barred from doing business there.Since 2019, the firm’s bankruptcy advisory business has paid millions in fines, or relinquished fees, for “disclosure deficiencies”.The firm can also give questionable advice.Under former McKinsey partner Jeff Skilling, Enron paid the firm $10m a year, during which the firm endorsed Enron’s suspect accounting tactics that would ultimately torpedo the business. According to a McKinsey employee quoted in Duff McDonald’s book The Firm: The Story of McKinsey and Its Secret Influence on American Business, Enron “was a great business that just got out of hand”.In April 2017, after three years studying the escalating inmate brawls and assaults by guards that endangered the viability of New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex, McKinsey sent a confidential final report to the city corrections commissioner. McKinsey had tested its new anti-violence strategy, the report said, and violence was down by more than half in the units where McKinsey had recommended new tactics.What the report didn’t say was that jail officials and McKinsey consultants had fixed the game, moving inmates they believed were less violent into the units ahead of the period of study. The reality was the opposite of McKinsey’s report: violence actually rose by nearly 50% since the firm had been working at Rikers. The city government dumped McKinsey, but not before paying it more than $27m.Then there’s the Department of Justice case, which found the firm’s invisible hand reached into virtually every opioid manufacturer and distributor. While McKinsey was advising the opioid manufacturers and distributors, the lawsuit noted, it was also advising the US Food and Drug Administration’s drug-approval department.So why does McKinsey still get hired? Because it sells what business wants.According to McDonald, in The Firm, McKinsey “certainly made the world a more efficient, rational and objective place than it might otherwise have been”. Eighty-five per cent of McKinsey’s work is repeat business, which would seem to show that the company provides useful counsel.But McKinsey also shields weak leaders from accountability. After a preventable shop floor accident or before big layoffs – known as “efficiency consulting”, McDonald notes – a McKinsey report can shield a company from an angry plaintiff or its soon-to-be former workers. Its presence offers the plausible deniability that layoffs were just a business decision, one recommended by a respected, external party. In the Rikers Island case, McKinsey’s contract let city administrators say they had tried their best, since they had only requested proposals from consultants on a pre-approved list from the previous administration.The durability of firms like McKinsey points to festering weakness in business’s upper reaches: today’s leaders either don’t have the skills to meet the accelerating world around them, can’t effect change within their own organizations, or are too afraid to make a mistake and fail.But if they succeed? Well, that’s what was supposed to happen, just as what we heard in Tokyo was preordained.I later asked a colleague from a GE business who also attended the Tokyo meeting what they had heard. Our own ideas, they replied: McKinsey had surveyed our own people and customers for ideas, then tried selling them as their own.It’s unlikely that McKinsey will change. After all, the firm’s partners ousted former CEO Kevin Sneader not for being too weak on compliance failures, but for being too tough. “Mr Sneader’s letter to employees about the [opioid] settlement was blunt in criticizing the firm’s behavior,” the Wall Street Journal noted, and “[s]ome partners felt that language was too strong.”Today’s business leaders should look within themselves and determine why they don’t trust their own people to make tough decisions. They need to find out why they are afraid to fail on their own terms. Making yourself accountable can be more painful than hiring a consultant to be accountable for you, but it’s likely to be more rewarding.Nearly 20 years after that meeting in Tokyo, I am also a consultant. And while my small firm didn’t earn the record $16bn that McKinsey did last year, we also didn’t get kicked out of Mongolia.

      Peter O’Toole is principal of Objective Lab and on the adjunct faculty at Georgetown University. He was a speechwriter in the Clinton administration and a senior executive at GE and Pfizer More

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      Luigi Mangione is the median American voter | Peter Rothpletz

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      The vast majority of the US population rarely – if ever – lapses into murderous fantasies wherein they gun down an unsuspecting father of two. One need not possess the telepathic powers of Professor Charles Xavier to consider this a fact. That said, the heterodox, ostensibly incoherent potpourri of political views expressed by the alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO assassin, Luigi Mangione, is more representative of the average American than many elites would care to admit.Mangione’s Twitter/X account is a kaleidoscopic fever dream with no clear ideological rudder. It seems he has a genuine interest in health and wellness. “Wokeness” and masculinity are occasionally discussed; so too are climate change, psychedelics and the potential risks and rewards of artificial intelligence. Pornography, in Mangione’s mind, “should be regulated no less than alcohol, cigarettes, and travel” – and certain sex toys should be banned. He likes Joe Rogan but disdains Jordan Peterson. He also appears to be particularly fond of Pokémon, baby elephants, gorillas and Japan’s Indigenous religion, Shintoism.More interesting than Mangione’s posts themselves are the personalities he follows. They run the political gamut. The right-leaning “manosphere” is well-represented by folks such as Rogan, Patrick Bet-David and Andrew Huberman. The only member of Congress on the list is Representative Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez, a democratic socialist. RFK Jr serves as a conduit for both the environmental and Maga movements. Even center-left, wonkish liberalism makes a cameo with Ezra Klein.Some have voiced befuddlement as to where the connective tissue lies between all these figures. They’re confused because they still believe the dominant divide in US politics is liberalism v conservatism. It’s not, and it hasn’t been for some time. Increasingly, even if they lack the exact language to explain it, voters do not identify foremost as Democrats or Republicans, progressives or traditionalists, or even left or right. They identify as pro-system or anti-system. As put by Jeet Heer in The Nation: “Pro-system politics is the bipartisan consensus of establishment Democrats and Republicans: It’s the politics of Nato and other military alliances, of trade agreements, and of deference to economists (as when they say that price gouging isn’t the cause of inflation).” Anti-system politics, he continues, is “a general thumbing of the nose at this consensus”.Rogan, Bet-David and Huberman’s anti-system bona fides are manifest; one can argue AOC’s are too given her status as Bernie Sanders’ heir apparent. RFK Jr is the scion of a Democratic dynasty, but his musings about vaccines, chemtrails, and tap water turning children gay are miles outside the Overton window. Yes, the New York Times’s Ezra Klein feels like a pro-system figure, but one must not forget his February audio essay calling on Joe Biden to pass the torch. Not only did his call land like a bomb, it arguably provided the initial momentum for Democrats to finally force the president out of the election following his disastrous debate performance in late June. Klein was the first man in mainstream media to observe that the emperor has no clothes. Such courage earns one anti-system credibility.Considering all this, Mangione’s digital media diet is arguably quite coherent – and in line with what most non-elites consume. As explained by Rachel Kleinfeld, average Americans are far less ideologically polarized than they think they are – and misconceptions around polarization are greatest among the most politically engaged people. Unfortunately, if you’re reading this essay, you’re likely very, very out of touch.Before November’s election, Blueprint Polling conducted a number of surveys in an effort to define the views of swing voters of swing states. They found these Americans, predictably, defy conventional political categorization. They believe immigration should be decreased, abortion should be legal, the criminal justice system is not tough enough, the government should crack down on price-gouging, and same-sex marriage is just dandy. They practice hodgepodge politics, and they aren’t bothered by what elites would call ideological inconsistency.Mangione is cast in the same mold. Insofar as Mangione can even be called an “ideologue”, he merely believed the American system was fundamentally flawed. He isn’t some pinko, dolled up in Che Guevera revolutionary regalia; nor is he an SS leather fetishist. He’s a highly educated, heterodox, politically homeless moderate – and that fact should terrify us all. Unlike the political violence of old, committed by dyed in the wool radicals, the assassination of Brian Thompson was carried out by a young man with no movement encouraging his extremism. He, on his own, came to the conclusion that the US is so broken and corrupt that murder is the only solution.

      Peter Rothpletz is a freelance writer More

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      Questions dog Trump pick for Middle East adviser with inconsistent résumé

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      President-elect Donald Trump’s appointee to advise him on Middle East affairs, Massad Boulos, is reported to have significant discrepancies between his public profile and documented business background, casting doubt on the thoroughness of the former president’s vetting process.Corporate records reviewed by the New York Times reveal that Boulos, father-in-law to Tiffany Trump, is frequently described as a billionaire mogul, but actually manages a truck dealership in Nigeria that generated less than $66,000 in profit last year. The company, SCOA Nigeria PLC, is valued at approximately $865,000, with Boulos’s personal stake worth just $1.53, according to the securities filings in the Times report.The advisory position, which does not require Senate confirmation, follows Boulos’s prominent role in Trump’s 2024 campaign outreach to Arab American voters, particularly in key swing states like Michigan. Boulos positioned himself as a critical intermediary, helping Trump navigate complex political sentiments within Arab American communities – and doing Arab-language interviews with media in the region.While Boulos has been active in Arab American political circles, his murky business background and lack of diplomatic and policy expertise raises questions about the depth of the vetting process conducted by Trump’s team – who were also said to be caught-off guard by accusations against Pentagon nominee Pete Hegseth.During the campaign, Boulos pounded the pavement in Michigan to tout Trump’s foreign policy record, claiming he was “the only president in modern US history who did not start any wars”, despite Trump resupplying Saudi Arabia with an arms package, including precision bombs and munitions, for its brutal war in Yemen.Boulos’s political connections are multifaceted. He’s reported to maintain relationships with various Lebanese political figures, including Christian politician Sleiman Frangieh, an ally of Hezbollah whom the militant group endorsed for president.Boulos’s own background includes a failed parliamentary run in Lebanon in 2009. It was his son Michael’s marriage to Tiffany in Mar-a-Lago in 2022 that significantly elevated the family’s political profile.A May meeting with dozens of Arab American leaders in Michigan highlighted the challenges of Boulos’s political positioning. The gathering, which included Trump adviser Richard Grenell, reportedly became tense when Grenell repeated controversial comments about removing Palestinians from Gaza’s “waterfront property”, causing frustration among attendees.Trump announced the appointment on Truth Social in early December, describing Boulos as “a skilled negotiator and a steadfast advocate for PEACE in the Middle East”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIf appointed, Boulos would inherit a Middle East in profound crisis, with Israel’s destructive and more than year-long war in Gaza leading to at least 45,000 dead Palestinians and international arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, former defense minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas leader Mohammed Deif. The portfolio also includes a new era for Syria as rebels toppled longtime autocrat Bashar al-Assad and war-torn Lebanon with ongoing strikes between Hezbollah and Israel.The appointment also follows a pattern of Trump selecting family-connected individuals for key positions, with Boulos joining Ivanka Trump’s father-in-law, Charles Kushner, who was named as the potential US ambassador to France. More

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      Inspector general finds no FBI agents were involved in January 6 attack – US politics live

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      The justice department inspector general found no evidence that employees of the FBI were involved in the January 6 attack, but did fault the bureau for not better communicating with its offices nationwide ahead of the joint session of Congress that descended into mayhem four years ago when Donald Trump’s supporters attacked the Capitol.In a report released today, the inspector general said: “The FBI effectively carried out its tactical support function on January 6.” However, it faulted the federal law enforcement agency for not checking in with its field offices, which could have corroborated reports that extremist groups were planning to travel to Washington DC.“The FBI did not canvass its field offices in advance of January 6, 2021, to identify any intelligence, including CHS reporting, about potential threats to the January 6 Electoral Certification,” the inspector general wrote.“FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate, who was Associate Deputy Director at the time, described the lack of a canvass prior to January 6 as a ‘basic step that was missed,’ and told the OIG that he would have expected a formal canvassing of sources to have occurred, through the issuance of an intelligence collection product, because it would have been the most thorough approach to understanding the threat picture prior to January 6.”Rightwing activists have alleged that FBI agents were involved in, or even instigated, the insurrection at the Capitol that took place after Trump addressed a crowd of his supporters on the White House ellipse.The inspector general found “no evidence in the materials we reviewed or the testimony we received showing or suggesting that the FBI had undercover employees in the various protest crowds, or at the Capitol, on January 6”.However a total of 26 FBI informants – known as confidential human sources (CHS) – were in the crowd, some of whom entered the Capitol or other restricted areas, the report says:
      We determined that of the 26 CHSs who were in DC on January 6 in connection with the events of January 6, 4 entered the Capitol during the riot; an additional 13 entered the restricted area around the Capitol, which was a security perimeter established in preparation for the January 6 Electoral Certification; and 9 neither entered a restricted area nor entered the Capitol or otherwise engaged in illegal activity. None of the CHSs who entered the Capitol or a restricted area has been prosecuted to date.
      Joe Biden issued a sweeping batch of sentence commutations that affected nearly 1,500 people, as well as 39 pardons. The acts of clemency came after the president drew criticism for pardoning his son Hunter Biden, who was about to be sentenced on tax evasion and gun charges. A recently released public opinion poll found most Americans don’t approve of Biden’s decision to pardon his son, but they also are not on board with Donald Trump’s plan to pardon defendants facing charges or convicted over the January 6 attack. Nonetheless, the president-elect told Time magazine in an interview conducted as he was named its “person of the year” that issuing those pardons would be among the first things he will do once he takes office. Trump also promised to make good on campaign promises to expand oil and gas production and carry out mass deportations, while declining to rule out a return of the family separation policy from his first term that was widely condemned as cruel.Here’s what else happened today:

      Trump campaigned on lowering grocery prices, but no longer sounds so sure that he can pull it off.

      An inspector general report found that no FBI agents took part in the January 6 insurrection, though about two dozen informants were at the Capitol or in the crowd. It also said the bureau should have communicated more with its Washington DC field offices about threats to the joint session of Congress held that day.

      Kari Lake, a failed Republican candidate for governor and senator in Arizona and multi-time election denier, has been named by Trump to lead Voice of America.

      The president-elect stopped by the New York Stock Exchange to ring the opening bell this morning and celebrate being named Time magazine’s “person of the year”.

      Jeff Bezos, the billionaire Amazon and Washington Post honcho, plans to meet with Trump next week, while Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta donated $1m to the president-elect’s inauguration fund.
      Monmouth University pollsters also asked Americans if they thought Donald Trump would unite the country during his presidency, or divide it further.Forty-four per cent of respondents said it would wind up more divided, while 34% said it would become more united.Trump won last month’s election decisively, besting Democratic vice-president Kamala Harris in all seven swing states and the popular vote – the first time a Republican has done so since 2004. Since then, he has not made baseless allegations of fraud, as he did following his election loss in 2020, and the Monmouth poll shows Americans mostly believe the vote was fair.Eighty-three per cent of respondents described the election as “fair and square”, and 12% said he won due to voter fraud.Americans are divided on whether to take Donald Trump seriously on his threats to suspend some laws and parts of the constitution and go after his political enemies, a Monmouth University poll released today found.Among 1,006 adults surveyed in recent days, 48% believe he will make good on the threat, while 47% think it is “more of an exaggeration”.Were he to follow through, 52% said it would bother them “a lot”, 22% “a little” and 22% “not at all”.Here’s more on what Trump has said he would like to do to his enemies:Joe Biden today announced 39 pardons, and nearly 1,500 grants of clemency – two distinct types of relief from criminal convictions that a president is empowered to grant. Here’s more on what the actions mean, from the Guardian’s Sam Levine:Joe Biden pardoned 39 Americans convicted of non-violent crimes on Thursday, also announcing that he had commuted the sentences of almost 1,500 people who have already been released from prison.The White House said on Thursday the commutations all relate to people who were released from prisons and placed in home confinement during the Covid pandemic who will now have their sentences reduced. The 39 people being pardoned will have their guilty verdicts wiped entirely.The announcement, what the White House is calling the single largest act of presidential clemency on a single day in modern US history, comes after Biden’s decision to pardon his son Hunter earlier this month for any federal crimes “he committed or may have committed” between 1 January 2014 and 1 December 2024 has brought renewed focus on the expansive power the US constitution gives the president to grant official clemency.It’s a power that presidents have deployed since George Washington, who pardoned those involved in the Whiskey Rebellion, to Donald Trump, who pardoned his political allies.For years after January 6, rightwing conspiracy theorists claimed that Arizona man Ray Epps was in fact a government agent who tricked Trump supporters into attacking the Capitol. No proof of that ever emerged, and earlier this year, Epps was sentenced to probation for his actions during the riot. Here’s more on that, from the Associated Press:A man targeted by rightwing conspiracy theories about the US Capitol riot was sentenced on Tuesday to a year of probation for joining the January 6 attack by a mob of fellow Donald Trump supporters.Ray Epps, a former Arizona resident who was driven into hiding by death threats, pleaded guilty in September to a misdemeanor charge. He received no jail time, and there were no restrictions placed on his travel during his probation, but he will have to serve 100 hours of community service.He appeared remotely by video conference and was not in the Washington courtroom when chief judge James Boasberg sentenced him. Prosecutors had recommended a six-month term of imprisonment for Epps.Epps’s sentencing took place in the same building where Trump was attending an appeals court hearing as the Republican former president’s lawyers argued he is immune from prosecution on charges he plotted to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost.The Fox News Channel and other rightwing media outlets amplified conspiracy theories that Epps, 62, was an undercover government agent who helped incite the Capitol attack to entrap Trump supporters.A major part of Donald Trump’s campaign was lowering prices that had risen at historic rates during Joe Biden’s presidency.But, unlike with gravity, what goes up in economics does not necessarily come down. Year-on-year consumer price inflation has declined from its peak of more than 9% in mid-2022 to under 3%, but economists say that does not necessarily mean every price increase will reverse.Asked about his plan to lower grocery prices in his Time magazine interview, Trump sounded less sure than he did on the campaign trail. “If the prices of groceries don’t come down, will your presidency be a failure?” Time asked. Trump replied:
      I don’t think so. Look, they got them up. I’d like to bring them down. It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up. You know, it’s very hard. But I think that they will. I think that energy is going to bring them down. I think a better supply chain is going to bring them down.
      In his interview with Time Magazine, Donald Trump suggested that he would pardon many people who faces charges or was convicted for their involvement in the January 6 attack.“I’m going to do case-by-case, and if they were non-violent, I think they’ve been greatly punished. And the answer is I will be doing that, yeah, I’m going to look if there’s some that really were out of control,” Trump said.Asked what he would do about those convicted of committing “violent acts”, Trump replied:
      Well, we’re going to look at each individual case, and we’re going to do it very quickly, and it’s going to start in the first hour that I get into office. And a vast majority of them should not be in jail.
      Despite the FBI’s Washington field office (WFO) and domestic terrorism operations section, both of which were involved in preparations for January 6, not canvassing their field offices ahead of the joint session of Congress, the inspector general finds they did not miss any specific threats.Instead, they missed information that would have corroborated reports they were already aware of. From the report:
      Although the WFO and Domestic Terrorism Operations Section at FBI Headquarters did not direct field offices to canvass their CHSs in advance of January 6, our review of documented CHS reporting in FBI field offices as of January 6 did not identify any potentially critical intelligence related to a possible attack on the Capitol on January 6 that had not been provided to law enforcement stakeholders prior to January 6.
      Additionally, our review of information in the FBI’s possession as of January 6, in addition to the then-documented CHS reporting, did not identify any potentially critical intelligence that had not been provided to, or was not otherwise known to, law enforcement stakeholders prior to January 6. Nonetheless, as numerous FBI officials told us, CHS information can be used to corroborate other sources of reporting to help the FBI develop as complete an understanding as possible of the threat picture in advance of an event like the January 6 Electoral Certification, and the FBI therefore should have canvassed its field offices for any relevant CHS information in advance of January 6.
      The justice department inspector general found no evidence that employees of the FBI were involved in the January 6 attack, but did fault the bureau for not better communicating with its offices nationwide ahead of the joint session of Congress that descended into mayhem four years ago when Donald Trump’s supporters attacked the Capitol.In a report released today, the inspector general said: “The FBI effectively carried out its tactical support function on January 6.” However, it faulted the federal law enforcement agency for not checking in with its field offices, which could have corroborated reports that extremist groups were planning to travel to Washington DC.“The FBI did not canvass its field offices in advance of January 6, 2021, to identify any intelligence, including CHS reporting, about potential threats to the January 6 Electoral Certification,” the inspector general wrote.“FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate, who was Associate Deputy Director at the time, described the lack of a canvass prior to January 6 as a ‘basic step that was missed,’ and told the OIG that he would have expected a formal canvassing of sources to have occurred, through the issuance of an intelligence collection product, because it would have been the most thorough approach to understanding the threat picture prior to January 6.”Rightwing activists have alleged that FBI agents were involved in, or even instigated, the insurrection at the Capitol that took place after Trump addressed a crowd of his supporters on the White House ellipse.The inspector general found “no evidence in the materials we reviewed or the testimony we received showing or suggesting that the FBI had undercover employees in the various protest crowds, or at the Capitol, on January 6”.However a total of 26 FBI informants – known as confidential human sources (CHS) – were in the crowd, some of whom entered the Capitol or other restricted areas, the report says:
      We determined that of the 26 CHSs who were in DC on January 6 in connection with the events of January 6, 4 entered the Capitol during the riot; an additional 13 entered the restricted area around the Capitol, which was a security perimeter established in preparation for the January 6 Electoral Certification; and 9 neither entered a restricted area nor entered the Capitol or otherwise engaged in illegal activity. None of the CHSs who entered the Capitol or a restricted area has been prosecuted to date.
      Joe Biden issued a sweeping batch of sentence commutations that affected nearly 1,500 people, as well as 39 pardons. The acts of clemency came after the president drew criticism for pardoning his son Hunter Biden who was about to be sentenced on tax evasion and gun charges. A recently released public opinion poll found most Americans don’t approve of Biden’s decision to pardon his son, but they also are not on board with Donald Trump’s plan to pardon defendants facing charges or convicted over the January 6 attack. Nonetheless, the president-elect told Time magazine in an interview conducted as he was named its “person of the year” that those pardons would be among the first things he will do once he takes office. Trump also promised to make good on campaign promises to expand oil and gas production and carry out mass deportations, while declining to rule out a return of the family separation policy from his first term that was widely condemned as cruel.Here’s what else has happened today so far:

      Kari Lake, a failed Republican candidate for governor and senator in Arizona and multi-time election denier, has been named by Trump to lead Voice of America.

      Trump stopped by the New York Stock Exchange to ring the opening bell this morning and celebrate being named Time magazine’s “person of the year”.

      Jeff Bezos, the billionaire Amazon and Washington Post honcho, plans to meet with Trump next week, while Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta donated $1m to the president-elect’s inauguration fund.
      Democrats may have lost the presidency in the November election, but they made inroads at the state level, including in North Carolina. Regarded as one of the most closely divided in the country, the GOP lost its supermajority in the state legislature last month, and so has moved to strip powers from the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general, the Guardian’s Sam Levine reports:On the brink of losing their supermajority in the state legislature, North Carolina Republicans overrode a gubernatorial veto on Wednesday to enact a new law that gives them control over elections in the state and strips the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general of some of their powers.Currently, North Carolina’s governor appoints the five members of the state board of elections, allowing him to select a three-person majority from his party. The new law transfers that appointment power to the state auditor. A Republican won control of the state auditor race this fall for the first time in more than a decade.The bill also changes how local election boards in each of North Carolina’s 100 counties would be appointed. Currently the state board appoints members and the governor appoints the chair. Under the new law, the auditor-appointed state board would still pick the local boards, but the auditor would pick the chair. Taken together, the new law would give Republicans control over both the state and local boards of elections.Lawsuits are expected challenging the changes, which were tucked into a bill that allocates more than $200m in relief money for Hurricane Helene. The money will not be immediately availableand the funds cannot be spent until the legislature acts again, according to the Associated Press.The outgoing governor, Roy Cooper, and the incoming governor, Josh Stein, both Democrats, have criticized the measure as a power grab. Republicans are poised to lose their supermajority in the state legislature next year.Americans don’t know much about Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s pick to lead the defense department, nor Tulsi Gabbard, who the president-elect has nominated as director of national intelligence.But those who do have opinions of them generally do not see them positively, an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found.Both Hegseth and Gabbard have attracted controversy, albeit for different reasons. The defense secretary nominee has been accused of sexual assault, and stories have circulated of him mistreating women and cheating on his wives, mismanaging finances at charities he was involved in, and drinking excessively.Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman who recently left the party, is under fire for statements supportive of resigned Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and Russian president Vladimir Putin – both US adversaries.Here’s what the AP/NORC poll discovered about them. Regarding Hegseth:
      Hegseth is still an unknown quantity for many Americans. About 4 in 10 don’t know enough about him to give an opinion, according to the poll. But his selection is viewed more negatively than positively among Americans who do know who he is. About 2 in 10 U.S. adults approve of Hegseth being picked for Trump’s Cabinet, while 36% disapprove and about 1 in 10 don’t know enough to have an opinion.
      He has higher support among Republicans, but it’s not overwhelming. Many Republicans do not have an opinion of Hegseth: About 4 in 10 say they don’t know enough about him. About one-third of Republicans approve of him as a pick, and 16% disapprove. Another 1 in 10 Republicans, roughly, are neutral and say they neither approve nor disapprove.
      Those approval numbers among Republicans are at least slightly lower for Hegseth than any of the other names included in the poll.
      And Gabbard:
      Gabbard is as unknown as Hegseth is, but Americans are a little less likely to disapprove of her nomination. About 2 in 10 Americans approve of Trump’s pick of Gabbard, while about 3 in 10 disapprove. The rest either do not know enough to say – about 4 in 10 said this – or have a neutral view.
      Approval is slightly higher among Republicans than Hegseth’s, though. About 4 in 10 Republicans approve of the choice, while very few disapprove and 16% have a neutral view. Similar to Americans overall, about 4 in 10 Republicans don’t know enough to say.
      Democratic representative Bennie Thompson, the former chair of the House committee invesigating the January 6 attack, says that he would accept a preemptive pardon if one were issued by Joe Biden.“It’s his prerogative. If he offers it to me or other members of the committee … I would accept it, but it’s his choice,” Thompson said on CNN this morning.The comments came after president-elect Donald Trump told NBC in an interview that members of the House committee that investigated the January 6 attack on the Capitol should go to jail.“Everybody on that committee … for what they did, yeah, honestly, they should go to jail,” Trump said.The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) chief, Michael Whitaker, will resign on inauguration day and will not continue as the head of the agency in a second Trump administration, according to reports.Politico reported the news this morning, citing two officials with direct knowledge of Whitaker’s plans. Whitaker reportedly informed his staff of his departure plans during a meeting on Thursday morning.Whitaker was confirmed as the FAA administrator by the Senate on 24 October 2023. FAA administrators generally serve for five years.Meta has donated $1m to Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, the company confirmed on Thursday.The donation appears to be the latest effort by the social media company and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, to improve relations with the incoming president, and comes just weeks after Zuckerberg dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.Meta confirmed its donation to the Guardian on Thursday but did not provide details regarding the reason for the contribution.Read more about it here:Donald Trump says he plans to meet with Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos next week.In brief remarks before the president-elect rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange this morning, he spoke with CNBC and said:
      Mark Zuckerberg’s been over to see me, and I can tell you, Elon [Musk] is another, and Jeff Bezos is coming up next week. I want to get ideas from them. Look, we want them to do well. We want everybody [to do well], and we want great jobs, fantastic salaries.
      More reactions to the decision by Joe Biden to commute the sentences of almost 1,500 people and pardon 39 Americans convicted of non-violent crimes, are coming in.Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, who is the chair of the Senate judiciary committee, said in a statement:
      The President took an important step by commuting the sentences of these men and women. In far too many cases in our justice system, the punishment doesn’t fit the crime” Durbin added. “I have long advocated for criminal justice reform to address these inequities and commend President Biden for this act of mercy and for his leadership.
      These individuals have successfully returned to their communities and reunited with their families. I urge the President to continue using his pardon power during his remaining time in office to address miscarriages of justice, just as the founders of this democracy intended.
      Lauren-Brooke Eisen, the senior director of the Brennan Center’s Justice Program, said that the decision was a “vital recognition of the excessively punitive nature of our criminal justice system”.In a statement Eisen added:
      There are thousands more who deserve the same, and we hope to see additional clemencies granted before the end of his term,” Eisen added.
      In addition to the group of people included in today’s announcement, the Brennan Center and a coalition of allies have been calling on the president to commute the sentences of the more than 40 people on federal death row to life without parole, and to thousands of people who are serving unfairly long, racially disparate drug sentences.” More

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      Pete Hegseth decried out gay troops in US military as part of Marxist agenda

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      Policies allowing out gay people to serve in the US military have been denounced as part of a “Marxist” agenda aimed at prioritising social justice above combat-readiness by Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s embattled defence secretary pick.The assertion was among many contentious “anti-woke” views expressed in Hegseth’s latest book, The War on Warriors, published this year, in which he lambasted a previous policy – known as don’t ask, don’t tell (DADT) – that tolerated gay service members as long as they did not disclose their sexual orientation, while also excoriating its repeal.DADT was introduced as a compromise during Bill Clinton’s presidency in 1993 to allow lesbians and gay men to serve in the military in the face of opposition from senior commanders. The policy overturned a previous blanket ban that had been in place since the second world war.It was repealed in 2011 during the presidency of Barack Obama following numerous complaints of discrimination resulting from the dishonourable discharges of armed service personnel after their sexuality had come to light.Hegseth – whose nomination has become imperilled following allegations of drunkenness, sexual misconduct and financial mismanagement – has denounced DADT as the start of ideological “tinkering” with the armed forces for social justice ends, CNN reported .But he has also voiced regret over its repeal, calling it “a breach in the wire” that opened the path to a wider ideological and cultural change in the armed forces.Recalling how he was getting ready to deploy to Afghanistan when the policy was annulled, he wrote: “Our commander briefed the unit, peppered with a few jokes. You know, infantry stuff.“We mostly laughed it off and moved on. America was at war. Gays and lesbians were already serving in the military. I had seen the enemy with my own eyes. We needed everybody.”He now says that inclusive and tolerant attitude was a mistake, suggesting it paved the way for admitting transgender people into the military and allowing women to serve in combat roles, from which they were barred until a 2013 reform.“It started with Clinton under ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’,” Hegseth told the conservative broadcaster, Ben Shapiro, in an interview this year in which he cited a military recruitment advertisement of a soldier with two lesbian mothers as illustrative of a shift in military culture.“At least when it was an ‘Army of One’, they were, you know, [a] tough-looking, go get ’em army,” he said.“Now you just have the absurdity of ‘I have two mommies and I’m so proud to show them that I can wear the uniform too.’ So they, it’s just like everything else the Marxists and the leftists have done. At first it was camouflaged nicely and now they’re just open about it.”Hegseth’s aversion to gay people in the military and women in combat was expressed before Trump nominated him for a cabinet position that would give him decision-making power over both policies.Interviewed this week by CNN, Hegseth – a former army national guard soldier and Fox News host – declined to say whether he still believed it was a mistake to repeal don’t ask, don’t tell.He also said he supported “all women serving in our military” – despite previously arguing that their presence led to an “erosion in standards”.Hegseth repeatedly took issue with the concept of female combatants in a chapter of his latest book titled “The (deadly) obsession with women warriors”.“I’m going to say something politically incorrect that is perfectly commonsensical observation,” he wrote. “Dads push us to take risks. Moms put the training wheels on our bike. We need moms, but not in the military, especially in combat units.”In another provocative passage, he wrote: “If you train a group of men to treat women equally on the battlefield then you will be hard pressed to ask them to treat women differently at home.”Hegseth conflated the issue of women and gay people in the military in comments to Fox News in 2015, Meidas News reported.“Through don’t ask, don’t tell and women in the military and these standards, they’re going to inevitably start to erode standards because they want that one female special operator, that one female Green Beret, that one female Army Ranger, that one female Navy Seal, so they can put them on a recruiting poster and feel good about themselves – and [that] has nothing to do with national security,” he said. More

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      Ontario leader threatens to halt energy exports to US if Trump imposes tariffs

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      The leader of Canada’s largest province says he’s prepared to halt energy exports to the United States, warning that other premiers “need to be ready to fight” as threats escalate ahead of possible American tariffs.The Ontario premier, Doug Ford, says he’s weighing options to fight back against a 25% levy on all Canadian goods that the US president-elect Donald Trump has pledged to implement when he assumes office.Following a meeting with the nation’s premiers and the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, Ford said other leaders were also drawing up lists of exports that could be halted.“But we will go to the full extent, depending how far this goes, we will go to the extent of cutting off their energy, going down to Michigan, going down to New York state and over to Wisconsin,” said Ford. “I don’t want this to happen, but my number one job is to protect Ontario, Ontarians and Canadians as a whole.”Canada’s most populous province is also among the most vulnerable to American tariffs because roughly 85% of its exports – including billions in automotive parts – are sent to a handful of US states. As a result, Ford has emerged as the Canadian politician most vocal about the devastating effects the tariffs would have on hundreds of billions of shared trade.“We need to be ready. We need to be ready to fight,” said Ford. “This fight is coming 100% on January 20 or January 21.”Ford’s threat aims to highlight both the integrated nature of North American economies and also to put pressure on state governors. But is unclear how much Ford could follow through on his pledge to cut electricity exports, given that premiers do not make international energy policy.Canada supplies roughly 60% of all American oil imports and even more of its electricity imports. In 2022, Canada’s revenue from electricity exports to the United States hit a record high of C$5.8bn. Quebec is the largest exporter, with Ontario following second at 13.9m megawatt-hours of power sent south.“We will use every tool in our tool box to fight back,” said Ford. “We can’t sit back and roll over. We just won’t as a country. And isn’t this a shame, our closest friends and allies.”Trump threatened last month to apply the devastating levies of 25% on all goods and services from both Mexico and Canada, vowing to keep them in place until “such time as drugs, in particular fentanyl, and all illegal aliens stop this invasion of our country!”Last week, Trump seemed to take joy in the panicked response from Canadian officials, calling Trudeau Canada’s “governor” of a potential “51st” state. More

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      North Carolina GOP lawmakers override veto to strip power from Democratic officials

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      On the brink of losing their supermajority in the state legislature, North Carolina Republicans overrode a gubernatorial veto on Wednesday to enact a new law that gives them control over elections in the state and strips the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general of some of their powers.Currently, North Carolina’s governor appoints the five members of the state board of elections, allowing him to select a three-person majority from his party. The new law transfers that appointment power to the state auditor. A Republican won control of the state auditor race this fall for the first time in more than a decade.The bill also changes how local election boards in each of North Carolina’s 100 counties would be appointed. Currently the state board appoints members and the governor appoints the chair. Under the new law, the auditor-appointed state board would still pick the local boards, but the auditor would pick the chair. Taken together, the new law would give Republicans control over both the state and local boards of elections.Lawsuits are expected challenging the changes, which were tucked into a bill that allocates more than $200m in relief money for Hurricane Helene. The money will not be immediately availableand the funds cannot be spent until the legislature acts again, according to the Associated Press.The outgoing governor, Roy Cooper, and the incoming governor, Josh Stein, both Democrats, have criticized the measure as a power grab. Republicans are poised to lose their supermajority in the state legislature next year.“Western North Carolina small businesses and communities still wait for support from the legislature while Republicans make political power grabs the priority. Shameful,” Cooper said in a statement.The measure also makes significant changes to election procedures. Voters currently have more than a week to provide ID or proof of residence when they vote. The new law shortens that window to just two and a half days and requires local election officials to count provisional ballots more quickly.That change seems directly in response to a state supreme court election in which the Democrat Allison Riggs trailed her opponent by 10,000 votes on election night but then pulled ahead as more votes were counted. She appears to have won the election by a little over 700 votes.It also limits Jeff Jackson, the incoming Democratic attorney general, from taking positions contrary to the general assembly and dilutes the governor’s power to fill judicial vacancies.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Unfortunately, Western North Carolina had to watch as every Republican in the general assembly shamelessly put their desire to strip political power away from recently elected Democrats ahead of the aid and relief their communities need,” Anderson Clayton, the chair of the North Carolina Democratic party, said in a statement. “Using the guise of Hurricane Helene relief is a new low, even for general assembly Republicans.” More

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      Meta donates $1m to Donald Trump’s inaugural fund

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      Meta has donated $1m to Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, the company confirmed on Thursday.The donation, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, appears to be the latest effort by the social media company and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, to improve relations with the incoming president, and comes just weeks after Zuckerberg dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.Meta confirmed its donation to the Guardian on Thursday but did not provide details regarding the reason for the contribution.During the dinner last month at Mar-a-Lago, the Meta CEO reportedly congratulated the president-elect on his victory and the two “largely exchanged pleasantries”, according to the New York Times.Zuckerberg also reportedly met with Senator Marco Rubio, Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, the Wall Street Journal reported, and other incoming White House advisers, such as Stephen Miller.A spokesperson for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, told the BBC at the time that Zuckerberg was “grateful for the invitation to join President Trump for dinner and the opportunity to meet with members of his team about the incoming administration”.“It’s an important time for the future of American Innovation,” the statement added.Zuckerberg’s team informed Trump’s inaugural team about Meta’s plans to contribute to the inaugural fund before meeting the president-elect for dinner at Mar-a-Lago, according to the Wall Street Journal.The donation by Meta seems to mark a shift for the company, as Meta did not make any contribution to Trump’s 2017 or Biden’s 2021 inaugural fund.Over the last several years, the relationship between Trump and Meta has been strained. Trump has accused the company of unfairly censoring him and other conservative voices on its platforms.In March of this year, Trump referred to Facebook as “an enemy of the people” during an interview with CNBC. He stated: “I think Facebook has been very dishonest. I think Facebook has been very bad for our country, especially concerning elections.”After the January 6 attack on the Capitol in 2021, Meta suspended Trump from posting on its platforms. Two years later, in 2023, the company restored his account with certain restrictions in place. However, in July of this year, those restrictions were lifted.Earlier that month, in a post on Truth Social, Trump said that if he’s elected in November, “election fraudsters” would be imprisoned, and referred to Zuckerberg.“If I’m elected President, we will pursue Election Fraudsters at levels never seen before, and they will be sent to prison for long periods of time” Trump wrote. “We already know who you are. DON’T DO IT! ZUCKERBUCKS, be careful!”.And in a book titled Save America, Trump accused Zuckerberg of “plotting” against him during the 2020 election and “steering” Facebook against him.But over the summer, the New York Times reported that Mark Zuckerberg and Trump had several private phone calls. In one of those calls, Zuckerberg reportedly wished Trump well following the assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, and expressed that he was “praying” for him.In a July interview with Bloomberg, Zuckerberg publicly praised Trump’s reaction to the Pennsylvania assassination attempt – when he stood up and began pumping his fist in the air – and described the moment as “one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life”.Zuckerberg expressed regret around some of his past political activities in a letter to Congress in late August and accused the Biden administration of pressuring Meta in 2021 into censoring more Covid-19 content than he was comfortable with.He did not endorse any candidate for the 2024 election, and has stated that he wants to stay away from politics.Trump told a podcast in October that he liked Zuckerberg “much better now”, adding: “I actually believe he’s staying out of the election, which is nice.”After Trump’s election victory in November, Zuckerberg congratulated him and said he was looking forward to working with the president-elect.“We have great opportunities ahead of us as a country. Looking forward to working with you and your administration,” he wrote.Earlier this month, reports indicated that Zuckerberg was seeking an “active role” in the Trump administration’s tech policy decisions.Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, who is also a former UK deputy prime minister, also added that Zuckerberg wanted to participate in “the debate that any administration needs to have about maintaining America’s leadership in the technological sphere”. More