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      Biden library reportedly under threat by Democrats enraged by Hunter pardon

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      Senior Democrats are reportedly considering withholding contributions to Joe Biden’s future presidential library amid a mounting backlash over his decision grant a blanket pardon to his son Hunter.The threat has emerged as simmering anger among congressional Democrats – already building over the president’s insistence on seeking a second term before belatedly stepping aside as the party nominee in favour of Kamala Harris – has burst into the open over Sunday’s pardon, which Biden had previously vowed not to give.Axios reported that party grandees were considering taking out their “rage” on Biden’s library project. Planning for the library, in the president’s home state of Delaware, is being spearheaded by the White House deputy chief of staff, Annie Tomasini, and Anthony Bernal, senior adviser to Jill Biden, the first lady.“If they had their shit together, they would have been doing the work on this over the summer – right after he announced he was stepping aside,” the site quoted one unnamed Democrat as saying. “Now, it’s just too late. Hopefully they are rightsizing their expectations and budget!”Presidential libraries – a tradition begun by Franklin D Roosevelt – are generally funded by a combination of private donors, state and local governments, and university partners. Maintained by the National Archives and Records Administration, they are used to house presidents’ papers and documents after they leave office.A source familiar with Biden’s project played down the possibility of donations being withheld, telling Axios: “That sentiment hasn’t come up in a single donor conversation, and work is well under way.”However, the fact that it is being publicly mooted is a sign of the internal party disenchantment following the pardoning of Hunter Biden, 54, who was convicted of lying on gun ownership application forms and separate charges of tax evasion. He had been due to be sentenced on both convictions this month. The act of clemency came less than a month after a demoralising election defeat that many privately blame Biden for.Biden, in his statement, said his son “was treated differently” than other people who had been late paying taxes because they were undergoing addiction problems. Biden pardoned his son for all possible offences committed between 2013 and 2024 – foreclosing the possibility of the incoming Trump administration reopening a case against the younger Biden that might be driven by the president-elect’s often-repeated desire for “retribution” against his political enemies.The judge in the tax case, Mark Scarsi, accused the president of “rewriting history” in a ruling penned after the pardon. He added that Hunter Biden’s tax offences had been committed after the period of his drug and alcohol addiction.A procession of Democratic senators and congressmembers have publicly accused Biden of putting his feelings for his son above the national interest and handing Donald Trump an excuse to abuse the presidential clemency powers.Even Chuck Schumer, the Democrats’ leader in the Senate and normally a loyal ally of the president, damned him with uncharacteristic reticence this week, telling reporters “I’ve got nothing for you on that” when asked his view.But party insiders say the outrage is a lightning rod for lingering resentment over Biden’s refusal to drop his bid for a second term until it was too late for Harris or other presidential contenders to be stress-tested in primaries and launch a well-prepared presidential campaign.“The pardon is simply a resentment delivery vehicle, like dressing on lettuce,” Philippe Reines, a veteran strategist who helped prepare Harris for September’s debate against Trump – which she was widely viewed to have won – told the New York Times.David Axelrod, a former adviser to Barack Obama, said the pardon gave “a free throw for people who think they can gain political advantage” from separating themselves from an unpopular, outgoing president.“But,” he added, “there’s also genuine concern and anger about the way the last year went down.” More

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      Trump promises a crackdown on diversity initiatives. Fearful institutions are dialing them back already

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      In 2020, Donald Trump signed an executive order against “race and sex stereotyping and scapegoating” which would have set the stage for sweeping attacks on diversity initiatives in the public sphere. In January 2021, on his first day in office, Joe Biden rescinded Trump’s anti-DEI order and signed one promoting “racial equity and support for underserved communities”.Now Trump is returning to office, he expected to restore his directive and double down on it. The people that run diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives at public and private institutions are expecting mass crackdown. Project 2025 has labeled them “woke culture warriors” and pledged to wield the full force of the federal government against their efforts to create a more equitable society.Trump and his advisers have already threatened the funds and accreditation of universities they have labeled the “enemy”, and pledged to dismantle diversity offices across federal agencies, scrap diversity reporting requirements and use civil rights enforcement mechanisms to combat diversity initiatives they see as “discrimination”.The multi-pronged attack is certain to be met with major legal challenges, but while they prepare for those, advocates warn about the ripple effects of an administration declaring war on inclusivity efforts.“The concern is the bigger footprint and symbol,” said Nina Ozlu Tunceli, chief counsel of government and public affairs at Americans for the Arts. “Federal policies do have a domino effect on other states, on foundations, on individual donors.”Last week, Walmart became the latest in a series of high-profile companies to announce a rollback of its diversity initiatives following a campaign of legal challenges by conservative groups. Other businesses and institutions small and large are trying to keep a low profile to avoid becoming the target of anti-DEI campaigns, those who work with them say.There are already concerns that institutions fearful of losing funding or facing lawsuits may overcorrect and dial back their programmes before they are required to do so, advocates warn.A climate of fearEven before Trump was re-elected, “educational gag orders” seeking to limit discussion of race and LGBTQ+ issues in school classrooms had been introduced in at least 46 states. Last spring, conservative legislators linked campus protests against the war in Gaza to DEI initiatives. Virginia Foxx, the chair of the House committee on education and the workforce, told the presidents of several colleges that her committee would be “steadfast in its dedication to attacking the roots of antisemitic hatred, including anti-Israel DEI bureaucracies”.Questioning by Foxx’s committee ultimately led to several resignations by college presidents.“That got everyone terrified, including private university presidents who previously had been pretty brave about these things,” said Jeremy Young, director of the Freedom to Learn programme at the free speech group PEN America. “It was just this sense that, they’re coming, they’re headhunting for leaders, and you just have to do everything they say or they’re going to fire you or they’re going to cut your budget.”View image in fullscreenEven where no laws have been passed, a broad fear of repercussions has prompted some campus leaders to cut back on DEI initiatives, noted Young.“A number of states have engaged basically in jaw-boning, where the lawmakers will go up to a university president and encourage them or threaten them to close their diversity office while dangling a threat of funding cuts or passing a law the following year,” he said. “So we’re seeing universities trying to comply with these restrictions, or with these threats, even though there’s no law compelling them to do so.”Young cited the University of Missouri, for instance, where campus leaders in July dissolved its division of inclusion, diversity and equity citing nationwide measures against DEI even though no such law was passed in the state.In Texas, where state law does ban DEI offices but exempts academic course instruction and scholarly research, the University of North Texas system began scrutinising course materials in search for references to DEI, in what Young called an example of overcompliance and a “complete overreaction”.It’s a domino effect that anti-DEI activists are exploiting, for instance by sowing confusion about the 2023 supreme court ruling, which was fairly narrow but is sometimes cited as evidence that all DEI initiatives in higher education are illegal, said Leah Watson, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Racial Justice Program, where she focuses on classroom censorship.“We are very concerned about the broad chilling effect, and we see conservatives misrepresenting the status of the law in order to further the chilling effect,” Watson said. “Overcorrections are happening, and things are being cut that don’t have to be cut.”Some institutions have attempted to protect their work by downplaying their language around diversity to ensure that members from states with restrictions in place can continue to access them. Others have changed language about eligibility requirements for fellowships initially intended to promote access to people of color so as to avoid legal challenges.“There are institutions that want to continue their DEI programmes and they don’t want to be sued and they are really in a hard place with how to do that,” said Watson. “People are trying to fly under the radar at this point.”The new administrationGoing forward, the Trump administration is “likely to be the most virulent anti-DEI administration that we’ve seen”, said David Glasgow, the executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, which helps institutions navigate an array of recent legislative restrictions on diversity work.“People who do this work are nervous and anxious about what might be restricted but their commitment is still there, so it’s really about trying to figure out what they’re going to be able to do,” he added.So far, four states – Florida, Texas, Iowa and Utah – have banned diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives or offices in universities, a primary target in the battle against DEI. A fifth, Alabama, has severely restricted them.In Florida, the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, also erased nearly all already approved state funding for the arts, ostensibly over a festival promoting inclusivity, which he dubbed a “sexual event”.View image in fullscreenThat may offer a blueprint for attacks on what conservatives see as “woke” culture under the incoming administration, said Tunceli, of Americans for the Arts.Institutions anticipating a similar backlash at the national level are already planning to emphasise projects the incoming administration may be more supportive to – like those celebrating the 250th anniversary of American independence, in 2026 – and to turn to alternative funding for those they expect will lose out on federal support.Many now believe that institutions will have to show bravery to uphold their values, even if it means risking funding. “What they need to do is find a backbone, and I say that with a lot of understanding and empathy for the situation they’re in,” said Young, of PEN America.“I worry when I see a university roll over for funding,” he added, calling on administrators to leverage their influence with alumni and their communities to stand up to legislators’ attacks. “A university that doesn’t have a new building is still a university, it’s just a poor university. A university that has lawmakers banning ideas and restricting the actions of the administration is really not a university at all.” More

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      Joe Biden should pardon Reality Winner for her actions as a whistleblower | Margaret Sullivan

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      In late November, Reality Winner – who turned 33 this week – finished her lengthy punishment for sending a government document to a news organization.It’s past time for her to be pardoned so that she can move on with her life and, particularly, her education. She wants to be a veterinary technician, get a good-paying job and move out of her mother’s Texas house, but having a felony in one’s background doesn’t help with any of that.“She doesn’t deserve to be punished forever,” her mother, Billie Winner-Davis, told me in an interview this week. “You would think that once you’d served your sentence, you’d be okay, but that doesn’t seem to be true.”A presidential pardon, of course, would help immensely, in removing the scarlet “F” from her record. And Biden, who pardoned his son Hunter just days ago, may find that the time is finally right since this, too, was a politically driven prosecution.Winner has been treated harshly – scapegoated for an act she intended to be patriotic.Because Donald Trump wanted to make an example of her, the US air force veteran and former National Security Agency (NSA) translator was hit with the longest prison sentence ever given for leaking government information to the media.Her crime? She sent an intelligence report about Russian interference in the 2016 elections to the investigative news organization the Intercept; the report indicated that Russian hackers had gained access to state-level voter information and apparently intended to use a “phishing” operation to hack it.“A public service” was how the well-respected investigative reporter James Risen described what Winner did. After all, he noted, a US Senate report concluded that most state election officials found out about the Russian hacking threat from the press, not federal officials, “who didn’t bother to notify them”.“And the main way the press found out about it,” Risen added pointedly, “was through Reality Winner”.Risen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter for many years, got to know Winner while he was the director of the First Look Press Freedom Defense Fund, which paid her legal bills.In an email to me this week, Risen said Winner is “incredibly smart and really nice, and was doing the right thing to help America”.But her punishment was meant to send a message – that leakers (or whistleblowers) would be given no mercy, no matter how much the information they shared was in the public interest. And of course, Trump has been desperate to term any evidence of Russian interference, no matter how clear or troubling, as nothing but a hoax perpetrated by the liberal media.The law is rigid in federal prosecutions of leak cases, Risen explained.“The fact that a leak to the press is a public service is not admissible in court when a whistleblower is charged with the disclosure of classified information – even when a Senate committee concludes that it was a public service.”Winner was denied bail and held in harsh pre-trial conditions for about a year before her trial. And her punishment included a strict provision that she can never be paid for telling her life story – whether in a book or through the several movies that have been made about her.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWinner’s attorney, Alison Grinter Allen, told me on Wednesday that the most helpful action for those who want to support a pardon is to communicate with their members of Congress. Online petitions don’t seem to be as effective in this administration as in past ones, she said.The lawyer worries about how Winner’s case might somehow be reopened in a new vengeance-seeking Trump administration through a newly weaponized justice department.“She’s already been targeted and made an example of,” Allen said.The best hope, she thinks, is a letter signed by multiple members of Congress supporting a pardon; she and others are working on that, but a deadline is looming: “We’re running out of president.”Reality Winner has served a harsh sentence for a patriotic, if illegal, act. She has a lot to offer the world if she’s allowed to move on.And so, Biden, in the short time he has left as president, has the power to do the right thing.In James Risen’s words: “She deserves a pardon.”

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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      Conspiracy theories and cosying up to dictators: why intelligence experts are spooked by Tulsi Gabbard

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      In 2018, a Syrian dissident codenamed Caesar was set to testify before the House foreign affairs committee about the torture and summary executions that had become a signature of Bashar al-Assad’s brutal crackdown on opposition during Syria’s civil war.It was not Caesar’s first time in Washington: the ex-military photographer had smuggled out 55,000 photographs and other evidence of life in Assad’s brutal detention facilities years earlier, and had campaigned anonymously to convince US lawmakers to pass tough sanctions on Assad’s network as punishment for his reign of terror.But ahead of that hearing, staffers on the committee, activists and Caesar himself, suddenly became nervous: was it safe to hold the testimony in front of Tulsi Gabbard, the Hawaii congresswoman on the committee who just a year earlier had traveled to Damascus of her own volition to meet with Assad?Could she record Caesar’s voice, they asked, or potentially send a photograph of the secret witness back to the same contacts who had brokered her meeting with the Syrian president?View image in fullscreen“There was genuine concern by Democrats in her own party, and Republicans and us and Caesar, about how were we going to do this?” said Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, an activist group, who had previously traveled with Gabbard in Syria in 2015. “With the member sitting on this committee that we believe would give any intelligence she has to Assad, Russia and Iran, all of which would have wanted to kill Caesar.”During a congressional trip in 2015, Moustafa recalled, Gabbard had asked three young Syrian girls whether the airstrike they had narrowly survived may not have been launched by Assad, but rather by the terrorist group Isis. The one problem? Isis did not have an air force.Photographs from the 2018 briefing showed a heavily disguised Caesar sitting in a hoodie and mask giving testimony before the House committee.“I often disguise [witnesses],” said Moustafa, who had worked closely with Caesar and served as his translator. “But that day I was especially wary of Tulsi.”There is no evidence that Gabbard sought to pass any information about the Syrian whistleblower to Damascus or any other country, nor that she has any documented connection to other intelligence agencies.But within Washington foreign policy circles and the tightly knit intelligence community, Gabbard has long been seen as dangerous; some have worried that she seems inclined toward conspiracy theories and cosying up to dictators. Others, including the former secretary of state and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, have gone further, calling her a “Russian asset”.Those concerns have been heightened by Gabbard’s nomination under Donald Trump to the post of director of national intelligence, a senior cabinet-level position with access to classified materials from across the 18 US intelligence agencies, and shaping that information for the president’s daily briefing. The role would allow her to access and declassify information at her discretion, and also direct some intelligence-sharing with US allies around the world.“There is real concern about her contacts [in Syria] and that she does not share the same sympathies and values as the intelligence community,” said a person familiar with discussions among senior intelligence officials. “She is historically unfit.”View image in fullscreenGabbard and her supporters have denounced those attacks as a smear, saying that her history of anti-interventionism in Syria and Ukraine has been misrepresented as a kind of “cold war 2.0”.In Washington, she has staked out a unique foreign policy position as a strong supporter of Israel and the “war on terror” – but also as a critic of US rivalries with countries like Russia and Iran (she strongly criticised Trump’s decision to assassinate the Iranian general Qassem Soleimani as an “illegal and unconstitutional act of war”).“When it comes to the war against terrorists, I’m a hawk,” she told a Hawaiian newspaper in 2016. “When it comes to counterproductive wars of regime change, I’m a dove.”Jeremy Scahill, the leftwing US journalist and activist, wrote that to “pretend that Gabbard somehow poses a more grave danger to US security than those in power after 9/11 or throughout the long bloody history of US interventions and the resulting blowback is a lot of hype and hysteria”.But Gabbard has repeatedly shared conspiracy theories, including claiming shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine that there are “25+ US-funded biolabs in Ukraine which if breached would release & spread deadly pathogens to US/world”. In fact, the US program stemming back to the 1990s is directed at better securing labs which focus on infectious disease outbreaks.Days after Russia invaded Ukraine, with Kyiv engaged in a desperate defense of the country’s sovereignty, Gabbard said: “It’s time to put geopolitics aside and embrace the spirit of aloha, respect and love, for the Ukrainian people by coming to an agreement that Ukraine will be a neutral country.”View image in fullscreenAnd she has repeatedly supported dictators, including Assad, suggesting that reports of the 2013 and 2017 chemical weapons attacks were false, and calling for the US to “join hands” with Moscow following its 2015 intervention in Syria.Establishment Democrats and Republicans have openly questioned whether or not she poses a threat to national security.“I worry what might happen to untold numbers of American assets if someone as reckless, inexperienced, and outright disloyal as Gabbard were DNI,” wrote Adam Kinzinger, a former congressman who served on the foreign affairs committee with Gabbard in 2018 when Caesar testified.The person close to the intelligence community said that there were continuing concerns about Gabbard’s contacts in the Middle East, stemming back to the controversial 2017 meeting with Assad – an encounter that Gabbard has insisted she does not regret.Those contacts may be explored during a Senate confirmation hearing early next year, the person said.Gabbard was briefly placed on a Transportation Security Administration watchlist because of her overseas travel patterns and foreign connections, CNN reported last month, but was later removed.She does not have a background in intelligence, although the Hawaii native served in the army national guard for more than two decades, and has deployed to Iraq and Kuwait.Moreover, there are concerns that her choice could affect intelligence sharing among US foreign allies, including the tightly knit Five Eyes intelligence group that includes the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand, as well as Nato and allies in Japan and South Korea.“Much of the intelligence we get, at least from the human collector side, is from our partners,” said John Sipher, formerly deputy director of the CIA’s Russia operations, noting that the cooperation was usually informal, “personality- and trust-based”.“They’re going to be really hesitant to pass [information] to a place that that is becoming more partisan and less professional … they would be making their own checklist: ‘Hey, this sensitive thing that we would in the past have passed to the CIA that could do us damage if it becomes public … Let’s just not do that this time.’” More

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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

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      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

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      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

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      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

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      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