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      ‘Your body, my choice’: what misogynistic Trump supporters feel about sexual power | Moira Donegan

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      You can’t say it was a fluke. If in 2016, Donald Trump’s novelty, combined with his loss of the popular vote, allowed liberals to retain a bit of plausible deniability about what his presidential win meant about America, this time, there is no such comfort. Donald Trump is no longer a mystery or an amusing diversion: no one can claim that they do not understand full extent of his malignant corruption, or the seriousness of his movement’s hostility to pluralist democracy. And he won the popular vote.Many postmortems of last week’s election have tried to preserve the notion that Trump’s voter’s did not endorse him and his vision – that they know not what they do. This is dishonest, and a bit patronizing toward Trump’s supporters. Trump’s voters, for the most part, know exactly what he is, and what voting for him means. They are not ignorant or mistaken about him. They endorse him and what he is.A large part of what a majority of Americans voted for last week was the Trump campaign’s virulent misogyny. Trump himself, an adjudicated rapist who has bragged about both committing sexual assault and engineering the reversal of Roe v Wade, speaks of women in vulgar, degrading terms. He picked a running mate who has denigrated childless women as “psychotic” “cat ladies”. His adviser and funder Elon Musk, who seems to have designs on becoming something of a shadow president in Trump’s second term, is a techno-fascist pro-natalist who goes around offering women insemination.The Trump campaign positioned itself as a champion of a hierarchical gender order, aiming to restore men to a place of wrongfully deprived supremacy over women. Many of his voters cast their lot in with Trump hoping that he would do just that.Now, in the wake of Trump’s victory, some of his supporters have adopted a slogan which neatly joins the movement’s twin projects of forced sex and forced pregnancy: “Your body, my choice.”“Your body, my choice,” was coined by the far-right, pro-Nazi internet troll and Trump dinner guest Nick Fuentes on the night of the election. “Your body, my choice,” Fuentes tweeted. “Forever.” It’s a taunting inversion of the pro-choice slogan “my body, my choice”, meant to assert women’s autonomy: instead, “your body, my choice” presents women’s full citizenship and freedom as laughable, asserting, in gleeful terms, the male supremacy that will now carry for the force of policy and law under a new Trump administration.In response to Fuentes’s post, pro-Trump men have adopted the slogan en masse to troll women online. An analysis from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue found that the use of the phrase soared on social media in the days following the election, along with similar misogynist phrases like “get back in the kitchen”, and the use of sexist slurs directed at liberal and progressive women like Kamala Harris and Rachel Maddow. Female TikTok users reported a flood of such comments, with “your body, my choice” chief among them on the platform. And young girls in schools, along with their teachers and parents, reported incidents of the phrase being yelled out by boys in taunting jeers of harassment and intimidation in the days following the election.“Your body, my choice” is a rejection of women’s rights to control their own bodies in more ways than one. In addition to the phrase’s sneering inversion of a pro-choice phrase, rejecting the abortion right and claiming the overturn of Roe as a victory for men, the phrase has a second, dual meaning: as a rape threat. The men and boys who use it are not merely taunting women with the threat of an unwanted, forced pregnancy. They are taunting them with the threat of forced sex.It is not always a connection that the misogynist right has made so explicit. In other eras, the anti-choice movement has adopted an overtly religious attitude of sexual repression, aiming to restrict abortion as a means of restricting sexuality across the board. But this preacherly, sexually repressed masculinity is not the masculinity of today’s misogynist rightwing movement. Rather, the Maga right is one that sees sex not as something that must be rendered shameful and pushed out of the public sphere, but as a weapon that can be used to punish, humiliate and dominate women.This new, avowedly and vulgarly sexual rightwing masculinity is what Fuentes was crystalizing in his snide little coinage of “your body, my choice”: it is one that aims to use physical and sexual force to coerce women into a degraded gendered role, one subject to men’s domination and only partial, limited and conditional in its citizenship and access to the public sphere. In this sense, their projects in joyfully celebrating rape and restricting women’s access to abortion are two sides of the same coin: the right seeks to dominate women and to commandeer the inside of their bodies so as to force them into a gendered role against their will, be that role as sex object or as mother.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThis is why it is fitting that Trump, who was found liable for the rape of one woman and accused of sexual assault by two dozen others, was the president to secure the overturning of Roe v Wade; it is why it is fitting that two of the justices who voted to overturn Roe, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh, have been credibly accused of sexual misconduct, each by more than one woman. It is because the sex politics of the right is not an anti-sex, puritanical politics. It is a politics of sexual domination.There is no use pretending that this is not what the Trump movement is. And there is no use in pretending that this is not what many of the men who voted for Trump hoped to achieve when they supported him. Much of the pre-election coverage of the gender dynamics of Trump’s campaign has disappeared in the days following the election, and perhaps this unpleasant reality is why: most Americans voted for a man they have every reason to believe is a rapist. For some of them, at least, that was not a liability, but an asset.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Archive, 1922: US isolation and its impact on Europe

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      During the 1920 US presidential election, Warren G Harding campaigned with the slogan “return to normalcy” – a return to how things were before the first world war. This included deregulation and isolationism. He won with a decisive victory and in 1922 introduced the Fordney-McCumber Tariff, a law that raised American tariffs on many imported goods.America and EuropeFrom our New York correspondent
      7 June 1922Most internationally minded American observers who were at Genoa or have been following recent events from Europe earnestly desire greater American participation in European affairs. Many thoughtful English liberals agree with them. But, curiously enough, many in America who share their hope that the United States may soon appreciate and bear her share of the world’s burdens and problems believe that participation by the American government in European conferences would at this time be futile and perhaps dangerous.Mr Hughes is a man of principle, but Mr Harding is a man of expediency. There is no doubt that the administration would like to take a larger part in European affairs; there is no doubt that the financial interests, to which it lends an attentive ear, are of the same mind; and there is also no doubt whatever that financial interest to which it lends and attentive ear, are of the same mind; and there is also no doubt whatever that the mass of American sentiment is steadfastly against it. The huge majority by which Mr Harding defeated the Democratic candidate in the autumn of 1920 was in large part a reaction against Mr Wilson’s entanglement in transatlantic politics.In so far as recent byelections and primary elections can be interpreted as bearing upon foreign policy they show a clear sympathy with the “irreconcilables” who kept the United States out of the League. The Administration, which shifts its domestic policy after every vote in an effort to please the country, would be even more incapable of a clearcut foreign policy.On the Russian question of course the United States has a policy – as intransigent as that of France. Mr Hughes and Mr Hoover, the two strong men of the Cabinet.A prejudice analysed
      The popular prejudice against participation in European affairs is often misinterpreted in Europe. It is, in part, of course, merely content with the relative prosperity in America, a selfish unwillingness to bother about a sick continent so far away. But it is vastly more than that. The figures of private donations for relief in Northern France, in Germany, in Austria, in Russia – which mounted into the tens of millions last year and continue mounting – are one proof of that. To anyone in touch with the pulse of American life it is plain that the main reason for the hesitation to plunge into Europe is a kind of bewildered disappointment at the results of America’s last plunge. There is no confidence in America’s diplomatic wisdom. The ordinary American farmer has two strong convictions – first, that the Europeans are making a mess of things; and, second, that the Americans, while they were in Europe, helped to make the mess worse. He would like to help, but he is unwilling to sign more blank cheques. He is confused; the issue is not clear, and until it is he thinks it safer to keep out. Where Wilson failed, he argues, what reason is there to believe that Harding and Hughes would succeed?There were during the Genoa Conference, when Europe seemed to be doing things on its own account, that American feeling was changing. The disappointing result at Genoa was tragic in its effect upon America. It did help still further to destroy the myth of a romantic France that could do no wrong; but tended to make the country still less disposed to mix in European problems. Yet other factors are at work. The discussion of the tariff, in which the New York banks that give the tone to financial opinion throughout the country are almost unanimously arguing for Free Trade, is very salutary indeed.The Genoa despatches of Mr Keynes and of Mr Frank Vanderlip, the former president of the National City Bank, attracted widespread comment and had a profound educative effect. But the bewildered apathy remains, and while it remains useful American participation in European affairs will be confined to the action of individuals such as Mr Morgan and Mr Vanderlip. It will take some striking event to galvanise American opinion. If the French should undertake independent military action they would certainly be unanimously condemned in this country; such an act might well give the Administration the popular support it requires for an effective return to the councils of Europe.The US tariff billBy FW Hirst
      24 June 1922Under the proposed Fordney-McCumber Tariff Bill, which the Republican leaders hope to get through this summer, the United States tariff will make import duties on clothing, boots, and most of our staple manufactures almost prohibitive. To quote one paragraph from a very careful analysis by the New York World which lies before me:
      Importations would be placed under a virtual embargo, thereby blocking Europe’s only means of paying off her war debt of more than eleven thousand million dollars to the United States. The economically unhealthy gold surplus would remain in this country – over 40 per-cent of the world’s gold supply is now in Federal Revenue bank vaults –instead of flowing back to normal channels and stabilising exchanges.
      The World declares that the agents of the big industrial monopolies have lobbied at Washington with more success than ever before.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEditorial: America’s new tariff22 September 1922View image in fullscreenPresident Harding has at last signed the new United States Tariff Bill. The Bill, as is well known, conforms to the Republican tradition of high protection, but carries it to a higher power than has ever before been attempted, and considerably higher, one suspects, than most Americans like. How, in that case, it has managed to survive a sustained fire of criticism and is finally to become law on the eve of the congressional elections is a little obscure. As a vote-catching device nothing could have been more unfortunately conceived, and the Democrats are doubtless surprised and delighted to have a weapon with so sharp an edge put into their hands. Their chances at the November elections are now brighter, even though their victory could not immediately enable them to repeal the new tariff.The Bill has been much pulled about during the year it has been under discussion, but in its final shape it is still the most extreme measure of Protection ever passed in an industrial State. It is hardly conceivable that it should last long, and already there are signs of reaction from the frenzied Protectionism in which it had its birth after the sensational collapse in prices and restriction of credit in 1920. It has been carried partly because the Republican party was committed to it, partly because the farmers had to be bribed with heavy duties on all kinds of agricultural produce, and partly because, in spite of a general feeling that the general level of duties was extravagantly high, no trade could be induced to admit that it really needed anything less than prohibition. The Bill, once it was introduced, was carried more by its own momentum than by any active belief in its all-round virtues. It has been carried against much public criticism, and may be followed, like the similar Payne-Aldrich Tariff of 1909, by Democratic successes at the polls. But, whatever its effects upon the internal politics of America may be, it will probably remain for a year or two as the expression of American tariff policy, and will have far reaching effects upon the trade of America with the rest of the world.From a European point of view the Fordney-McCumber tariff is without any redeeming feature. It fits in only too well with the American policy of self-isolation. This is a policy which can be perfectly well understood even on this side of the Atlantic. If it were practicable there are many who would like to adopt it for England. But even if it were morally defensible to say that the Continent’s troubles are no concern of ours, and that we need not incur the odium and expense of mixing ourselves up in them, it is manifest to everybody that in point of fact that Europe’s troubles are very much our affair and that isolation would be the most dangerous and costly policy of all.In America there is the same inducement to cut clear of a continent which looks like falling to pieces and much less obvious reason why isolation even for her, is impracticable. At least the United States would not starve, as most people in England would, if the whole of her foreign trade were cut off. But though she would not starve she would be a good deal poorer, and she could not profess indifference even to the loss of her trade with Europe, which still takes over half of her total exports and used to take more than that. How much of America’s foreign trade will be destroyed by the new tariff cannot be foreseen. Many of the new duties are described as prohibitive, and a good many more will become so if the President exercises his arbitrary powers of increasing them.(All articles are edited extracts). More

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      ‘Go to hell’: how Project 2025 chief kicked the Guardian out of book event

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      Kevin Roberts, the head of the influential rightwing thinktank the Heritage Foundation, told a Guardian reporter to “go to hell” at the launch of Roberts’s new book on Tuesday night, then threw the reporter out of the venue, apparently in response to reporting on the organization.The Guardian was invited last week to Roberts’s book events in New York and Washington DC. They were billed as an opportunity “to celebrate Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America” – Roberts’s new book, which features a foreword by the vice-president-elect, JD Vance.Roberts, the chief architect of Project 2025, the infamous rightwing plan for Donald Trump’s presidency which would crack down on immigration, dismantle LGBTQ+ and abortion rights and diminish environmental protections, spoke briefly at the event, held in the lavish Kimberly Hotel in midtown New York City, before mingling with the crowd.Approached by the Guardian, a staff member at the Heritage Foundation said Roberts would be available for a brief interview. The Guardian waited patiently before being introduced to Roberts, who was tidily dressed in a suit, tie and cowboy boots.“You’ve got two minutes with our best friend Adam from the Guardian,” the Heritage Foundation employee told Roberts.Roberts said to the Guardian: “Make it good, the first one [question], otherwise you’re going to pound sand.”It was quite loud in the venue and the Guardian misheard the word “sand”. Asked for clarification, Roberts repeated the phrase.The Guardian said: “I don’t know what that means,” which seemed to upset Roberts. He reacted angrily.“It means you’re a bunch of liars, is what it means. So make it good or we’re done,” Roberts said. The Guardian asked if Roberts could elaborate on his “liars” comment, which seemed to upset the Heritage Foundation president further.“No, we’re done, I’m not talking to you,” Roberts said.The Guardian, overlapping Roberts slightly, had begun to ask a question about Project 2025, which provides a roadmap on how a Republican president could permanently transform the federal government into a conservative institution.Roberts replied: “Go to hell.”It was a surprising outburst from Roberts, seen as one of the masterminds of the conservative blueprint which could change the shape of the US government. Roberts, who said earlier this year that the US was “in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be”, is a highly influential figure on the right.Vance, who in his foreword wrote: “Never before has a figure with Roberts’s depth and stature within the American Right tried to articulate a genuinely new future for conservatism,” was not present to witness Roberts’s conversation with the Guardian on Tuesday night.After the initial encounter, the Guardian returned to Roberts and asked if he would like to add to his earlier comments. A staff member objected, and asked the Guardian to “please move back.” The Guardian acquiesced, and used the opportunity to go to the bathroom, but was intercepted on the way by two burly members of security.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe security members said the Guardian had to leave – no explanation was offered – and confiscated a name tag that had been handed out earlier in the evening. This reporter was then escorted down to street level by a member of security, who then returned to the event.It was an odd end to what had been a genteel book party. Held in the Kimberly’s Upstairs bar on the 30th floor of the hotel, about 80 people, the men in sharp suits, most of the women in fashionable dresses, had spent time quietly mingling before listening to a conversation between Roberts and Brian Kilmeade, the Fox News host.The pair discussed Roberts’s book, in which he describes how “many of America’s institutions […] need to be burned”. Included among those to be incinerated, Roberts writes, are the FBI and the New York Times, along with “every Ivy League college”, “80% of ‘Catholic’ higher education”, and the Boy Scouts of America.The event had been billed to run from 5.30pm until 8pm, but the Guardian was ejected a full hour earlier than that. It was enough to have this reporter double-check the Heritage Foundation’s invitation, which was sent by Heritage’s senior communications manager on Thursday.“Hey all! Heritage Foundation President Dr Kevin Roberts is launching his new book Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America next week in NYC and DC,” it said.“The book has a forward [sic] written by Vice President-elect JD Vance and identifies institutions that conservatives need to build, others that need to [be] taken back, and more that are too corrupt to save.”The invitation ended: “We’d love to see you attend either (or both) launch parties.” More

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      Americans are desperately Googling how to ‘move to Europe’. We should welcome them | Alexander Hurst

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      I am resisting the temptation to write a lamentation of anger and sorrow about Trump’s second victory. What is more useful is to think about what Europe can do to protect its environment, its people and its economy in a world where the Trump administration may act, in many ways, to undermine and even destroy it.The EU’s first bold move to lead by example in the new Trump era should be to seize 200bn euros’ worth of frozen Russian central bank assets and transfer them to Ukraine as a form of pre-emptive reparations. The European Parliamentary Research Service and outside experts have proposed ways in which it could be done in full accordance with international law. But this alone won’t obviate the need for the EU to borrow more to boost its common defence and green infrastructure spending, even though it will increase its debt.Part of the money raised should be earmarked for the European Space Agency to develop a crewed vehicle that can guarantee European astronauts independent access to orbit and beyond without having to turn to Elon Musk and SpaceX (or other US-based companies). Other spending might be used to boost research in ways that help Europe’s economy rebound and stay competitive.But the real step the EU can take towards protecting its economy (and with it, its citizens’ wellbeing, optimism and faith in democracy) involves things that are less sexy than building a spaceship, such as finishing the capital markets union that could enable more European tech start-ups to borrow money. The EU has spent the better part of a decade wringing its hands over the absence of European substantial tech companies compared with the US and China. A big reason for this is that it’s simply easier to raise funds in the US because private and public pension funds allocate a greater part of their investments towards venture capital than European pension funds do.As the former Italian prime minister Enrico Letta said on French radiorecently, each year European savers send about €300bn to US stock markets, primarily because that’s where their banks focus their activities. This money helps boosts the valuation of US companies, which can result in them being able to finance buying out European firms. Europe already exports tech-startup founders to the US rather than keeping them at home – which, according to a US-based French investor – has resulted in French tech in the US being worth far more than French tech in France. For instance, Snowcloud and Datadog, both founded by French entrepreneurs in the US, are many times more valuable than France’s largest unicorns or biggest recent stock market flotation. A situation where the continent is exporting founders, their startups, and the capital that is funding them makes absolutely no sense. This matters because, as Stanford academic and author Mariejte Schaake argues in the FT, we need European tech to embody democratic values. On that front, the EU should feel vindicated that its attempt to regulate disinformation on social media is the correct strategy. Democracy is untenable when voters are subjected to algorithms weaponised to constrict their worldview and flood them with disinformation. In Musk’s hands, X is an extraordinarily dangerous tool for election engineering. Europe was already on the verge of fining X 6% of its global revenue (and potentially including Tesla and SpaceX in its calculation). Musk, who spent at least $130m to help elect Trump, is already seeing the return on his investment, with vice president-elect JD Vance suggesting the US might withdraw from Nato if the EU takes action against him. Whether through enforcement, some new type of regulatory agency or a future ban on X, this is not a fight the EU can back away from because the existence of European democracy itself is at stake. The EU can also do something unexpected. Trump has made no secret of his desire for vengeance and retribution against his enemies: tens of thousands of civil servants ; universities, professors and students. He has fantasised and encouraged violence against journalists, protesters, judges, immigrants and political opponents, and has promised to set the justice department and even the military on them. It bears repeating: a second Trump administration will not have the guardrails of the first, where Mike Milley and Mike Esper ignored orders to “just shoot” antiracism protesters.American dissidents abroad might one day be targeted as well. The EU should announce a principle of non-compliance with any US attempt to extradite or harass US citizens being targeted for political reasons or for civil disobedience – such as engaging in tax resistance against a Trump administration, as some Americans did in small numbers during his first time in office and which has its roots in opposition to the Vietnam war. Finally, Europe has an opportunity to invert the transatlantic brain drain. This time really is different and Americans know it: searches for “move to Europe,” or for individual European countries are on a totally different scale than ever before. There is a unique chance for Europe to roll out a red carpet of special visas and ease the path for highly educated Americans who want to flee Trumpmerica (like climate scientists sure to have their funding slashed). Or perhaps to partner with US universities that might eventually seek to establish satellite campuses for students and staff who can no longer be located in the US.Underlying all Europe’s failures to solve its collective action problems is the same phenomenon – sometimes it thinks and acts like a continent but too often actually behaves like a group of small, fragmented nations. In 2003, the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas proposed that Europe might surpass this tendency by constructing European identity in opposition to theUS. Two decades later, he may inadvertently get his wish.

      Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe columnist More

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      Trump selects Elon Musk to lead government efficiency department

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      Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy will lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, Donald Trump said on Tuesday.Despite the name, the department will not be a government agency. Trump said in a statement that Musk and Ramaswamy will work from outside government to offer the White House “advice and guidance” and will partner with the Office of Management and Budget to “drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to government never seen before.” He added that the move would shock government systems.Trump said the duo “will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies”.Posting on X, the social media platform he owns, Musk pledged to document all actions of the department online for “maximum transparency”.“Anytime the public thinks we are cutting something important or not cutting something wasteful, just let us know!” he said, while also promise to keep “a leaderboard for most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars”.Ramaswamy also responded to the announcement of his appointment on X. “We will not go gently, @elonmusk”, he said, adding an American flag emoji.It is not clear how the organization will operate. It could come under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which dictates how external groups that advise the government must operate and be accountable to the public.Federal employees are generally required to disclose their assets and entanglements to ward off any potential conflicts of interest, and to divest significant holdings relating to their work. Because Musk and Ramaswamy would not be formal federal workers, they would not face those requirements or ethical limitations.Musk had pushed for a government efficiency department and has since relentlessly promoted it, emphasizing the acronym for the agency: Doge, a reference to a meme of an expressive Shiba Inu and the name of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, which Musk promotes. Trump said the agency will be conducting a “complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government, and making recommendations for drastic reforms”.The value of dogecoin has more than doubled since election day, tracking a surge in cryptocurrency markets on expectations of a softer regulatory ride under a Trump administration. Shares in Tesla are up about 30% since the election.Trump said their work would conclude by 4 July 2026, adding that a smaller and more efficient government would be a “gift” to the country on the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.Ramaswamy is a wealthy biotech entrepreneur whose first time running for office was for the Republican party nomination last year. After dropping out of the race, he threw his support behind Trump. He told ABC earlier this week that he was having “high-impact discussions” about possible roles in Trump’s cabinet.He also has no government experience, but has pushed for cost-cutting in the corporate sector. After building a stake in the struggling online media firm Buzzfeed, he urged the company in May to cut staff and hire conservative commentators like Tucker Carlson.Musk, speaking to reporters last month, stated a goal of reducing government spending by $2tn. Practically speaking, experts say those cost cuts could result in deregulation and policy changes that would directly impact Musk’s universe of companies, particularly Tesla, SpaceX, X and Neuralink.Adding a government portfolio to Musk’s plate could benefit the market value of his companies and favored businesses such as artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency.Equities analyst Daniel Ives of Wedbush Securities said in a research note: “It’s clear that Musk will have a massive role in the Trump White House with his increasing reach clearly across many federal agencies.”But Musk’s appointment was criticized by Public Citizen, a progressive consumer rights NGO that challenged several of Trump’s first-term policies. “Musk not only knows nothing about government efficiency and regulation, his own businesses have regularly run afoul of the very rules he will be in position to attack,” co-president Lisa Gilbert said in a statement.Trump had made clear that Musk would likely not hold any kind of full-time position, given his other commitments.“I don’t think I can get him full-time because he’s a little bit busy sending rockets up and all the things he does,” Trump said at a rally in Michigan in September. “He said the waste in this country is crazy. And we’re going to get Elon Musk to be our cost-cutter.” More

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      US election updates: Trump picks hardliner as ambassador to Israel in slew of job appointments

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      Donald Trump has announced seven new appointments for his incoming administration, recruiting Mike Huckabee as the US ambassador to Israel and Steven Witkoff as Middle East envoy.Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, has a track record of hardline, occasionally provocative, pro-Israel rhetoric and previously said Israel has a rightful claim to the West Bank. In 2018, he said he dreamed of building a “holiday home” in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.Trump said in a statement: “He loves Israel, and the people of Israel, and likewise, the people of Israel love him.”Witkoff is a New York City-based real estate mogul, longtime friend of Trump’s and major campaign donor who testified as an expert witness for the defence in the New York attorney general’s case against the Trump family and its namesake business.Trump’s first administration had an explicitly pro-Israel posture, relocating the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in a move decried by Palestinians as damaging to peace prospects.Here’s what else happened on Tuesday:Trump administration news and updates

      Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead a new Department of Government Efficiency, Trump announced. Despite the name, the organisation will not be a government agency. Trump said in a statement that Musk and Ramaswamy, a former Republican presidential candidate, will work from outside the government to “drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to government never seen before.”

      South Dakota governor Kristi Noem will lead the Department of Homeland Security. In the role, Noem would oversee everything from border protection and immigration to disaster response and the US Secret Service. She is a staunch Trump ally, once considered a contender to run with him for vice-president until her revelation that she shot and killed a “hated” dog on her family farm.

      Fox News host Pete Hegseth will serve as secretary of defence, Trump said. Hegseth, an army veteran and veterans advocate, has criticised so-called “woke” policies pursed by Pentagon leaders. He developed a friendship with the president-elect during his appearances on Fox & Friends.

      Two alumni of the first Trump administration will make a comeback, with former director of national intelligence and close Trump ally John Ratcliffe picked for CIA director, and William Joseph McGinley, who served as cabinet secretary in the first term, to serve as White House counsel.
      US election news and updates

      The Republicans are just two seats shy of a 218 majority in the House of Representatives, after David Valadao won re-election in California’s 22nd congressional district and Gabe Evans defeated the Democratic incumbent Yadira Caraveo in Colorado’s 8th congressional district.

      Trump will meet congressional Republicans during his Biden White House visit on Wednesday as lawmakers prepare to “hit the ground running,” House speaker Mike Johnson said. Trump’s first years in office were marked by legislative chaos and “precious time was wasted”, Johnson told reporters on Tuesday. “We are not going to make those mistakes again.”

      Wisconsin Republican Eric Hovde has refused to concede to Democrat Tammy Baldwin in their US Senate race, saying he was “deeply concerned” about the election results but that seeking a recount was a “serious” decision and he was still reviewing his options, the Associated Press reported. Republicans have already won a majority in the Senate.

      The judge in Trump’s Manhattan criminal hush-money case has postponed deciding on whether to throw out the conviction on presidential immunity grounds. Judge Juan Merchan’s office told Trump’s legal team he would delay the ruling until 19 November after defence and prosecutors submitted letters asking for a postponement.

      Samuel Alito, a long-serving conservative justice on the supreme court, has no plans to step down, the Wall Street Journal reported. If he changes his mind, Trump and the Republican-controlled Senate could confirm a replacement and likely prolong the court’s conservative supermajority.

      Trump will reportedly oppose a US law that could lead to popular social media app TikTok being banned, despite bipartisan support for the measure.

      Trump advisers are reportedly mulling a “warrior board” to organise purge of top military officers. Donald Trump’s transition team is working on an executive order that would create a new body tasked with naming military leaders who should be demoted, the Wall Street Journal reported. The reported proposal is the latest sign that Trump may make due on his threat to retaliate against leaders at all levels of government who have broken with him, or who are perceived as disloyal.

      Trump’s latest cabinet appointments were revealed as Joe Biden’s administration appeared to continue to allow military aid to Israel after threatening sanctions if it did not act to counter the acute humanitarian crisis in Gaza by a 30-day deadline. State department spokesperson Vedant Patel said on Tuesday there was “no new policy or new assessment to offer but we’ll continue to have our conversations with the Israeli government”.
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      Senior Trump adviser suggests Rudd’s time as US ambassador could be up with hourglass gif

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      A senior adviser to US president-elect Donald Trump has fuelled speculation about the future of Australia’s ambassador to Washington, former prime minister Kevin Rudd, by reposting Rudd’s congratulatory statement to Trump on social media with a gif of an hourglass.The provocative time-is-running-out post by former Trump deputy chief of staff for communications Dan Scavino reignited suggestions that the incoming president may prefer another Australian representative in Washington when he takes office in January.Scavino spoke at Trump’s now-infamous Madison Square Garden rally in New York ahead of the election and was billed as a “senior adviser”.A new video emerged earlier this week of Rudd in an interview in 2021 describing Trump as “a village idiot” and “not a leading intellectual force”. Rudd last week – following the US election – deleted old social media posts criticising Trump.There are no formal protocols for challenging the status of incumbent foreign diplomats upon a change of US administration.But Trump has already banished one high-profile diplomat from a significant ally in the past, effectively forcing the withdrawal of then-British ambassador Kim Darroch in 2019 after leaked cables revealed past personal criticisms of the president.Darroch’s situation was different to Rudd’s because the British ambassador’s criticisms were contemporary, not historical.Nevertheless, there is now concern in Australian government and diplomatic circles that the personal nature of some of Rudd’s past criticisms of Trump may be a bigger problem than first feared.

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      Former Australian ambassador to the US Arthur Sinodinos has urged the government not to withdraw Rudd because of the risk of appearing supine. But he also advised finding a way to publicly walk back Rudd’s criticisms of the incoming president.“It would not be a good look to suddenly just yank the ambassador out,” Sinodinos told ABC radio on Wednesday.“But what is important is two things: not only that the prime minister stand by the ambassador, but also the ambassador and the prime minister have got to explain maybe that those comments are inoperative, because circumstances have changed – that calling him all those names … that’s a bit sort of passé.”Sinodinos said the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, and Rudd should seize the opportunity of the president-elect’s emphatic victory to recalibrate.“Because the president [elect] has demonstrated his capacity to win elections and to win an extraordinary mandate from the American people, the popular vote, as well as the electoral college and the and the Congress. So maybe he’s not as unsmart or the village idiot that some people think.”On Wednesday, the Australian opposition leader, Peter Dutton, appeared to endorse Rudd and praised his efforts.“It’s important that he does work in our country’s name,” Dutton told ABC radio. “He’s been a very effective contributor to public debate, particularly as a former prime minister. He is well respected, and I hope he’s able to form a relationship with the new administration, as he’s done with the current one.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhile highlighting the former prime minister’s “incredible work ethic”, evident in a meeting the pair had on his own recent trip to Washington, Dutton caveated his praise.“As you would expect, [Rudd’s] got an incredible work ethic, but he’s made disparaging comments and that’s an issue for the government to deal with,” he said.“People of both political types have gone to that position. They bring gravitas to the office and I hope that there can be good work done in our country’s name.”Former prime minister Tony Abbott downplayed Rudd’s criticisms and any risk of US intervention. Abbott said Rudd had done a good job and said some “injudicious things about the incoming president – but a lot of people have”.“[It would be] unusual for our closest ally to start being prescriptive about who can and can’t be our ambassador,” Abbott said in his podcast Australia’s Future with Tony Abbott.But he also warned Australia should be “very careful” about criticising a US president or ex-president.On Tuesday, Dutton had more actively entertained critical questions about Rudd’s future.“The ambassador has to have a functional working relationship with the administration, whether that’s a Democrat or Republican administration,” Dutton told reporters.. He also pointed to criticisms of Trump by Albanese and the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong.Albanese has continued to back Rudd and said he remains the right person for the ambassador role. More