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      DoJ to release part of report on Trump’s attempt to overturn 2020 election

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      Attorney general Merrick Garland intends to release the first part of the highly-anticipated special counsel report into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election but will withhold the second part about Trump’s retention of classified documents, the justice department said on Wednesday.The full report by the special counsel, Jack Smith, will also be made available to the top Democrat and Republican on the House and Senate judiciary committees as long as they agree to keep the contents of the second part confidential, the department also said.Exactly when the first part of the report will become public remains unclear, since it is still temporarily blocked by a court order issued by the federal judge who presided in the documents case. The justice department’s intentions were disclosed in a court filing challenging the order.The move to make the report public still faces several hurdles. Even if the 11th circuit quickly rules in favor of release, Trump is expected to make a final challenge to the supreme court in an effort to buy time and shred the report before his 20 January inauguration.Ever since Trump won the election, ending the possibility of the cases going to trial, Smith has been preparing a final report into the Trump cases and their charging decisions, as is required under the special counsel regulations at the end of a case.The report is confidential and first gets sent to the attorney general, who has the power to decide how much becomes public. Garland had previously pledged to publish at least some of it, and the justice department’s court filings suggest the entire first volume will be released.Trump’s lawyers, including Todd Blanche who has been tapped by Trump to be his incoming deputy attorney general, reviewed a draft version of the report over the weekend in Washington and took issue with its findings but also with its very existence.The lawyers objected to Smith even being allowed to complete a report and asked that Garland remove him from his post. If Garland disagrees and Smith produces a report, the decision on whether it should become public should be left to the incoming attorney general, the lawyers suggested.The lawyers leaned heavily into their contention that Smith was improperly appointed because he was not confirmed by the Senate before he took the job – the basis on which the US district judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the classified documents case against Trump.The Trump legal team also argued that the release of the report would unfairly prejudice Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, Trump’s former co-defendants in the documents case, against whom the justice department is separately trying to resurrect the case on appeal.On Tuesday, Cannon granted a temporary injunction that prohibited the justice department from releasing the report outside of the agency until three days after the 11th circuit decided the matter.To get around the documents case situation, the special counsel’s team told the 11th circuit in its reply brief on Wednesday that it would withhold the second part of the report that discusses Trump’s retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and his efforts to obstruct justice.“This limited disclosure will further the public interest in keeping congressional leadership apprised of the significant matter within the Department while safeguarding defendants’ interests,” the filing said. More

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      US electors to certify Trump’s win in process targeted by fake electors in 2020

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      Electors will meet in all 50 states on Tuesday to ratify the second election of Donald Trump to the presidency, a process typically no more than a ceremonial step to the White House for the winner of an election.Usually, it lacks drama. But four years ago on 20 December 2020, Republican activists met in seven states won by Joe Biden – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – to sign false certificates of ascertainment proclaiming victory for Donald Trump and Mike Pence, to be sent to the National Archives and to Congress.Prosecutors have described the intent behind this act of “fake electors” as the provision of a rationale for the vice-president to either declare Trump president or to throw the election to Congress to decide on 6 January 2021. On that day, rioters breached the US Capitol intent on subverting the results of the election.The constitution states that on the first Tuesday following the second Wednesday of December after a presidential election, each state’s presidential electors gather in each state’s capitol to cast their vote in the electoral college for president and vice-president. The electoral college is an artifact of the politics of slavery; created at the insistence of southern states because it initially enhanced the voting power of states with larger enslaved populations due to the apportionment value of the three-fifths compromise.The re-election of Trump in November by a decisive margin, coupled with the relative acceptance of the results by his political opponents, suggests no second wave of shenanigans on Tuesday.Nonetheless, Congress tightened up language about how the process works after the January 6 insurrection, the latest of periodic adjustments to the 248-year-old tradition of the electoral college. The Electoral Count Reform Act clarified that the legislatures of states that use an election to choose a president cannot simply appoint electors after the fact if there is some kind of election “failure”.The reforms require the executive of each state to certify an election at least six days before the electoral count, and that this certification is conclusive unless a state or federal court concludes otherwise. It limited the kind of objections members of Congress could make to the votes of electors. It also ensured that a mob with bad intentions could not change the outcome, by explicitly designating the vice-president’s role in counting votes as a ministerial, ceremonial act.The one thing the 2022 reforms didn’t do is require states to hold a presidential election.Stated in article II, section 1, clause 2 of the constitution: “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress … ”The US supreme court ruled in Bush v Gore that states do not actually have to hold an election at all, but if they do it has to conform with 14th amendment rules for equal protection.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe “manner” state legislatures have chosen in the past has included allowing voters to choose them by electoral district, or with legislators choosing themselves – as Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, New Jersey and South Carolina did in the first presidential election.Electors appointed to the college are obligated to vote for the winning candidate. Some vote for someone else anyway. It’s rare – fewer than 100 out of more than 14,000 people over the life of the country. The modern record is seven, set in 2016.So-called faithless electors have never overturned an election, but dozens of electors have cast ballots for a candidate not of their party over the years. Thirty-three states and Washington DC have state laws prohibiting electors from casting ballots for someone other than the winner of the election. In 2016, four electors for Hillary Clinton in the state of Washington cast their votes for Colin Powell or Faith Spotted Eagle instead and were fined $1,000 for doing so.Five states make the act of a faithless elector a crime; California law makes it a felony punishable by up to three years in prison to break ranks. More

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      Trump says he supports polio vaccine despite signs of RFK Jr’s opposition – live

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      Last week, the New York Times reported that a lawyer who had filed petitions seeking to revoke the approval of vaccines for polio and other preventable diseases has been by Robert F Kennedy Jr’s side in interviews to hire top officials for the health and human services department.A reporter asked Donald Trump today if he supported taking the polio vaccine out of circulation.“You’re not going to lose the polio vaccine. That’s not going to happen,” Trump said. “I saw what happened with the polio, I have friends that were very much affected by that. I have friends from many years ago, and … they’re still in not such good shape because of it.”The polio vaccine has been credited with suppressing, almost entirely, a disease that can cause lifelong paralysis in people who get it. Mitch McConnell, the top Senate Republican who survived the disease, condemned the news that Trump’s incoming administration could be hostile to the much-used vaccine.However, Trump did signal some skepticism to the vaccine mandates enacted by some states and school districts. “I don’t like mandates. I’m not a big mandate person,” Trump said.He also said that there might be a link between vaccines and pesticides and autism. “You take a look at autism today versus 20, 25 years ago, it’s like, not even believable. So we’re going to have reports,” Trump said.But he downplayed fears that Kennedy, if confirmed to lead the nation’s health department, would make radical changes. “Nothing’s going to happen very quickly. I think you’re going to find that Bobby is much is a very rational guy,” Trump said.Democratic party aides have begun to float ideas for a Kamala Harris political comeback, reportedly eyeing another run at the US’s highest office even as the party continues to grapple with the electoral messages contained in the vice-president’s decisive defeat in November’s White House race against Donald Trump.Harris, who has reportedly not ruled out a second run for the presidency, is now reported to be considering a run for the California governorship, currently held until 2027 by Gavin Newsom. Newsom was a rumoured presidential contender during the chaotic summer that saw Joe Biden step down from a rematch with Trump – whom he defeated in the 2020 election – and then endorse Harris as his replacement.According to the Washington Post on Monday, some Democratic party aides believe Trump – who, among other things, overcame a criminal conviction and other such charges to win – has sufficiently overturned the norms of losing White House candidates’ not attempting a second bite at the proverbial apple to give Harris the opportunity of a repeat bid in 2028, this time for the full cycle.“Since Donald Trump has rewritten the rules – the norms – I don’t believe Kamala Harris or anyone should try to go with precedent, ever,” said Donna Brazile, a Harris ally, Al Gore 2000 presidential campaign manager and political commentator. “There are no rule books.”Read more:Trump’s stance on TikTok has softened since his first term in office. Initially he advocated to ban the app, but during his run for re-election he posted on his Truth Social account that he would “save TikTok in America”.Trump launched his own TikTok account in June, which now has nearly 15 million followers.On Monday, Trump said in a press conference at Mar-a-Lago that he has a “warm spot in my heart for TikTok”. He’s reportedly slated to meet with TikTok CEO Shou Chew at his estate on Monday, according to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.TikTok asked the supreme court to block a law that aims to ban the popular social media app in the US. Unless the court intervenes, the ban is set to go into effect on 19 January, one day before Donald Trump is sworn into office.The law to ban TikTok passed Congress last spring and was signed by Joe Biden. The US government says TikTok is a national security threat because its parent company, ByteDance, is Chinese-owned. They say China could use the app to access personal data from millions of Americans and also spread propaganda. The government has not disclosed evidence that Beijing or ByteDance has done so.TikTok argues the law is unconstitutional, unfairly singles it out and violates the right to free speech of its millions of users.“The Act will shutter one of America’s most popular speech platforms the day before a presidential inauguration,” reads the court filing. “This, in turn, will silence the speech of Applicants and the many Americans who use the platform to communicate about politics, commerce, arts, and other matters of public concern,” they added.TikTok asked the supreme court to act by 6 January.Donald Trump’s allies have become increasingly emboldened to float their most audacious ideas as Trump prepares to return to office, suggesting he run for an unconstitutional third term in 2028 and accusing the news media of having engaged in a criminal conspiracy with prosecutors against him.Those suggestions, by Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon, came at a self-congratulatory gala dinner for conservatives in New York on Sunday. At times the remarks seemed like the product of the euphoria that permeated attendees.The underlying message was clear: with Trump back in the White House and with Bannon renewing his influence with the president-elect, the most extreme and polarizing proposals at the very least were up for consideration.“The viceroy Mike Davis tells me, since it doesn’t actually say consecutive, that maybe we do it again in ’28?” Bannon said of Trump possibly running again in his remarks at the New York Young Republican Club gala dinner that also saw a Trump adviser keel over the lectern and fall off the stage.Riding the wave of self-congratulatory sentiment in the room, Bannon, who ignored the black-tie dress code with a wax jacket and black collared shirt, doubled down on pursuing a campaign of retribution against Trump’s perceived enemies in the news media and at the justice department.“We want retribution and we’re going to get retribution. You have to. It’s not personal, it’s not personal,” Bannon said to the raucous room. “They need to learn what populist, nationalist power is on the receiving end.“I need investigations, trials and then incarceration. And I’m just talking about the media. Should the media be included in the vast criminal conspiracy against President Trump? Should Andrew Weissmann on MSNBC and Rachel Maddow and all of them?”Read more:Anti-vaccine activist Robert F Kennedy Jr is on Capitol Hill to meet Republican senators who will decide if he should be confirmed as secretary of health and human services:Kennedy has attracted much scrutiny for his embrace of various conspiracy theories, and advocacy against vaccines. But as conservative activist Charlie Kirk wrote on X, Kennedy’s appeal to Trump supporters is that he would downsize the massive federal department he is being tapped to lead:
      The annual budget for HHS is over $1.8 trillion, including $130 billion in discretionary spending. A behemoth of bloat and bureaucracy.
      That said, there’s one thing about Kennedy that might not sit well with some Republicans: his previous statements of support for abortion. We’ll see what lawmakers have to say about that.It’s a somewhat obscure issue, but one thing Trump has made very clear he plans to do is take steps to require federal employees to work from offices that they may have stopped going to when Covid-19 broke out.He repeated the promise at his Mar-a-Lago press conference today, saying:
      If people don’t come back to work, come back into the office, they’re going to be dismissed.
      In a statement, Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union of federal government employees, said the issue was not as simple as Trump makes it sound:
      Rumors of widespread federal telework and remote work are simply untrue. More than half of federal employees cannot telework at all because of the nature of their jobs, only ten percent of federal workers are remote, and those who have a hybrid arrangement spend over sixty percent of working hours in the office.
      Kelley also threatened a fight over any steps Trump may take that run afoul of union contracts, saying: “Collective bargaining agreements entered into by the federal government are binding and enforceable under the law. We trust the incoming administration will abide by their obligations to honor lawful union contracts. If they fail to do so, we will be prepared to enforce our rights.”Here’s more about Trump’s plans to return government workers to their offices:Donald Trump is considering appointing Democratic congressman Jared Moskowitz to lead the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), CNN reports.Moskowitz, the former director of Florida’s division of emergency management, would be a rare registered Democrat to wind up in Trump’s administration. The congressman earlier this month announced he would join the congressional caucus supporting the “Department of Government Efficiency”, the quasi-governmental effort co-chaired by billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to downsize the federal government.Trump has nominated some former Democrats to cabinet posts, including ex-Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, and anti-vaccine activist Robert F Kennedy Jr as health and human services secretary.Elon Musk is often by Donald Trump’s side these days, but the Guardian’s Edward Helmore reports that the government does not necessarily consider him trustworthy:Space entrepreneur Elon Musk is unlikely to receive government security clearances if he so applied, even as his SpaceX launch company blasts military and spy agency payloads into orbit, according to a report on Monday.The billionaire, a close ally of Donald Trump, who is set to join the incoming administration as an efficiency expert and recently became the first person to exceed $400bn in self-made personal wealth, is reported by the Wall Street Journal to have been advised by SpaceX lawyers to not seek highest-level security clearances owing to personal drug use and contacts with foreign nationals.Musk currently holds a “top-secret” clearance that took years to obtain after he discussed use of marijuana on a 2018 podcast with Joe Rogan, according to the outlet. But that may not be enough to have access to information about US government payloads in his rockets.Typically, candidates undergoing federal security screenings by the department of defense may not receive clearance if the agency expresses concerns about drug or alcohol use, criminal conduct, psychological conditions, sexual behavior or allegiance to the US.According to the Journal, Musk’s lawyers outlined scenarios in which he might inadvertently disclose secrets to foreign officials with whom he regularly speaks, including the Russian president Vladimir Putin, with whom he is reported to have been in regular contact since 2022.Musk’s use of another semi-legal drug, ketamine, in pursuit of what friends call “pure creativity”, along with reports of LSD, ecstasy and magic mushrooms, could also be an issue.Joe Biden has been briefed on a school shooting in Madison, Wisconsin, which the local police chief says has left five people dead and several other injured.“The president has been briefed on the school shooting in Madison, Wisconsin. Senior White House officials are in touch with local counterparts in Madison to provide support as needed,” the White House said.Here’s more on this developing story:Regarding Israel’s assault on Gaza and the possibility for a ceasefire, Miller said:
      We are pushing as hard as we know how to do at this point. We believe we can get to the deal, but again it remains incumbent on Hamas and Israel agreeing to those final terms and getting it over the line. I cannot in good conscience stand here and tell you that that’s going to happen. But it should happen.
      US officials and other countries are trying to broker a deal between Israel and Hamas that would call for a ceasfire and the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian detainees.More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in Gaza since Hamas’s 7 October attacks on Israel, more than half of whom are women and children.The US state department is holding a briefing right now, much of it dedicated to the aftermath of the rapid toppling of Syria’s government, formerly led by authoritarian leader Bashar al-Assad – and what that means for the US.Spokesperson Matthew Miller said the US’s “message to the Syrian people is this: We want them to succeed and we are prepared to help them do so.”Miller spoke to the importance of locating and finding US journalist Austin Tice, who has been missing since 2012 but is reportedly alive, to his family. Tice’s mother, Debra, went on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday and said she has met with the state department and the White House.She added: “We’re just really excited about being a reunited family.”No organization from the US government has been on the ground yet in Syria in reference to the search for Tice or other diplomatic issues since rebel forces took down the regime, the state department confirmed.Donald Trump held a wide-ranging press conference from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, weighing in on everything from pardoning New York mayor Eric Adams (he might do it) to getting rid of the polio vaccine (he’s not in favor). The president-elect also tried to tamp down concerns that his nominee to lead the health and human services department, Robert F Kennedy Jr, would make big changes, saying instead that “he’s going to be much less radical than you would think”. Finally, Trump announced that Japanese firm SoftBank would invest $100bn in America and create 100,000 jobs, though in the past, similar promises have not panned out.Here’s what else has happened today so far:

      Democrats are making a last minute-push to convince Joe Biden to put the Equal Rights Amendment into the constitution, which would protect against sex discrimination and likely spark a court fight.

      Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator who has met with Pete Hegseth, said the defense secretary nominee told him that he will allow a woman who he paid in relation to a sexual assault allegation to speak about it publicly.

      Biden defended his economic record with an essay in the progressive American Prospect magazine.
      Donald Trump has a history of announcing big investments that do not turn out as advertised, and one of the prime examples from his first term was a sprawling plant in Wisconsin that electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn was to build. It never actually materialized, but despite that unmet promise, the Badger state this year voted to send Trump back to the White House. Writing before the election, the Guardian’s Callum Jones took a look at what went wrong with the much-ballyhooed investment:Less than 30 miles south of the Fiserv Forum, the Wisconsin convention center where Republicans confirmed Donald Trump as their nominee for president for the third time, lies the site of a project Trump predicted would become “the Eighth Wonder of the World”.While still in office, the then president traveled to Mount Pleasant in Racine county to break ground on a sprawling facility that the electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn had agreed to build – in exchange for billions of dollars’ worth of subsidies.Flanked by local allies and executives from the company, Trump planted a golden shovel in the ground. “America is open for business more than it has ever been open for business,” he proclaimed in June 2018, as FoxConn promised to invest $10bn and hire 13,000 local workers.Highways were built and expanded. Homes were razed. The area – a former manufacturing powerhouse – was primed for revitalization in a deal that seemed to underline the executive prowess of America’s most famous businessman, an image that has helped maintain many voters’ confidence that he could steer the US economy more competently than his rival, Kamala Harris, and could win him the White House again come November.At his just-concluded press conference in Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump was asked if he would consider pardoning New York mayor Eric Adams, who is facing corruption charges.“Yeah, I think that he was treated pretty unfairly,” Trump replied.Adams has been indicted on five federal charges related to accepting gifts in exchange for favors such as helping Turkey open a new diplomatic tower in Manhattan despite concerns about its fire safety system. More

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      Trump allies float extreme ideas, including Trump third term, at gala

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      Donald Trump’s allies have become increasingly emboldened to float their most audacious ideas as Trump prepares to return to office, suggesting he run for an unconstitutional third term in 2028 and accusing the news media of having engaged in a criminal conspiracy with prosecutors against him.Those suggestions, by Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon, came at a self-congratulatory gala dinner for conservatives in New York on Sunday. At times the remarks seemed like the product of the euphoria that permeated attendees.The underlying message was clear: with Trump back in the White House and with Bannon renewing his influence with the president-elect, the most extreme and polarizing proposals at the very least were up for consideration.“The viceroy Mike Davis tells me, since it doesn’t actually say consecutive, that maybe we do it again in ’28?” Bannon said of Trump possibly running again in his remarks at the New York Young Republican Club gala dinner that also saw a Trump adviser keel over the lectern and fall off the stage.Riding the wave of self-congratulatory sentiment in the room, Bannon, who ignored the black-tie dress code with a wax jacket and black-collared shirt, doubled down on pursuing a campaign of retribution against Trump’s perceived enemies in the news media and at the justice department.“We want retribution and we’re going to get retribution. You have to. It’s not personal, it’s not personal,” Bannon said to the raucous room. “They need to learn what populist, nationalist power is on the receiving end.“I need investigations, trials and then incarceration. And I’m just talking about the media. Should the media be included in the vast criminal conspiracy against President Trump? Should Andrew Weissmann on MSNBC and Rachel Maddow and all of them?“We want all your emails, all your text messages, everything you did. You colluded in a conspiracy with Merrick Garland, Nancy Pelosi, Lisa Monaco and Jack Smith,” Bannon said, name checking the attorney general, former Democratic House speaker, the deputy attorney general and the Trump special counsel.The threatening rhetoric, and especially the concept of using a criminal conspiracy statute against Trump’s political enemies, has been permeating through Bannon’s orbit for some time since the election. But Sunday night’s gala was the first time it was floated outside of the Maga ecosystem.The remarks also turned bizarre at various points as Bannon segued into talking about the importance of the bond market, perhaps in a nod to his previous life as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, and questioned whether the New York mayor, Eric Adams, was a QAnon conspiracy adherent.In a night of unexpected turns, the most dramatic moment came earlier when senior Trump campaign adviser Alex Bruesewitz keeled over the lectern and collapsed off the stage in an apparent medical episode. Organizers later said he was treated on-site and speculated he had a seizure.The gala then had a further bizarre twist when Trump’s incoming deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino took to the stage to fill the moment, but was interrupted when he got a phone call from the president-elect himself, who apparently was asking about Bruesewitz.Scavino put the call on speakerphone and had Trump address the gala in real time, but Trump mostly ended up delivering praise for Bruesewitz instead. “I guess the show goes on,” one bemused Bannon associate said to his seat neighbor as he watched the situation unfold.The gala dinner at Cipriani on Wall Street drew the same Trumpworld figures as it has for several years, including Trump’s in-house counsel Boris Epshteyn, Nigel Farage, Trump legal adviser Mike Davis, and a cast of Bannon allies including the emcee, Raheem Kassam. Kash Patel, Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, was invited to attend but did not make an appearance.Sitting at the table directly in front of the stage and next to Farage, the other guest of honor, Epshteyn was singled out by Bannon for orchestrating Trump’s legal victories including the dismissal of the criminal cases against him. “Boris, I don’t know how you did it,” Bannon said. More

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      Trump announces SoftBank plans to invest $100bn in US projects

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      Donald Trump claimed to have notched up the first economic success of his forthcoming second presidency on Monday by announcing a $100bn investment by the Japanese company, SoftBank, which he said would be completed during his four-year presidency.The president-elect has a history of headline-grabbing job announcements – not all of which pan out successfully.During Trump’s first presidency, he announced a $10bn investment by the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer, Foxxcon, that he promised would create 13,000 jobs in Wisconsin. In the event, the company drastically scaled back its outlay and created little more than 1,000 jobs.But on Monday, flanked by Masayoshi Son, SoftBank’s CEO, at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, Trump vowed that the fresh investment would result in 100,000 new jobs, mainly in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector. He trumpeted the move as “a monumental demonstration of confidence in America’s future” – while suggesting it had been secured as a result of his victory in last month’s presidential election.“He [Son] is doing this because he feels very optimistic about our country since the election and many other people are also coming in with tremendous amounts of money,” said Trump, who spent the election campaign lambasting the Biden administration’s supposed failure to combat the effects of inflation, which polls indicated was a key voter concern.He said the investment would “ensure that artificial intelligence, emerging technologies and other industries of tomorrow are built created and grown right here in the USA”.Son, who announced a $50bn American investment project at the time of Trump’s 2016 election win, said he had doubled the sum this time because the Trump was “a double-down president”.“I would really like to celebrate the great victory of President Trump and my confidence level to the economy of the United States has tremendously increased with his victory,” he said. “This is double [the amount] of last time … because President Trump is a double down president.”Trump responded by suggesting – apparently in jest – that Son double his current commitment to $200bn. Son laughed and merely vowed to “make this [the current investment] happen”.Son’s 2016 commitment came with a pledge to create 50,000 jobs. It is unclear if those jobs were in fact produced as a result, Reuters reported.Nor is it clear how SoftBank plans to fund the investment. The company had $29bn in cash and cash equivalents in its most recent earnings report last September.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAt Monday’s announcement, Son voiced the hope that Trump’s second presidency would “bring the world into peace again”, adding: “I think he will actually make it happen.”Later, taking questions from reporters, Trump repeated his vow to bring a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine – reiterating his previous claim that the war between the two countries would never have happened if he had remained president.Asked if he would use his relationship with President Vladimir Putin of Russia to pressure him to give up the recently deposed Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad, who has been granted exile status by the Russian leader, Trump replied that he had not thought about it. More

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      The Guardian view on political turmoil in Paris and Berlin: an ominous end to the year | Editorial

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      After a brief weekend hiatus, action has resumed in the real-life political boxsets playing out in the EU’s two most important capitals. In the Bundestag on Monday, a vote of no confidence in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s battered coalition government duly paved the way for a snap election in February. Over in Paris – where the same manoeuvre collapsed Michel Barnier’s short-lived government a fortnight ago – his prime ministerial replacement was putting his feet under the desk after being appointed on Friday by an increasingly desperate Emmanuel Macron.As Europe faces big decisions and dilemmas over Ukraine, how to deal with Donald Trump, and the challenge of China, this is no time for the continent’s fabled Franco-German engine to temporarily conk out. But there are no easy fixes in view on either side of the Rhine. In both France and Germany, the rise of the far right and a concomitant crisis of trust in mainstream politics have pointed to a deep political malaise for some time.Mr Scholz effectively decided to put his troubled coalition government out of its misery in November by firing his fiscally hawkish finance minister, Christian Lindner. As Germany seeks to reboot an economic model that can no longer rely on cheap Russian energy and export-led growth, the SPD leader has deliberately forced an election to seek a mandate for greater borrowing and investment.Unfortunately, he looks unlikely to get it. The most likely next chancellor is Friedrich Merz, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader and a former BlackRock executive. Mr Merz has pledged to maintain the cordon sanitaire excluding the far‑right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) from power. But the CDU’s plans to cut corporate taxes and rein in public expenditure would only deepen the social tensions that have fuelled the AfD’s rise.France’s problems began in earnest with Mr Macron’s disastrous decision to call his own snap election last summer. Conceived as a means of confronting Marine Le Pen’s far-right party, which had won the European elections in June, the strategy succeeded only in delivering an ungovernable parliament divided into three blocs, none boasting a majority. Mr Macron then compounded his error by refusing to allow the election’s narrow winner, the leftwing New Popular Front coalition, to provide the next prime minister.A damaging democratic fiasco has ensued. Mr Macron spectacularly lost his electoral gamble, but is stubbornly attempting to protect his unpopular pension reforms and push through an austerity budget to appease the markets and satisfy Brussels’ deficit criteria. With the rightwing Mr Barnier ousted in record time, he has now turned to François Bayrou, a veteran centrist from the rural south-west of France and longstanding ally. Mr Bayrou is the fourth prime minister to be recruited by the president this year, each lasting a shorter period of time than their predecessor. He has drily pronounced his task to be of “Himalayan” proportions.Political dysfunction in the EU’s two most powerful member states feels like a somewhat ominous way to close the year. From January, Mr Trump will doubtless be seeking to browbeat western allies on matters of economic and foreign policy. Right now, with Paris and Berlin plunged into introspection, it would be fair to say that Europe does not look fully ready for the challenge. More

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      Trump says he would consider pardoning New York mayor Eric Adams

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      President-elect Donald Trump on Monday said in a far-ranging news conference that he would consider pardoning the embattled New York City mayor, Eric Adams. Separately he called on the Biden administration to stop selling off unused portions of border wall that were purchased but not installed during his first administration.“Yeah, I would” consider pardoning Adams, Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, before saying that he was not familiar with the specifics of the charges Adams is facing.Adams is facing federal fraud and corruption charges, accused of accepting flight upgrades and other luxury travel perks valued at $100,000 along with illegal campaign contributions from a Turkish official and other foreign nationals looking to buy his influence. Multiple members of his administration have also come under investigation.Speaking at his first press conference since winning the election, Trump also threatened legal action against the Biden administration over sales of portions of border wall, saying he has spoken to the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, and other Texas officials about a potential restraining order.“We’re going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more on building the same wall we already have,” Trump said. “It’s almost a criminal act.”Congress last year required the Biden administration to dispose of the unused border wall pieces. The measure, included in the massive National Defense Authorization Act, allows for the sale or donation of the items to states on the southern border, providing they are used to refurbish existing barriers, not install new ones. Congress also directed the Pentagon to account for storage costs for the border wall material while it has gone unused.“I’m asking today, Joe Biden, to please stop selling the wall,” Trump said.While Trump described the handover between Biden and his incoming team as “a friendly transition”, he also took issue with efforts to allow some members of the federal workforce to continue working from home. Trump said that if government workers did not come back into the office under him, they would be dismissed.Trump was joined at the appearance by the SoftBank Group CEO, Masayoshi Son, who announced that the Japanese company was planning to invest $100bn in US projects over the next four years.It was a win for Trump, who has used the weeks since the election to promote his policies, negotiate with foreign leaders and try to strike deals.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a post on his Truth Social site last week, Trump had said that anyone making a $1bn investment in the United States “will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals”.“GET READY TO ROCK!!!” he wrote.Deals announced with much fanfare have sometimes failed to deliver on promised investments. But the announcement nonetheless represents a major win for Trump, who has boasted that he has done more in his short transition period than his predecessor did in all four years.“There’s a whole light over the entire world,” he said Monday. “There’s a light shining over the world.” More

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      Trump will destroy the government agencies that most help working people | Katrina vanden Heuvel

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      The Republican party has shellacked its clean-cut corporatism, in recent years, with a veneer of economic populism. See JD Vance’s pseudo-criticisms of Wall Street, so gestural they could be mistaken for an interpretive dance routine, or Donald Trump’s stint as a McDonald’s “employee”, which seemed more inspired by his contempt for Kamala Harris than his affection for fry cooks.But when it comes to how the second Trump administration actually intends to govern, there have already been plenty of signals that they intend to target and weaken – if not outright destroy – the parts of government most beneficial to working people. And right now, the agency most clearly in their crosshairs is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).While there’s new fervor behind rightwing efforts to undermine the CFPB – or, indeed, “delete” it, as Elon Musk recently tweeted – these attacks have been ongoing since the agency’s inception. In his first term, in fact, Trump slashed the CFPB’s budget, appointed a vocal critic to run it and rolled back regulations protecting consumers from predatory practices.Trump and his nearly-half-trillionaire “first buddy” feel threatened for good reason: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is one of the few federal agencies created explicitly to help average Americans, and actually given authority to do so. Its efforts have represented some of the Biden administration’s most impactful advances for working people – and gutting it would be among the most devastating anti-consumer moves the Trump administration could make.The CFPB was born out of the 2008 financial crisis, which saw almost 400 banks fold and American households lose about $17tn in wealth (that’s 42 Elon Musks). The popular narrative rightfully blames predatory lending and securities fraud, but those lapses were only possible because of decades-long bipartisan deregulation. In response, the then Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren proposed a federal agency to centralize regulation of the consumer financial sector, work which had been spread thin across seven different agencies. Rather than being “duplicative”, as Musk has claimed, the CFPB began as a novel effort to make government more responsive, effective and – indeed – efficient.But not until the current directorship of Rohit Chopra did the CFPB begin fulfilling its true potential. Since his appointment in 2021, Chopra has cracked down on exploitative consumer practices with a fervor not seen since Upton Sinclair stepped into a meatpacking plant.In the last year, the agency has banned excessive credit card late fees, saving consumers $10bn annually. It has started regulating “buy now, pay later” lenders, which often leave buyers on the hook for expensive purchases they return. It has created a registry of businesses who have repeatedly engaged in illegal practices, finally bringing a tough-on-crime approach to “corporate recidivism”. And just last week, the CFPB announced a rule capping overdraft fees that will return another $5bn to consumers every year.Chopra has notched these wins while burnishing a dynamic persona that might best be described as swashbuckler meets bureaucrat. He has embraced public engagement in a way most regulators don’t; see his PSAs on medical debt with Rashida Tlaib, the Michigan representative. He has also embraced conflict, prompting some opponents to accuse him of antagonism, as when he sued not just a credit reporting firm but one of its executives for misleading consumers. Still, one populist’s antagonism is most Americans’ vindication, and Chopra has even drawn reluctant praise from Republicans such as the onetime speaker pro tempore Patrick McHenry.Other than consumers, arguably the biggest beneficiary of Chopra’s ferocity has been Joe Biden. The CFPB has accomplished many of his administration’s most unambiguously progressive (and practical) victories. Chopra joins a class of hugely productive Biden appointees – Lina Khan at the FTC, Marty Walsh and Julie Su at the Department of Labor, and a slate of pro-worker appointees at the National Labor Relations Board – who reaffirm the adage that “personnel is policy”.Even in the administration’s waning days, Khan’s FTC has helped unravel a merger between Kroger and Albertsons that would probably have spiked food prices, and raised alarms about “task scams” that have cheated targets out of millions. In this respect at least, Biden has taken a page from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who gleefully stocked his cabinet with unabashed crusaders such as Frances Perkins, the mother of the New Deal.While many Democrats continue post-election recriminations, many will no doubt feel tempted to disavow anything and everything associated with the first one-term Democratic president since Carter. But a prevailing lesson of 2024 has been that voters respond to brash anti-corporate messaging, even when it comes from the mouths of an erstwhile venture capitalist and a real estate tycoon who stiffs workers.So even if the legacies of Chopra, Khan, Walsh and Su aren’t reflected in the next four years of governance, progressives can at least embrace them in their campaign rhetoric – especially in response to Trump’s imminent efforts to deter or even dismantle agencies such as the CFPB in favor of corporate interests.Three years ago, immediately after his swearing-in ceremony, Chopra wrote a memo describing the CFPB’s most important mission as this: “We must anticipate emerging risks so we can act before a crisis, rather than acting after it is too late.”It may be too late to avert the crisis of the last election. But it’s also the best time to act in anticipation of the next one.

      Katrina vanden Heuvel is the editorial director and publisher of the Nation. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has contributed to the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times More