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      Is Donald Trump a foreign policy dove? If only | Mehdi Hasan

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      “If Kamala wins, only death and destruction await because she is the candidate of endless wars,” declaimed Donald Trump at a rally in Michigan, on the Friday before the election. “I am the candidate of peace.” In a typically ridiculous rhetorical flourish, Trump added: “I am peace.”Nevertheless, despite the ridiculousness, the president-elect in recent weeks succeeded in connecting with plenty of of anti-war voters tired of the United States’ “forever wars”. He went to Dearborn, the “capital” of Arab America, attacked Kamala Harris for campaigning with the pro-war Cheneys, and came away with an endorsement from a local imam who called him the “peace” candidate.In fact, I have lost count of the number of leftists who have told me in recent months: “Trump didn’t start any new wars.” Sorry, what? Trump spent his four years in the White House escalating every single conflict that he inherited from Barack Obama. Many have forgotten that Trump bombed the Assad government in Syria twice; dropped the “mother of all bombs” on Afghanistan; illegally assassinated Iranian general Qasem Soleimani on Iraqi soil; armed Saudi Arabia’s genocide in Yemen; and made John Bolton his national security adviser. Few are even aware that Trump launched more drone strikes in his first two years in office than Obama, dubbed “the drone president”, did across eight years in office.But this time, we were told, it would be different. This time Trump meant it. No more war! No more neocons! Some took heart from Trump’s very public rejection of arch-hawks Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley. Others signal-boosted efforts by RFK Jr, Don Jr and Tucker Carlson to block neoconservative figures from joining the new Trump-Vance administration. “I’m on it,” bragged Trump’s eldest failson.It was all for naught. “I am peace”? Really? Consider who Trump now plans to nominate as his secretary of state: Marco Rubio. The Florida senator was once an outspoken critic of the president-elect, calling him a “con man”, “the most vulgar person to ever aspire to the presidency”, and questioning the size of his manhood. Fast forward almost a decade and Rubio has happily bent the knee to Trump in order to become fourth in line for the presidency and to take charge of US diplomacy.The slight problem is that Rubio isn’t a fan of diplomacy; he’s a fan of war. An ardent hawk, Rubio defended the invasion of Iraq during his first Senate run in 2010. He has since backed regime change everywhere from Cuba to Venezuela to Iran to Syria. In 2019 he voted to oppose withdrawing US forces from both Syria and Afghanistan. Over the past year, he has been one of the strongest supporters in Congress of Benjamin Netanyahu’s assault on Gaza, dismissing widespread Palestinian civilian casualties as the fault only of Hamas, and saying that Israel cannot coexist “with these savages … They have to be eradicated.”“I am peace”? At Rubio’s side, running the Trump transition team at the state department, is Brian Hook, a long-standing Iran hawk and co-founder of the John Hay Initiative, an anti-isolationist Republican group. He was the architect of the “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran during Trump’s first term. And, as I revealed for the Intercept in 2018, Hook was in charge of the the state department’s policy planning staff when one of its internal memos called for an “Islamic reformation”.“I am peace”? Trump wants Elise Stefanik to be the new US ambassador to the United Nations. The New York congresswoman is perhaps best known for being a Trump sycophant par excellence but she is also a long-standing Republican hawk whose first job out of college was working in the Bush White House. She later went on to be employed by two of the most hawkish thinktanks in Washington DC, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) and the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI). The FDD is obsessed (obsessed!) with regime change in Iran, while the FPI, which was co-founded by neocons Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan and closed down in 2017, loudly pushed for an expansion of the war in Afghanistan.Stefanik is also a blind supporter of Israel’s war on Gaza, backs an uninterrupted supply of US weapons to the Netanyahu government, and has slammed Joe Biden for being too tough on the Jewish state. In May, she gave an address to the Knesset in which she called for a “total victory” against Hamas.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I am peace”? Trump is appointing Florida congressman Mike Waltz as his national security adviser. Waltz, a former Green Beret, is perhaps the leading China hawk in Congress. Like Stefanik, Waltz is also an alumnus of the Bush administration and an enthusiast for the “war on terror”. As late as 2017, he was still calling for a “multi-generational war” against terrorism and suggesting the US should be ready for “a lot more fighting” in Afghanistan. That sound dovish to you? In fact, here’s the best (worst?) part: he served as counterterrorism adviser to the most hawkish vice-president in US history, the prince of darkness himself: Richard B Cheney. Got that? Trump spent the last few weeks of his presidential campaign attacking Dick and Liz Cheney, suggesting the latter should be forced to face “nine barrels” on the battlefield, and then just days after winning the election tapped the elder Cheney’s former counterterrorism adviser to be his own national security adviser. File it under: You. Cannot. Make. This. Stuff. Up.“I am peace”? Trump is sending former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee to Israel as his ambassador. Huckabee is a Christian evangelical so extreme that he believes there is “no such thing as a West Bank” and “no such thing as an occupation”. He compared Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal to the Nazi Holocaust and was such a proud supporter of the Iraq war that he even criticized George W Bush for setting a timetable for withdrawal!“I am peace”? Trump’s pick for defense secretary is Fox host Peter Hegseth, a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Dubbed “Trump’s war whisperer”, Hegseth called for the US to disregard the “rigged” rules of war in order to attack Iranian religious and cultural sites in 2020, and also helped persuade Trump to pardon three soldiers accused or convicted of war crimes in 2019. How do you get more hawkish than a supporter of a literal war criminal?In Washington DC, as the saying goes, personnel is policy. Trump is surrounding himself with hawks so you can be assured that his will be a very hawkish administration. Again.But this is the Trump playbook: run as a dove, govern as a hawk. It’s what he did in 2016 and again this year. Attack neocons; get elected; hire neocons.So “Donald the dove”, as Maureen Dowd of the New York Times once put it? If only. Whether it is on domestic policy or foreign policy, Trump remains a conman. Don’t take my word for it. Take his new secretary of state’s.

      Mehdi Hasan is the CEO and editor-in-chief of the new media company Zeteo More

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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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      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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      Elon Musk handpicked by Trump to carry out slash-and-burn cuts plan

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      Donald Trump, president-elect of the US, announced on Tuesday that he has selected Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, with plans to reduce bureaucracy in the federal government by roughly a third.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. Trump said the agency will be conducting a “complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government, and making recommendations for drastic reforms”.In a video posted on X two days after the election, Trump said he would “immediately re-issue my 2020 executive order, restoring the president’s authority to remove rogue bureaucrats”. He wants to “clean out the deep state”. His promises echo his slogan on The Apprentice: “You’re fired!” And Project 2025, an influential and controversial blueprint for Trump’s second term, lays out ways to make bureaucrats fireable.Musk has extensive experience slashing corporate spending, and he has promised to cull federal payrolls in much the same way. He cut staff at X, formerly Twitter, by 80% after buying it in 2022, a move he said prevented a $3bn shortfall, but which has not otherwise paid off. Revenue is in steep decline and advertisers have absconded, making a comeback seem unlikely. As the CEO of SpaceX, however, he has garnered a reputation for launching rockets more cheaply than competitors by negotiating with suppliers and keeping operations lean.The billionaire does not seem to be under any illusions of what will happen after his proposed cuts, admitting that reducing spending “necessarily involves some temporary hardship”. Americans do want to spend less – of their own money. Do they want austerity and less financial assistance from the federal government? Do they want the world’s richest person admonishing them to cut their expenses?Ramaswamy, meanwhile, is a wealthy biotech entrepreneur whose first time running for office was for the Republican nomination last year. 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 has already asked Trump to appoint SpaceX employees to top government positions, the New York Times has reported. The president-elect promised to ban bureaucrats from taking jobs at the companies they regulate. Such a rule would seem to bar SpaceX’s lieutenants from the Pentagon’s door. But Trump has never shied away from cronyism. The two are not trying to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest: Musk’s role in the government will be structured so that he can maintain control of his companies, the Financial Times reports.In his first term, Trump and his team struggled to fill the thousands of government appointments needed to run the federal government. Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie said the administration never fully recovered from its failure to find those appointees. Perhaps adding Musk to the equation is meant to prevent a repeat of such laggardness.In an extreme version of the new administration, Trump and Musk simply eliminate any position for which they cannot find a friendly appointee. In John Kennedy Toole’s Pulitzer-winning 1980 novel A Confederacy of Dunces, the idiot hero, tasked with organizing an intractable pile of files at his new job, eradicates the company’s mess. Ignatius J Reilly is no genius of organization, though; he is just throwing cabinets full of records away. It is easy to imagine Trump and Musk following his example.What will stand in Musk’s way, however, is one of his sworn enemies: labor law. Tesla is the only major US carmaker that does not employ a unionized workforce. The billionaire CEO wants to keep it that way. Federal government employees, by contrast, enjoy strong employment protections that would hinder Musk’s slash-and-burn approach to cost-cutting and possibly render it impossible.For all the different companies he runs, Musk has little experience managing public sector employees. He may find them less pliable lions than he is used to taming.Kira Lerner contributed to this report More

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      Trump advisers reportedly consider ‘warrior board’ to remove military leaders; Mike Huckabee named US envoy to Israel – live

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      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 reports.The reported proposal for a “warrior board” staffed by former military officers loyal to the president-elect 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.Here’s more on the proposal, from the Journal:
      If Donald Trump approves the order, it could fast-track the removal of generals and admirals found to be “lacking in requisite leadership qualities,” according to a draft of the order reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. But it could also create a chilling effect on top military officers, given the president-elect’s past vow to fire “woke generals,” referring to officers seen as promoting diversity in the ranks at the expense of military readiness.
      As commander in chief, Trump can fire any officer at will, but an outside board whose members he appoints would bypass the Pentagon’s regular promotion system, signaling across the military that he intends to purge a number of generals and admirals.
      The draft order says it aims to establish a review that focuses “on leadership capability, strategic readiness, and commitment to military excellence.” The draft doesn’t specify what officers need to do or present to show if they meet those standards. The draft order originated with one of several outside policy groups collaborating with the transition team, and is one of numerous executive orders under review by Trump’s team, a transition official said.
      The warrior board would be made up of retired generals and noncommissioned officers, who would send their recommendations to the president. Those identified for removal would be retired at their current rank within 30 days.
      Karoline Leavitt, the Trump-Vance Transition spokeswoman, declined to comment on this draft executive order but said “the American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will deliver.”
      The House is scheduled to vote today on a bill targeting non-profit organizations deemed to be supporting “terrorism”.Civil rights advocates have raised alarm that bill, which was first introduced in response to nationwide protests on college campuses against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, could be used against pro-Palestinian groups as well as those that environmental groups, reproductive rights groups and other human rights organizations during the upcoming Trump administration.The language in the bill would give the Treasury Department broad authority to determine which organizations are “terrorist-supporting” without requiring evidence, and allow the agency to revoke tax-exempt status from those non-profits.Republicans drafted the policy as part of a popular measure to prevent the IRS from issuing fines and tax penalties to Americans held hostage by terrorist groups. The measure, which is being fast-tracked in the House, would need a two-thirds majority in the Senate to pass.“This bill requires no oversight. No due-process. No justification. In Trump’s hands, it would be a weapon of mass destruction against dissent,” said Andrew O’Neill, legislative director of the group Indivisible. “The vote today requires a two-thirds threshold to pass, so Democrats really do have agency here. The question is whether they’ll use it to stand up against authoritarian overreach, or if they’ll sit back and hand Trump more power.”“Passing this bill would hand the incoming Trump administration a dangerous new tool it could use to stifle free speech, target political opponents, and punish disfavored groups,” said Kia Hamadanchy, senior policy counsel at ACLU. “The freedom to dissent without fear of government retribution is a vital part of any well-functioning democracy, which is why Congress must block HR 9495 before it’s too late.”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 reports.The reported proposal for a “warrior board” staffed by former military officers loyal to the president-elect 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.Here’s more on the proposal, from the Journal:
      If Donald Trump approves the order, it could fast-track the removal of generals and admirals found to be “lacking in requisite leadership qualities,” according to a draft of the order reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. But it could also create a chilling effect on top military officers, given the president-elect’s past vow to fire “woke generals,” referring to officers seen as promoting diversity in the ranks at the expense of military readiness.
      As commander in chief, Trump can fire any officer at will, but an outside board whose members he appoints would bypass the Pentagon’s regular promotion system, signaling across the military that he intends to purge a number of generals and admirals.
      The draft order says it aims to establish a review that focuses “on leadership capability, strategic readiness, and commitment to military excellence.” The draft doesn’t specify what officers need to do or present to show if they meet those standards. The draft order originated with one of several outside policy groups collaborating with the transition team, and is one of numerous executive orders under review by Trump’s team, a transition official said.
      The warrior board would be made up of retired generals and noncommissioned officers, who would send their recommendations to the president. Those identified for removal would be retired at their current rank within 30 days.
      Karoline Leavitt, the Trump-Vance Transition spokeswoman, declined to comment on this draft executive order but said “the American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will deliver.”
      At the White House, Karine Jean-Pierre is taking questions from reporters who are asking for an idea of what to expect when Joe Biden meets Donald Trump tomorrow.But the US press secretary does not have much to say. Responding to a reporter who wanted to know if they would discuss foreign policy issues such as US assistance to Ukraine and Israel, she said:
      I’m not going to get into the details of what’s going to be discussed tomorrow. That’s not something I’m going to get into here.
      What about concerns about Trump’s contacts with foreign leaders, many of whom have spoken to him by phone since he won the election? Jean-Pierre didn’t have much of a comment on that question, either:
      He’s the president-elect. Every president-elect receives calls from world leaders, takes calls from world leaders, has calls from world leaders. It is not unusual. [I] don’t have a comment beyond that, any specifics or details. That’s something for the … Trump transition.
      Donald Trump plans to begin his second presidential term with a bang, the Guardian’s Robert Tait reports:Donald Trump will mark the first day of his return to the White House by signing a spate of executive orders to reinstate signature policies from his first presidency that were revoked by Joe Biden, according to his incoming chief of staff.Susie Wiles’s disclosure came in a closed-door meeting in Las Vegas of the Rockbridge Network, a group of conservative donors co-founded by Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, the New York Times reported.She did not specify which policies were likely to be reintroduced in the flurry of signing that is expected on Trump’s first day back in the Oval Office.But several of Trump’s higher-profile executive orders that Biden revoked include leaving the Paris climate agreement, withdrawing from the World Health Organization (WHO) and banning entry to citizens from a list of predominantly Muslim countries.Did a majority of Latino men support Donald Trump, as some national exit polls suggest?No, according to the researchers behind the 2024 American Electorate Voter Poll, a survey of more than 9,400 voters that emphasizes accurately representing Black, Latino and AAPI voters.“The national exit polls are wrong about Latinos in general and Latino men in particular. They did shift more Republican, however a majority of Latino men continued to vote Democrat in 2024,” said Matt Baretto, a co-founder of BSP Research, told reporters on a call in which he presented the survey’s findings.“We’re extremely confident that our sample is accurate – that it is an accurate portrait of Latino men and Latino women and that it is balanced to measure the demographics and that it was available in Spanish at every stopping point in the survey.”According to the survey, Hispanic men supported Kamala Harris over Trump by a 13-point margin, compared with the 34-point margin among Hispanic women. Among Hispanic men under 40, Harris held an only four-point margin.Baretto said it was “incorrect, categorically” to suggest that any cohort of Latino men supported Trump over Harris.Even as he acknowledged Trump had made clear gains with Hispanic voters, he noted that Democrats performed worse this election cycle with “every single racial and ethnic group” than they did four years ago.The poll also found an uptick in support for Harris among Puerto Ricans, particularly in Pennsylvania, which Hispanic organizers attributed to a surge in fundraising after a shock-jock comic made disparaging comments about the island during Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally.“The participation rate of Puerto Ricans and Latinos in Pennsylvania increased noticeably after the Madison Square Garden rally – a nine-point shift in Latino voter sentiment in Pennsylvania towards Harris,” said Frankie Miranda, president and CEO at Hispanic Federation, on the call.“The effect is undeniable, but it took a fluke very late in the game to get the attention of the campaigns and funders to provide investment desperately needed to ensure mobilization.Newly elected senators are in Washington DC for orientation, and true to form, West Virginia’s Jim Justice brought along his bulldog, Babydog.The dog has been by Justice’s side throughout his term as West Virginia’s governor, and the senator-elect was hoping to bring Babydog into the Senate chambers. But Axios reports that is against the rules:
      Justice was told by Senate floor staff that only service dogs are allowed onto the floor of the Senate, and that even in that case there would need to be an analysis on potential allergies.
      Justice had no such problems at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee this past summer, where Babydog was by his side throughout.Mike Johnson has congratulated congressman Mike Waltz on being selected as Donald Trump’s national security advisor.“Congressman Mike Waltz is a brilliant and faithful patriot, who has served our country as a Green Beret and a member of Congress. It has been his life’s mission to help protect the United States, and he will continue to do so as the President’s National Security Advisor,” the Republican House speaker said.He added that the Florida congressman is “the perfect person to advise President Trump and defend our interests on the world stage. I look forward to continuing to engage with him as Congress works to implement America First national security policies under the new Trump administration”.Waltz just won re-election to his district just north of Orlando, and his departure from Congress will trigger a special election to replace him. But Democrats are unlikely to win in Waltz’s district, which is sharply Republican.A new Louisiana law that requires the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public classroom by the beginning of 2025 has been temporarily blocked after a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction on Tuesday.The judge said the law was “unconstitutional on its face” – and plaintiffs were likely to win their case with claims that the law violates the US constitution’s first amendment, which bars the government from establishing a religion and guarantees the right to religious freedom.The ruling marks a win for opponents of the law, who argue that it is a violation of the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state.They also argue that the poster-sized display of the Ten Commandments would isolate students, especially those who are not Christian.Proponents say that the measure is not solely religious, but that it has historical significance to the foundation of US law.Donald Trump has announced that he will nominate Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, to be the US ambassador to Israel.Huckabee “loves Israel, and the people of Israel, and likewise, the people of Israel love him,” the president-elect said in a statement on Tuesday.“Mike will work tirelessly to bring about Peace in the Middle East!” Trump added.Huckabee, who served as Arkansas governor from 1996 to 2007, is two-time Republican presidential hopeful and father to Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the current governor of the state and Trump’s former White House press secretary.He is an outspoken settlement backer; in 2018, he said he dreamed of building a “holiday home” in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.Several hundred White House staffers loudly cheered for the vice-president, Kamala Harris, who was arriving for her lunch with Joe Biden.Staffers shouted “MVP”, for Madame vice-president, as she got out of her SUV and clapped and waved, per pool report.“We still have a lot of work to do,” Harris addressed staffers. “So thank you all very much.“Listen, we do the best work anybody could do, which is to dedicate ourselves to the people, to public service, to lifting folks up, knowing we have the power, and when we do that work, we make a difference, and you all are a part of doing that work every single day, and I am so grateful to each of you.“So let’s get back to work, because we still have work to get done. And I am sending all my love and thanks. Thank you, everyone.”Joni Ernst, the Republican senator for Iowa, has privately expressed interest in becoming Donald Trump’s defense secretary, according to multiple reports.If nominated and confirmed, Ernst, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, Iraq War veteran and member of the Senate’s armed services committee, would be the first woman to serve in the role.National security leaders have told Ernst that she would be a good fit for the job, but those conversations have not yet escalated to anything official, Notus reported.A source told the Washington Post on Tuesday that the idea started “gaining a life of its own yesterday”, but it’s not clear whether Trump will consider her for the role.Donald Trump has issued a statement announcing his appointment of Mike Waltz to serve in his cabinet as the national security adviser.Waltz “has been a strong champion of my America First Foreign Policy agenda, and will be a tremendous champion of our pursuit of Peace through Strength!” the president-elect said in a statement on Tuesday.Waltz, a Republican congressman representing east-central Florida and Trump loyalist who served in the national guard as a colonel, has criticized Chinese activity in the Asia-Pacific and voiced the need for the US to be ready for a potential conflict in the region.Waltz is a combat-decorated Green Beret and a former White House and Pentagon policy adviser. He was first elected in 2018, replacing Ron DeSantis, who ran for governor, in Florida’s sixth congressional district.Waltz served multiple combat tours in Afghanistan, and he was awarded four bronze stars. He was one of the lawmakers appointed in July to serve on a bipartisan congressional taskforce to investigate the attempted assassination of Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July.The judge who presided over Donald Trump’s hush money case has paused legal proceedings at the request of prosecutors and the president-elect’s attorneys, both of whom pointed to his victory in last week’s presidential election. Republicans are getting ready for Trump’s visit to the White House, with House speaker Mike Johnson saying he planned to have Trump address his lawmakers. Speaking of Congress, we still do not know for sure which party will control the House for the next two years. Counting of ballots in key races remains ongoing, though Republicans seem on track to keep their majority.Here’s what else has happened today so far:

      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.

      Despite taking office with Republicans in control of Congress in 2017, Trump’s first years in office were marked by legislative chaos. Johnson vowed that won’t happen again when Trump returns to the White House in January.
      As Donald Trump appoints his cabinet, and searches for a treasury secretary, the billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson – a key backer of the president-elect – has withdrawn his name. He had been widely tipped as a likely candidate for the role.“Although various media outlets have mentioned me as a candidate for secretary of the treasury, my complex financial obligations would prevent me from holding an official position in President Trump’s administration at this time,” Paulson told The Wall Street Journal in a statement.He pledged to remain “actively involved” with Trump’s economic team, however, and in helping to implement the incoming administration’s policy agenda.Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, Bob Casey still is not conceding, despite grim signs for the Democratic senator’s prospects of re-election.The Associated Press has already called the race for Republican challenger David McCormick, but ballot counting is ongoing. In a new statement, Casey signaled he is waiting for that process to finish:
      My priority has always been standing up for the people of Pennsylvania. Across our Commonwealth, close to seven million people cast their votes in a free and fair election. Our county election officials will finish counting those votes, just like they do in every election. The American democratic process was born in Pennsylvania and that process will play out.
      I want to thank the election workers across our Commonwealth who have been working diligently over the weekend. Their work will ensure Pennsylvanians’ voices are heard.” More