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      Marjorie Taylor Greene to Lead ‘DOGE’ Panel and Work With Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy

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      When she arrived in Congress in 2021, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, was quickly stripped of her two committee assignments by Democrats and shunned by her colleagues on Capitol Hill.Almost three years later, Ms. Greene is poised to hold a gavel for the first time, a sign of the ascendancy of the MAGA wing of the G.O.P. in Congress, where President-elect Donald J. Trump’s most loyal allies will occupy prominent posts next year.Representative James Comer of Kentucky, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, is planning to create a new subcommittee to partner with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to “eliminate government waste.” The committee, which has yet to be created, will work with the new Department of Government Efficiency, known as “DOGE,” and leading Republicans have agreed to allow Ms. Greene to serve as its chairwoman.Republicans said the committee would be charged with investigating waste and corruption within the federal government.Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene during a House Homeland Security Committee meeting on Capitol Hill, in Washington, in January.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesEven though she is not yet the chairwoman of a committee that does not yet exist, Ms. Greene’s new position appeared to be a done deal, with top Republicans confirming it would be hers to lead when the new Congress convenes in January.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Trump’s nomination of Matt Gaetz unravelled in just eight days

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      Donald Trump decided to nominate Matt Gaetz as attorney general last Wednesday, during a flight home from Washington, where the president-elect had visited Joe Biden at the White House. The pick proved as surprising as it was controversial. Just eight days later, after a week of relentless hullabaloo, Gaetz withdrew from contention.It was a Washington farce for the ages. But how did it happen?Gaetz, now 42, made his name as a far-right Florida congressman, a pro-Trump publicity hound and gadfly who in October 2023 made history by bringing down a House speaker: Kevin McCarthy, the first ever ejected by his own party.The seeds of Gaetz’s own downfall were to be found in that extraordinary episode.Ostensibly, Gaetz moved against McCarthy in order to install a speaker more amenable to rightwing threats to shut down the federal government over arguments about funding, and less likely to seek Democrats’ help in avoiding such outcomes.But McCarthy never believed that. He insisted Gaetz moved against him in order to block release of a House ethics committee report into allegations of sexual misconduct, illicit drug use and other offenses.Gaetz vehemently denied – and still denies – wrongdoing but, nonetheless, when Trump nominated him for attorney general, he promptly resigned his seat in the House. According to precedent, that blocked release of the ethics report.The report duly became the hottest property in Washington, reporters chasing it, Democrats and some skeptical Republicans eager to find out what it contained. It promised sensational reading.Gaetz was initially investigated by the US justice department, in relation to the actions of Joel Greenberg, a Florida tax collector who in 2021 pleaded guilty to sex trafficking of a minor and agreed to cooperate in the investigation of Gaetz.Eventually, the justice department dropped that investigation. But the House ethics committee had been investigating Gaetz too, and in June it outlined the scope of its work: it was investigating claims the congressman “may have engaged in sexual misconduct and/or illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted a bribe, improper gratuity, or impermissible gift”.Trump’s nomination of Gaetz was controversial for other reasons. There was Gaetz’s loud support for Trump supporters convicted in relation to the January 6 attack on Congress, and his promises to seek revenge against Trump’s political opponents. There was his almost complete lack of legal experience and expertise, having graduated from law school but practiced only briefly before entering politics.But in Washington, the ethics committee report remained the holy grail.Details began to leak, ABC News first to report that the committee had obtained records showing Gaetz paid more than $10,000 to two women who testified before the panel, with some of the payments being for sex.A lawyer for two women spoke to the media, saying one had been 17 – under the age of consent – when she was paid for sex with Gaetz.The Trump camp repeatedly pointed to the justice department’s decision to drop its investigation of allegations against Gaetz, without official reason but amid reports of concerns about witness credibility.On Wednesday, the House committee considered whether to release the report. The session ended in deadlock, five Democrats for release, five Republicans against it. In the House at large, Democrats introduced motions calling for a full vote to force the issue.Controversy switched to the Senate. As Democrats said they had asked the FBI for its files on Gaetz, the congressman himself climbed Capitol Hill, in the company of JD Vance, to meet the vice-president-elect’s erstwhile Senate colleagues and seek to convince them that Gaetz should be confirmed.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt did not go well. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, relative Republican moderates already used to saying no to Trump, at least some of the time, were not supportive.Gaetz found sympathy from others. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a close Trump ally, said he would “urge all of my Senate colleagues, particularly Republicans, not to join the lynch mob and give the process a chance to move forward”. But plenty of other Republicans cast doubt on Gaetz’s chances of being confirmed.John Cornyn of Texas, a member of the judiciary committee, said any hearings for Gaetz would be like “Kavanaugh on steroids” – a reference to the tempestuous hearings in 2018 in which Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s second pick for the supreme court, angrily rejected accusations of sexual assault. In Kavanaugh’s case, the Capitol Hill circus proved controversial but survivable.But Gaetz would not be given a chance to pull off a similar escape. On Thursday, on social media, he said: “There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle, thus I’ll be withdrawing my name from consideration to serve as attorney general.”CNN subsequently reported that the woman who says she had sex with him when she was a minor told the ethics committee she had another sexual encounter with Gaetz, which also involved another adult woman.“After being asked for comment for this story,” the CNN report said, “Gaetz announced he was backing out as President-elect Donald Trump’s attorney general nominee.”However, a source familiar with Gaetz’s nomination process told the Guardian that privately confirmed opposition from four senators – enough to sink the nomination if no Democrats defected – was what pushed Gaetz to decide to withdraw, before the call from CNN.Murkowski and Collins were opposed. So was John Curtis, the senator-elect from Utah who will succeed Mitt Romney, another Trump critic, in the new year. The fourth voice set against Gaetz was an influential one: Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former Republican leader now beginning life back in the rank and file.In his announcement, Gaetz proclaimed his support for “the most successful president in history” and said he would “forever be honored” that Trump nominated him for attorney general.Elsewhere in Washington, it seemed safe to bet, politicians and reporters alike were reflecting on an extraordinary episode of near-unsurpassable Washington dishonor. More

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      Begich Defeats Peltola in Alaska, Flipping House Seat for Republicans

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      Nick Begich III, the Republican son of a prominent liberal political family in Alaska, has defeated Representative Mary Peltola to win the state’s sole House seat, according to The Associated Press, ousting one of the nation’s most vulnerable Democrats and adding to Republicans’ slim House majority.The victory, announced on Wednesday, more than two weeks after Election Day, was a comeback of sorts for Mr. Begich, an Anchorage native and businessman who was endorsed by the right-wing House Freedom Caucus and who had challenged Ms. Peltola in 2022 but fell short. Back then, Republicans split their votes between him and former Gov. Sarah Palin, allowing the Democrat to prevail in Alaska’s unusual ranked-choice voting system. This time, Mr. Begich benefited from a G.O.P. that united behind him.Ms. Peltola, the first Alaska Native elected to Congress, staked her campaign on her working-class appeal and presented herself as a solutions-focused pragmatist fighting for the state’s future. She first won the seat in a special election after the death in 2022 of Representative Don Young, the longest-serving Republican in the House. Before Ms. Peltola, the last Democrat to represent Alaska in the House was Nick Begich Sr., Mr. Begich’s grandfather.During his first run for Congress, the younger Mr. Begich, who once worked for Mr. Young, drew a backlash from Republicans for challenging the congressman in a primary shortly before Mr. Young’s death at the age of 88. Former Young aides called Mr. Begich deceitful and disloyal to their boss and chose to back Ms. Peltola instead.That was not the case this year. The party united behind Mr. Begich after his top Republican rival, Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, withdrew from the race after placing behind him in the late-August primary. Ms. Dahlstrom had the backing of both former President Donald J. Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson.Mr. Begich has said he wants to decrease federal spending, a touchy subject in Alaska, where the U.S. government employs more than 16,000 people and federal spending pays for almost half the state’s budget. More

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      Biden urged to use clemency powers to tackle ‘crisis’ of US mass incarceration

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      More than 60 members of Congress have written to Joe Biden calling on him to use his presidential clemency powers to reunite families, address unfair sentencing policies, and begin to tackle the scourge of mass incarceration, which they said was eroding “the soul of America”.Biden has 61 days left before he leaves the White House in which he could pardon or commute the sentences of incarcerated Americans. The letter, signed by a number of prominent Democratic politicians and spearheaded by the progressive politician Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, urges Biden to act while he still can.“Now is the time to use your clemency authority to rectify unjust and unnecessary criminal laws passed by Congress and draconian sentences given by judges,” the letter demands.Biden’s clemency power is one of the most concrete tools at his disposal during the lame-duck period of his presidency. During his term in the White House he has already granted 25 pardons and 132 commutations, including for people imprisoned for simple possession of marijuana and several court-martialed from the military because of their sexual orientation.But he could make a far greater impact, should he choose to. There are currently more than 12,000 petitions for commutations and almost 4,000 requests for pardons on his desk.“So many people who are serving extensive sentences today are there because of crimes that are victimless. That is astonishing, and it should be dealt with,” Clyburn told a press conference outside the Capitol building on Wednesday.Clyburn’s participation in the appeal may carry weight with the president. The congressman is widely credited for having helped Biden secure the Democratic presidential nomination during the primary contests of 2020.In their letter, the congress members urge Biden to focus on categories of prisoner who they say especially deserve his help. That includes the 40 men who are currently on federal death row and who are facing the threat of imminent execution once Donald Trump returns to the White House.Other groups of incarcerated people highlighted by the group include women forced into crime or acts of self-defense by abusive domestic partners, and those serving long sentences because of the disparate sentencing rules around crack cocaine. In 1986 Ronald Reagan introduced harsher sentences for crack than the powder form of the drug, even though the only difference in their chemical composition is baking soda.Crack tended to be used more widely by Black people and powder cocaine by white people. The Biden administration addressed the disparity in 2022 by leveling the sentences, but the change did not help those already imprisoned.“The mass incarceration crisis is one of our country’s greatest failures,” said Pressley, whose father was incarcerated when she was a child as a result of his drug addiction. “President Biden was elected with a mandate for making compassionate change, and he has the power to do so right now.” More

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      House ethics committee fails to decide whether to release Matt Gaetz report

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      The House ethics committee deadlocked on releasing a report examining allegations of sexual misconduct against Matt Gaetz, the former Republican representative and Donald Trump’s choice to lead the US justice department, after the panel met behind closed doors on Wednesday.Emerging from the meeting after roughly two hours, most members of the panel declined to offer details on their discussion, but the Republican chair, Michael Guest, told reporters that there was “not an agreement by the committee to release the report”.Susan Wild, the top Democratic representative on the ethics committee, told reporters that the panel did hold a vote on the matter, but there was “no consensus”. Wild implied that the committee, which is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, broke along party lines and thus could not reach a decision. The panel plans to reconvene on 5 December, Wild added.The panel has previously said it was investigating claims that Gaetz “may have engaged in sexual misconduct and/or illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted a bribe, improper gratuity, or impermissible gift”.Guest told reporters before the meeting on Wednesday that he had “some reservations” about releasing the report when it had not yet gone through a review process.“That is something that we will be talking about today, and that’s another reason I have some reservations about releasing any unfinished work product,” Guest said.The justice department launched its own inquiry into accusations that Gaetz engaged in a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl, but the department closed its investigation last year without filing charges. Gaetz has consistently denied the allegations.Two women testified to congressional investigators that Gaetz paid them for sex and that he was seen having sex with the 17-year-old, a lawyer for the women has said.As the ethics committee is evenly split between the two parties, it would take only one Republican siding with every Democrat on the panel to have the report released. But prominent Republicans, including the House speaker, Mike Johnson, have cautioned against releasing the report on Gaetz, who resigned his seat immediately after Trump announced his nomination as attorney general.“I think that would be a Pandora’s box,” Johnson told CNN on Sunday. “I don’t think we want the House ethics committee using all of its vast resources and powers to go after private citizens, and that’s what Matt Gaetz is now.”Gaetz was on Capitol Hill on Wednesday with the vice-president-elect, JD Vance, meeting with some of the senators who will decide his fate. After his conversation with Gaetz, Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump loyalist, indicated he was open to supporting the attorney general nominee and condemned the “lynch mob” raising concerns about the sexual misconduct allegations.“My record is clear. I tend to defer to presidential cabinet choices unless the evidence suggests disqualification,” Graham said in a statement. “I would urge all of my Senate colleagues, particularly Republicans, not to join the lynch mob and give the process a chance to move forward.”Other Republicans, including Senator Markwayne Mullin, have suggested the report should be at least made available to the senators who will vote on confirming Gaetz’s nomination.“I believe the Senate should have access to that,” Mullin told NBC News on Sunday. “Now, should it be released to the public or not? I guess that will be part of the negotiations. But that should be definitely part of our decision-making.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDemocrats have appeared open to the idea of releasing the report. Nearly 100 House Democrats signed a letter requesting the ethics committee’s findings be released, noting that there was some precedent for issuing reports on former members who resigned amid scandal.Representative Sean Casten, who led fellow Democrats in signing the letter, indicated on Wednesday that he would introduce a privileged resolution to require a full House vote on releasing the report. Casten would need the support of only a handful of Republicans to get the resolution approved in the House, where Gaetz has made enemies on both sides of the aisle.Democratic members of the Senate judiciary committee, which will hold Gaetz’s confirmation hearings, have also requested the FBI’s file on the attorney general nominee.“The Senate has a constitutional duty to provide advice and consent on presidential nominees, and it is crucial that we review all the information necessary to fulfill this duty as we consider Mr Gaetz’s nomination,” the Democrats wrote on Wednesday in a letter to the FBI director, which was obtained by Politico. “The grave public allegations against Mr Gaetz speak directly to his fitness to serve as the chief law enforcement officer for the federal government.”RThe representative Susan Wild, the top Democratic representative on the ethics committee, said on Monday that she supported the report’s release, echoing comments made over the weekend by a fellow Democrat on the committee, Rthe representative Glenn Ivey.“It should certainly be released to the Senate, and I think it should be released to the public, as we have done with many other investigative reports in the past,” Wild told reporters, peraccording to NBC News. “There is precedent for releasing even after a member has resigned.”If the ethics committee report is released, it could further damage Gaetz’s prospects of Senate confirmation, but Trump has floated the idea of installing his nominees via recess appointment to circumvent the confirmation process. 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      Trans congresswoman Sarah McBride responds to Capitol Hill bathroom ban

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      Sarah McBride, the incoming congresswoman and first openly transgender person elected to the US House of Representatives, on Wednesday shared a statement on social media in response to the House banning trans people from using single-sex bathrooms on Capitol Hill that match their gender identity.Earlier in the day, the House speaker, Louisiana Republican Mike Johnson, issued a statement “regarding facilities throughout the US Capitol complex”.Johnson said: “All single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House Office Buildings – such as restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms – are reserved for individuals of that biological sex.”He added: “It is important to note that each member office has its own private restroom, and unisex restrooms are available throughout the Capitol. Women deserve women’s only spaces.”McBride is due to be sworn in in January to represent Delaware after handily winning the seat in the election earlier this month, having been the first openly trans person elected to the state senate seat there in 2020.She had initially pushed back over proposed restrictions by saying the argument was a far-right-driven distraction from issues such as housing, healthcare and childcare.But on Wednesday, after Johnson’s announcement, McBride responded with a post on X: “I’m not here to fight about bathrooms, I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families. Like all members, I will follow the rules as outlined by Speaker Johnson, even if I disagree with them … serving in the 119th Congress will be the honor of a lifetime, and I continue to look forward to getting to know my future colleagues on both sides of the aisle.”On Monday Nancy Mace, the South Carolina Republican representative, had introduced a bill to ban transgender people, including congressional members, officers and employees, from using single-sex bathrooms and other facilities on Capitol Hill that correspond to their gender identity.Mace told reporters that McBride “does not belong in women’s spaces, women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, period, full stop” and called her a biological man, insisting that McBride “doesn’t get a say”, CNN reported.Mace’s bill comes as Republicans have attacked transgender people as part of a broader political culture-war strategy, limiting what bathrooms they can use and the youth sports teams they can play on. Fourteen states currently have laws that prohibit transgender people from using the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ rights group.Donald Trump leaned into such politics vigorously during the presidential election campaign.

      This article was amended on 20 November 2024 to remove a reference to a Bluesky post that had been attributed to Sarah McBride. A representative for McBride later said the account is not affiliated with the congresswoman-elect. More

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      Republican senator calls for release of Matt Gaetz ethics report to chamber

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      Discussion on Donald Trump’s selection of Matt Gaetz, the former Florida congressman who had been accused of sexual misconduct, for US attorney general continued on Sunday, with Republican senator Markwayne Mullin calling for an unreleased ethics report to be released to the Senate.Mullin told NBC’s Meet the Press that the Senate, which will oversee Gaetz’s confirmation hearings to become attorney general, “should have access to that” but declined to say if it should be released publicly.Gaetz resigned from his seat in Congress on Wednesday soon after the president-elect made his controversial pick, frustrating plans by a congressional ethics panel to release a review of claims against Gaetz, including sexual misconduct and illegal drug use. Gaetz denies any wrongdoing.Republican House speaker Mike Johnson repeated his position on Sunday that the survey should remain out of the public realm. Gaetz had faced a three-year justice department investigation into the same allegations that concluded without criminal charges being brought.Johnson said the principle was that the ethics committee’s jurisdiction did not extend to non-members of the House. “There have been, I understand, I think, two exceptions to the rule over the whole history of Congress and the history of the ethics committee,” Johnson told CNN, adding that while he did not have the authority to stop it “we don’t want to go down that road.”Trump’s selection of Gaetz, while successfully provoking Democrats’ outrage, is also seen as a test for Republicans to bend Trump’s force of will. Mullin has previously noted situations in which Gaetz had allegedly shown colleagues nude photographs of his sexual conquests and described him as “unprincipled”.But the senator said he had not made a decision on whether to support Gaetz in a confirmation vote. “I’m going to give him a fair shot just like any individual,” Mullin said.The pending report seems likely to emerge in some form after other senior Republicans, including senators Susan Collins, John Cornyn and Thom Tillis have all said they believe it should be shown to them.Separately, Pennsylvania Democratic senator John Fetterman repeated his advice to members of his own party to not “freak out” over everything Trump does, pointing out that for at least the next two years, Republicans can “run the table”.Fetterman, who won decisive re-election in the state this month, said he looked forward to reviewing some of Trump’s nominations but others “are just absolute trolls”, including Gaetz.For Democrats, who are still trying to figure out reasons for their devastating loss at the ballot box this month, their outrage at Trump’s nominations “gets the kind of thing that he wanted, like the freak out”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It’s still not even Thanksgiving yet and if we’re having meltdowns at every tweet or every appointment.”Democrats, Fetterman added, should be “more concerned” about Republicans being able “to run the table for the next two years. Those are the things you really want to be concerned about, not small tweets or, you know, random kinds of appointments.”But Democratic senator-elect Adam Schiff told CNN that Gaetz was “not only unqualified, he is really disqualified” to become the country’s top lawyer.“Are we really going to have an attorney general [with] … credible allegations he was involved in child sex-trafficking, potential illicit drug use, obstruction of an investigation? Who has no experience serving in the justice department, only being investigated by it,” Schiff said. More

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      in Elections

      When Will Democrats Learn to Say No?

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      When Donald Trump held a rally in the Bronx in May, critics scoffed that there was no way he could win New York State. Yet as a strategic matter, asking the question “What would it take for a Republican to win New York?” leads to the answer, “It would take overperforming with Black, Hispanic and working-class voters.”Mr. Trump didn’t win New York, of course, but his gains with nonwhite voters helped him sweep all seven battleground states.Unlike Democrats, Mr. Trump engaged in what I call supermajority thinking: envisioning what it would take to achieve an electoral realignment and working from there.Supermajority thinking is urgently needed at this moment. We have been conditioned to think of our era of polarization as a stable arrangement of rough parity between the parties that will last indefinitely, but history teaches us that such periods usually give way to electoral realignments. Last week, Mr. Trump showed us what a conservative realignment can look like. Unless Democrats want to be consigned to minority status and be locked out of the Senate for the foreseeable future, they need to counter by building a supermajority of their own.That starts with picking an ambitious electoral goal — say, the 365 electoral votes Barack Obama won in 2008 — and thinking clearly about what Democrats need to do to achieve it.Democrats cannot do this as long as they remain crippled by a fetish for putting coalition management over a real desire for power. Whereas Mr. Trump has crafted an image as a different kind of Republican by routinely making claims that break with the party line on issues ranging from protecting Social Security and Medicare to mandating insurance coverage of in vitro fertilization, Democrats remain stuck trying to please all of their interest groups while watching voters of all races desert them over the very stances that these groups impose on the party.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More