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      in US Politics

      Republicans baffled after Trump picks ‘reckless’ Gaetz for attorney general

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      Donald Trump’s decision to nominate the far-right Republican congressman Matt Gaetz as attorney general has sent shockwaves through Washington, including the president-elect’s own party.Trump on Wednesday announced Gaetz as his pick to be the nation’s chief law enforcement officer in the justice department, a role that directs the government’s legal positions on critical issues, including abortion, civil rights, and first amendment cases.Republicans were puzzled over this nomination, expressing this move was not on their “bingo card”.“I don’t think it’s a serious nomination for the attorney general,” Republican senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, told NBC News. “We need to have a serious attorney general. And I’m looking forward to the opportunity to consider somebody that is serious. This one was not on my bingo card.”A rightwing firebrand, Gaetz was a thorn in the side of his fellow Republican and former House speaker Kevin McCarthy, eventually leading the successful charge to oust McCarthy from his role.He was investigated by the justice department in a sex-trafficking case, though the department ultimately declined to bring charges. And was under investigation by the House ethics committee amid allegations of sexual misconduct, illicit drug use and other alleged ethical breaches.Gaetz has fiercely denied wrongdoing.Amid consternation even within his own party, it’s unclear if Gaetz can win Senate approval.Republican congressman Max Miller of Ohio told Axios that “Gaetz has a better shot at having dinner with Queen Elizabeth II than being confirmed by the Senate”.Miller also told Politico that Gaetz is “a reckless pick” with “a zero percent shot”.John Bolton, a former national security adviser, said Gaetz “must be the worst nomination for a cabinet position in American history”.“Gaetz is not only totally incompetent for this job, he doesn’t have the character. He is a person of moral turpitude,” Bolton said in an interview with NBC News.One anonymous House GOP member told Axios: “We wanted him out of the House … this isn’t what we were thinking.” Another remarked they were “stunned and disgusted”.Democrats, too, were left astonished by the announcement. Vice-President Kamala Harris’s team said in a statement that Trump and Gaetz “will weaponize the DoJ to protect themselves and their allies”.Congressman Ro Khanna of California argued that voters were not necessarily voting for these cabinet picks when they decided to elect Trump.“People voted for Trump to have lower prices and a secure border. I don’t think they voted for the appointments that they’re getting,” Khanna told CBS News. “He is not moving to the center. He’s going to his Maga base, and we’ll see if he’s overreaching on the mandate he had from the American people.”Kate Maeder, a California-based political strategist, said the announcement should not come as a surprise, but wondered whether Trump trusts Gaetz will make it through the confirmation process. “It’s not a surprise that Trump is rewarding his political loyalists,” Maeder told the Guardian. “It’s a shock to many that he’s considering Matt Gaetz for attorney general. But is this a serious pick? I don’t think so.”“In this political climate, it’s definitely possible for Matt Gaetz to be confirmed,” she said. “But I think it’ll be difficult. Some of the more moderate Republican senators are already on record questioning this choice.” More

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      in Elections

      Gaetz, Gabbard and Hegseth: Trump’s Appointments Are a Show of Force

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump’s cabinet picks show that he prizes loyalty over experience and is fueled by retribution.A Fox News ally for defense secretary. A former Democrat-turned-Trump-World-celebrity to oversee 18 spy agencies. A right-wing provocateur for the nation’s top law enforcement job.President-elect Donald J. Trump’s appointments for top government jobs continued to roll in fast and furiously on Wednesday, and his promise to build a presidential administration fueled by retribution quickly came into view.Those plans were perhaps best summarized by Representative Matt Gaetz, who wrote of his enthusiasm for the wholesale elimination of federal law enforcement agencies just hours before Mr. Trump announced he’d chosen the Florida Republican to lead the Justice Department:“We ought to have a full-court press against this WEAPONIZED government that has been turned against our people,” Mr. Gaetz wrote on social media on Wednesday. “And if that means abolishing every one of the three letter agencies, from the FBI to the ATF, I’m ready to get going!”Mr. Trump could not have said it better himself. And that is the entire point.The president-elect’s other bombshell picks include Pete Hegseth, a military veteran known for defending Mr. Trump on Fox News, to be his defense secretary; and Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman, to be director of national intelligence.President-elect Donald J. Trump chose Tulsi Gabbard as his director of national intelligence. They appeared together at a rally in North Carolina last month.Kenny Holston/The New York Times“These are so appalling they’re a form of performance art,” Michael Waldman, the president of the Brennan Center for Justice, said in an interview, reflecting on Mr. Trump’s choices and their fitness for their jobs.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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      in Elections

      Matt Gaetz, a Bomb-Thrower for the Justice Department

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      President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be attorney general has set a new bar for in-your-face nominations.In selecting Representative Matt Gaetz to be his attorney general, President-elect Donald J. Trump has chosen an undisguised attack dog to preside over the Department of Justice.Mr. Gaetz, 42, a Florida Republican and an unswerving loyalist to Mr. Trump, has a history that under conventional circumstances would make his confirmation prospects appear insurmountable.He was investigated by the Justice Department on suspicion of child sex trafficking. This year, after the government case was shuttered, the House Committee on Ethics opened its own inquiry into the matter, which effectively ended on Wednesday night after Mr. Gaetz resigned from his seat. Mr. Gaetz has also been accused of showing photos of nude women to colleagues on the House floor and of seeking a pardon from the previous Trump White House. He has denied each of these allegations.Mr. Gaetz is also an avowed enemy of virtually every top Republican not named Trump. He led the charge last year to oust one Republican leader, Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and this year openly celebrated the resignations of two others — Senator Mitch McConnell, who announced he would be retiring as minority leader, and Ronna McDaniel, who stepped down as chairwoman of the Republican Party National Committee.“We’ve now 86’d: McCarthy, McDaniel, McConnell,” Mr. Gaetz exulted on the social media platform X in March.“I am not some ‘Lord of the Flies’ nihilist,” Mr. Gaetz insisted to The New York Times in January 2023, just after he had relinquished his five-day blockade of Mr. McCarthy’s eventually successful quest to be speaker. But nine months later, Mr. Gaetz helped pushed Mr. McCarthy out of the job for good.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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      Trump meets with Biden and promises ‘smooth as it can get’ transfer of power

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      Donald Trump met with Joe Biden on Wednesday and promised a transfer of power that is “as smooth as it can get”, as the outgoing US president pledged his administration’s every possible resource to pave the way for his successor.The two men, longtime political rivals who must now work together again to pass the reins of power, shook hands as they met in the Oval Office. Introducing Trump as both a former president and now president-elect, Biden congratulated him on his victory.“We’re looking forward to having, like we said, a smooth transition. We’ll do everything we can to make sure you’re accommodated, what you need and we’re going to get a chance to talk about some of that today,” Biden said. “Welcome back.”Despite Trump’s many excoriating comments toward Biden over the years, he thanked the president for the warm reception he received at the White House.“Politics is tough, and it’s, in many cases, not a very nice world, but it is a nice world today, and I appreciate very much a transition that’s so smooth. It’ll be as smooth as it can get. And I very much appreciate that, Joe,” Trump said.Reporters attempted to shout questions at Biden and Trump, but both men ignored the queries. The meeting continued for roughly two hours after journalists were escorted out of the Oval Office.The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, offered few specifics about the meeting, but she noted that Biden described Trump as “gracious” and prepared with “a detailed set of questions”.“It was indeed very cordial, very gracious and substantive,” Jean-Pierre said. “National security was discussed. Domestic policy issues were discussed.”Before meeting with Biden, Trump addressed House Republicans on Capitol Hill, celebrating his party’s victories up and down the ballot last week while suggesting he might seek a third term as president.“I suspect I won’t be running again, unless you say, ‘He’s good, we got to figure something else,’” Trump said, sparking laughter from fellow Republicans in the room.Trump has repeatedly floated the idea of extending his tenure, even though the US constitution bars presidents from serving a third term.Introducing Trump on Wednesday, the Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, praised the president-elect as a “singular figure in American history”.“They used to call Bill Clinton the comeback kid. [Trump] is the comeback king,” Johnson said.Elon Musk joined Trump at the meeting with House Republicans, sitting in the first row, according to attenders. On Tuesday, Trump named Musk and the former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy as co-leaders of a new Department of Government Efficiency. The announcement intensified concerns over how Trump and Musk, known for his slash-and-burn approach to cutting company expenses, might overhaul the federal workforce. Also on Tuesday, Trump named Pete Hegseth, a veteran and Fox News host with no political experience, to lead the Department of Defense.Trump continued his series of cabinet announcements on Wednesday with the news that Marco Rubio, a Republican senator of Florida, would be nominated as secretary of state. He also named Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman, as director of national intelligence and Matt Gaetz, a Republican congressman of Florida, as attorney general. All three nominations are subject to Senate approval, and Gabbard and Gaetz specifically may face numerous hurdles to confirmation.As of Wednesday, Republicans had already won a majority in the Senate, but the House remained up for grabs as ballot-counting continued in 12 uncalled races. However, House Republicans appear poised to capture a narrow majority.Trump has already tapped at least three House Republicans for senior roles in his administration. In addition to Gaetz, Elise Stefanik will be nominated as ambassador to the United Nations and Mike Waltz, a Florida representative, will serve as his national security adviser. Republicans currently hold a razor-thin four-seat majority in the House, and if the outcome of vote counts remains as it stands today, a Republican speaker in 2025 would also have a four-seat majority.Johnson has said he expects Republicans to end up with a larger majority. But each Republican appointment or resignation from the House – as Governor-elect Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota must do – diminishes that majority.“We have an embarrassment of riches,” Johnson said on Tuesday. “We have a really talented Republican conference. We’ve got really competent, capable people here. Many of them could serve in really important positions in the new administration, but President Trump fully understands and appreciates the math here, and it’s just a numbers game.”The meeting between Biden and Trump on Wednesday reflected a return to a traditional transfer of power, after the custom was somewhat abandoned in 2020. Underscoring the acrimony of the 2020 election, Trump eschewed the meeting after being defeated by Biden.Melania Trump was also invited to meet with the first lady, Jill Biden, but she declined the invitation. According to the White House, the first lady offered Trump’s team “a handwritten letter of congratulations for Mrs Trump, which also expressed her team’s readiness to assist with the transition”. More

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      in Elections

      Evans Defeats Caraveo in Colorado, Flipping a Key House Seat for the G.O.P.

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      Representative Yadira Caraveo, Democrat of Colorado, lost her first re-election battle to her Republican challenger, Gabe Evans, a state representative, former Army captain and police officer with ties to the far right, The Associated Press declared on Tuesday, handing the G.O.P. a key pickup as it closes in on retaining its House majority.Mr. Evans’s win puts Republicans just two seats shy of the majority, with about a dozen races left to be called.A moderate Democrat, Ms. Caraveo kept a relatively low profile after winning her seat two years ago in a new swing district north of Denver. Her campaign heavily emphasized Ms. Caraveo’s background as a pediatrician and the daughter of Mexican immigrants, highlighting how her stances on reproductive rights and access to health care contrasted starkly with her opponent’s.She was Colorado’s first Latina elected to federal office.Mr. Evans, who has refused to say that former President Donald J. Trump lost the 2020 election and also downplayed the severity of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, was one of several election deniers and skeptics who sought to flip tossup districts.He also backpedaled his stance on abortion, saying in a recent debate that he would no longer support a national ban after endorsing one in 2022. As a state representative, he voted against a ban on corporal punishment in Colorado public schools, and refused to say during a debate with Ms. Caraveo when he believed it would be appropriate for a teacher to strike a child. More

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      in US Politics

      Sweep of swing states rubs salt in Democrats’ wounds as Trump prepares to meet Biden

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      Donald Trump was declared the winner in Arizona early on Sunday, completing the Republicans’ clean sweep of the so-called swing states and rubbing salt in Democrats’ wounds as it was announced that the president-elect is scheduled to meet with Joe Biden at the White House on Wednesday to discuss the presidential handover.In a national campaign that was projected as being extremely close but he ended up winning handily, the result in Arizona gives Trump 312 electoral college votes, compared with Kamala Harris’s 226. The state joins the other Sun belt swing states – Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina – and the three Rust belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in voting Republican. All were expected to be extremely competitive but all went for Trump, though by fairly close margins.Republicans also regained control of the Senate – they hold 53 seats to the Democrats’ 46 – and look likely to keep control of the House of Representatives, where 21 races remain uncalled but Republicans currently have a 212-202 advantage, giving them a “trifecta” – both houses of Congress as well as the presidency – that will allow them to govern largely unfettered for at least the next two years.The political realignment comes after a bruising election that has set the stage for the Democratic party to re-evaluate a platform that appeared to have been rejected by a majority of US voters. Trump also won the popular vote, the first time a Republican has done so since George W Bush in 2004 following the 9/11 attacks a few years before.At Biden’s request, Trump will visit the Oval Office on Wednesday, a formality that Trump himself did not honor in 2020 when he lost the presidency to Biden but refused to accept the results.In a speech last week, Biden said he would “direct my entire administration to work with his team to ensure a peaceful and orderly transition”.But as president-elect, Trump has reportedly yet to submit a series of transition agreements with the Biden administration, including ethics pledges to avoid conflicts of interest. The agreements are required in order to unlock briefings from the outgoing administration before the handover of power in 72 days’ time.The national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said Biden will brief Trump on foreign policy on Wednesday, telling CBS Face the Nation: “The president will have the chance to explain to President Trump how he sees things.”Asked if Biden will ask legislators to pass additional aid for Ukraine before he leaves office, Sullivan said the president “will make the case that we do need ongoing resources for Ukraine beyond the end of his term”. Trump allies have said the incoming administration’s focus would be on peace not territory.View image in fullscreenSullivan also said that the international community needs “to increase pressure on Hamas to come to the table to do a deal in Gaza, because the Israeli government said it’s prepared to take a temporary step in that direction” because the group had told mediators, he said, it “will not do a cease-fire and hostage deal at this time”.The political fallout from Trump’s win continues to reverberate, not least in the Democratic camp. The Harris-Walz campaign is estimated to have spent $1bn in three months but is now reportedly $20m in debt.The Republican pollster Frank Luntz told ABC News’s This Week that whoever “told” Harris to focus on Trump during her presidential campaign had “committed political malpractice”.“We all know what Trump is,” Luntz said. “We experienced him for four years.”Progressive senator Bernie Sanders, who votes with Democrats, defended Harris’s campaign and refused to be drawn into further analysis on whether Biden should have stepped away from his re-election bid sooner.“I don’t want to get involved,” he told CNN. “We got to look forward and not in the back. Kamala did her very best. She came in, she won the debate with Trump. She worked as hard as she possibly could.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreen“Here is the reality: the working class of this country is angry, and they have reason to be angry,” he added. “We are living in an economy today where people on top are doing phenomenally well while 60% of our people are living paycheck-to-paycheck.”Republicans, meanwhile, have not explained why Trump and many in the party argue last week’s election was free and fair but maintain the 2020 one was somehow rigged, despite every single lawsuit alleging fraud being rejected.Jim Jordan, the Republican chair of the the house judiciary committee, called Trump’s victory last week the “greatest political comeback”.On Friday, Jordan and fellow Republican representative Barry Loudermilk sent a letter to special counsel Jack Smith to demand that his office preserve records of the justice department’s prosecutions of Trump.Asked by CNN whether Trump would go after his political opponents, Jordan said: “He didn’t do it in his first term. The Democrats went after him and everyone understands what they did.”“I don’t think any of that will happen,” Jordan reiterated. “We are the party who is against political prosecution. We’re the party who is against going after your opponents using lawfare.”Byron Donalds, a Republican congressman from Florida, told Fox News that claims of a list were “lies from the Democratic left”.“I will tell you, this is not something that Donald Trump has ever spoken to, or he’s committed to, whatsoever. There’s no enemies list,” Donalds said. Trump has regularly referred to his political opponents as “the enemy within”. More

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      Republicans on the verge of clinching control of the US House

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      Republicans on Saturday appeared close to clinching control of the US House of Representatives, a critical element for Donald Trump to advance his agenda when the president-elect returns to the White House in January.With votes still being counted from the 5 November general election, Republicans had won 212 seats in the 435-member House, according to Edison Research, which projected on Friday night that Republican Jeff Hurd had enough votes to keep Republican control of Colorado’s third congressional district.Democratic Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez won re-election to a US House seat representing Washington state on Saturday, the Associated Press reported, defeating Republican Joe Kent in a rematch of one of the closest races of 2022.Gluesenkamp Perez won the seat by just more than 2,600 votes two years ago. Prior to her election, Gluesenkamp Perez ran an auto shop in a rural part of the district, which featured heavily in her campaign.The Republican-leaning district, which Donald Trump carried in 2020, includes the south-western portion of the state and some Portland, Oregon, suburbs that spill into Washington state.Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

      Trump wins the presidency – how did it happen?

      With Trump re-elected, this is what’s at stake

      Abortion ballot measure results by state
      Republicans need to win six more seats to keep control of the House and they already have enough victories to wrest control of the US Senate from Democrats, though Edison Research projected late on Friday that Democratic US Senator Jacky Rosen had won re-election in Nevada.A first-term moderate in a presidential battleground state, Rosen was among the GOP’s top targets. She campaigned on lowering costs for the middle class, defending abortion rights and tackling the climate crisis. Over the summer, she introduced legislation that would allow extreme heat to qualify as a disaster under federal law, pointing to heatwaves that have devastated the west.With Trump’s victory in the presidential election and Republican control of the Senate already decided, keeping hold of the House would give Republicans sweeping powers to potentially ram through a broad agenda of tax and spending cuts, energy deregulation and border security controls.Results of 19 House races remain unclear, mostly in competitive districts in western states where the pace of vote counting is typically slower than in the rest of the country.Ten of the seats are currently held by Republicans and nine by Democrats. Fourteen seats had widely been seen as competitive before the election.Republican senators will decide next week who will serve as the party’s leader in the Senate in 2025, with John Thune, John Cornyn and Rick Scott vying for the job. On Saturday, Senators Bill Hagerty and Rand Paul endorsed Scott over the more senior Thune and Cornyn, who have been viewed as favorites.Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      in US Politics

      Arizona endures tense wait for final election result in last battleground

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      Arizona remained in a tense waiting game on Saturday for its election results, even as neighboring Nevada declared for Donald Trump overnight, giving the president-elect six out of seven swing states after election day on 5 November.In Arizona, official tallies were 83% complete by mid-morning on Saturday with Trump leading at 52.7% and Harris at 46%, or about 180,000 votes ahead. But enough ballots remain uncounted – 602,000 as of late Friday night – for the state to remain undeclared. The state sensationally flipped to Joe Biden and the Democrats in 2020.In the key US Senate race there between Republican Kari Lake and Democrat Ruben Gallego, Lake, who always denied that Biden won the White House fairly in 2020, was trailing the Democrat 48.5% to 49.5%, or by around 33,000 votes, mid-morning on Saturday.The contested primary for the seat sprang from Kyrsten Sinema, who was elected in 2018 for the Democrats, switched to become an independent and then announced she wasn’t seeking re-election this year.Other Arizona races remain close, including the sixth congressional district battle between incumbent Republican Juan Ciscomani and Democratic challenger Kirsten Engel, as the Democrats nationally wait to see if they can come from behind to flip control of the House of Representatives in Washington DC.The delay in reporting the races falls largely on Maricopa county, the fourth largest in the US, where the state capital, Phoenix, lies. The county on Friday evening reported 351,000 ballots yet to count. Some have not been through the first step of verifying the voter signature on the outside of the envelope. Officials expected ballot counting would continue for 10 to 13 days after election day.The long process for counting ballots is in part explained by the lengthy two-page ballot itself with election workers taking nearly double the usual amount of time to separate the two sheets from the mail-in envelope, lay them flat and check for damage, according to Votebeat.In Cochise county, a mechanical problem with tabulators caused them to work more slowly.According to the Arizona Republic newspaper, part of the state’s problem is “early-late” votes – early voting ballot papers that were filled in don’t get dropped off to be counted until election day itself.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We have a substantial number of voters who take their early ballot and they kind of keep it on their kitchen counter for, like, three weeks,” state representative Alexander Kolodin told AZ Central.Kolodin, a Republican, is considering a proposal that would require early ballots to be returned in advance of election day, giving time for election officials to go through the process of verification.But amid heightened security in Arizona, with fears of violence, there has so far been no repeat of unrest over counting and long, drawn-out challenges that followed the 2020 election in Maricopa county – and no claims of election worker intimidation there. More