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      US Republican politician must resign after pleading guilty to sexual assault

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      Days after winning elected office, a Republican politician in Indiana pleaded guilty to trying to sexually assault a woman in Las Vegas and now must resign his position.John Jessup, commissioner of Hancock, Indiana, is at the center of one of the more bizarre tales to emerge from the down-ballot 5 November elections across the US.As noted by the local Greenfield Daily Reporter newspaper and KLAS, authorities in Nevada charged Jessup, 49, in June in connection with a sexual assault that occurred in January. But he remained in office as a county commissioner; ran for a seat on the Hancock council, which is a distinct elected body; and emerged as one of three victors after collecting about 15,000 votes.Jessup’s satisfaction with his victory – secured while he was under house arrest in Nevada – may have been fleeting, however. Records show he pleaded guilty in Nevada court on 13 November to attempted sexual assault, which is a kind of felony that can carry multiple years in prison, according to state law.Indiana prohibits convicted felons from serving in state or local elected offices, though a decisive majority of its voters on 5 November helped vault Donald Trump to a second US presidency just months after a New York City jury convicted him on felony charges of criminally falsifying business records.Therefore, Jessup must resign – unlike Trump, who has also faced multimillion-dollar civil penalties for a rape allegation that a judge determined to be substantially true.Jessup on Monday told the Guardian that he must fill out certain paperwork before he could step down. The county council chair had mailed him those papers, but they had not immediately arrived, said Jessup, who is awaiting a sentencing hearing tentatively scheduled for April.According to what Jessup told the Daily Reporter, he was prepared for prosecutors to argue that he deserves between eight and 20 years in prison. Jessup reportedly said that his attorneys were going to seek a sentence of probation.“It’s been my greatest honor serving the people of Hancock county and I’m deeply, deeply ashamed and profoundly sorry for the shame that I brought to the county,” Jessup told the Daily Reporter.An affidavit obtained and reported on by the outlet said Jessup’s criminal charges came after he flew to Las Vegas with a woman in January.Multiple witnesses allegedly told authorities that Jessup got the woman intoxicated by constantly “feeding” her Long Island iced teas. Purportedly, as Jessup repeatedly said the famous slogan “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” she became so intoxicated that she needed a wheelchair to get back to her hotel room.There, she recalled showering while clothed – and her immediate next recollection was waking up naked as Jessup sexually assaulted her, authorities wrote in the affidavit cited by the Daily Reporter.The woman reported the assault to police in just a few days, and authorities arrested him in Indiana in June before extraditing him to Nevada. According to the Daily Reporter, during an interview with investigators, Jessup acknowledged that he “fucked up” – and spoke of taking his life – yet also maintained that he had not done anything criminal.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJessup posted a $100,000 bond to await the outcome of the case against him under house arrest in the Las Vegas area.In a statement to the Indiana news outlet WXIN, a Republican party official in Hancock county denied that her organization had any role in Jessup’s case “until the legal process concludes or he resigns”.“Mr Jessup decided to keep his name on the ballot after charges were filed,” Janice Silvey, Hancock county Republican party chairperson, said in a statement. “He later verbally and via text committed to resigning if elected.”Silvey added that the local Republican party would arrange a caucus to fill Jessup’s position once his resignation takes effect.Hancock county is part of a region that includes Indianapolis, the state capital. It has a population of about 80,000. More

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      Trump selects Fox News contributor Sean Duffy as transport secretary

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      Donald Trump has named Sean Duffy, a former Republican congressman from Wisconsin,and former cast member of the MTV show The Real World, to serve as the secretary of transportation. He was also a co-host on Fox Business but left that role on Monday, according to Fox News Media.Duffy served in Congress from 2011 until 2019. Before being elected to public office, he was district attorney for Ashland county, Wisconsin, from 2002 to 2008 and previously had a reality TV show role. Duffy was a cast member on The Real World: Boston in 1997 where he would meet his wife, Fox news contributor Rachel Campos-Duffy.“He will prioritize Excellence, Competence, Competitiveness and Beauty when rebuilding America’s highways, tunnels, bridges and airports,” the president-elect said in a statement announcing his nomination. “He will ensure our ports and dams serve our Economy without compromising our National Security, and he will make our skies safe again by eliminating DEI for pilots and air traffic controllers.”During his time in Congress, Duffy, 53, faced immense backlash for comments he made on CNN about the difference between white supremacist mass violence and violence carried out by the Islamic State. He also said that one of the “good things” that came from the 2015 mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church (AME) was that it led Nikki Haley, the then governor of South Carolina, to remove the confederate flag from the state capitol.After the backlash, Duffy said that the massacre at Emanuel AME was horrific but the shooter was not a part of an organized terror group such as IS. He encouraged the government to continue to monitor large hate groups such as the KKK.In a March 2017 op-ed Duffy penned for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel after Trump’s first State of the Union, the former congressman praised Trump’s dedication to working with conglomerates such as Ford, General Motors and Walmart to combine efforts to “reinvest in America”.Duffy, a father to nine children, resigned from Congress in 2019, citing complications during his wife’s pregnancy for the couple’s ninth child and his desire to spend more time with his family.If confirmed, Duffy will oversee aviation, automotive, rail, transit and other transportation policies at the department with about a $110bn budget as well as significant funding remaining under the Biden administration’s 2021 $1tn infrastructure law.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHis potential appointment follows the devastating train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, and still-elevated numbers of traffic deaths, which have fallen this year but remain above pre-Covid levels. He will also have to deal with ongoing investigations into companies run by Elon Musk, who’s been cozy with Trump and deeply involved in the administration’s transition plans. The Department of Transportation is investigating Tesla Autopilot, while the FAA has proposed fining SpaceX for violating space license rules.Trump has vowed to reverse the Biden administration’s vehicle emissions rules. He has said he plans to begin the process of undoing the Biden administration’s stringent emissions regulations finalized earlier this year as soon as he takes office. The rules cut tailpipe emissions limits by 50% from 2026 levels by 2032 and prod automakers to build more EVs. More

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      Trump pick Matt Gaetz under further scrutiny amid fresh allegations

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      An attorney representing two women who he says testified before the House ethics committee has claimed that the former congressman Matt Gaetz paid both women for sex and that one of the women alleged she witnessed Gaetz having sex with a minor.The new allegations were revealed by the attorney Joel Leppard during an interview with ABC News on Monday – less than a week after Gaetz resigned from Congress following his nomination by Donald Trump to serve as attorney general in his second administration.In the interview, Leppard claimed that his clients were paid by Gaetz using Venmo and said that one of the women testified to the committee that she saw Gaetz at a house party in 2017 having sex with a 17-year-old girl.“She testified that in July of 2017 at his house party, she was walking out to the pool area, and she looked to her right, and she saw Rep Gaetz having sex with her friend, who was 17,” Leppard said.Ahead of the Senate’s consideration of Gaetz’s nomination, Leppard said that he believed “several questions demand answers”, adding: “What if multiple credible witnesses provided evidence of behavior that would constitute serious criminal violations?”In a statement sent to ABC News, Alex Pfeiffer, Trump’s transition spokesperson, called the allegations against Gaetz “baseless”, adding that they are “intended to derail the second Trump administration”.“The Biden justice department investigated Gaetz for years and cleared him of wrongdoing,” Pfeiffer added.Gaetz was investigated by the justice department on suspicion of child sex trafficking, but the department decided not to bring charges. The House ethics committee then launched its own inquiry into allegations that Gaetz engaged in sexual misconduct, illicit drug use and other ethical breaches.Gaetz has repeatedly denied the allegations against him and insisted that he is innocent of any wrongdoing.The House ethics committee had reportedly put together a report on the findings of its investigation into Gaetz and, according to the New York Times, were planning on voting last week on whether to release it, but his resignation halted that process and in effect ended the ethics committee investigation.It was reported on Monday that the committee is now scheduled to meet this Wednesday to discuss the report and may potentially vote on whether to release it. In recent days, an increasing number of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have said that they want to review and see the report the committee compiled as they consider and weigh Gaetz’s nomination.The committee chair, Michael Guest, a Republican, told Politico on Monday that the panel would decide on its own whether to release the report, regardless of Speaker Mike Johnson’s desire to keep it under wraps.The attorney John Clune, who, according to ABC News, represents the former minor, called for the release of the committee’s report last week.“Mr Gaetz’s likely nomination as attorney general is a perverse development in a truly dark series of events,” Clune said. “We would support the House ethics committee immediately releasing their report. She was a high school student and there were witnesses.” More

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      ACLU sues for information on Trump’s mass deportation plan – live

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      The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit a little earlier today seeking basic details on how the federal government would carry out a program to deport millions of people from the US, which President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to begin on “day one” of his new administration.As part of the federal action, the ACLU demanded to be given information about the government’s current relationships with, for example, private airlines, ground transportation facilities and other elements that would be involved in arranging deportation flights for undocumented people. The lawsuit was first reported by the Washington Post this afternoon.The suit was filed in Los Angeles by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California and accuses the government of keeping the mechanisms used to deport people “shrouded in secrecy”.Trump has pledged to begin deporting millions of people despite the legal, financial, economic and human rights implications, also confirming today that he would be prepared to shred norms and harness the US military to enforce his policy, despite the threat to democracy and due process.As the Trump administration continues to take form, the field of potential appointees to lead the treasury department has widened to include Marc Rowan who founded and runs one of the nation’s largest public equity firms, and Kevin Warsh a central banker who from 2006 to 2011 served as a governor for the Federal Reserve, Reuters reports.Two others in the running for the seat are Scott Bessent, the founder of the capital management firm Key Square who has said he wants the US dollar to remain the world’s reserve currency and use tariffs as a negotiating tactic, and Howard Lutnick who leads Cantor Fitzgerald.Trump ally Elon Musk publicly threw his support behind Lutnick in a post on X that argues that Lutnick “will actually enact change”.A lawyer who is representing two women who gave testimony to the ethics committee of the House of Representatives investigating Matt Gaetz has said in an interview that the former congressman paid the women to have sex with him.The two women were adults at the time but also told lawmakers that she witnessed Gaetz having sex with a 17-year-old at the same party she attended, ABC News reported.Gaetz resigned from his position as a Republican representative for Florida last week immediately on being nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to become US attorney general. That immediately shut down the congressional investigation and, despite pressure, the House has not yet agreed to release the report of the investigation to the public or the US Senate, the body that will have the job of confirming Gaetz’s appointment.Florida-based lawyer Joel Leppard spoke to ABC News earlier today.“Just to be clear, both of your clients testified that they were paid by [then] Representative Gaetz to have sex?” interviewer Juju Chang asked Leppard.“That’s correct. The House was very clear about that and went through each. They essentially put the Venmo payments on the screen and asked about them. And my clients repeatedly testified, ‘What was this payment for?’ ‘That was for sex,’” Leppard told Chang.One of the clients, Leppard said, also told the House committee that at the party she was at in July 2017 as she went to the pool area she saw Gaetz having sex with a friend of hers, who was 17.Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing throughout various investigations into his behavior amid allegations of sexual misconduct. The names of Leppard’s clients have not been disclosed.Donald Trump appears to be planning to attend a SpaceX Starship rocket launch tomorrow, in the latest indication of influence of the company’s founder, Elon Musk, on the president-elect and his orbit.The Federal Aviation Administration has issued temporary flight restrictions over the area of Brownsville and Boca Chica, at the eastern end of the Texas-Mexico border, for a VIP visit that coincides with the SpaceX launch window for a test of its massive Starship rocket from its launch facility on the Gulf of Mexico, the Associated Press reports.Tuesday’s 30-minute launch window opens at 4pm central time (5pm ET), according to the company, with the company again looking to test the landing capture system of the booster in Texas, which it debuted last month and about which Trump has been complimentary, while the upper stage continues to a splashdown in the Indian Ocean.Musk pumped an estimated $200m through his political action committee to help elect Trump.The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit a little earlier today seeking basic details on how the federal government would carry out a program to deport millions of people from the US, which President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to begin on “day one” of his new administration.As part of the federal action, the ACLU demanded to be given information about the government’s current relationships with, for example, private airlines, ground transportation facilities and other elements that would be involved in arranging deportation flights for undocumented people. The lawsuit was first reported by the Washington Post this afternoon.The suit was filed in Los Angeles by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California and accuses the government of keeping the mechanisms used to deport people “shrouded in secrecy”.Trump has pledged to begin deporting millions of people despite the legal, financial, economic and human rights implications, also confirming today that he would be prepared to shred norms and harness the US military to enforce his policy, despite the threat to democracy and due process.Mikie Sherrill has represented New Jersey’s 11th District, which includes parts of Essex, Morris and Passaic counties, since her 2018 election during president-elect Donald Trump’s first administration’s midterm. Sherrill flipped the district from Republican control with former Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen’s retirement and has been reelected three times since.Before getting elected to Congress, she was a prosecutor for the US attorney for the district of New Jersey. She served in the Navy from 1994 to 2003, the AP writes.Sherrill joins fellow Democratic US House member Josh Gottheimer, who announced his run for governor last week. Also seeking the Democratic nod are Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, Jersey City mayor Steven Fulop, teachers union president Sean Spiller and former state Senate President Steve Sweeney.Republicans are also lining up to run. Among them are state senator Jon Bramnick, former state legislator Jack Ciattarelli, former state senator Ed Durr and radio host Bill Spadea.New Jersey Democratic congresswoman Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey has announced today that she’s running for governor, saying it’s time to fix the state’s economy and make it more affordable.Sherrill, a former federal prosecutor and US Navy helicopter pilot, joins a crowded field of Democrats vying to succeed Democratic governor Phil Murphy, whose second term expires after next year’s election. Murphy is barred by term limits from running again, the Associated Press reports.In a video announcing her run, Sherrill introduced herself as a US Naval Academy graduate and chopper pilot and leaned on her military experience.
      I learned early on: In a crisis, the worst thing you can do is freeze. You have to choose to lead, to follow, or get out of the way.”
      She went on to say in the video that the state’s economy needs to be fixed.
      “Let’s make life more affordable for hardworking New Jerseyans, from health care to groceries to childcare. These challenges aren’t new and it’s time to confront them head on.”
      Tom Fitton, the president of the influential conservative group Judicial Watch, has had a little more to say today, after his social media post prompted Donald Trump this morning to confirm that he is prepared to utilize the US military to conduct mass deportations when he takes office.Fitton popped up on the hard-right Newsmax cable channel a little earlier. He said that his social media post that Trump 2.0 would be prepared to declare a national emergency in order to use military assets was not derived from any insider knowledge but just from stories that were around. Trump has caused a stir by reposting the message today with the endorsement “True!”He told Newsmax: “Does anyone dispute the invasion is not a national emergency? It’s got to be a whole government approach.”Rightwingers such as Fitton, Trump and Texas’s anti-immigration hardline governor, Greg Abbott, often invoke an “invasion” of undocumented people seeking refuge in the US and crossing the border from Mexico without authorization as and invasion.“They cut the line and they need to be sent home,” he said.The House ethics committee is reportedly set to meet on Wednesday to discuss its report into Matt Gaetz, according to NBC News.The committee has been looking into allegations that Gaetz engaged in sexual misconduct, illicit drug use and other ethical breaches.Last week, Gaetz was nominated by president-elect Donald Trump to serve as his Attorney General. Gaetz then resigned from the House of Representatives, which effectively ended the ethics inquiry.The news of the meeting on Wednesday comes as an increasing number of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have said that they would like to review the Ethics committee report.Eric Hovde, the Republican Senate candidate in Wisconsin, has conceded the race to Democratic incumbent Tammy Baldwin in a video message.In the message, Hovde, who lost to Baldwin by about 29,000 votes, said that he would not request a recount of the vote but expressed concerns about the election process and alleged “many troubling issues” related to absentee ballots in Milwaukee.His claims of impropriety have been refuted by Republicans, Democrats and non-partisan election leaders.In the video message Hovde said that “without a detailed review of all the ballots and their legitimacy, which will be difficult to obtain in the courts, a request for a recount would serve no purpose, because you will just be recounting the same ballots, regardless of their integrity”.The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, said that the process of selecting someone to fill Florida senator Marco Rubio’s seat has begun and that a selection will likely be made by the beginning of January.In a statement on Monday, DeSantis said that Rubio is expected to resign from the Senate to assume duties as secretary of state when the Trump administration takes power on January 20th.Under Florida law, DeSantis is tasked with appointing Rubio’s successor.“We have already received strong interest from several possible candidates, and we continue to gather names of additional candidates and conduct preliminary vetting” DeSantis said. “More extensive vetting and candidate interviews will be conducted over the next few weeks.”

      Donald Trump gave the nod on social media this morning to the notion that he wants to use the military to enforce his previously-stated intentions for the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants from the US once he gets into office.

      Conservative strategist Steve Bannon was due to go to trial next month on state charges in New York of conspiring to dupe donors to build a border wall but a judge said this morning that Bannon won’t face trial until February.

      There are reports of clashes among top Trump insiders over leadership picks.

      According to reports, Linda McMahon, a former Small Business Administration (SBA) director, is expected to be announced as Trump’s secretary of commerce.

      Trump picked Brendan Carr, Project 2025 co-author, to lead FCC as speculation over treasury secretary appointment mounts.
      Steve Bannon did not turn up in person to attend the latest hearing in his court case in New York City today, on state charges of conspiring to dupe donors to build a wall on the US-Mexico border.Instead, he listened in virtually as the judge, April Newbauer, set 25 February for jury selection, postponing it from December.Bannon did not speak except to say, “yes, ma’am” when asked whether he understood he must be in court on the new date, the Associated Press reported.The judge delayed the trial date from 9 December after deciding to let the future jurors hear evidence that some of the wall charity’s money went to pay a more than $600,000 credit card debt that a separate Bannon-related not-for-profit organization had racked up in 2019.Prosecutors wanted to introduce it and defense lawyers argued unsuccessfully that it was irrelevant.Bannon denies the charges, including conspiracy and money laundering. Manhattan prosecutors brought the case after Donald Trump pardoned Bannon in a similar federal prosecution that was in its early stages, where Bannon had denied pocketing over $1m from the We Build the Wall outfit.Newbauer has yet to rule on whether jurors’ names will be kept confidential, as the prosecution has requested. More

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      Trump advisers contemplating cuts to Medicaid and other welfare programs

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      Donald Trump’s economic advisers and congressional Republicans are discussing possible cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and other government welfare programmes to cover the costs of extending the president-elect’s multitrillion-dollar 2017 tax cut.The cuts could mean new work requirements and spending caps, according to the Washington Post, citing sources involved in the talks, including aides in Trump’s transition team.Extending the tax cuts – most of which are due to expire next year – could add $4tn to the national debt, which already stands at $36tn.But Republicans fear triggering a political backlash by slashing programmes that serve an estimated 70 million Americans to pay for a tax cut that disproportionately benefits the wealthy.The 2017 tax cuts were criticised for being skewed in favour of the rich, with households in the top 1% income bracket receiving a reduction of $60,000 in 2025, compared with less than $500 for those in the bottom 60%, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.Trump campaigned on extending the 2017 reduction while also vowing to abolish taxes on tips for restaurant workers.Republicans support the extension but worry that the loss of revenue could add to government borrowing – prompting them to search for savings in others areas.In addition to safety net programme cuts, some Republicans are considering re-purposing clean energy funds passed by Democrats.The GOP has warned that the costs of Medicaid – whose claimants can include low-income people, newborns, people who are blind or disabled, and those suffering from certain illnesses – has ballooned with the expansion of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.Jodey Arrington, the chair of the House of Representatives’ budget committee, told reporters that a “responsible and reasonable work requirement” could save $100bn in Medicaid costs, while another $160bn could be cut by checking eligibility more than once a year.The Paragon Health Institute, a rightwing thinktank, published a study in the summer proposing other reductions that it said could save $500bn over a decade. It said rule changes to Medicaid recently enacted over the past year by the Biden administration could cost up to $135bn nationally and between $46.3bn and $82.3bn at state level over the next five years.Alterations to food stamps – officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – could take the form of limiting which items recipients can purchase with benefits or broadening work requirements. The latter proposal was floated in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint for radically overhauling US government.Qualifying criteria are tailored to assist the poorest households, with eligibility determined by income and household size. A single person with no dependents needs to be earning less than $1,354 a month to qualify. A household with two or more people but earning $1,800 per month would also be eligible.The projected cuts to welfare entitlement programmes come as the Republicans prepare to control the White House and both chambers of Congress following this month’s election.It also coincides with Trump’s choice of Elon Musk, the Tesla and Space X entrepreneur, to head a newly formed Department of Government Efficiency along with Vivek Ramaswamy, his former Republican primary opponent, with the brief of slashing waste from federal spending. Musk has spoken of making around $2tn in spending cuts.The US is currently running a budget deficit at around 6% of its gross domestic product. The national debt held by the public is currently worth around 97% of the national economy.The non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has argued that, without major spending reductions, the deficit would widen significantly in the next 10 years, while the US national debt could soar to 143% of the economy. More

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      How Trump 2.0 might affect the wildfire crisis: ‘The harms will be more lasting’

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      In the days that followed Donald Trump’s election win, flames roared through southern California neighborhoods. On the other side of the country, wildfire smoke clouded the skies in New York and New Jersey.They were haunting reminders of a stark reality: while Trump prepares to take office for a second term, the complicated, and escalating, wildfire crisis will be waiting.As the climate crisis unfolds, communities across the country are spending seasons under smoke-filled skies. Federal firefighters are overworked and underpaid, the cost of fire suppression has climbed, and millions of people are at risk of losing their insurance. Landscapes and homes alike have been reduced to ash as the world continues to warm.The president-elect has offered few plans to address the emergency. Instead, he’s promised to deliver a wave of deregulation, cripple climate-supporting agencies, and clear departments of logistical experts relied upon during disasters.His allies, including the authors of Project 2025, a conservative playbook for a second Trump administration, have recommended privatizing parts of the federal government that now serve the public good.In the past week, Trump’s announcements for key cabinet nominations has already shown he’s begun to solidify an anti-science agenda.“Whatever happens at a broad scale is going to affect our ability to manage risks, respond to emergencies, and plan for the future, “ said University of California climate scientist Daniel Swain. “I don’t see any way there won’t be huge effects.”Here are the challenges ahead:Setting the stakesLooking back at his first term, Trump had a poor record managing large wildfire emergencies – and he had many opportunities. After presiding over the response to destructive blazes that left a devastating toll, including the Camp fire that claimed the lives of 85 people in and around the town of Paradise, in 2020 he told a crowd in Pennsylvania that high-risk fire states such as California, and their residents, were to blame.“I said you gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests – there are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they’re like, like, so flammable, you touch them and it goes up,” he said. That year, a record 10.2m acres were charred across the US.In a signal of how politicized disaster management in the Trump era became, he added: “Maybe we’re just going to have to make them pay for it because they don’t listen to us.”Such comments raised fears among experts and officials working to protect these landscapes and the neighborhoods near them that Trump didn’t understand the magnitude of the risks US forests faced.He’s been unwilling to embrace the strategies that the scientists and landscape managers recommend to help keep catastrophic fire in check, including a delicate and tailored approach to removing vegetation in overgrown forests, protecting old-growth stands, and following those treatments with prescribed burning.The risks and challenges have only intensified since his first term.Some in the wildfire response communities are hopeful that Trump will cut red tape that’s slowed progress on important forest treatments, but others have highlighted a blunt approach could do more harm than good.Many have voiced concerns over ambitions set out in Project 2025 to curb prescribed burning in favor of increasing timber sales.Meanwhile, federal firefighters are waiting to see whether Trump and a Republican-led Congress will secure long-overdue pay raises.The US Forest Service (USFS), the largest employer of federal firefighters, has seen an exodus of emergency responders over abysmally low pay and gaps in support for the unsustainable and dangerous work they do.Federal firefighters who spend weeks at a time on the fireline and rack up thousands of hours in overtime each summer, make far less than their state- and city-employed counterparts with paychecks that rival those of fast-food employees. That exodus has hampered its ability to keep pace with the year-round firefighting needs.“Doing less with your resources makes a task like fire suppression and fuels management extremely more challenging,” said Jonathan Golden, legislative director of the advocacy group Grassroots Wildland Firefighters.Joe Biden facilitated a temporary pay raise for federal wildland firefighters, but those expire at the end of the year. With Trump promising large cuts to federal budgets and the bureaucrats who operate them, many fear the Republican leadership in Congress won’t push the legislation needed to ensure these essential emergency responders keep their raise.If the pay raises are allowed to expire, many more federal firefighters will walk out the door – right when they are needed most.“The job isn’t going to get any easier,” Golden said. “My hope is that we continue to have a well-staffed and well-funded professional workforce that can answer the call year-round – because that’s what is required.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEmergencies on the riseBillion-dollar weather and climate disasters are on the rise. There was a historic number in the US in 2023 with a total of 28 – surpassing the previous record of 22 in 2022. With more than a month left, there have already been 24 this year.Trump has a history of stalling in the aftermath of natural disasters, opting instead to put a political spin on who receives aid. For wildfires during his first term, that meant threatening California and other Democratic-majority states with delayed or withheld funding to punish them for their political leanings.This time, some fear he may also reduce the amount of aid provided by Fema. Project 2025 has called for a shift in emergency spending, putting the “majority of preparedness and response costs to states and localities instead of the federal government” and either eliminating or armoring grants that fund preparedness to push Trump’s political agenda.The framework advises the next president to remove all unions from the department and only give Fema grants to states, localities and private organizations who “can show that their mission and actions support the broader homeland security mission”, including the deportation of undocumented people.These tactics could hamper both preparedness and recovery from wildfires and other disasters, especially in high-risk blue states such as California and others across the west.The administration has also been advised by Project 2025 authors to dismantle or severely hamper the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, whose forecasting has been essential to warn when dangerous weather arises, and remove all mention of the climate crisis in federal rhetoric and research.Trump’s picks of a former congressman Lee Zeldin to head the Environmental Protection Agency and North Dakota governor Doug Burgum as the Department of Interior secretary – two agencies deeply connected to US climate policy – indicate his strong skepticism of the climate crisis. Zeldin and Burgum have clear directives to oversee rampant deregulation and expedite extraction on public lands.“Folks at federal agencies are already being gently advised to think about the language they use to describe things,” Swain said. He thinks the effects will be far-reaching, especially when it comes to wildfire preparedness and response. Disabling science and weather-focused agencies could reduce important intel that responders rely on, reduce nimbleness and hamper efforts to plan into the future.“A lot of people are thinking this is going to be the second coming of the first Trump administration and I don’t think it’s the right way to be thinking about it,” Swain said.“This time, it’s highly plausible that the disruption and the harms will be a lot deeper and more lasting – it will be much harder to reverse.”Big picture problemsEven before Trump retook the White House, the US was missing the mark on its ambitious climate goals. But scientists and experts have offered clear warnings about how Trump’s policies could accelerate dire outcomes.“Climate change is a huge crisis and we don’t have time to spare,” said Julia Stein, deputy director of the Emmett Institute on climate change and the environment at the UCLA School of Law.Stein pointed to the potential for many of these policies to be challenged in court, much like they were the first time around. States such as California, which is also home to one of the world’s largest economies to back it, are already preparing to challenge Trump’s policies. The directives of the first Trump administration were often legally vulnerable, Stein said, and she thinks they might be again this time around, especially if he attempts to rid the agencies of career bureaucrats and their deep knowledge of how things work.In a state where wildfires are always a risk, California is also bolstering its own approach, doubling down on landscape treatments and investing in preparation, mitigation, and response according to Stein, who noted the $10bn climate bond just passed by voters there that will go toward wildfire prevention and mitigation.Still, fires don’t recognize borders. The threats continue to push into areas that aren’t accustomed to them, and larger swaths of the country will be forced to grapple with smoke. Without partners in federal agencies that manage lands across the US, states will struggle to address the mounting challenges on their own.“Continuing to enforce those laws in California will blunt some of the impact for Californians,” she said. “The unfortunate thing – especially when it comes to climate change – there are going to be national and global consequences for inaction at the federal level.” More

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      Here’s how to mitigate some of Trump’s most dangerous foreign policy instincts | Kenneth Roth

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      The nightmare has arrived. Trump’s “America First” norm-flouting was bad enough the last time around, when a collection of traditional Republicans in senior positions moderated his worst impulses. No such grown-ups are expected to return.Our only hope may be that Trump no longer must worry about re-election. Instead of pandering to – and promoting – the worst instincts of his base, Trump, long preoccupied by his image, may begin to contemplate his legacy. Will history mock or admire him? The greater his concern with his lasting reputation, the better our chances of averting disaster.Ukraine illustrates the choices ahead. Does Trump really want to be known as the Neville Chamberlain of the 21st century, appeasing a brutal tyrant in the naive hope that he will be sated with a single gulp of ill-gotten territory?For reasons that are not wholly understood, Trump has long harbored an unseemly admiration for Vladimir Putin. Trump is likely to stop sending arms to Ukraine and to insist that Kyiv settle for at best a frozen conflict, in effect ceding its occupied eastern territory to Russia. But with Trump in the White House, Putin is likely to want more.Behind Putin’s self-serving rhetoric about denazifying Ukraine is a desire to de-democratize it. A democratic Ukraine on Russia’s border is a constant reminder to the Russian people of the freedoms that Putin’s dictatorship denies them. He wants another Belarus.No amount of strongman-admiration on Trump’s part will overcome the Ukrainian people’s refusal to become another Kremlin vassal state. Nor will it avoid Ukraine’s understandable distrust of Putin and insistence on western security guarantees if there is to be any formal accord. Trump as Chamberlain would be indifferent to Kyiv’s pleas. A Trump sensitive to his place in history might be more accommodating.Moreover, a humiliating surrender for Ukraine would hardly go unnoticed in Beijing. Trump might try to spin it as enabling greater focus on China, which he rightly sees as a threat, but Xi Jinping is likely to read it as a lack of resolve. If Trump will not defend an aspiring democracy on the threshold of the European Union, why would he prevent Beijing from incorporating Taiwan by threatened or actual force? Even close American allies such as Japan and South Korea would quickly recalibrate their need to accommodate Beijing. Is that what Trump wants to be remembered for?Trump mainly sees China as a commercial threat. Having hiked tariffs during his last presidency (Joe Biden maintained them), Trump now threatens to substantially increase them. He laughably claims that China would pay for the tariffs, ignoring the near-universal view of economists that the cost would be passed on to American consumers.Trump contends that tariffs would force more manufacturing to US soil, but a battle of tit-for-tat tariffs would more immediately fuel inflation. During the campaign, Trump played on many Americans’ mistaken tendency to equate higher prices from past inflation with ongoing inflation, but they would soon appreciate the difference as prices again soared.Biden showed the way toward a smarter trade policy – one built on common values rather than mere competition – that Trump would be wise to continue and expand. Beyond subsidies, many Chinese producers exploit Beijing’s use of Uyghur forced labor, especially in China’s north-west province of Xinjiang. That forced labor infects exports of cotton, tomatoes, aluminum and, significantly, polysilicon, the building block of China’s corner-the-market solar panels.Both the US government and the European Union claim to oppose importing the product of forced labor, but only the United States has created a legislative presumption against any imports from Xinjiang without proof that forced labor was not involved – proof that is impossible to obtain given China’s opaque supply chains. The EU never adopted that presumption, so imports from Xinjiang have surged, while US imports have diminished.A smart policy on trade with China would push the EU to adopt a similar presumption. Trump should also have US customs officials pay more attention to Beijing’s subterfuges, such as shipping from Xinjiang via other parts of China or even third countries to avoid the presumption.Israel’s war in Gaza will demand a rethink from Trump. During his first term, he gave Benjamin Netanyahu whatever he wanted, from recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital to greenlighting rapid expansion of Israel’s illegal (war-crime) settlements and refusing to call Palestinian land “occupied”. Now, Trump says that Biden has imposed too many restraints on the Israeli prime minister – by pushing him to stop bombing and starving Palestinian civilians – even though Biden refused to use the leverage of conditioning US arms sales and military aid to enforce those demands. Trump wants to let Israel “finish the job”, ideally quickly, and told Netanyahu to “do what you have to do”.But an unrestrained Netanyahu might heed the calls of his rightwing ministers to force the mass deportation of the Palestinians of Gaza to Egypt – a trip that, like the Nakba of 1948, is likely to be one-way. That would outrage the world and almost surely yield additional war-crime charges from the international criminal court (ICC).During Trump’s last term, he disgracefully imposed sanctions on the prior ICC prosecutor for opening investigations that could implicate Israeli officials in Palestinian territory as well as US torturers under George W Bush in Afghanistan. Biden lifted those sanctions, and even mainstream Republicans warmed to the court after its prosecutor charged Putin with war crimes in Ukraine. If Trump were to revive sanctions, he would virtually invite the prosecutor to abandon political restraints that keep him from charging senior US officials (soon, including Trump) for aiding and abetting Israeli war crimes in Gaza.Trump’s desire to expand the Abraham Accords, perhaps the most visible foreign policy achievement of his first term, will also founder without a tougher approach to Israel. Although the Saudi crown prince is notoriously indifferent to the plight of Palestinians, Saudi public opinion has forced him to announce that, however much he wants the carrot of US security guarantees against Iran, he will not normalize relations with Israel without a firm path to a Palestinian state. That is anathema to the Israeli government. Trump must decide whether to abandon his reflexive support for Israel in favor of a deal that would indeed be historic.A similar dilemma faces Trump on Iran. His ripping up of Barack Obama’s nuclear deal has put the clerics just a few short steps from a nuclear bomb. Netanyahu is itching for Trump to join him in a military attack on Iran’s nuclear program, but that would risk involving American forces in a regional war that Trump wants to avoid. It would also endanger the Gulf states’ oil supplies, fueling inflation. And it would only encourage Iran to obtain a ready-made nuclear weapon from, say, North Korea. Is that what Trump wants?More broadly, Trump needs to decide whether to continue his professed admiration for the world’s autocrats. He seems to relish their ability to act without the impediments of democratic checks and balances that so frustrated him during his first term.But the autocrats have learned to play him. Trump can hardly trumpet his artful dealmaking when word is out that a round of calculated fawning is all it takes to manipulate his fragile ego. Will Trump be known for dispensing with the national interest in his quest for the sugar high of flattery? Despite his transactional, go-it-alone tendencies, even Trump might come to appreciate how few friends he has if he stands for little beyond a quest for praise.Trump might even reconsider his instinctive opposition to multilateral endeavors. Biden, sadly, has already done him the favor of abandoning the US seat on the UN human rights council. But does Trump really want to defund the World Health Organization again when it is the frontline for our defense against the next pandemic, whether bird flu, mpox, antimicrobial resistance or something as yet unidentified? Does he really want to continue treating climate change as a “hoax” as severe weather decimates the homes of his supporters?On migration, Trump’s threat to deport millions of undocumented immigrants would cost billions, create labor shortages that fuel inflation and separate millions of US-citizen children from one or both parents. Yet with the need for an election issue behind him, he could negotiate long-awaited comprehensive legislation that would bolster border enforcement, fund the asylum system to reduce backlogs and introduce a statute of limitations that exempts longtime residents (who, despite his racist claims, typically have families, jobs and constructive lives in America) from the threat of deportation.I recognize this may all be wishful thinking. Trump may be too self-absorbed to think beyond the self-gratification of the moment. But if he has a shred of mental space left to worry about his legacy, that may be our best bet to salvage a potentially disastrous presidency – for America and the world.

      Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch from 1993 to 2022, is a visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs 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