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

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

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

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

      Samuel Alito, a long-serving conservative justice on the supreme court, has no plans to step down, the Wall Street Journal reported. If he changes his mind, Trump and the Republican-controlled Senate could confirm a replacement and likely prolong the court’s conservative supermajority.

      Trump will reportedly oppose a US law that could lead to popular social media app TikTok being banned, despite bipartisan support for the measure.

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

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      Trump reportedly picks Kristi Noem to run homeland security department

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      Donald Trump has picked the South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem, to serve as the next secretary of the homeland security department, US media reported on Tuesday, in a further sign of his determination to launch a no-holds-barred crackdown on immigration.Noem’s pending nomination was reported by CNN and NBC, which said it had confirmed it with four sources.She is the third anti-immigration hardliner in two days to be chosen to be part of the president-elect’s administration after he clinched a return to the White House in the 5 November election.Tom Holman, a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has been selected to fill the role of border czar. And Stephen Miller, an adviser and speech writer in Trump’s first presidency, is expected to become deputy chief of staff, responsible for policy.The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is responsible for everything from border protection and immigration to disaster response and the US Secret Service.Noem’s selection is an apparent reward for being one of the most vocal communicators of Trump’s immigration policy during the election campaign, often voicing uncompromising rhetoric that echoed his.It is also a statement of confidence in her being stern enough to help oversee Trump’s planned mass deportation of 11 million undocumented immigrants, a priority he has vowed to address as soon as he takes office.Last January, in a speech to a joint sitting of South Dakota’s legislature that she requested following a visit to the southern border, she said the US was “in a time of invasion”.“The invasion is coming over our southern border,” she said. “The 50 states have a common enemy, and that enemy is the Mexican drug cartels. They are waging war against our nation, and these cartels are perpetuating violence in each of our states, even right here in South Dakota.”She offered to send razor wire and agents to help shore up the border.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHer posture ingratiated her with Trump even while he removed her from the running as a possible vice-presidential candidate after an outcry over her admission in a book she published last May that she once shot a pet dog, as well as a family goat.In the book, titled No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward, Noem recounted shooting the dog, Cricket, after it attacked chickens belonging to a family she stopped to talk to.She wrote that she included the story to show that she was prepared to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly”, in politics and in life, if necessary. She said she “hated” the dog.Yet the tale provoked an angry backlash that seemed to have damaged Noem’s political prospects but for Trump’s victory.She also aroused the anger of Indigenous tribes in her own state after suggesting that tribal leaders benefited from Latin American drug cartels. She was banned from seven of nine tribal reservations – amounting to one-fifth of South Dakota’s territory – over the remarks.But while her vice-presidential hopes took a nose dive, Trump apparently kept faith with Noem, who occasionally accompanied him on the campaign trail.She shared the stage with him and acted as a moderator in October at one of his most unusual campaign events, a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania at which he stopped taking questions after two attenders fainted and ordered some of his favourite songs to be played, while he – and Noem – swayed along.Both Trump’s campaign and Noem’s office did not respond to requests for comments outside regular business hours.

      Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Trump builds hawkish team with Rubio and Waltz tipped for top jobs

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      Donald Trump has chosen a pair of establishment Republicans from Florida for senior roles in his administration as he builds a national security team that looks more hawkish than the isolationist America First brand of foreign policy that he has championed in public.Trump was expected to select the senator Marco Rubio as his secretary of state, the US’s top diplomat, and has asked the congressman Mike Waltz, a retired Green Beret known as a China hawk, to become his national security adviser, a powerful role that would help shape his policies on the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as around the world.Rubio is a noted foreign policy hawk with hardline policies on China, Iran, and on Venezuela, where he has led US efforts to unseat the president, Nicolás Maduro. He was one of the earliest China hawks in Washington, where Beijing is now viewed with extreme scepticism by both parties, and has served as a co-chair of the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China.On Ukraine he is likely to tailor his views to Trump’s and those around him, including Elon Musk and Donald Trump Jr, who have voiced sharp criticism of continued funding for Ukraine’s defence against the Russian invasion. Rubio was one of 15 Republican lawmakers to vote against a $61bn supplemental aid bill in the Senate earlier this year that led to a months-long delay of crucial funding for the Ukrainian military.Rubio said earlier this month on national television: “I think the Ukrainians have been incredibly brave and strong in standing up to Russia. But at the end of the day what we are funding here is a stalemate war, and it needs to be brought to a conclusion, or that country is going to be set back 100 years.”Rubio, whom Trump nicknamed “Little Marco” during his first presidential run, has gone from a regular target of Trump’s insults to a loyal surrogate to the Republican president-elect.Trump had regularly denigrated him in the past as a member of the Republican establishment, calling him a “puppet” and saying he was a “nervous basket case”. But he has been in lockstep with Trump during the campaign and has worked with Democrats and fellow Republicans in the Senate foreign relations committee and intelligence committee, making it likely he will have an easy confirmation process in that body.That stands in sharp relief to a reported rival for the role of secretary of state, Ric Grenell, Trump’s former acting director of national intelligence and ambassador to Germany, who has proven himself as a loyalist but was known in Washington and Europe as combative and would have faced a tough confirmation process.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWaltz, Trump’s choice for national security adviser, has argued that Trump should move quickly to end the wars in Gaza and Ukraine in order to transfer US focus and military assets back to the Indo-Pacific region and counter China.Those policies dovetail with Trump’s isolationist tendencies in terms of seeking a speedy resolution to the war in Ukraine, even if it is achieved by forcing Ukraine to make concessions to Russia.“Supporting Ukraine for ‘as long as it takes’ in a war of attrition against a larger power is a recipe for failure,” Waltz and a co-author, Matthew Kroenig, wrote in an op-ed for the Economist this year. “The next administration should aim, as Donald Trump has argued, to ‘end the war and stop the killing’.” They said the US should use economic leverage on energy sales to “bring Mr Putin to the table”.“If he refuses to talk, Washington can, as Mr Trump argued, provide more weapons to Ukraine with fewer restrictions on their use,” they continued. “Faced with this pressure, Mr Putin will probably take the opportunity to wind the conflict down.”With regards to Israel’s war in Gaza, the pair appeared ready to give Benjamin Netanyahu carte blanche to “let Israel finish the job”, as Trump has said. They also suggested launching a “diplomatic and economic pressure campaign to stop [Iran] and to constrain their support for terror proxies”.“Washington should maintain a military presence in the region, but with the war in Gaza and Lebanon concluded, it can transfer critical capabilities back to the Indo-Pacific,” they wrote. More

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      Trump expected to appoint China critics Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz

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      President-elect Donald Trump has reportedly decided to appoint the prominent China hawks Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz as his respective secretary of state and national security adviser.Rubio was arguably the most hawkish option on Trump’s shortlist for secretary of state, and he has in past years advocated for a muscular foreign policy with respect to America’s geopolitical foes, including China, Iran and Cuba.Over the past several years the Florida senator has softened some of his stances to align more closely with Trump’s views. The president-elect accuses past US presidents of leading America into costly and futile wars and has pushed for a more restrained foreign policy.A failed challenger to Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, Rubio had been rumored to be one of the leading contenders for Trump’s vice-presidential pick before JD Vance was announced.Since his failed run for president, Rubio has served as an informal foreign policy adviser and helped Trump prepare for his first debate against Biden in 2020.Trump has not confirmed the planned appointment, which was first reported by the New York Times. If confirmed, Rubio would be the first Latino to serve as America’s top diplomat once the Republican president-elect takes office in January.While the famously mercurial Trump could always change his mind at the last minute, he appeared to have settled on his pick as of Monday, sources told Reuters.While Rubio was far from the most isolationist option, his likely selection nonetheless underlines a broad shift in Republican foreign policy views under Trump.Once the party of hawks who advocated military intervention and a muscular foreign policy, most of Trump’s allies now preach restraint, particularly in Europe, where many Republicans complain US allies are not paying their fair share on defense.“I’m not on Russia’s side – but unfortunately the reality of it is that the way the war in Ukraine is going to end is with a negotiated settlement,” Rubio told NBC in September.Waltz, a Republican congressman and Trump loyalist who served in the national guard as a colonel, has criticized Chinese activity in the Asia-Pacific and voiced the need for the US to be ready for a potential conflict in the region.Last week, Waltz won re-election to the US House seat representing east-central Florida, which includes Daytona Beach. He defeated the Democrat James Stockton, a pastor and former president of a local NAACP branch.Waltz is a combat-decorated Green Beret and a former White House and Pentagon policy adviser. He was first elected in 2018, replacing the Republican Ron DeSantis, who ran for governor, in Florida’s sixth congressional district.Waltz served multiple combat tours in Afghanistan, and he was awarded four Bronze Stars. He was one of the lawmakers appointed in July to serve on a bipartisan congressional taskforce to investigate the attempted assassination of Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July.After Waltz left the US army, he worked in the Pentagon in the George W Bush administration as policy director for former defense secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates.Under the former vice-president Dick Cheney, Waltz served as a counter-terrorism adviser.In 2021, after Joe Biden ordered a chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan, Waltz asked Biden to reverse course and relaunch military operations in the region. The war in Afghanistan began under Bush after the 11 September 2001 attacks.The Intercept reported that before his run for Congress in 2018 Waltz managed a lucrative defense contracting firm with offices in Afghanistan.Waltz has consistently expressed the need for protecting the Afghan people, saying that US “soldiers will have to go back”. Government reports have stated that US nation-building efforts resulted in the deaths of more than 48,000 civilians and 66,000 Afghan police and military, and widespread torture.In other developments on Trump’s appointments, the governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, has been picked to become the next secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, CNN reported on Tuesday, citing two sources.Earlier this year, Noem was widely seen as a potential presidential running mate for Trump. She lost out after recycling a two-decade-old story designed to illustrate decisive leadership that involved her shooting dead a puppy that did not hunt and had bitten members of her family.Reuters contributed to this report More

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      Trump to name immigration hardliner Stephen Miller as deputy chief of policy

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      Donald Trump is expected to announce that he will appoint immigration hardliner and close adviser, Stephen Miller, as his White House deputy chief of staff for policy.Miller worked in the White House during the president-elect’s first administration, serving as a senior adviser to Trump and as director of speechwriting. He played a key role in developing several of Trump’s immigration policies, including the Muslim travel ban and the family separation policy.Although Trump has not officially announced the appointment yet, CNN reported the news earlier on Monday, citing two sources familiar with the matter, and later on Monday, JD Vance appeared to confirm the report in a post on X, where he congratulated Miller.“This is another fantastic pick by the president. Congrats @StephenM!” the vice-president-elect said.It had been expected that Miller would take on an expanded role in Trump’s second term if the former president won the 2024 election, and assist him in carrying out his mass deportation plan for millions of undocumented migrants in the US.Miller has been a frequent presence during Trump’s 2024 campaign, according to the Associated Press, often traveling with him and speaking ahead of Trump at his rallies.Miller is also known for his extremist rhetoric. He spoke at Trump’s infamous Madison Square Garden rally, where he told the crowd that “America is for Americans and Americans only” and promised to “restore America to the true Americans”.In an interview with the New York Times last year, Miller also outlined plans in the event that Trump was re-elected, to restrict legal and illegal immigration. The plans included rounding up undocumented immigrants in the US and detaining them in camps while they await expulsion.Over the years, reports have alleged that during Trump’s administration, Miller had advocated for blowing up migrants with drones – which he has denied – and that he suggested sending 250,000 US troops to the southern border.In 2019, after the US raid killed the Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, it was alleged by Mark Esper, the former defense secretary, that Miller had proposed beheading al-Baghdadi, dipping the head in pig’s blood and parading it around “to warn other terrorists”. Miller also denied this, and called Esper a “moron”.That same year, Miller was found to have promoted white nationalist views in emails sent to rightwing journalists. This led a number of Democrats to call on him to resign and more 50 civil rights groups penned a letter to Trump, urging him to fire Miller.“Stephen Miller has stoked bigotry, hate and division with his extreme political rhetoric and policies throughout his career,” the letter stated. “The recent exposure of his deep-seated racism provides further proof that he is unfit to serve and should immediately leave his post.”After the Trump presidency ended, Miller founded the non-profit America First Legal Foundation, which he described as the right’s “long-awaited answer” to the American Civil Liberties Union.Over the years, the group has launched more than 100 legal actions against Democratic policies and what it sees as “woke corporations” such as Disney, Nike and more, according to the New York Times.It was also reported last year that Miller’s legal group also had a board seat with Project 2025, the controversial policy effort led by the Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups, to roadmap rightwing policy plans for a second Trump term.Project 2025, a document which consists of more than 900 pages, outlines plans and strategies on how Trump and his allies could dismantle the US government. The plans include shrinking environmental protections, the replacement of civil servants with Trump loyalists, the elimination of the the education department, the reduction of LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights and more.In 2022, Miller reportedly testified to the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection on the US Capitol, where he was asked about whether Trump encouraged his supporters to march on the Capitol that day.Miller reportedly defended Trump, stating that his use of the word “we” in his remarks outside the Capitol that day was not an effort to incite the crowd to storm the Capitol, but rather a rhetorical device used in political speeches for decades.In April this year, Axios reported that Miller was helping to drive a plan to tackle supposed “anti-white racism” if Trump was re-elected.The Axios report stated that if Trump returned to the White House, Miller and other aides planned to “dramatically change the government’s interpretation of civil rights-era laws to focus on ‘anti-white racism’ rather than discrimination against people of colour”.Trump’s spokesperson, Steven Cheung, told Axios: “As President Trump has said, all staff, offices, and initiatives connected to [Joe] Biden’s un-American policy will be immediately terminated.”The news about the expected appointment of Miller on Monday follows Trump’s announcement that former acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Tom Homan would be appointed “border czar”.Miller will also work alongside Susie Wiles, whom Trump last week named as his chief of staff. 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      Ukraine’s MPs hopeful Donald Trump’s victory ‘not a catastrophe’ for war effort

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      Ukrainian politicians are expressing tentative hopes that the return of Donald Trump to the White House will not necessarily lead to a rapid and humiliating forced peace.An initial 25-minute post-election call between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday, during which the president-elect handed the phone to Elon Musk, is said to have been positive in tone and no specifics of any peace proposals were discussed.Zelenskyy also thanked Musk for making the Starlink satellite internet service available for use by his country’s military, for whom it is a vital communications tool on the front line.Though Trump promised to “stop wars” in his first speech after his victory over Kamala Harris became apparent last week, there are no settled outlines of a peace plan yet, giving Kyiv breathing space to press its own case.Oleksiy Goncharenko, a Ukrainian opposition MP, said: “I don’t think that Trump’s victory is a catastrophe. Ukraine is now his business and if negotiations lead to a disaster it will be his, like Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan. This is a person who loves to win.”Trump spoke to Vladimir Putin on the phone on Thursday and discussed the war in Ukraine, the Washington Post has reported. The US president-elect advised Putin not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of “Washington’s sizeable military presence in Europe”, according to the Post.Ukrainians emphasise the complexity of negotiating with the Russian president, who they hope may overplay his hand with maximalist demands or irritate the notoriously prickly American leader.“At some point, Trump has to present a plan to Putin and we will see if Putin wants to stick to it. From that moment there is a new reality,” Goncharenko said. “In the meantime, we have to work with the US and with US public opinion.”Putin has already praised Trump’s courage for his defiant behaviour after surviving an assassination attempt in July, describing him as “a real man”, though Moscow has said its goals in invading Ukraine – once described as “demilitarisation and denazification” – remain unchanged.The Russian president congratulated Trump on his victory and said: “He turned out to be a courageous person. People show who they are in extraordinary circumstances. This is where a person reveals himself. And he showed himself, in my opinion, in a very correct manner, courageously. Like a man.”He said he was ready for dialogue with Trump. “What was said about the desire to restore relations with Russia, to bring about the end of the Ukrainian crisis, in my opinion this deserves attention at least.”On Sunday, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, was upbeat but non-specific. “Trump during his election talked about how he perceives everything through deals, that he can make a deal that can lead to peace,” he said, though he added campaign trail statements were not always borne out.A day after his phone call with Trump, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, acknowledged that the president-elect thought he could move fast. “I believe that President Trump really wants a quick decision,” he said at a meeting of the European Political Community in Budapest. “He wants that. It doesn’t mean that it will happen this way.”Specific proposals for a peace deal in Ukraine from senior Republicans are competing and to some extent contradictory. A critical factor will be Trump’s appointments to the state department and Pentagon as well as his choice of national security adviser.In June, the retired Lt Gen Keith Kellogg and Fred Fleitz, who previously both served as chiefs of staff in Trump’s national security council, presented a proposal to Trump that would force Ukraine to negotiate by threatening to cut off military aid, freezing the conflict along the current frontlines.In September, JD Vance, now the vice-president-elect, proposed something similar, a plan that would allow Russia to take control of the 20% of Ukraine it currently occupies, and stipulating that Ukraine would never be allowed to join Nato.Another plan partly proposed by Mike Pompeo, a former secretary of state under Trump now considered to be a candidate for defence secretary, involves a de facto partition based on the current frontlines while lifting “all restrictions on the type of weapons Ukraine can obtain and use” – including British Storm Shadow missiles. This would be paid for with money obtained from Russian foreign exchange reserves; $50bn in loans from G7 members was announced last month.Over the weekend, the Trump campaign distanced themselves from a comment made by another campaign adviser, Bryan Lanza, who said “Crimea is gone,” arguing the occupied territories were lost for good. Lanza “does not speak for” Trump, a spokesperson for the Republican said.All such proposals are diametrically opposed to Zelenskyy’s own “victory plan” presented publicly last month, which called for Nato membership plus unrestricted use of western weapons to force a restoration of its internationally recognised territory.Across Ukraine there is a certain fatalism. Maria Avdeeva, a Kyiv-based fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute thinktank, said: “I think Ukrainians have already learned the lesson that we have to count on ourselves” – a refrain that crops up repeatedly in conversation.Ukraine is already struggling on the battlefield to a degree not seen since the spring of 2022, particularly on the southern part of the eastern from, where Ukraine has lost 9km in a week in some areas as Russia presses forward aggressively, incurring, according to UK estimates, numbers of troops killed and wounded of as high as 1,354 a day.The numbers of cases of Ukrainian desertion (18,196) and soldiers going absent without leave (35,307) between January and September are double those of the whole of 2023, according to leaked figures from the prosecutor general’s office, suggesting a growing weariness in parts of the armed forces.Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine’s most senior military commander, said on Saturday: “The situation remains challenging and shows signs of escalation. The enemy, leveraging its numerical advantage, is continuing offensive actions and is focusing its main efforts on the Pokrovsk and Kurakhove directions.” More

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      Trump’s ‘golden age of America’ could be an unrestrained imperial presidency

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      At 2.25am, Donald Trump gazed out at his jubilant supporters wearing “Make America Great Again” hats. He was surrounded by his wife, Melania, and his children, the Stars and Stripes and giant banners that proclaimed: “Dream big again” and “Trump will fix it!”“We’re going to help our country heal,” Trump vowed. “We have a country that needs help and it needs help very badly. We’re going to fix our borders, we’re going to fix everything about our country and we’ve made history for a reason tonight, and the reason is going to be just that.”Having risen from the political dead, the president-elect was already looking ahead to what he called the “golden age of America” – a country that had just shifted sharply to the right. And at its core was the promise of Trump unleashed: a radical expansion of presidential power.The 45th and 47th commander-in-chief will face fewer limits on his ambition when he is sworn in again in January. He returns as the head of a Republican party remade in his image over the past decade and as the architect of a right-leaning judiciary that helped eliminate his legal perils. Second time around, he has allies across Washington ready to enforce his will.Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist and former Republican congressional aide, said: “What we’re going to have is an imperial presidency. This is going to be probably the most powerful presidency in terms of centralising power and wielding power that we’ve had probably since FDR [Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was president from 1933 until his death in 1945].”Trump won big in this week’s presidential election against Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice-president. He became the first Republican in 20 years to win the national popular vote. He improved on his 2020 performance in every state except two (Washington and Utah) and made gains in nearly every demographic. A third of voters of colour supported him. Whereas Joe Biden won Latino men by 23 percentage points in 2020, Trump won them by 10 points in 2024.Emboldened by this mandate, Trump, who said he would be a “dictator”, but only on “day one”, is promising a second act more sweeping and transformational than the first. He is backed by a Republican party that regained control of the Senate, might retain the House of Representatives and is more acquiescent than ever. The opposition Democratic party is demoralised and lacks an obvious leader.Trump, who arrived in Washington as a political neophyte eight years ago, is less likely this time to be surrounded by establishment figures and steady hands curbing his darkest impulses. His allies have spent the past several months pre-screening candidates for his administration, aiming to ensure key posts will be filled by dependable foot soldiers. His pugnacious son Don Jr intends to have a say.Bardella added: “It’s going to be a more competent version of the first term. This time Donald Trump and his team know how the White House works. They know what type of personnel they need where to achieve what they want to achieve. They have, unlike last time, more of a complete hold of Congress.”Trump sceptics such as the House speaker Paul Ryan or the congresswoman Liz Cheney are gone, he noted, replaced by Maga devotees primed to do his bidding. “There’s going to be more continuity, more synergy, everyone’s going to march to the beat of the same drummer. There is no resistance within the Republican party any more and they are now facing a Democratic party that is leaderless, that is searching for its own identity, that’s going to have to recalibrate.”Trump will also expect compliance from a conservative supreme court that includes three of his own appointees. The court has loosened the legal guardrails that have hemmed past presidents in thanks to a July decision that gives presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution.The 78-year-old businessman and former reality TV star also hopes to exploit a new universe of rightwing podcasters and influencers who were instrumental in his election and could help him shape the information ecosystem. Chief among these is X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who played a key role in the Trump campaign.Despite the daunting outlook, however, some commentators are optimistic that checks and balances will remain.Elaine Kamarck, a former official in the Bill Clinton administration, said: “For him to expand presidential power, Congress has to give up power and they’re not in the mood to do that. They’ve never done that. There are plenty of institutionalists in Congress.”Kamarck also expressed faith in the federal courts, noting that judges appointed by Trump only constitute 11% of the total placed on the bench by former presidents. A Trump dictatorship is “not going to happen”, she added. “Now, there might be things that the president wants to do that people don’t like that the Republican Congress goes along with him on but that’s politics. That’s not a dictatorship.”Trump will return to power with an aggressive agenda that includes what his ally Steve Bannon called “the deconstruction of the administrative state”. He has proposed a government efficiency commission headed by Musk that would gut the federal bureaucracy. Trump plans to fire federal workers by classifying thousands of them as being outside civil service protections. They could be replaced by what are essentially political appointees loyal to him.On his signature issue, illegal immigration, Trump has vowed to carry out the biggest deportation operation in American history, starting with people who have criminal records or final orders of deportation. He has called for using the national guard and empowering domestic police forces in what he has said will be “a bloody story”.He told Time magazine that he did not rule out building new migrant detention camps but “there wouldn’t be that much of a need for them” because people would be rapidly removed. His running mate, JD Vance, told the New York Times that deporting 1 million immigrants a year would be “reasonable”.During the election campaign Trump played down abortion as a second-term priority, even as he took credit for the supreme court ending a woman’s federal right to terminate a pregnancy and returning abortion regulation to state governments.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAt Trump’s insistence the Republican platform, for the first time in decades, did not call for a national ban on abortion. Even so, Trump has not explicitly said he would veto a national ban if it reached his desk. He has also indicated that he would let Robert F Kennedy Jr, the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, “go wild” on public health matters, including women’s health. Trump has promised to extend his 2017 tax cut, reversing Joe Biden’s income tax hikes on the wealthiest Americans and scrapping levies that fund energy measures to combat the climate crisis. Trump also has proposals aimed at working- and middle-class Americans: exempting tips and overtime wages from income taxes.Steve Schmidt, a political strategist and former campaign operative for George W Bush and John McCain, said: “He’s going to have a Republican Congress go through a deregulatory frenzy; they’re going to propose brutal spending cuts that will affect the people primarily that voted for them but also a lot of other poor people in the country.”Trump has vowed to eliminate the Department of Education and slash federal funding “for any school or program pushing critical race theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children”. The Trump campaign made opposition to transgender rights a central part of its closing argument, with the president-elect vowing to “keep men out of women’s sports”. He plans to end Biden’s policy of extending Title IX civil rights protections to transgender students and ask Congress to require that only two genders can be recognised at birth.On the world stage, Trump touts an “America first” ideology that would make the US more isolationist, non-interventionist and protectionist than at any time since the second world war. He has proposed tariffs of 10% to 20% on foreign goods despite economists’ warnings that this would drive up inflation.Trump has repeatedly praised authoritarians such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Russia’s Vladimir Putin and not ruled out withdrawing from Nato. He has said he would end Russia’s war on Ukraine within a day, prompting fears of a a deal that compels Ukraine to surrender territory, and reportedly told Israel’s president, Benjamin Netanyahu, that he wants the war in Gaza to be finished by January.Schmidt commented: “They will act very quickly in Ukraine to end the war while escalating the situation with Iran and you’ll see very quickly a tremendous amount of instability with Mexico. It’s going to be horrendous. It’s going to be shocking.”Trump, who falsely claims that the climate crisis is a “hoax”, has said he will again remove the US from the Paris climate accords and dismantle Biden’s climate agenda. He has promised to increase oil production and burn more fossil fuels – “Drill, baby, drill!” was a regular chant at Trump rallies – and weaken regulatory powers or eliminate bodies such as the Environmental Protection Agency.The ascent of Trump, the first convicted criminal to be elected president, is also a crisis for the rule of law. The justice department is moving to wind down the two federal cases against him after he vowed to fire the special counsel Jack Smith “within two seconds” of becoming president. Trump has vowed to bend the department to his will, pardon January 6 rioters and target journalists, election workers and other perceived political enemies.Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, said: “Will people who he believes broke the law in trying to persecute him and his friends be investigated? Yes. Will they be subject to all of the defense mechanisms and the fair trials that he was afforded? Absolutely.“I’m sure he looks at it and says, ‘I could have gone after Hillary, there’s a lot of reason to; I showed you an open hand and what did you do? You persecuted me for eight years. The gloves are off.’ That doesn’t mean anything other than, ‘OK, you decided to use these weapons, I now own the weapons. I’m going to use the weapons too.’ It’s not the end of American democracy.”Others, however, are less sanguine. Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman who campaigned for Harris this year, said: “It’s going to be a revenge tour on steroids. I don’t think people realise what’s coming. He is emboldened. He didn’t think he’d win in 2016. He lied about 2020 but oh my God, he thought he was going to win now, he did, and now he believes, ‘Man, they want me and they want what I’ve been promising and I’ve been promising this enemies list.“‘I’m going to put my enemies in jail, I’m going to fuck Nato, I’m going to do what Putin wants me to do.’ If I were the rest of the world and the country, I’d be scared to death because we just put an absolutely out-of-control authoritarian in the White House. That’s scary shit.”Trump’s strongman tendencies will receive defiance and pushback, however. Along with Congress and the courts, America has a robust civil society and rambunctious media. The Women’s March of 2017 set the tone for four years of resistance by progressive activists and pressure groups, an energy that converted into electoral gains in 2018, 2020 and 2022.Now, as Trump prepares for his once unthinkable return to the White House, these weary foot soldiers are preparing to do it all over again. That, in turn, raises the prospect of a fierce backlash from the would-be American Caesar who once asked authorities if they could just shoot protesters in the legs.“What am I worried about most?” pondered Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington. “The answer is that in response either to demonstrations in the streets or the exigencies of rounding up and deporting millions of immigrants here illegally, Mr Trump will invoke the Insurrection Act, which is the closest thing in American law to the declaration of martial law.“That prospect terrifies me. There’s very little else about the administration that terrifies me but the mass deployment of the US military in domestic affairs put us, I’m afraid, on a very slippery slope.” More