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    Trump Tells Republicans to ‘Kill’ Bipartisan Press Freedom Bill

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    President-elect Donald J. Trump on Wednesday instructed congressional Republicans to block the passage of a bipartisan federal shield bill intended to strengthen the ability of reporters to protect confidential sources, dealing a potentially fatal political blow to the measure — even though the Republican-controlled House had already passed it unanimously.The call by Mr. Trump makes it less likely that the bill — the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act, or PRESS Act — would reach the Senate floor and be passed before the current session of Congress ends next month. Even one senator can hold up the bill, chewing up many hours of Senate floor time that could be spent on confirming judges or passing other legislation deemed to be a higher priority.Mr. Trump issued the edict in a post on his Truth Social platform Wednesday afternoon. Citing a “PBS NewsHour” report about the federal shield legislation, he wrote: “REPUBLICANS MUST KILL THIS BILL!”Mr. Trump has exhibited extreme hostility to mainstream news reporters, whom he has often referred to as “enemies of the people.” In his first term as president, he demanded a crackdown on leaks that eventually entailed secretly seizing the private communications of reporters, including some from The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN.After those subpoenas came to light early in the Biden administration, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland issued a rule that banned prosecutors from using compulsory legal processes like subpoenas and search warrants to go after reporters’ information — including by asking third parties, like phone and email companies, to turn over their data — or to force them to testify about their sources. But a future administration could rescind that regulation.The PRESS Act would codify such limits into law. Trevor Timm, the co-founder and executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said he hoped Mr. Trump would reconsider, arguing that it would protect all journalists, including those who primarily reach conservative audiences.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Donald Trump’s Presidency Could Impact Retirement Rules

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      Readers had questions about individual retirement accounts, distributions and access to brokerage accounts if they moved away from the U.S. Here are some answers.Your retirement accounts may be the biggest component of your net worth. Or maybe those large balances are still only a goal, and you want to know if any changes coming in the next four years will help you get there — or get in your way.Of the 1,200 or so money-related questions we’ve received from readers in the days since the presidential election, many have been about retirement. We have some answers for what we know and context for what we don’t yet know. Most of them have nothing to do with Social Security; my colleague Tara Siegel Bernard answered questions about that program last week.But first, here’s an important caveat that is true in any administration, but especially in one like this: For things to change, President-elect Donald J. Trump has to want things to change, act on that desire and then succeed. If lawmakers are involved, they also have to have the desire, follow through and pass legislation.There will be plenty of noise, but in this particular category, it’s possible that not much of substance will look different four years from now.What did Mr. Trump say he wanted to change about individual retirement accounts or 401(k)s?Not much. Neither Mr. Trump’s campaign website nor the Republican Party platform that it pointed to said anything about I.R.A.s or workplace retirement accounts like 401(k)s, with one exception that probably wouldn’t affect many people.On his campaign website, Mr. Trump sounded off about environmental, social and governance, or E.S.G., funds and their place in workplace retirement plans. During his first term, the Labor Department issued a rule related to what sorts of funds an employer — which must act in employees’ best interest as a so-called fiduciary — can use in those plans.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Young Women Will Never Stop Talking About Sexism

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      I was not going to write any more election post-mortems based on the current data. California is still counting votes, and it will take months for the whole picture of the electorate to come into focus.But that hasn’t stopped chatter from strategists and politicians about the ways Democrats should change their candidates and messaging. There has been heavy emphasis on appealing to young men specifically, with many advising that the left should go about manufacturing its own Joe Rogan. One articulation of this viewpoint comes from Richard Reeves, who writes in an op-ed in The Boston Globe that Democrats shouldn’t talk about sexism, and claims that the problem is that they haven’t focused enough on issues affecting boys and men. James Carville keeps repeating the charge that “preachy females” are the problem and Democratic messaging comes across as “too feminine.”It feels absurd to ask rank-and-file Democrats to stop talking about sexism when Donald Trump himself and several of his cabinet picks so far have credible accusations of sexual misconduct lodged against them, and when Trump’s campaign sunk to new lows in disparaging women.Democrats should absolutely be soul-searching and figuring out ways to win. But Reeves’s suggestions — “More investments in vocational training, for example in apprenticeships and technical high schools, would mostly help boys and men to secure better jobs” — were already an explicit part of Harris’s platform for economic opportunity, which she talked up on the campaign trail.Harris did not mention sexism as a reason for her loss in her concession speech. And the overwhelming consensus was that Biden’s low approval ratings, and his failure to bring an end to inflation sooner, were the major reasons that she did not win. But does that negate the sexism raining down on our young women, who are walking across campus hearing their classmates tell them: “Your body, my choice”?Trump’s totally cavalier attitude about violence against women — the ones he said he would protect whether we “like it or not” — is most glaringly evident in his nomination of Matt Gaetz as attorney general. More than 100 nonpartisan organizations that combat sex trafficking and gender-based violence signed on to an open letter to the heads of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee asking them to reject Gaetz because he has been investigated for sex trafficking himself and said: “The nomination of Mr. Gaetz sends a signal to the country and the world that sexual misconduct and exploitation and corrupt behavior will not only go unpunished, but will be rewarded.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Chooses Linda McMahon, a Longtime Ally, for Education Secretary

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump on Tuesday tapped Linda McMahon, a former professional wrestling executive who ran the Small Business Administration for much of his first term, to lead the Education Department, an agency he has routinely singled out for elimination in his upcoming term.A close friend of Mr. Trump’s and a longtime booster of his political career, Ms. McMahon had been among his early donors leading up to his electoral victory in 2016 and has been one of the leaders of his transition team, vetting other potential appointees and drafting potential executive orders since August.In Ms. McMahon, 76, Mr. Trump has elevated someone far outside the mold of traditional candidates for the role, an executive with no teaching background or professional experience steering education policy, other than an appointment in 2009 to the Connecticut State Board of Education, where she served for just over a year.But Ms. McMahon is likely to be assigned the fraught task of carrying out what is widely expected to be a thorough and determined dismantling of the department’s core functions. And she would assume the role at a time when school districts across the country are facing budget shortfalls, many students are not making up ground lost during the pandemic in reading and math, and many colleges and universities are shrinking and closing amid a larger loss of faith in the value of higher education.“We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort,” Mr. Trump said in a statement announcing the decision on Tuesday.Ms. McMahon led the Small Business Administration during Mr. Trump’s first term and resigned in 2019 without a public fallout or rift with Mr. Trump, who praised her at her departure as “one of our all-time favorites” and a “superstar.” She stepped down from that role to help with Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign and became the chairwoman of the pro-Trump super PAC America First Action.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Los Angeles City Council Passes ‘Sanctuary’ Ordinance in Response to Trump

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      The swift action, two weeks after Donald J. Trump’s presidential win, signaled a sense of urgency from city leaders.The Los Angeles City Council passed a so-called sanctuary ordinance on Tuesday that would prohibit city resources from being used to carry out federal immigration enforcement, the first deportation-related move by a major U.S. city since Donald J. Trump won the presidential election two weeks ago.Though Los Angeles had already declared itself a “city of sanctuary” during Mr. Trump’s first term, it had done so only through a resolution and an executive directive rather than by establishing a new city ordinance. The ordinance passed on Tuesday would enshrine protections in city law and give them more legal weight, officials said.The unanimous vote came a week after Mayor Karen Bass called for “swift action” to protect immigrants in Los Angeles, and it required the expediting of a draft ordinance that was introduced last year. The ordinance will now go to Ms. Bass for her signature and would take effect 10 days after she signs it.The leaders of the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second largest school system, were also poised to enact their own immigrant protections later on Tuesday.The prompt actions by Los Angeles leaders signaled a sense of urgency to protect the city’s large immigrant population ahead of the inauguration of President-elect Trump, who has promised to pursue mass deportations of undocumented immigrants across the country.The ordinance would prohibit the use of city resources — including city workers and city property — to arrest or detain someone as part of a federal immigration enforcement effort. It would also bar city employees from asking about someone’s citizenship or immigration status. (The Los Angeles Police Department has had an order in place since 1979 that prohibits its officers from asking about immigration status or making arrests because of someone’s legal status.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Group Sues Justice Department for Gaetz Investigation Documents

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      A nonpartisan watchdog group has filed a motion in federal court seeking to compel the Justice Department to release all material relating to its now-shuttered sex trafficking investigation of Matt Gaetz, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick to be attorney general.The motion was filed on Tuesday night by the group, American Oversight, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The F.B.I., which was investigating the case for the Justice Department, has refused to release the documents, stating that it is exempt from Freedom of Information Act inquiries.The group has been trying to get the documents since last year, when the Justice Department ended its two-year inquiry into whether Mr. Gaetz, then a House member from Florida, had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old and paid for her to travel with him. Mr. Gaetz was never charged, and he has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.The case is before Judge Dabney L. Friedrich, who was appointed by Mr. Trump in 2017.Mr. Trump announced last week that he would nominate Mr. Gaetz, sparking a furor in Washington. The House Committee on Ethics was also investigating allegations that Mr. Gaetz had engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, and was prepared to vote on releasing a highly critical report about him. But within hours of Mr. Trump’s announcement, Mr. Gaetz resigned his seat and the report’s contents instantly became moot, at least as far as the House was concerned.American Oversight argued in its motion that there was now “an elevated and significant public interest in the quick release of these records” owing to “the unusual circumstances of Mr. Gaetz potentially leading the agency holding the records relating to his investigation.”The documents sought by American Oversight include all F.B.I. forms describing interviews with witnesses at the heart of both the sex-trafficking inquiry and any efforts to obstruct it. The group seeks a deadline of Dec. 16 for the release of the documents. More

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      N.Y.C. Helped Migrant Accused of Killing Laken Riley Move to Georgia, Witness Says

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      In other testimony, law enforcement witnesses placed the suspect, José Ibarra, at the scene of Ms. Riley’s killing, mainly through cellphone and GPS tracking data.Details of how the Venezuelan migrant charged with killing Laken Riley ended up in Athens, Ga., came into sharper focus on Monday, the second day of a trial that is being closely followed by supporters of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s planned immigration crackdown.The migrant, José Ibarra, was apprehended by the Border Patrol when he entered the country illegally in 2022 near El Paso. Like many migrants, he was released with temporary permission to stay in the country, and he headed to New York.A former roommate of Mr. Ibarra’s testified that she met Mr. Ibarra last year in New York City and traveled with him to Athens in September 2023 after Mr. Ibarra’s brother told them they could find jobs there.They lived for a while with Mr. Ibarra’s wife and mother-in-law at a Crowne Plaza hotel in Queens that had been converted to a migrant shelter, the roommate, Rosbeli Flores-Bello, said. And for a few weeks, she added, she and Mr. Ibarra lived in a car parked on the street by the hotel.Ms. Flores-Bello said that Mr. Ibarra’s brother Diego had constantly called him in New York, telling him to move to Athens because there were good work opportunities.Laken Riley was a nursing student at Augusta University in Georgia.Augusta University, via Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lawyer Says His Client Testified That She Saw Gaetz Having Sex With Underage Girl

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      A lawyer representing two women who testified that former Representative Matt Gaetz paid them for sex told multiple news outlets on Monday that one of the women described witnessing Mr. Gaetz having sex with an underage girl at a party in 2017.The lawyer, Joel Leppard, told CBS News, ABC News and CNN about his clients’ testimony to the House Ethics Committee, which was investigating allegations about Mr. Gaetz and young women, as well as accusations of drug use.Mr. Gaetz resigned last week shortly after President-elect Donald J. Trump announced he planned to nominate the Florida lawmaker to be his attorney general, despite having been investigated by the Justice Department previously.After the resignation, Speaker Mike Johnson announced that he would not make public the committee’s report because Mr. Gaetz was no longer in office.Mr. Leppard, speaking to ABC News, said one of the women testified that “in July of 2017, at this house party, she was walking out to the pool area, and she looked to her right, and she saw” Mr. Gaetz “having sex with her friend, who was 17.”He told CNN that Mr. Gaetz later discovered the girl was underage.Both women also told the committee that they were paid for sex using Venmo, Mr. Leppard said.Mr. Gaetz has previously denied the allegations. Alex Pfeiffer, a spokesman for the Trump transition, said, “Matt Gaetz will be the next Attorney General. He’s the right man for the job and will end the weaponization of our justice system. These are baseless allegations intended to derail the second Trump administration.” Mr. Gaetz is one of several controversial nominees whom Mr. Trump has announced he will submit for Senate confirmation. But he is the one who has provoked the most negative reactions from Republican senators. More