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    Trump says he will fire ‘some’ FBI agents who worked on January 6 cases and defends Doge’s treasury access – live

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    Donald Trump has made clear he will fire “some” of the FBI agents who investigated the January 6 US Capitol attack, after the bureau turned over their names to a justice department official who was previously one of the president’s attorneys. Speaking at a joint press conference with Japan’s prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, the president also again backed dismantling the Department of Education and said he was “very proud” of the work of the “department of government efficiency”, despite objections from Democrats and advocacy groups. Earlier in the day, he renewed his offensive against USAid, and said he’d announce a new barrage of tariffs on unspecified countries next week.Here’s what else has happened today:

    Trump said he is in “no rush” to make his plan to put the United States in charge of the Gaza Strip a reality.

    USAid’s dismantling may be a boon for China’s global influence, analysts say.

    The health and human services department and agencies under its umbrella – such as the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control – may be the next targets of Trump’s mass layoffs, the Wall Street Journal reports.
    A US judge on Friday said he will enter a “very limited” temporary order blocking Donald Trump’s administration from taking certain steps to dismantle the US Agency for International Development (USaid), according to Reuters.US District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington said he would issue the order following a lawsuit by the largest US government workers’ union and an association of foreign service workers, who sued on Thursday to stop the administration’s efforts to dismantle the agency.In a notice sent to the foreign aid agency’s workers on Thursday, the administration said it will keep 611 essential workers on board at USaid out of a worldwide workforce that totals more than 10,000. This move has largely been directed by Elon Musk, who’s spearheading the president’s effort to shrink the federal bureaucracy.A Justice Department official, Brett Shumate, told Nichols that about 2,200 USaid employees would be put on paid leave under the administration’s plans, saying, “The president has decided there is corruption and fraud at USAID.”A US official said the agency will deploy about 1,500 more active-duty troops, bringing the total number to about 3,600, according to the Associated Press.Moving troops south is part of Donald Trump’s plans to crack down on immigration and beef up security at the border. Trump signed several executive orders during his first week in office addressing immigration, including one declaring a national emergency at the southern border.Roughly 1,600 active-duty troops have already been deployed, according to the Associated Press, and about 500 more are anticipated to head south within the next few days.Donald Trump has signed an executive order to address “serious human rights violations occurring in South Africa”, Reuters reports, in the latest sign of worsening relations between the United States and Africa’s largest economy.It was not yet clear how the order would affect South Africa, but it comes after secretary of state Marco Rubio accused the country of “anti-Americanism”, while Trump announced he would cut funding to the country over its efforts to reform land ownership.Here’s more on the spat:The shuttering of USAid continues apace, with its name taped over on a building directory outside its Washington DC headquarters:Only a few hundred staffers are set to remain at the organization that facilitates the US foreign aid strategy:Donald Trump has made clear he will fire “some” of the FBI agents who investigated the January 6 US Capitol attack, after the bureau turned over their names to a justice department official who was previously one of the president’s attorneys. Speaking at a joint press conference with Japan’s prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, the president also again backed dismantling the Department of Education and said he was “very proud” of the work of the “department of government efficiency”, despite objections from Democrats and advocacy groups. Earlier in the day, he renewed his offensive against USAid, and said he’d announce a new barrage of tariffs on unspecified countries next week.Here’s what else has happened today:

    Trump said he is in “no rush” to make his plan to put the United States in charge of the Gaza Strip a reality.

    USAid’s dismantling may be a boon for China’s global influence, analysts say.

    The health and human services department and agencies under its umbrella – such as the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control – may be the next targets of Trump’s mass layoffs, the Wall Street Journal reports.
    Just before he wrapped up his press conference with the Japanese prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, Donald Trump was asked if he had given Elon Musk and his “department of government efficiency” any particular orders of where to find areas to cut spending.“We haven’t discussed that much. I’ll tell him to go here, go there. He does it. He’s got a very capable group of people, very, very, very, very capable. They know what they’re doing. They’ll ask questions, and they’ll see immediately, as somebody gets tongue-tied, that they’re either crooked or don’t know what they’re doing,” Trump said.“I’ve instructed him go into education, go into military, go into other things as we go along, and they’re finding massive amounts of fraud, abuse, waste, all of these things,” the president added, without offering details.The reporter speaking to Trump noted that social security and Medicare make up the bulk of federal spending. “Social security will not be touched, it’ll only be strengthened,” Trump replied, again without providing details of how he would do that and then pivoting to accusations that undocumented immigrants are accessing those benefits.Donald Trump said he will fire an unspecified number of the FBI agents who worked on January 6 cases, after the justice department sought the names of bureau employees involved in investigations related to the Capitol attack.“I’ll fire some of them because some of them were corrupt,” Trump replied, when asked at his press conference if he would fire all the agents who investigated January 6.“I have no doubt about that. I got to know a lot about that business, that world. I got to know a lot about that world, and we had some corrupt agents, and those people are gone, or they will be gone, and it’ll be done quickly and very surgically.”Donald Trump then signaled he remained serious about closing the Department of Education, saying regulations around schooling would be better left to the states.“We’re ranked dead last,” Trump said. “I want to see it go back to the states where great states that do so well have no debt, they’re operated brilliantly. They’ll be as good as Norway or Denmark or Sweden or any of the other highly ranked countries … 35 to 38 states will be right at the top, and the rest will come along. They’ll have to come along competitively. And by the way, we’ll be spending a lot less money, and we’ll have great education.”Donald Trump has defended Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge), saying their work is necessary to root out unspecified “corruption”.“I’m very proud of the job that this group of young people, generally young people, but very smart people, they’re doing,” Trump said, referring to the reportedly young engineers Musk has staffed Doge with. “They’re doing it at my insistence. It would be a lot easier not to do it, but we have to take some of these things apart to find the corruption.”Democrats have condemned the effort, saying Musk and his employees are unqualified and have put America’s privacy at risk by accessing sensitive government systems, among other concerns.The last time Donald Trump was in office, Shinzo Abe was Japan’s prime minister, and the rapport the two leaders developed looms over Shigeru Ishiba’s visit to Washington DC, the Guardian’s Justin McCurry reports:Donald Trump had yet to get his feet under the Oval Office desk when he held his first meeting with a foreign leader in late 2016. Shinzo Abe, then Japan’s prime minister, arrived at Trump Tower in November that year bearing a gift of a gold-plated golf club and harbouring a determination to get the Japan-US relationship under Trump off to the best possible start.The success, or otherwise, of Abe’s charm offensive had potentially serious repercussions. During the election campaign, Trump had suggested he would withdraw US troops from Japan, contingent on Tokyo’s willingness to make a bigger financial contribution to their countries’ postwar alliance.The gambit worked. During Trump’s five-nation visit to Asia in late 2017, he and Abe, who was assassinated in 2022, bonded over a round of golf – a sport for which the Japanese leader had apparently developed a sudden passion – and gourmet hamburgers.For the remainder of Trump’s term, Abe supported the US administration with a fervour that eluded many of his contemporaries. US troops remained in Japan, and the bilateral security treaty – the cornerstone of Japan’s postwar foreign policy – survived unscathed.As he prepares to fly to Washington on a three-day visit, all eyes are on whether Japan’s current leader, Shigeru Ishiba, will be able to re-create Abe’s personal rapport with Trump, although golf diplomacy is unlikely to play a part for the cigarette-smoking plastic-modelling enthusiast.The press conference is now underway and Donald Trump is currently giving compliments to his counterpart.Just before the two leaders came out, US vice-president JD Vance turned up in the room.Trump said the US worked well together with Japanese prime minister Shigeru Ishiba’s predecessor, Shinzo Abe.The scene is set at the White House for the forthcoming press conference between Donald Trump and Shigeru Ishiba.The press has gathered in the East Room and podium sound checks are complete as the US president and the Japanese prime minister prepare to make remarks and take questions from media representatives.The countries’ respective flags alternate behind the area where the leaders will station themselves and senior aides are chatting nearby.The press conference was due to get under way an hour ago. The two are having a working lunch. Ishiba is the second foreign leader to visit Trump here since he became the 47th president. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu was the first, earlier this week, and the visit made huge waves with Trump’s comments that the US should take over Gaza.Around a dozen Democratic members of Congress attempted to enter the Department of Education today in response to reports that Donald Trump would soon order it dismantled, but were denied access.“Today we went to the Department of Education and demanded answers in defense of our students, in defense of our teachers, in defense of families and communities that are built around public education. We’re not going to let them destroy our public school system and destroy the futures of millions of kids across this country,” said congressman Maxwell Frost, who was part of the group.The group tried for about 10 minutes to get in, but were informed they would not be allowed access. Police were called, and were positioned inside the building’s lobby.You can see video of the attempt here.Only a few hundred employees will remain at USAid once Donald Trump’s dismantling of the aid agency is complete, the Guardian’s Anna Betts reports:Donald Trump’s administration is reportedly planning to keep just more than 600 essential workers at USAid, according to a notice sent to employees of the US foreign aid agency on Thursday night.The notice, shared with Reuters by an administration official on Friday, reportedly stated that 611 essential workers would be retained at USAid, which had more than 10,000 employees globally.Earlier, it was reported that the administration intended to retain fewer than 300 staff members at USAid.The USAid staff reductions are set to take effect at midnight on Friday, as indicated on the agency’s website. But a lawsuit filed on Thursday by the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) seeks to prevent the administration from dismantling USAid, which was established as an independent agency by a law passed by Congress in 1998.Donald Trump said he plans to announce reciprocal tariffs on many countries next week.Trump was asked about his plans for further restrictions on trading partners during a bilateral meeting with the Japanese prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba. Trump replied:
    I’ll be announcing that next week, reciprocal trade, so that we’re treated evenly with other countries, we don’t want any more, any less.
    Trump warned repeatedly during his campaign that he would impose a universal tariff on imports into the US.Trump also threatened tariffs on Japanese goods if the US trade deficit with Japan is not equalized.“Should be pretty easy to do,” he said, according to Reuters. “I don’t think we’ll have any problem whatsoever. They want fairness too.”The Trump administration has agreed not to publicly release the names of FBI agents and employees who investigated the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.The justice department agreed to a temporary deal not to immediately make public the names of agents who worked on investigations related to the 6 January 2021 insurrection until at least late March.The deal was struck after acting head of the FBI, Brian Driscoll, turned over to the justice department a list of FBI employees involved in the January 6 investigations.The data, submitted to at least partially comply with an order from the acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, last month demanding information, included employee numbers, job titles and job roles.The demand prompted days of internal resistance from Driscoll and the bureau and prompted two lawsuits from groups of anonymous FBI agents who said the move endangered their safety. More

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      in US Politics

      Musk’s Doge reportedly keeps attempting to push out federal workers despite judge blocking buyout deadline – live

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      Attorney general Pam Bondi dissolved an FBI taskforce aimed at combatting foreign influence operations on Wednesday, the same day that a hoax news report linked to Russia was shared by Donald Trump’s ally, Elon Musk, and his son, Donald Trump Jr.“To free resources to address more pressing priorities, and end risks of further weaponization and abuses of prosecutorial discretion,” Bondi wrote in a memo to all Justice department employees after she was sworn in on Wednesday, “the Foreign Influence Task Force shall be disbanded.”The FBI website explains that former director Christopher Wray established the taskforce in 2017 to combat “covert actions by foreign governments to influence US political sentiment or public discourse”.“The goal of these foreign influence operations directed against the United States is to spread disinformation, sow discord, and, ultimately, undermine confidence in our democratic institutions and values,” according to the FBI.As Olga Robinson and Shayan Sardarizadeh of BBC Verify report, Elon Musk shared a viral video with more than 200 million followers on his social media platform X that falsely claims the United States Agency for International Development (USAid) paid more than $40m to Angelina Jolie, Sean Penn, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Orlando Bloom and Ben Stiller to get them to visit Ukraine.The video, which carries the branding of the NBCUniversal outlet E! News, and follows the style of its celebrity reports, never appeared on any of that outlet’s social media accounts.The hoax, Robinson reports, “is extremely similar in style” to a Russian influence operation BBC Verify previously exposed that use fictional social media news reports to impersonate media outlets and push anti-Ukraine narratives.One of the named stars, Stiller, made an effort to combat the disinformation running rampant on Musk’s social-media platform by writing in a post there: “These are lies coming from Russian media. I completely self-funded my humanitarian trip to Ukraine. There was no funding from USAID and certainly no payment of any kind. 100 percent false”.Despite Stiller’s effort to halt the spread of the hoax news report, it was also shared by Donald Trump Jr and Sidney Powell, known for her leading role in spreading wild conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.Donald Trump has signed an executive order sanctioning the international criminal court (ICC), the White House has confirmed.The text of the order, posted on the White House website, accuses the ICC of having “engaged in illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel” and abused its power by issuing “baseless arrest warrants targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant”.According to the order:
      The United States will impose tangible and significant consequences on those responsible for the ICC’s transgressions, some of which may include the blocking of property and assets, as well as the suspension of entry into the United States of ICC officials, employees, and agents, as well as their immediate family members, as their entry into our Nation would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.
      Our colleagues on the Middle East live blog are tracking reaction to the order.Attorney general Pam Bondi dissolved an FBI taskforce aimed at combatting foreign influence operations on Wednesday, the same day that a hoax news report linked to Russia was shared by Donald Trump’s ally, Elon Musk, and his son, Donald Trump Jr.“To free resources to address more pressing priorities, and end risks of further weaponization and abuses of prosecutorial discretion,” Bondi wrote in a memo to all Justice department employees after she was sworn in on Wednesday, “the Foreign Influence Task Force shall be disbanded.”The FBI website explains that former director Christopher Wray established the taskforce in 2017 to combat “covert actions by foreign governments to influence US political sentiment or public discourse”.“The goal of these foreign influence operations directed against the United States is to spread disinformation, sow discord, and, ultimately, undermine confidence in our democratic institutions and values,” according to the FBI.As Olga Robinson and Shayan Sardarizadeh of BBC Verify report, Elon Musk shared a viral video with more than 200 million followers on his social media platform X that falsely claims the United States Agency for International Development (USAid) paid more than $40m to Angelina Jolie, Sean Penn, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Orlando Bloom and Ben Stiller to get them to visit Ukraine.The video, which carries the branding of the NBCUniversal outlet E! News, and follows the style of its celebrity reports, never appeared on any of that outlet’s social media accounts.The hoax, Robinson reports, “is extremely similar in style” to a Russian influence operation BBC Verify previously exposed that use fictional social media news reports to impersonate media outlets and push anti-Ukraine narratives.One of the named stars, Stiller, made an effort to combat the disinformation running rampant on Musk’s social-media platform by writing in a post there: “These are lies coming from Russian media. I completely self-funded my humanitarian trip to Ukraine. There was no funding from USAID and certainly no payment of any kind. 100 percent false”.Despite Stiller’s effort to halt the spread of the hoax news report, it was also shared by Donald Trump Jr and Sidney Powell, known for her leading role in spreading wild conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.Doge staffer installed at treasury resigns after Wall Street Journal uncovers racist posts.Marko Elez, a 25-year-old engineer who obtained access to a treasury department payments system as part of his work for Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” initiative, reportedly resigned on Thursday after The Wall Street Journal asked the White House about a deleted social media account that advocated for racism and eugenics.According to the Journal, recent posts on an account that once used the handle @marko_elez called for the repeal of the Civil Rights Act and supported a “eugenic immigration policy” just before Trump returned to office and empowered Musk to take a sledgehammer to federal agencies.
      ‘You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,’ the account wrote on X in September, according to a Wall Street Journal review of archived posts. ‘Normalize Indian hate,’ the account wrote the same month, in reference to a post noting the prevalence of people from India in Silicon Valley.
      “Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool”, the account holder posted in July.A lawyer for the government confirmed in federal court on Wednesday that Elez, who had previously worked for Musk at SpaceX, Starlink and X, had access to US treasury payment systems that contain the sensitive personal information of millions of Americans.Sources told Wired earlier this week, that Elez had been granted the ability “not just to read but to write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the US government: the Payment Automation Manager and Secure Payment System at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS). Housed on a secure mainframe, these systems control, on a granular level, government payments that in their totality amount to more than a fifth of the US economy.”Here’s what has been in the news this afternoon:

      A “DEI watch list” targeting federal employees who work in health equity-related positions spurred fear for the workers’ safety and jobs. Most of the workers included on the list are Black.

      A budget dispute among congressional Republicans could slow their efforts to enact Donald Trump’s legislative agenda. Trump was scheduled to meet with Republican lawmakers on Thursday as they craft a spending bill that could avert a government shutdown in March.

      For the second time in two days, a judge moved Thursday to block Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship. The Seattle judge said Trump viewed the rule of law simply as an “impediment to his policy goals.”

      A judge also temporarily limited Elon Musk’s access to the Treasury’s payment system. The order allows for two of Musk’s associates to access the system – but on a read-only basis.

      Even after a judge delayed a buyout offer for federal employees, Musk’s self-styled Department of Government Accountability (DOGE), continued to pressure workers to quit. Agencies under Musk’s unofficial purview threatened workers with layoffs and implied their jobs could be replaced with artificial intelligence.

      DOGE reportedly accessed sensitive data from the Department of Education and used artificial intelligence to analyze it. The data reportedly included personal and financial information.

      The Trump administration has dropped efforts to sanction oligarchs close to Putin. The Joe Biden administration had implemented sanctions on Russian oligarchs in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
      After Donald Trump issued an executive order to ban diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, dozens of workers have been fired from their positions in the civil service.In an attempt to aid in the purge, a Heritage Foundation-linked group published a list of employees who work in health equity, most of whom are Black, and asked Trump to fire them.The “DEI watch list,” created by the rightwing nonprofit American Accountability Foundation, included the photos and work history of the employees it targeted – causing the workers to fear for their safety.Donald Trump is disbanding an effort started after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine to enforce sanctions and target oligarchs close to the Kremlin, Reuters reports. A memo from Attorney General Pam Bondi, issued on Wednesday during a wave of orders on her first day in office but not previously reported, said the effort, known as Task Force KleptoCapture, will end as part of a shift in focus and funding to combating drug cartels and international gangs.“This policy requires a fundamental change in mindset and approach,” Bondi wrote in the directive, adding that resources now devoted to enforcing sanctions and seizing the assets of oligarchs will be redirected to countering cartels.The effort, launched during Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration, was designed to strain the finances of wealthy associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin and punish those facilitating sanctions and export control violations.In a statement, Politico’s CEO and editor-in-chief responded to rightwing claims, echoed by Donald Trump and Elon Musk, that the outlet is bankrolled by the US government.The outlet clarified that Politico does not receive any government funding, while private companies, organizations and government agencies may pay to subscribe to Politico Pro for specialized reports.“They subscribe because it makes them better at their jobs — helping them track policy, legislation, and regulations in real-time with news, intelligence, and a suite of data products,” they wrote in the statement.Elon Musk’s associates at the tech billionaire’s self-styled Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have reportedly used artificial intelligence to process sensitive data from the Department of Education.According to the Washington Post, the operatives used AI to analyze spending by the Department of Education. Some of the information included sensitive employee and financial data.Meanwhile, Donald Trump is reportedly considering executive actions to dismantle the Department of Education, including one proposal to abolish the department entirely. Dozens of employees of the education department were reportedly put on leave following Trump’s orders to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programming in the federal government.Democratic lawmakers are seeking an inquiry into possible security breaches by Elon Musk and his operatives, reports the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe:Democrats are demanding an investigation into potential national security breaches created by Elon Musk’s takeover of certain federal agencies through his self-styled “department of government efficiency” (Doge).In a letter published on Thursday, the members of the House oversight committee say they are worried that Musk and his operatives have illegally accessed classified information and sensitive personal data at agencies including the office of personnel management (OPM), the US treasury and the US Agency for International Development (USAid).“There is no evidence that he, or any of his associates working under the ‘Doge team’ moniker, are entitled to access our government systems, nor is there any evidence that they have undergone the proper vetting to ensure the security of taxpayer and government data,” the letter said.Even as a judge blocked a buyout offer for federal employees, Elon Musk has continued his effort to push federal workers out of their jobs. According to a new report by Politico, officials at the agencies now overseen by Musk’s unofficial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have peppered employees with messages urging them to take the offer – or brace for layoffs. In one email, an official suggested the government would cut “redundant business functions and associated staffing” and was considering implementing artificial intelligence.Meanwhile, Musk has continued to regularly share posts throughout the day on X promoting DOGE and the idea that the civil service is rife with fraud.A judge has temporarily limited the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency (Doge)’s ability to access the highly-sensitive payment system of the US Treasury that Musk’s associates reportedly attempted to use to block USAID payments.The ruling marks the first time that the courts have limited DOGE, which, in the last two weeks, has dug into the federal bureaucracy, pushing to shut down USAID and sowing chaos in the civil service.It comes in response to unions that represent federal employees accusing the Treasury of unlawfully sharing personal employee data with DOGE. The ruling named two DOGE associates who could be given access to the payment system – but on a read-only basis.A judge has moved to block Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship in the US, the second such ruling in two days.On Thursday, the Seattle judge, John Coughenour, told reporters, “It has become ever more apparent that to our president the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals.”Wednesday, a judge temporarily paused Trump’s order, which sought to prevent the US-born children of undocumented immigrants from obtaining automatic citizenship. The fourteenth amendment protects birthright citizenship, a right that was recognized by the US supreme court in 1898.Donald Trump is meeting with congressional Republican leadership Thursday to discuss a budget bill that has generated conflict within the GOP caucus.The proposed spending bill will attempt to turn Trump’s agenda into legislation, touching on immigration, energy and taxes, and while the senate Republican leadership has signaled they are ready to move forward with a two-part piece of legislation, Trump has suggested he prefers a single measure to deliver his agenda.The conflict underscores how narrow the Republicans’ majority in the house is: with 218 Republicans to 215 Democrats, the Republicans need nearly every vote to pass legislation.The Heritage Foundation funded the group compiling a list of federal employees to be targeted for firing under the Trump administration, the Guardian’s Rachel Leingang reports: A rightwing group that has created a series of blacklists to target federal workers it believes the Trump administration should fire has received funding for the project by the thinktank behind Project 2025.A recent list created by the American Accountability Foundation called the “DEI Watch List” includes mostly Black people with roles in government health roles alleged to have some tie to diversity initiatives. Another targets education department employees in career roles who “cannot be trusted to faithfully execute the agenda of the elected President of the United States”. One calls out the “most subversive immigration bureaucrats”.Tom Jones, the president of the American Accountability Foundation, said the organization had plans to add to its existing lists and create more. The group was designed to go after the “DC bureaucrats and leftist organizations” that had been allowed “to subvert, obstruct, and sabotage the America First agenda”, according to its website.Here’s a recap of developing news today so far:

      The Senate appears poised to confirm the nomination of Russell Vought to lead the powerful Office of Management and Budget, despite intense Democratic opposition. Senate Democrats held an overnight floor session in the senate to deliver speeches decrying Vought, an architect of Project 2025 who would likely attempt to further consolidate executive authority under Trump if confirmed.

      Trump attended the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, an annual gala, where he said he had plans to create a task force to root out “anti-Christian bias” and floated possible changes to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

      The deadline for federal workers to accept offered buyouts approaches tonight, leaving federal employees to wonder whether the promised benefits are really on offer, and whether they will be laid off if they choose to stay – a possibility floated to the press by top Trump officials.

      CNN reported that top associates of Elon Musk sought to use the highly-sensitive Treasury payment system to block funding for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), sparking fears of overreach by the unelected government employee and his staff.

      Trump is expected to sanction the International Criminal Court in an executive order, accusing the court of improperly investigating the US and Israel. In November, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and top Hamas leadership.

      A federal judge said he stood ready to enforce his order for the Trump administration to end its freeze on federal grant funding. States have reported programs like Head Start still struggling to access their funding despite the Trump administration rescinding its pause on such funding and a court order to do the same.
      A federal judge on Thursday said he stood ready to enforce an order he issued blocking Donald Trump’s administration from freezing federal grants, loans and other financial assistance after Democratic-led states said billions of dollars in funding was still being tied up, Reuters reports. US District Judge John McConnell in Providence, Rhode Island, during a virtual court hearing, said state agencies had a “rightful concern” that they were still not able to fully access money nearly a week after he issued his temporary restraining order.He issued that 31 January order at the behest of Democratic attorneys generals from 22 states and the District of Columbia, determining it was necessary even after the White House’s Office of Management and Budget rescinded its wide-ranging directive that had announced the funding freeze. More

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      in US Politics

      President Trump fired me. Now it will be easier for the government to spy on Americans | Travis LeBlanc

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      Donald Trump fired me on Monday from my job as a member of the bipartisan Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board – a job he nominated me for twice. Yes, I am a Democrat. He also fired every other board member who is not a registered Republican. While most Americans have never heard of our board, which oversees national security agencies such as the CIA, NSA and FBI, we should all be concerned about the undermining of an oversight agency designed by Congress to ensure that government surveillance does not infringe our privacy and civil liberties.The board I served on was created to make sure that independent bipartisan subject matter experts – such as myself and my fellow board members – could keep a close watch on the use of new national security powers presidents were given to surveil Americans after 9/11. Our job was to look for abuses that threatened Americans’ privacy and freedom.Congress designed the board as an “independent agency” to keep it insulated from day-to-day politics. Members of the board must be Senate confirmed and are appointed to six-year terms so that they serve by law and design across two administrations. At least two of the five members must not be from the president’s political party, and in selecting those members the law requires that the president consult with the opposition party. That design helps to ensure that potential surveillance abuses – abuses that might be targeted at the opposition and not otherwise be known to Congress, the courts or the American public – are more difficult to hide behind invocations of national security and executive privilege. Despite Congress’s attempt to insulate the board from politics, I and other board members were fired before the end of our terms with no explanation. Our firings were clearly partisan, but Americans should not be fooled into thinking that board members have partisan agendas. I was nominated for my seat two times by Trump in his first term and confirmed by a Republican Senate. At a time when Democrats and Republicans were fleeing the federal government, I dutifully took up Trump’s call to serve in his first administration.My top priority while at the board was oversight of the FBI – a concern that I am confident the president shares. And since taking office, I have been criticized by Joe Biden’s national security council and earned praise from Freedom caucus Republicans for proposing reforms to ensure that federal surveillance activities are not being abused to spy on American citizens.The result of these historically unprecedented firings at our agency is that a board intentionally designed by Congress to be staffed on a bipartisan basis across administrations is now exclusively staffed by a single Republican. That Republican has previously aligned herself with Merrick Garland and the Biden administration in defending warrantless surveillance by the FBI on average Americans – a practice that a federal court in New York ruled unconstitutional last week. And worse, the board (which requires a quorum of three members to do anything) will no longer engage in any oversight of presidential surveillance of American citizens. In other words, by firing us, the president has extinguished independent oversight of surveillance activities of the exact kind that plagued Trump and Carter Page in past years.The same story is being repeated throughout the executive branch. Trump has fired many of the inspectors general whose job is to prevent government waste, fraud and abuse. He’s fired the heads of other independent agencies such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the National Labor Relations Board, with many others likely to follow. And he’s undertaking a swift purge of the civil service to get rid of anyone not perceived as sufficiently loyal.These partisan witch-hunts and firings need to stop. Congress creates independent agencies and insulates civil servants from partisan firings for a reason. They provide critical non-partisan expertise to Congress, the president and the American people on a wide range of critical issues from privacy, to securities regulation, to monetary policy, to transportation safety, to protecting American consumers from corporate abuses, to the storage of radioactive materials. If this week’s actions by the president become the new normal – and partisanship overrides Congress’s design and becomes the only criteria for holding a position in a federal agency – then our financial markets will be more volatile, our consumer products more hazardous, our skies and railroads more dangerous, and our civil liberties and constitutional rights less secure.

      Travis LeBlanc was a Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board member from 2019 to January 2025. He is a partner at Cooley LLP, a global law firm, and an expert on data privacy, cybersecurity and the regulation of emerging technologies. He has held key roles at the Federal Communications Commission, Department of Justice and California attorney general’s office More

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      in Elections

      US electors to certify Trump’s win in process targeted by fake electors in 2020

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      Electors will meet in all 50 states on Tuesday to ratify the second election of Donald Trump to the presidency, a process typically no more than a ceremonial step to the White House for the winner of an election.Usually, it lacks drama. But four years ago on 20 December 2020, Republican activists met in seven states won by Joe Biden – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – to sign false certificates of ascertainment proclaiming victory for Donald Trump and Mike Pence, to be sent to the National Archives and to Congress.Prosecutors have described the intent behind this act of “fake electors” as the provision of a rationale for the vice-president to either declare Trump president or to throw the election to Congress to decide on 6 January 2021. On that day, rioters breached the US Capitol intent on subverting the results of the election.The constitution states that on the first Tuesday following the second Wednesday of December after a presidential election, each state’s presidential electors gather in each state’s capitol to cast their vote in the electoral college for president and vice-president. The electoral college is an artifact of the politics of slavery; created at the insistence of southern states because it initially enhanced the voting power of states with larger enslaved populations due to the apportionment value of the three-fifths compromise.The re-election of Trump in November by a decisive margin, coupled with the relative acceptance of the results by his political opponents, suggests no second wave of shenanigans on Tuesday.Nonetheless, Congress tightened up language about how the process works after the January 6 insurrection, the latest of periodic adjustments to the 248-year-old tradition of the electoral college. The Electoral Count Reform Act clarified that the legislatures of states that use an election to choose a president cannot simply appoint electors after the fact if there is some kind of election “failure”.The reforms require the executive of each state to certify an election at least six days before the electoral count, and that this certification is conclusive unless a state or federal court concludes otherwise. It limited the kind of objections members of Congress could make to the votes of electors. It also ensured that a mob with bad intentions could not change the outcome, by explicitly designating the vice-president’s role in counting votes as a ministerial, ceremonial act.The one thing the 2022 reforms didn’t do is require states to hold a presidential election.Stated in article II, section 1, clause 2 of the constitution: “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress … ”The US supreme court ruled in Bush v Gore that states do not actually have to hold an election at all, but if they do it has to conform with 14th amendment rules for equal protection.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe “manner” state legislatures have chosen in the past has included allowing voters to choose them by electoral district, or with legislators choosing themselves – as Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, New Jersey and South Carolina did in the first presidential election.Electors appointed to the college are obligated to vote for the winning candidate. Some vote for someone else anyway. It’s rare – fewer than 100 out of more than 14,000 people over the life of the country. The modern record is seven, set in 2016.So-called faithless electors have never overturned an election, but dozens of electors have cast ballots for a candidate not of their party over the years. Thirty-three states and Washington DC have state laws prohibiting electors from casting ballots for someone other than the winner of the election. In 2016, four electors for Hillary Clinton in the state of Washington cast their votes for Colin Powell or Faith Spotted Eagle instead and were fined $1,000 for doing so.Five states make the act of a faithless elector a crime; California law makes it a felony punishable by up to three years in prison to break ranks. More

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      Trump says he supports polio vaccine despite signs of RFK Jr’s opposition – live

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      Last week, the New York Times reported that a lawyer who had filed petitions seeking to revoke the approval of vaccines for polio and other preventable diseases has been by Robert F Kennedy Jr’s side in interviews to hire top officials for the health and human services department.A reporter asked Donald Trump today if he supported taking the polio vaccine out of circulation.“You’re not going to lose the polio vaccine. That’s not going to happen,” Trump said. “I saw what happened with the polio, I have friends that were very much affected by that. I have friends from many years ago, and … they’re still in not such good shape because of it.”The polio vaccine has been credited with suppressing, almost entirely, a disease that can cause lifelong paralysis in people who get it. Mitch McConnell, the top Senate Republican who survived the disease, condemned the news that Trump’s incoming administration could be hostile to the much-used vaccine.However, Trump did signal some skepticism to the vaccine mandates enacted by some states and school districts. “I don’t like mandates. I’m not a big mandate person,” Trump said.He also said that there might be a link between vaccines and pesticides and autism. “You take a look at autism today versus 20, 25 years ago, it’s like, not even believable. So we’re going to have reports,” Trump said.But he downplayed fears that Kennedy, if confirmed to lead the nation’s health department, would make radical changes. “Nothing’s going to happen very quickly. I think you’re going to find that Bobby is much is a very rational guy,” Trump said.Democratic party aides have begun to float ideas for a Kamala Harris political comeback, reportedly eyeing another run at the US’s highest office even as the party continues to grapple with the electoral messages contained in the vice-president’s decisive defeat in November’s White House race against Donald Trump.Harris, who has reportedly not ruled out a second run for the presidency, is now reported to be considering a run for the California governorship, currently held until 2027 by Gavin Newsom. Newsom was a rumoured presidential contender during the chaotic summer that saw Joe Biden step down from a rematch with Trump – whom he defeated in the 2020 election – and then endorse Harris as his replacement.According to the Washington Post on Monday, some Democratic party aides believe Trump – who, among other things, overcame a criminal conviction and other such charges to win – has sufficiently overturned the norms of losing White House candidates’ not attempting a second bite at the proverbial apple to give Harris the opportunity of a repeat bid in 2028, this time for the full cycle.“Since Donald Trump has rewritten the rules – the norms – I don’t believe Kamala Harris or anyone should try to go with precedent, ever,” said Donna Brazile, a Harris ally, Al Gore 2000 presidential campaign manager and political commentator. “There are no rule books.”Read more:Trump’s stance on TikTok has softened since his first term in office. Initially he advocated to ban the app, but during his run for re-election he posted on his Truth Social account that he would “save TikTok in America”.Trump launched his own TikTok account in June, which now has nearly 15 million followers.On Monday, Trump said in a press conference at Mar-a-Lago that he has a “warm spot in my heart for TikTok”. He’s reportedly slated to meet with TikTok CEO Shou Chew at his estate on Monday, according to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.TikTok asked the supreme court to block a law that aims to ban the popular social media app in the US. Unless the court intervenes, the ban is set to go into effect on 19 January, one day before Donald Trump is sworn into office.The law to ban TikTok passed Congress last spring and was signed by Joe Biden. The US government says TikTok is a national security threat because its parent company, ByteDance, is Chinese-owned. They say China could use the app to access personal data from millions of Americans and also spread propaganda. The government has not disclosed evidence that Beijing or ByteDance has done so.TikTok argues the law is unconstitutional, unfairly singles it out and violates the right to free speech of its millions of users.“The Act will shutter one of America’s most popular speech platforms the day before a presidential inauguration,” reads the court filing. “This, in turn, will silence the speech of Applicants and the many Americans who use the platform to communicate about politics, commerce, arts, and other matters of public concern,” they added.TikTok asked the supreme court to act by 6 January.Donald Trump’s allies have become increasingly emboldened to float their most audacious ideas as Trump prepares to return to office, suggesting he run for an unconstitutional third term in 2028 and accusing the news media of having engaged in a criminal conspiracy with prosecutors against him.Those suggestions, by Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon, came at a self-congratulatory gala dinner for conservatives in New York on Sunday. At times the remarks seemed like the product of the euphoria that permeated attendees.The underlying message was clear: with Trump back in the White House and with Bannon renewing his influence with the president-elect, the most extreme and polarizing proposals at the very least were up for consideration.“The viceroy Mike Davis tells me, since it doesn’t actually say consecutive, that maybe we do it again in ’28?” Bannon said of Trump possibly running again in his remarks at the New York Young Republican Club gala dinner that also saw a Trump adviser keel over the lectern and fall off the stage.Riding the wave of self-congratulatory sentiment in the room, Bannon, who ignored the black-tie dress code with a wax jacket and black collared shirt, doubled down on pursuing a campaign of retribution against Trump’s perceived enemies in the news media and at the justice department.“We want retribution and we’re going to get retribution. You have to. It’s not personal, it’s not personal,” Bannon said to the raucous room. “They need to learn what populist, nationalist power is on the receiving end.“I need investigations, trials and then incarceration. And I’m just talking about the media. Should the media be included in the vast criminal conspiracy against President Trump? Should Andrew Weissmann on MSNBC and Rachel Maddow and all of them?”Read more:Anti-vaccine activist Robert F Kennedy Jr is on Capitol Hill to meet Republican senators who will decide if he should be confirmed as secretary of health and human services:Kennedy has attracted much scrutiny for his embrace of various conspiracy theories, and advocacy against vaccines. But as conservative activist Charlie Kirk wrote on X, Kennedy’s appeal to Trump supporters is that he would downsize the massive federal department he is being tapped to lead:
      The annual budget for HHS is over $1.8 trillion, including $130 billion in discretionary spending. A behemoth of bloat and bureaucracy.
      That said, there’s one thing about Kennedy that might not sit well with some Republicans: his previous statements of support for abortion. We’ll see what lawmakers have to say about that.It’s a somewhat obscure issue, but one thing Trump has made very clear he plans to do is take steps to require federal employees to work from offices that they may have stopped going to when Covid-19 broke out.He repeated the promise at his Mar-a-Lago press conference today, saying:
      If people don’t come back to work, come back into the office, they’re going to be dismissed.
      In a statement, Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union of federal government employees, said the issue was not as simple as Trump makes it sound:
      Rumors of widespread federal telework and remote work are simply untrue. More than half of federal employees cannot telework at all because of the nature of their jobs, only ten percent of federal workers are remote, and those who have a hybrid arrangement spend over sixty percent of working hours in the office.
      Kelley also threatened a fight over any steps Trump may take that run afoul of union contracts, saying: “Collective bargaining agreements entered into by the federal government are binding and enforceable under the law. We trust the incoming administration will abide by their obligations to honor lawful union contracts. If they fail to do so, we will be prepared to enforce our rights.”Here’s more about Trump’s plans to return government workers to their offices:Donald Trump is considering appointing Democratic congressman Jared Moskowitz to lead the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), CNN reports.Moskowitz, the former director of Florida’s division of emergency management, would be a rare registered Democrat to wind up in Trump’s administration. The congressman earlier this month announced he would join the congressional caucus supporting the “Department of Government Efficiency”, the quasi-governmental effort co-chaired by billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to downsize the federal government.Trump has nominated some former Democrats to cabinet posts, including ex-Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, and anti-vaccine activist Robert F Kennedy Jr as health and human services secretary.Elon Musk is often by Donald Trump’s side these days, but the Guardian’s Edward Helmore reports that the government does not necessarily consider him trustworthy:Space entrepreneur Elon Musk is unlikely to receive government security clearances if he so applied, even as his SpaceX launch company blasts military and spy agency payloads into orbit, according to a report on Monday.The billionaire, a close ally of Donald Trump, who is set to join the incoming administration as an efficiency expert and recently became the first person to exceed $400bn in self-made personal wealth, is reported by the Wall Street Journal to have been advised by SpaceX lawyers to not seek highest-level security clearances owing to personal drug use and contacts with foreign nationals.Musk currently holds a “top-secret” clearance that took years to obtain after he discussed use of marijuana on a 2018 podcast with Joe Rogan, according to the outlet. But that may not be enough to have access to information about US government payloads in his rockets.Typically, candidates undergoing federal security screenings by the department of defense may not receive clearance if the agency expresses concerns about drug or alcohol use, criminal conduct, psychological conditions, sexual behavior or allegiance to the US.According to the Journal, Musk’s lawyers outlined scenarios in which he might inadvertently disclose secrets to foreign officials with whom he regularly speaks, including the Russian president Vladimir Putin, with whom he is reported to have been in regular contact since 2022.Musk’s use of another semi-legal drug, ketamine, in pursuit of what friends call “pure creativity”, along with reports of LSD, ecstasy and magic mushrooms, could also be an issue.Joe Biden has been briefed on a school shooting in Madison, Wisconsin, which the local police chief says has left five people dead and several other injured.“The president has been briefed on the school shooting in Madison, Wisconsin. Senior White House officials are in touch with local counterparts in Madison to provide support as needed,” the White House said.Here’s more on this developing story:Regarding Israel’s assault on Gaza and the possibility for a ceasefire, Miller said:
      We are pushing as hard as we know how to do at this point. We believe we can get to the deal, but again it remains incumbent on Hamas and Israel agreeing to those final terms and getting it over the line. I cannot in good conscience stand here and tell you that that’s going to happen. But it should happen.
      US officials and other countries are trying to broker a deal between Israel and Hamas that would call for a ceasfire and the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian detainees.More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in Gaza since Hamas’s 7 October attacks on Israel, more than half of whom are women and children.The US state department is holding a briefing right now, much of it dedicated to the aftermath of the rapid toppling of Syria’s government, formerly led by authoritarian leader Bashar al-Assad – and what that means for the US.Spokesperson Matthew Miller said the US’s “message to the Syrian people is this: We want them to succeed and we are prepared to help them do so.”Miller spoke to the importance of locating and finding US journalist Austin Tice, who has been missing since 2012 but is reportedly alive, to his family. Tice’s mother, Debra, went on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday and said she has met with the state department and the White House.She added: “We’re just really excited about being a reunited family.”No organization from the US government has been on the ground yet in Syria in reference to the search for Tice or other diplomatic issues since rebel forces took down the regime, the state department confirmed.Donald Trump held a wide-ranging press conference from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, weighing in on everything from pardoning New York mayor Eric Adams (he might do it) to getting rid of the polio vaccine (he’s not in favor). The president-elect also tried to tamp down concerns that his nominee to lead the health and human services department, Robert F Kennedy Jr, would make big changes, saying instead that “he’s going to be much less radical than you would think”. Finally, Trump announced that Japanese firm SoftBank would invest $100bn in America and create 100,000 jobs, though in the past, similar promises have not panned out.Here’s what else has happened today so far:

      Democrats are making a last minute-push to convince Joe Biden to put the Equal Rights Amendment into the constitution, which would protect against sex discrimination and likely spark a court fight.

      Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator who has met with Pete Hegseth, said the defense secretary nominee told him that he will allow a woman who he paid in relation to a sexual assault allegation to speak about it publicly.

      Biden defended his economic record with an essay in the progressive American Prospect magazine.
      Donald Trump has a history of announcing big investments that do not turn out as advertised, and one of the prime examples from his first term was a sprawling plant in Wisconsin that electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn was to build. It never actually materialized, but despite that unmet promise, the Badger state this year voted to send Trump back to the White House. Writing before the election, the Guardian’s Callum Jones took a look at what went wrong with the much-ballyhooed investment:Less than 30 miles south of the Fiserv Forum, the Wisconsin convention center where Republicans confirmed Donald Trump as their nominee for president for the third time, lies the site of a project Trump predicted would become “the Eighth Wonder of the World”.While still in office, the then president traveled to Mount Pleasant in Racine county to break ground on a sprawling facility that the electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn had agreed to build – in exchange for billions of dollars’ worth of subsidies.Flanked by local allies and executives from the company, Trump planted a golden shovel in the ground. “America is open for business more than it has ever been open for business,” he proclaimed in June 2018, as FoxConn promised to invest $10bn and hire 13,000 local workers.Highways were built and expanded. Homes were razed. The area – a former manufacturing powerhouse – was primed for revitalization in a deal that seemed to underline the executive prowess of America’s most famous businessman, an image that has helped maintain many voters’ confidence that he could steer the US economy more competently than his rival, Kamala Harris, and could win him the White House again come November.At his just-concluded press conference in Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump was asked if he would consider pardoning New York mayor Eric Adams, who is facing corruption charges.“Yeah, I think that he was treated pretty unfairly,” Trump replied.Adams has been indicted on five federal charges related to accepting gifts in exchange for favors such as helping Turkey open a new diplomatic tower in Manhattan despite concerns about its fire safety system. More

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      Washington DC steels itself for Trump’s ‘takeover’: ‘We’re in for a bumpy ride’

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      View image in fullscreenBoth a senator and a pastor, Raphael Warnock reflected on being asked to give closing remarks at an annual congressional dinner in Washington. “Since we are meeting in what used to be the Trump International Hotel,” he mused, “perhaps it is an exorcism”.That was last year, when the ghost of Donald Trump had seemingly been banished for good from the nation’s capital. But like all the best horror movies, there is going to be a sequel. Next month Trump will return to a city that he has openly disparaged – the feeling is generally mutual – when he is inaugurated as the 47th US president.Trump lost the Republican primary election to Nikki Haley in the District of Columbia. He lost the presidential election there to Democrat Kamala Harris by 86 percentage points. Even so, he has vowed to radically overhaul the capital, threatened its political autonomy and recruited the billionaire Elon Musk to slash the federal workforce.Sally Quinn, an author, journalist and socialite, said: “The mood is pretty grim. People are depressed. I had a dinner last night with a number of people from Washington and I would say that everyone was very subdued and there’s not a lot of gaiety or celebration. I don’t know anybody who’s in the Christmas spirit right now.”During his first term, Trump, a New Yorker and now Florida resident, never truly embraced Washington, a city of around 700,000 people that has been home to the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, the singer Marvin Gaye and the comedian Dave Chappelle.During his presidency, the only DC restaurant he patronised was his own, ordering a well-done steak with ketchup at BLT Prime in the Trump International Hotel, half a mile from the White House. He has since sold the hotel, and its new restaurant is run by José Andrés, a Spanish-American chef and outspoken Trump critic.The former president snubbed Washington rituals. He was the only president never to attend the annual Kennedy Center Honors. He also skipped the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. In late 2019 Trump did watch the Washington Nationals in the baseball World Series only to be met with loud boos and chants of “Lock him up!” and “Impeach Trump!”In 2020 Washington was convulsed by the coronavirus pandemic and Black Lives Matter demonstrators. Teargas was fired against nearby peaceful protesters outside the White House before Trump staged a photo opportunity holding a Bible outside a church. DC responded by painting “Black Lives Matter” on a nearby street and creating Black Lives Matter Plaza.Then came his defeat in the presidential election. First the city erupted in joy with people celebrating in the streets. Then it was stunned by the insurrection on 6 January 2021 at the US Capitol building, leading to five deaths. Washington was left reeling but, two weeks later, saw Trump depart the White House and assumed he was gone for good.Quinn reflected: “This is a Democratic town. People are in a state of shock and disbelief and trying to understand: how do you get over January 6? What is it that Democrats did wrong that was so much worse than January 6? What did the Democrats do that didn’t appeal to people? You have an indicted criminal as an elected president. How is that possible?”With the Trump hotel now under different ownership, it remains to be seen where his allies and supporters will congregate. Quinn recalls that some used to gather at Cafe Milano in Georgetown, much to the dismay of locals. “One night there were about 10 Trump people there and the buzz all around the room was such that I felt like everybody was going to stand up and start singing ‘La Marseillaise’ the way they did at Rick’s Café in Casablanca.”Trump’s return also has huge implications for the way that DC runs itself. The district has always lacked the autonomy of state. It was granted limited self-governance by the Home Rule Act in 1973 but Congress still essentially vets all DC laws and can outright overturn them.During his first term Trump threatened to federalise DC police, deployed the National Guard against protesters and expressed a desire to control city functions like road repair. On the campaign trail he expressed disdain for the city, raising fears about a potential escalation during his second term.Trump repeatedly vowed to “take over” the city and usurp the authority of the local government. In August last year, when he briefly came to town to plead not guilty on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 electoral loss to Biden, Trump derided the capital on social media, calling it a “filthy and crime ridden embarrassment to our nation”. He has long condemned it as “the swamp”.George Derek Musgrove, co-author of Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital, suggests that there are two Washingtons in Trump’s imagination. “One is the place where only lobbyists, lawyers and Hill staffers and federal regulators live. He sees those people as parasitical: if we got rid of those, we’d be able to have a much more functional democracy.“Contradictorily, he also sees the district where actual real people live but those people are poor and Black and highly criminal. Those are two DCs that he and House Republicans have presented to the country and both of them have a national political function. They’re a way of painting the Democratic party as part of the deep state and siding with criminals over victimised law-abiding citizens.”Trump has duly appointed Elon Musk and the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to a “Department of Government Efficiency” intended to save money by shrinking the federal government – an effort that could risk the jobs of thousands of employees in Washington and nearby Maryland and Virginia. The president-elect has also vowed to dismantle the Department of Education.Musgrove, an associate professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore county, said: “When you talk about the fear of the incoming Trump administration, it’s twofold. One is the attacks on democracy in the district. The other is this real fear that his plans to slash the federal workforce will fall disproportionately on us and cause economic pain in the district.”Congressional Republicans have become increasingly aggressive in using their power to override DC laws, restrict its budget and target liberal policies on criminal justice, marijuana legalisation and abortion. Andrew Clyde, a Georgia congressman, has proposed completely repealing the Home Rule Act, while Andy Ogles, a Tennessee congressman, has talked publicly of abolishing the office of DC mayor.The current mayor, Muriel Bowser, was a thorn in Trump’s side first time around. But she and other local officials are seeking ways to work with the Trump administration on issues such as bringing federal workers back to the office. Unlike Democratic state governors, who are already coordinating on how to resist Trump on issues such as immigration, the mayor’s reach is limited.Meagan Hatcher-Mays, a senior adviser for United for Democracy, a coalition of more than 140 organisations, said: “We have a Democratic mayor but we’re not a state and so the federal government can interfere with our local politics and our local decisions in a way that they can’t with the states. Whether Trump is physically present here or not, we’re in for a bumpy ride with a lot of his policy folks and administration.”Hatcher-Mays also warned that DC could also prove a laboratory for Project 2025, a radical policy blueprint drawn up by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative thinktank. “Pretty much everything that’s in Project 2025 that they might not be able to get through Congress to go national could become real and exclusively apply just to DC.”Republicans’ clean sweep of the White House and both chambers of Congress was also a heavy blow to the long-running campaign for DC statehood. Advocates argue that this is the only way to ensure full democratic rights for DC residents, who pay federal taxes but lack voting representation. Republicans, however, are fiercely opposed to the idea of adding two senators likely to be Democrats.Paul Strauss, the “shadow” senator for DC who does get a vote in the Senate chamber, admitted: “We’re on defence. Most of what I expect I’ll be doing in the next two years is defending attacks on DC autonomy without a majority in either chamber. There’s not going to be much of a chance to move a bill forward. We are going to be trying to preserve what little self-determination we have.”The storied culture of DC includes the Washington Post, a newspaper founded in 1877 and famed for its investigation into the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. It spent the first Trump term locked in an old fashioned newspaper war with the New York Times over a seemingly endless series of revelations about his administration.But since then the Post has suffered deep financial losses, job cuts and reports that its publisher, Will Lewis, tried to pressure Post staff not to report on questions of whether he was involved in covering up crimes more than a decade ago at Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloid newspapers. The paper, owned by the billionaire Jeff Bezos, declined to endorse a candidate for president, reportedly prompting more than 250,000 readers to cancel subscriptions.Hatcher-Mays commented: “This is not a knock on any of the reporters who work at the Post. I know they’re independent and all great but it’s going to be a tough uphill climb to report out the various misdeeds of this administration when the owner of your paper is more interested playing footsie with a person who’s been impeached twice, is under indictment and has no interest in the product of democracy.”During his first term, Trump spent many weekends at his clubs in Florida or New Jersey but, when in Washington, was often driven to his golf club in Sterling, Virginia, where he played rounds. An accompanying pool of reporters would kill time at Lucia’s, an Italian restaurant nearby.Its owner, David Hackett, is preparing for their return after a four-year hiatus and prefers to not reveal his political allegiance. “It was definitely a nice Saturday and Sunday boost,” he said. “I’m looking forward to the journalists coming back. That might be the only plus to the whole deal for me.” More

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      Nancy Pelosi hospitalized after sustaining injury on Luxembourg trip

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      Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the US House of Representatives, suffered an injury on a trip to Luxembourg and has been admitted to a hospital for evaluation, her office said in a statement on Friday.Pelosi, 84, is the first woman to serve as speaker of the House and had also been a longtime leader of the House Democratic caucus.“While traveling with a bipartisan congressional delegation in Luxembourg to mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi sustained an injury during an official engagement and was admitted to the hospital for evaluation,” a Pelosi spokesperson, Ian Krager, said in a statement.Krager added: “Speaker Emerita Pelosi is currently receiving excellent treatment from doctors and medical professionals. She continues to work.”The San Francisco congresswoman stepped down from her role as speaker – a powerful position second in line to the presidency after the vice-president – in 2023 but she has continued to serve in the House.She was re-elected in November to another two-year term beginning on 3 January.Pelosi played a key role in passing Joe Biden’s sweeping $1tn infrastructure bill in 2022 and famously feuded with Donald Trump during his first four years in office, culminating with the moment when she tore up his State of the Union speech on national television in 2020.Pelosi has been a prominent figure in Washington over a tenure spanning seven presidential administrations. She first served as House speaker from 2007 to 2011, then regained the job in 2019 after her party took back control of the chamber in the 2018 midterm elections.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDemocrats lost their House majority in 2022, and Republicans will again hold a narrow majority next year when President-elect Trump returns to the White House. More

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      Did gerrymandering keep Republicans from a bigger majority? Absolutely not | David Daley

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      Mike Johnson, the House Speaker, will soon have the challenge of leading a three-seat Republican majority. He has an interesting theory about why the Republican edge will be so slender. Last week, on Fox News, he blamed Democratic gerrymandering.While it’s always a delightful surprise to hear a Republican leader express concern about the evils of gerrymandering, Johnson has the facts and the math completely backwards.The truth is the opposite: Republicans drew the district lines of nearly three times as many US House seats as did Democrats – 191 to 71. Republicans gerrymandered more than three times as many seats than Democrats. They started from a position of power after drawing historic gerrymanders in 2011 that lasted a decade in states like Wisconsin, Ohio and North Carolina. And the Republicans’ gerrymandered advantage was preserved and protected by the Republican supermajority on the US supreme court.Johnson is right about one thing: he holds the speakership because of gerrymandering – but because of the election rigging done by his own side.The Republican party’s three-seat majority would not exist at all without a new, mid-decade gerrymander in North Carolina that gift-wrapped the Republicans the three additional seats that made the difference. Before the Republican-controlled state supreme court upended North Carolina’s congressional map, the purple state elected seven Democrats and seven Republicans. (When Democrats controlled the court, they mandated a fair map, not a Democratic one; when Republicans took over, the gerrymander returned.)And what happened after the newly seated Republican court destroyed the balanced map and returned it to the Republican legislature to be tilted in its direction? The new map produced 10 Republicans and four Democrats. Many experts believe it could yet elect 11 Republicans and three Democrats. The gerrymander handed Johnson the three seats that made him speaker. Without it, Democrats might even control the House.Johnson, quite simply, couldn’t be any more wrong. Both parties certainly gerrymandered where they could. But Republicans had the power to gerrymander far more districts in far more places.Overall, according to the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at New York University law school, it all adds up to a 16-seat edge for Republicans nationwide. “The bias in this cycle’s maps strongly favors Republicans due primarily to aggressive gerrymandering in GOP strongholds in the South and Midwest,” a Brennan report concludes.There are no redistricting angels. The US supreme court made sure of that with their 2019 decision in Rucho v Common Cause, which closed the federal courts to partisan gerrymandering cases at exactly the time when lower-court judges appointed by both parties had found the tools they needed to determine when partisan gerrymanders went too far.But when the Republican court ended the possibility of a national solution, it launched a game of mutual assured destruction: the Republican party built its advantages in state legislature and Congress throughout the 2010s via redistricting. With no hope of help from neutral courts in leveling tilted playing fields in Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Georgia and elsewhere, Democrats were left with little choice but to maximize gerrymanders of their own. This is terrible for voters. It’s bad for democracy. Sometimes it is even hypocritical. Yet doing nothing while Republican gerrymanders run wild isn’t a better strategy and presents no moral victory.So in 2021, Democrats turned a 13-5 map in Illinois into a 14-3 edge, gaining one seat and wiping away two from the Republicans. (Illinois lost a member in reapportionment.) Democrats also helped themselves to an additional seat in Oregon, Nevada and New Mexico, and retained their gerrymander of Maryland. This year, a court-ordered redistricting in New York resulted in one additional Democratic seat, and mildly strengthened a handful of others, each by no more than a percentage point. (Only one flip in New York this cycle can be attributed to redistricting.)Those are the only gerrymanders Johnson wants you to know about. The truth is that they are dwarfed by what Republicans did themselves.Start in Florida, where Ron DeSantis, the governor, oversaw an aggressive and likely unconstitutional gerrymander that netted the Republican party four additional seats, wiped away two historically Black districts and created a wildly disproportional 20-8 Republican delegation.The North Carolina gerrymander added three more seats. This was hardball politics to the core: national Republicans deeply wired into Leonard Leo’s court-packing, billion-dollar dark money entity helped fund the takeover of North Carolina’s state supreme court. The new Republican majority quickly did the national party’s dirty work and overturned a year-old decision that created the balanced 7-7 map and enabled the Republican state legislature to radically tilt it toward Republicans.Florida and North Carolina alone account for more Republican gerrymanders than Democratic ones. They don’t stop there.Republicans gerrymandered two additional seats in Texas, creating an unbalanced 25-13 Republican delegation. In Ohio, Republicans lawlessly stiff-armed the state supreme court not once, not twice, but seven times to preserve gerrymanders of the state’s legislature and congressional delegation. A federal court packed with Federalist Society and Leonard Leo acolytes allowed them to get away with it.Republican judges similarly abused the legal process to allow Wisconsin to get away with its congressional gerrymander which awards the Republican party a 6-2 edge in the ultimate swing state. The US supreme court slow-walked cases on racial gerrymandering, which also accrued, unsurprisingly, to the Republicans’ benefit.In Tennessee, the Republican party wiped a Democratic seat in Nashville off the map by cracking the blue city in half and attaching small pieces to conservative, rural districts. They played similar tricks with swing seats in Salt Lake City, Oklahoma City and Indianapolis, and reinforced a Republican seat in Omaha, Nebraska, swapping suburban areas for more Republican, rural ones. It might well have tipped Democratic this year otherwise.Republican hardball with Iowa’s redistricting commission added another seat. In Arizona, Republicans didn’t bother playing games at all; they simply hijacked the entire process by taking over an obscure state board that vets the commissioners and packing the field of supposedly independent chairs with longtime partisans, friends and family of Republican leadership, and business acquaintances. Arizona now consistently sends a 6-3 Republican-dominated delegation to Washington, even in years where Democrats all but sweep statewide offices.Mike Johnson doesn’t want to admit it, but Republican gerrymanders are the only reason he will wield the gavel for another term.Whether Democrats should control the chamber is a trickier question; Republican candidates did win four million more votes nationwide. Yet the “national popular vote” for the House is a statistic that has also been distorted and made meaningless by gerrymandering. Uncompetitive gerrymandered seats generate weak opposition and lower voter turnout. Nearly all of that bulge comes from states where gerrymanders gutted competitive elections and created Republican delegations wildly disproportionate to the presidential vote: Florida, Texas, Ohio and North Carolina.Fair maps and competitive contests in those Republican and mixed states – rather than districts rigged so one side comes away with three-quarters of the seats in a 50/50 state – would make the “popular vote” look entirely different. (It is, of course, equally exciting to see Republican leaders talk about the popular vote as it is to hear them discuss gerrymandering concerns.) No one would look at the results in nations where district lines have been so drastically warped and suggest that they reflect the will of the people. We shouldn’t either.Johnson’s gaslighting, however, probably has a deeper purpose. He may well be laying the groundwork for a Republican package to change how we vote. What if the Republican party advanced a package of redistricting “reforms” that actually reverberated to their advantage – say, ending any consideration of race, counting population based on citizenship rather than all residents, requiring congressional districts to be drawn by the legislature and not an independent commission, and making it more difficult to challenge maps in the courts? Or if they required prioritizing “compactness”, which could naturally pack Democratic voters in a handful of urban districts and benefit the party that is spread out more efficiently?We live in a gerrymandered nation twisted into extremism by one side as eager to warp the map as they are to protect their ill-won gains. And every time you think it can’t get worse, or harder to overcome, Johnson’s mistruths suggest that it very much still can.

      David Daley is the author of the new book Antidemocratic: Inside the Right’s 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections as well as Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count More

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      Trump says FBI chief Wray’s resignation will ‘end the weaponization’ of justice department – US politics live

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      Christopher Wray’s plans to step down as FBI director once he takes office will “end the weaponization” of federal law enforcement, Donald Trump said.Referring to the justice department as “the United States Department of Injustice”, Trump said of Wray, the outgoing FBI director whom he appointed in 2017: “I just don’t know what happened to him.” The president-elect has repeatedly claimed the bureau has become politicized, after FBI agents searched his Mar-a-Lago resort and found classified documents. He’s also criticized the justice department under Joe Biden, whose attorney general, Merrick Garland, appointed Jack Smith as special counsel to lead Trump’s prosecution on charges of hiding classified documents, and attempting to overturn the 2020 election.Here’s more from Trump:
      The resignation of Christopher Wray is a great day for America as it will end the Weaponization of what has become known as the United States Department of Injustice. I just don’t know what happened to him. We will now restore the Rule of Law for all Americans. Under the leadership of Christopher Wray, the FBI illegally raided my home, without cause, worked diligently on illegally impeaching and indicting me, and has done everything else to interfere with the success and future of America. They have used their vast powers to threaten and destroy many innocent Americans, some of which will never be able to recover from what has been done to them.
      Montana’s ban on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors has been temporarily blocked by the state supreme court on grounds that it is likely to violate the right to privacy enshrined in the state’s constitution.The top court in Montana sided on Wednesday with an earlier district court decision blocking SB 99, the ban introduced last year by the Republican-controlled state legislature. The decision will allow under-18 transgender girls and boys to continue gender-affirming medical treatment pending a full trial.Montana’s supreme court justices agreed with the district court judge Jason Marks who put a stop to the ban in September 2023, just days before it came into effect. Marks ruled: “The legislature has no interest … to justify its interference with an individual’s fundamental privacy right to obtain a particular lawful medical procedure from a healthcare provider.”The decision to allow gender-affirming treatment to continue for the time being was greeted with delight by the young plaintiffs and advocacy groups. Zooey Zephyr, a Democrat who is the first out trans member of the state legislature, said on social media: “Montana has a constitutional right to privacy, including in our healthcare decisions. Today our constitution continues to protect individuals from government overreach.”Zephyr was propelled into the national limelight in the spring of 2023 when she spoke passionately against the ban in the Montana house. She was banished from the chamber by the Republican leadership prompting large protests.Montana is among at least 26 states that have introduced bans on gender-affirming medical care for minors. By contrast, 15 states have enacted protections for under-18s seeking treatment.The state’s supreme court ruling comes at a critical moment in the nationwide battle over medical care for trans youth. Earlier this month the US supreme court heard oral arguments in a landmark case brought by the ACLU and others against Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming hormonal therapies for trans minors.Read the full story here:Attorney general Merrick Garland praised Wray for his service.“The director of the FBI is responsible for protecting the independence of the FBI. from inappropriate influence in its criminal investigations. That independence is central to preserving the rule of law and to protecting the freedoms we as Americans hold dear,” Garland said in a statement.Kash Patel, Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, has been on Capitol Hill promoting his candidacy.“We look forward to a very smooth transition at the FBI and I’ll be ready to go on day one,” he told reporters.It is unclear the level of support Patel can expect, even from Republicans, for his nomination. The firebrand loyalist has said he sees the department he would lead as part of a “deep state” and pledged to shut its Washington headquarters.The Democratic chair of the Senate select committee on intelligence, Mark Warner, had a measured response to the resignation of FBI chief Christopher Wray.“As we look ahead to the process of confirming a new leader for the FBI, it is essential that the next director be someone who shares director Wray’s commitment to fairness, transparency, and the rule of law, so that the men and women of the FBI can continue their vital work safeguarding national security, fighting crime, and ensuring justice for all,” he said.Independent senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who became notorious for opposing major parts of Joe Biden’s legislative agenda during the first half of his term, have prevented Democrats from appointing a majority on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).Manchin and Sinema, both former Democrats who left the party this year and in 2022, respectively, voted against reappointing Lauren McFerran to a five-year term on the NLRB, which enforces labor laws and oversees unionization efforts. Together with opposition from Senate Republicans, McFerran’s nomination failed, preventing the Democrats from having a majority of their appointees on the board through 2026. Instead, her seat will become open next week, and is likely to be filled by an appointee picked by Donald Trump and confirmed by the Senate’s incoming Republican majority.Manchin and Sinema’s votes were a parting shot to Democrats, after both opted to retire rather than seek another term in the Senate. Biden’s allies are rushing to approve as many federal judges and other appointees as possible before the GOP takes the majority in January, with an eye towards frustrating Trump’s ability to enact the sorts of radical policies he campaigned on implementing.In his post cheering Christopher Wray’s plan to depart as FBI director, Donald Trump also sang the praises of Kash Patel, his nominee to lead the bureau:
      Kash Patel is the most qualified Nominee to lead the FBI in the Agency’s History, and is committed to helping ensure that Law, Order, and Justice will be brought back to our Country again, and soon. As everyone knows, I have great respect for the rank-and-file of the FBI, and they have great respect for me. They want to see these changes every bit as much as I do but, more importantly, the American People are demanding a strong, but fair, System of Justice. We want our FBI back, and that will now happen. I look forward to Kash Patel’s confirmation, so that the process of Making the FBI Great Again can begin.
      Patel has promised to make radical changes to the bureau, including dramatically downsizing its Washington headquarters, and opening investigations of journalists and others who have been critical of Trump. Republican senators have thus far signaled support for his nomination.Here’s more about Patel’s ideas, and the concerns that have been raised about them:Christopher Wray’s plans to step down as FBI director once he takes office will “end the weaponization” of federal law enforcement, Donald Trump said.Referring to the justice department as “the United States Department of Injustice”, Trump said of Wray, the outgoing FBI director whom he appointed in 2017: “I just don’t know what happened to him.” The president-elect has repeatedly claimed the bureau has become politicized, after FBI agents searched his Mar-a-Lago resort and found classified documents. He’s also criticized the justice department under Joe Biden, whose attorney general, Merrick Garland, appointed Jack Smith as special counsel to lead Trump’s prosecution on charges of hiding classified documents, and attempting to overturn the 2020 election.Here’s more from Trump:
      The resignation of Christopher Wray is a great day for America as it will end the Weaponization of what has become known as the United States Department of Injustice. I just don’t know what happened to him. We will now restore the Rule of Law for all Americans. Under the leadership of Christopher Wray, the FBI illegally raided my home, without cause, worked diligently on illegally impeaching and indicting me, and has done everything else to interfere with the success and future of America. They have used their vast powers to threaten and destroy many innocent Americans, some of which will never be able to recover from what has been done to them.
      The Senate judiciary committee’s outgoing Democratic chair, Dick Durbin, had this to say about Christopher Wray’s announcement that he will step down as FBI director once Donald Trump takes office:
      The FBI is critical to our nation’s security and our families’ safety. It will soon embark on a perilous new era with serious questions about its future. I want to thank Director Wray for his service to our nation, and all the men and women of the FBI for their continued efforts to protect our security and liberty.
      The committee is set to consider Donald Trump nominee Kash Patel’s qualifications for the FBI director job – but when it do so sometime next year, it’ll be Trump-aligned Republicans in the majority, not the Democrats.The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said the US was “looking at the question” of whether there was evidence of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces committing genocide in Darfur when asked by Democratic congresswoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove this afternoon at a House foreign affairs committee.Kamlager-Dove said a genocide determination was “overdue” as she pressed Blinken on what was causing the delay. Blinken said: “In terms of atrocities, war crimes, we’ve been making determinations already; we’re looking at the question of genocide. Whether we complete that review in the time we have left, I can’t tell you.”Blinken also said that Sudan, which has been at war since April 2023, was the “worst humanitarian situation in the world by orders of magnitude”, adding that modest progress had been made on getting aid into the country.Progressive thinktank Public Citizen called on Christopher Wray to rethink his decision to resign as FBI director once Joe Biden’s presidency ends.“FBI director Christopher Wray should stay. He should rethink his decision to resign and finish out his 10-year term,” the group’s co-president Robert Weissman, said in a statement.He continued:
      It is especially important that Wray stays in office in light of Donald Trump’s announced intention to appoint Kash Patel to the position. Patel is not only unqualified, he is a danger to America. Patel has already announced his intention to weaponize the FBI against Trump’s perceived enemies – threatening a return to the agency’s most sinister history, or worse.If Donald Trump fires him, so be it. But Wray should not aid and abet the effort to weaponize the FBI by bowing out in advance.
      Christopher Wray announced his resignation plans in a message to FBI employees today, Reuters reports.“After weeks of careful thought, I’ve decided the right thing for the bureau is for me to serve until the end of the current administration in January and then step down,” Wray said, according to a statement from the bureau seen by Reuters.The FBI director, Christopher Wray, will resign once Donald Trump takes office, Reuters reports.Trump appointed Wray to a 10-year term leading the federal law enforcement agency in 2017, but has since criticized him for the FBI’s search of his Mar-a-Lago resort for classified documents and other actions the president-elect says are proof the bureau has been “weaponized” against him. After winning the presidential election, Trump nominated former national security official Kash Patel to serve as FBI director, who has so far received a positive reception from Senate Republicans.Patel’s nomination was a clear warning to Wray that if he did not resign, he would be fired.Donald Trump will be Time magazine’s person of the year this year, picking up the accolade for a second time, Politico reports.Trump previously won the honor in 2016, when he won his first term as president. Politico reports he beat out Kamala Harris, Elon Musk, Benjamin Netanyahu and others for the title, and will celebrate by ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange tomorrow.Here’s more, from Politico:
      Last year, pop superstar Taylor Swift won the honor. To mark the magazine cover reveal, Time CEO Jessica Sibley rang the opening bell.
      Trump was also named Time Person of the Year in 2016 after he won the presidential election. He joins 13 other U.S. presidents who have received the recognition, including President Joe Biden.
      A short list for Time Person of the Year was announced Monday on NBC’s “The Today Show” and included Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris, Kate Middleton, Elon Musk and Benjamin Netanyahu.
      Time already announced NBA star Caitlin Clark as Athlete of the Year, Elton John as Icon of the Year and Lisa Su of Advanced Micro Devices as CEO of the Year.
      A spokesperson for Time said the magazine “does not comment on its annual choice for Person of the Year prior to publication. This year’s choice will be announced tomorrow morning, Dec. 12, on Time.com.”
      Republican congresswoman Nancy Mace yesterday said she had been assaulted by an activist who supports transgender rights, but witnesses to the incident say no such attack occurred, and they are puzzled as to why police made an arrest.The Washington Post and the Imprint report that the alleged attack took place at an anniversary celebration for a child welfare law, which Mace attended. The man who police would later go on to arrest on a charge of assaulting a government official, James McIntyre, is a former foster child who now advocates for their rights. Far from attacking Mace, he went up and shook her hand and spoke to her, the reports say.From the Imprint:
      At tonight’s event, Mace, who co-chairs Congress’ bipartisan foster care caucus, joined a group of legislators at a House reception celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Foster Care Independence Act of 1999. The act created the John H. Chafee Foster Care Program for Successful Transition to Adulthood, legislation that significantly expanded federal support for foster youth who leave the system after turning 18 without a permanent home.
      In her remarks at the House event, Rep. Mace told the crowd that while she was not an adoptee or former foster youth, she had been a victim of sexual abuse as a child. She called the dozens of advocates and foster youth in attendance — McIntyre among them — “the cream of the crop.”
      “I look forward to working with each and every one of you. God bless you, I will be praying for you,” Mace said.
      As she finished her comments and moved to leave the room, McIntyre approached her near an exit door, witnesses said.
      Elliott Hinkle, a former foster youth and advocate for LGBTQ rights, said McIntyre shook her hand, and made a comment about how many transgender youth are in foster care, adding: “They need your support.”
      “From what I saw, it was a normal handshake and interaction that I would expect any legislator to expect from anyone as a constituent,” said Hinkle, a consultant who has advised the federal government on issues affecting youth in foster care.
      Later, Hinkle said, one of Mace’s aides returned to the reception and asked McIntyre his name and whether he would repeat what he had told the legislator. Two other people who witnessed the interaction confirmed that description of the brief episode.
      McIntyre left the celebration, but he was later summoned back to the Rayburn Building by police.
      Donald Trump’s nominees for powerful cabinet positions are back on Capitol hill to make their cases to the Republican senators who will decide if they get the job. Pete Hegseth is making the rounds, after picking up apparent support from a senator who had grown wary of the defense secretary nominee following the emergence of a sexual assault allegation and stories of excessive drinking and poor treatment of women. Nominee for FBI director Kash Patel is also on the Hill, but his ex-boss, Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, says he’s unqualified to lead the bureau because he inflated his résumé and was known for exaggerations and fibs.Here’s what else has been happening:

      Nancy Mace, a Republican congresswoman who introduced a bill to bar the first-ever openly transgender House lawmaker from using the bathroom that corresponds with her gender identity, said she was attacked. Capitol police confirmed the arrest of an Illinois man on a charge of assaulting a public official.

      Conservative activists have launched a pressure campaign, which includes threats to launch primaries, against lawmakers who are less than enthusiastic in their support Trump’s cabinet picks.

      John Fetterman has become the first Democratic senator to join Trump’s X-like Truth Social. In his first post, he called both the president-elect’s hush-money case and the prosecution of Hunter Biden “bullshit”.
      Former national security adviser John Bolton said Kash Patel, whom he supervised during his time in Donald Trump’s first administration, is the wrong choice to lead the FBI.Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Bolton says Patel inflated his résumé and was prone to exaggerations or outright fibs that jeopardized national security:
      Rep Devin Nunes pushed Mr Patel for the National Security Council staff after Republicans lost the House in 2018. Notwithstanding Mr Patel’s lack of policy credentials, the president ordered him hired. NSC staff has long been divided into directorates responsible for different policy areas. Charles Kupperman, my deputy, and I placed Mr. Patel in the International Organizations Directorate, which had a vacancy.
      Some five months later, we moved him to fill an opening in the Counter-Terrorism Directorate. In neither case was he in charge of a directorate during my tenure as national security adviser or thereafter, as he contends in his memoir and elsewhere. He reported to senior directors in both cases and had defined responsibilities. His puffery was characteristic of the résumé inflation we had detected when Mr Trump pressed him on us. We found he had exaggerated his role in cases he worked on as a Justice Department lawyer before joining Mr Nunes’s committee staff. Given the sensitivity of the NSC’s responsibilities, problems of credibility or reliability would ordinarily disqualify any job applicant.
      He proved to be less interested in his assigned duties than in worming his way into Mr Trump’s presence. Fiona Hill, NSC senior director for Europe, testified to Congress during Mr Trump’s first impeachment hearings that Mr Patel, at that time assigned to the International Organizations Directorate, participated in a May 2019 Oval Office meeting on Ukraine, and that he had engaged in various other Ukraine-related activities. Whatever he did on Ukraine while an NSC staffer, at least during my tenure, was unrestrained freelancing. (He has denied any communication with Mr Trump on Ukraine.)
      He also said Patel nearly compromised a hostage rescue mission by falsely stating that approval for US troops to enter a country had been granted:
      According to former Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s memoir, during an October 2020 hostage-rescue mission, Mr Patel, then in the Counter-Terrorism directorate, misinformed other officials that a key airspace-transit clearance had been granted. In fact, Mr Esper writes, the clearance hadn’t been obtained, threatening the operation’s success, and his team “suspected Patel made the approval story up” but wasn’t certain. Typically, Mr Patel’s version of this episode in his memoir denies any error – though, ironically, it also boasts of his acting beyond the authority of NSC staffers. Then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also knew the day’s details, including about the clearance issue. He hasn’t spoken publicly about the incident. He should.
      Bolton, who was national security adviser from 2018 to 2019 and has since broken with Trump, said the president-elect likely nominated Patel simply because he would do whatever he is told – a dangerous qualification for a FBI director:
      Too many of Mr Trump’s personnel selections evidence his assiduous search for personal fealty, not loyalty to the Constitution. Kash Patel’s nomination as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation squarely fits this pattern.
      Also expected on Capitol Hill today is Kash Patel, a former defense official whom Donald Trump nominated to lead the FBI.Republican senator Josh Hawley of Missouri said he would be meeting with Patel this morning.Yesterday, Patel met with several Republican senators, who generally praised him, despite his plans to radically change the FBI and potentially use it to go after Trump’s opponents.After their meeting yesterday, Senator Thom Tillis said on X:
      Kash Patel is the real deal. President Trump campaigned on the promise to enforce our laws equally and fairly and restore the integrity of the FBI. I look forward to supporting @Kash_Patel ’s confirmation.
      Senator Tommy Tuberville expressed a similar sentiment:
      Just met with the next FBI Director, @Kash_Patel. He will support our law enforcement officers and get the FBI back to working for the PEOPLE again. More