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      Mike Johnson reportedly opposes releasing results of Matt Gaetz misconduct investigation – live

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      Politico reports that the Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, said he is against the ethics committee releasing its report into drug use and sexual misconduct by Matt Gaetz, the former representative nominated by Donald Trump to serve as attorney general.“I’m going to strongly request that the ethics committee not issue the report, because that is not the way we do things in the House,” Johnson said, hours after returning from a visit to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. “And I think that would be a terrible precedent to set.”The committee had reportedly been near to releasing its inquiry, but Gaetz’s resignation has thrown into question whether such a report can be made public once a lawmaker exits the House. Some senators from both parties have said it should be shared with them, so they can assess Gaetz’s candidacy to serve as the nation’s top law enforcement officer.Iran sent a message to the Biden administration in October stating it was not attempting to kill Donald Trump while he was president, aiming to reduce tensions with the U.S., according to The Wall Street Journal.The message, delivered through an intermediary, followed a September warning from the Biden administration that any Iranian attempt on Trump’s life, then a Republican presidential candidate, would be considered “an act of war.”Since Trump’s election victory last week, some Iranian former officials, analysts, and media figures have encouraged Tehran to engage with the president-elect and adopt a more cooperative stance, despite Trump allies’ promises to reintroduce a hardline approach against Iran.The news comes the same week Elon Musk, whom Trump named as one of the heads of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, reportedly met with Iran’s UN ambassador to discuss how to defuse tensions between Iran and the United States.A former Virginia lawmaker has pleaded guilty to felony gun and drug charges and been sentenced to time already served in jail, according to the Associated Press.Matt Fariss, who had served in the House of Delegates as a Republican since 2012 before running unsuccessfully last year as an independent, pleaded guilty Wednesday to meth possession and having a firearm while possessing an illegal drug, the Lynchburg News & Advance reported.Judge Dennis Lee Hupp sentenced Fariss in Campbell circuit court to three years in prison and suspended all but 20 days, according to the News & Advance.The appointment of a US health secretary with anti-vaccine views could cause deaths and have profound consequences around the world, global health experts fear.Robert F Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump’s pick for the position, has a history of spreading misinformation on vaccines and questioning the science of HIV and Aids.His nomination has been greeted with bemusement and alarm. One global health activist, speaking on background, said the move was akin to making the disgraced doctor Andrew Wakefield, who falsely claimed that the MMR vaccine caused autism, the UK’s health secretary.Prof Sir Simon Wessely, a regius professor of psychiatry at King’s College London, said of the move: “That sound that you just heard was my jaw dropping, hitting the floor and rolling out of the door.”Prof Sir Andrew Pollard, the director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, said there was real concern that Kennedy might use the platform “to pursue the same anti-science positions on life-saving public health interventions that he has advanced previously”.He added: “If this makes families hesitate to immunise against the deadly diseases that threaten children, the consequence will be fatal for some.”Kat Lay and Kate Connolly explained what the latest appointment could mean:After Donald Trump nominated him to lead the interior department and the new National Energy Council, North Dakota’s governor, Doug Burgum, wrote on X:
      I’m deeply grateful to President @RealDonaldTrump for this amazing opportunity to serve the American people and achieve ENERGY DOMINANCE!
      Expect that energy dominance to involve a lot of fossil fuels. Here’s more on what environmentalists fear Burgum as interior secretary could portend for fighting the climate crisis:The Guardian’s Alice Herman has more on defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, who concerns experts for his adherence to a number of rightwing ideologies:Extremism experts are sounding the alarm about Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, whose writings and online presence reveal someone immersed in a culture of rightwing Christianity, political extremism and violent ideation.The Fox & Friends host, who has served in the US army but has no experience in government, drew shock from Pentagon officials when Trump nominated him. Hegseth’s books on American culture and the military, his commentary on Fox and his frequent posts on social media showcase his far-right ideology. On these platforms, Hegseth telegraphs paranoia and anger toward “leftists”, an ultra-masculine Maga persona and apparent revulsion toward service members who do not fit his vision – including women.“The thing that really worries me, is both the ideology of Christian nationalism and what that’s going to mean for the kind of policies he tries to put in place for the defense department,” said Thomas Lecaque, a historian focusing on religion and political violence.Donald Trump said in a statement that he will appoint Doug Burgum as both interior secretary and the head of a new National Energy Council.Trump announced the North Dakota governor would head up the department that handles oil and gas drilling on federal lands, rattling environmentalists who fear Burgum will pursue policies that will exacerbate the climate crisis.“I am thrilled to announce that Doug Burgum, the Governor of North Dakota, will be joining my Administration as both Secretary of the Interior and, as Chairman of the newly formed, and very important, National Energy Council, which will consist of all Departments and Agencies involved in the permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation, transportation, of ALL forms of American Energy,” Trump said.“This Council will oversee the path to U.S. ENERGY DOMINANCE by cutting red tape, enhancing private sector investments across all sectors of the Economy, and by focusing on INNOVATION over longstanding, but totally unnecessary, regulation. With U.S. Energy Dominance, we will drive down Inflation, win the A.I. arms race with China (and others), and expand American Diplomatic Power to end Wars all across the World.”Much can change between now and whenever the Senate begins considering Matt Gaetz’s nomination for attorney general, likely after Donald Trump is sworn in on 20 January.But the Wall Street Journal reports that perhaps as many as 30 Republican senators will not support the former representative’s nomination:
      Trump can afford to lose the support of no more than three GOP senators on his most contentious picks, assuming all Democrats are opposed, in a chamber that will be split 53-47 in the new Congress. People familiar with discussions among Senate Republicans said that far more than three of them are prepared to vote no if the matter comes to a vote, and some said there was already talk of trying to convince Trump to pull Gaetz, or get Gaetz to voluntarily withdraw his name.
      ‘It’s simply that Matt Gaetz has a very long, steep hill to get across the finish line,’ said Sen Kevin Cramer (R, ND). ‘And it will require the spending of a lot of capital, and you just have to ask: if you could get him across the finish line, was it worth the cost?’
      Cramer said he didn’t think Gaetz would have the votes to be approved by the Judiciary Committee, much less to be confirmed by the full Senate.
      One person familiar with the conversations among Republican senators said ‘significantly more than four’ of them are opposed, which would be enough to tank Gaetz’s chances. ‘People are pissed,’ the person said.
      Other estimates ranged from more than a dozen Republican ‘no’ votes to more than 30. ‘It won’t even be close,’ another person said.
      ‘It’s going to be very difficult,’ said Sen Markwayne Mullin (R, Okla), when asked if Gaetz could win the votes necessary for confirmation. Mullin, a close Trump ally, said he would keep an open mind because he trusts Trump to pick his cabinet. But he said Gaetz will have to go through the vigorous vetting process required of any nominee, and said the former Florida congressman might decide to opt out and withdraw.
      “We’ve seen a lot of nominees, when they go through the process, they’re like, ‘You know, it’s not going to happen,’ and they pull out,” Mullin said.
      In an interview with CNN, Mike Rounds, a Republican senator from South Dakota, said that the chamber should be able to see the House ethics committee’s report into Matt Gaetz.“We do have a process in place which includes the ability to get that type of information, in many cases. And what we want to do is make good decisions based upon all the relevant facts and information that we can get,” Rounds said.“We should be able to get a hold of it, and we should have access to it one way or another, based on the way that we do all of these nominations.”Politico reports that the Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, said he is against the ethics committee releasing its report into drug use and sexual misconduct by Matt Gaetz, the former representative nominated by Donald Trump to serve as attorney general.“I’m going to strongly request that the ethics committee not issue the report, because that is not the way we do things in the House,” Johnson said, hours after returning from a visit to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. “And I think that would be a terrible precedent to set.”The committee had reportedly been near to releasing its inquiry, but Gaetz’s resignation has thrown into question whether such a report can be made public once a lawmaker exits the House. Some senators from both parties have said it should be shared with them, so they can assess Gaetz’s candidacy to serve as the nation’s top law enforcement officer.Donald Trump has also appointed his top ally Sergio Gor as assistant to the president and director of the presidential personnel office.Gor was the CEO of Winning Team Publishing while also serving for the pro-Trump Super Pac Right for America, the Trump-Vance campaign said.Commenting on the nominations of Steven Cheung (as White House communications director) and Gor, Trump said:
      Steven Cheung and Sergio Gor have been trusted advisors since my first presidential campaign in 2016, and have continued to champion American First principles throughout my first term, all the way to our historic victory in 2024 … I am thrilled to have them join my White House as we, Make America Great Again.
      Donald Trump has appointed his campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung as the next White House communications director.Replacing Ben LaBolt, Cheung will be tasked with steering Trump’s strategy of selling his presidency to the American people.In a statement on Friday, the Trump-Vance campaign said:
      Steven Cheung will return to the White House as assistant to the president and director of communications. Cheung was director of communications on the Trump-Vance 2024 presidential campaign and previously served in the Trump White House as director of strategic response.
      Donald Trump will appoint his main campaign spokesperson, Steven Cheung, as the White House communications director, Politico reports, citing someone familiar with the matter.Throughout the 2024 presidential campaign, Cheung was Trump’s primary vessel to mainstream media outlets, frequently defending the president-elect and remaining close to his side at campaign events and rallies.Environmental groups are sounding the alarm over Donald Trump’s nomination of North Dakota’s governor, Doug Burgum, as interior secretary.Since 2016, the former businessman has been governor of North Dakota, which is the third-largest oil and natural gas producer in the country. Burgum, if confirmed by the Senate, would manage US federal lands including national parks and wildlife refuges, as well as oversee relations with 574 federally recognized Native American tribes.The Sierra Club, the country’s largest non-profit environmental organization, said: “It was climate skeptic Doug Burgum who helped arrange the Mar-a-Lago meeting with wealthy oil and gas executives where Donald Trump offered to overturn dozens of environmental rules and regulations in exchange for $1bn in campaign contributions.”Similarly, the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation policy organization focused on land and energy issues across the western states, said: “Doug Burgum comes from an oil state, but North Dakota is not a public lands state. His cozy relationship with oil billionaires may endear him to Donald Trump, but he has no experience that qualifies him to oversee the management of 20% of America’s lands.”For the full story, click here:Donald Trump has not nominated anyone new for his cabinet yet today, but many names are flying around for top posts. Larry Kudlow could reportedly return to his old job heading the National Economic Council, or even the treasury, while Mike Rogers, who just lost election to the Senate from Michigan, may be tapped to lead the FBI. Meanwhile, we have learned more about Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary nominee. He was reportedly involved in a sexual assault investigation in 2017 – a surprise to Trump’s transition team – but no charges were ever filed. The president-elect has taken to announcing his nominations in the later half of the day, so perhaps we will hear from him this afternoon.Here’s what else has happened today so far:

      Dick Durbin, the outgoing Senate judiciary committee chair, warned that Trump’s justice department will use its powers to “seek vengeance”.

      Mike Pence came out against Robert F Kennedy Jr to lead the health department, citing the nominee’s support for abortion.

      Scott Bessent, a hedge fund founder, and Howard Lutnick, the co-chair of Trump’s transition team, are also reportedly in the running to head up the treasury.
      The outgoing Democratic chair of the Senate judiciary committee Dick Durbin warned that Donald Trump’s appointees to top justice department posts are a sign that he will direct prosecutors and law enforcement to retaliate against his political opponents.Durbin singled out the president-elect’s nomination of Todd Blanche, who defended Trump in his hush-money trial in New York, as deputy attorney general, and John Sauer, who argued before the supreme court in his immunity case, as solicitor general:
      Coupled with the announcement that he intends to nominate former Congressman Matt Gaetz to be attorney general, these selections show Donald Trump intends to weaponize the justice department to seek vengeance. Donald Trump viewed the justice department as his personal law firm during his first term, and these selections – his personal attorneys – are poised to do his bidding.
      The American people deserve a justice department that fights for equal justice under the law. This isn’t it.
      Democrats are losing control of the Senate at the beginning of next year, and it will be up to the incoming Republican majority to confirm Trump’s appointees. More

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      Two Trump cabinet choices in jeopardy over sexual misconduct allegations

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      The confirmation prospects of two of Donald Trump’s most controversial cabinet choices were in jeopardy over sexual misconduct allegations on Friday in developments mirroring the president-elect’s own history of abusive behavior towards women.Uncertainty surrounded the nomination of Pete Hegseth, Trump’s choice as defense secretary – whose path to Senate confirmation was already complicated over concerns about his inexperience and extreme views – following revelations that police in California investigated a sexual assault allegation against him in 2017.No charges were pressed. But the allegations were sufficiently serious for Trump’s newly appointed chief of staff, Susie Wiles, to reportedly speak to Hegseth after she learned of them on Wednesday evening, the day after his nomination.According to Vanity Fair, which initially reported the story, the incoming president’s own lawyers also talked to Hegseth, a 44-year-old Fox News host and army veteran who has railed against – among other things – women serving in military combat roles.The disclosure compounded the controversy over Matt Gaetz, the far-right Florida congressman nominated as attorney general despite having faced a two-year Department of Justice investigation over sex-trafficking allegations. They included allegations that he had sex with a 17-year-old minor.Republican and Democratic senators pressed on Friday to see a House of Representatives ethic committee report into Gaetz’s conduct that was commissioned despite the criminal investigation ending without charges.Gaetz forestalled Friday’s scheduled publication of the report – the contents of which were widely expected to be damaging to him – by resigning from the House immediately after Trump announced his nomination on Wednesday. The House speaker, Mike Johnson, has also said he would “strongly request” the report not be published.But the report’s existence could still in effect torpedo his nomination after senior senators – including Republican John Cornyn of Texas, a member of the Senate judiciary committee – demanded that it be preserved for use in Senate confirmation hearings.The inquiry was originally launched in 2021 to investigate whether the congressman “may have engaged in sexual misconduct and/or illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted a bribe, improper gratuity, or impermissible gift, in violation of House rules, laws, or other standards of conduct”.Trump is believed to have picked Gaetz as the ideal candidate to conduct a wholesale purge of the justice department, against which he harbors bitter grievances for pressing criminal investigations into his conduct during his first presidency.Hegseth, likewise, has been selected with a view to purging the armed forces, which he has accused of being hampered by “woke leadership”.His prospects of doing so seemed to be clouded by disclosure of the 2017 investigation, which stemmed from an alleged incident at the Hyatt Regency hotel and spa in Monterey, California, which was hosting a Republican women’s conference.The Monterey city manager’s office confirmed the investigation in a brief statement, adding that the alleged incident occurred between midnight on 7 October 2017 and 7am the following morning.Hegseth reportedly told Wiles and the Trump legal team that it stemmed from a consensual encounter and described the allegation as “he said, she said”, Vanity Fair reported.The magazine’s website also quoted a source as saying Hegseth had not been vetted. This was countered by a source in Trump’s transition team, who said: “Hegseth was vetted, but this alleged incident didn’t come up.”The dispute over vetting followed separate reports that standard FBI background checks on some of Trump’s most controversial nominees – designed to uncover past criminal activity and other potentially disqualifying liabilities – had been set aside.The questions over the sexual behavior of his nominees echo Trump’s own past. The president-elect was ordered to pay $83m damages to the writer E Jean Carroll last year after a New York jury in a civil trial found him liable for sexual assault and defamation. Carroll alleged Trump raped her in 1996, which Trump denied.His candidacy in the 2016 presidential election was almost derailed following the emergence of an Access Hollywood tape from more than a decade earlier in which he boasted of using his celebrity status to grab women’s genitals.Sexual misconduct allegations have also dogged Robert F Kennedy Jr, Trump’s selection as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. A former babysitter for his children alleged that Kennedy groped her in his home in 1998. Kennedy responded to the accusation, again reported in Vanity Fair, by saying: “I’m not a church boy.” More

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      Environmental groups alarmed as Doug Burgum picked for US interior secretary

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      Donald Trump’s nomination of North Dakota’s Republican governor, Doug Burgum, as the interior secretary has prompted swift backlash from environmental advocacy groups alarmed at the incoming administration’s plans to use federal lands for oil and gas drilling.Trump also announced in a statement on Friday his intention to make Burgum chair of a National Energy Council he intends to form to “oversee the path to U.S. ENERGY DOMINANCE” and to focus on “the battle for AI superiority”.Burgum, a former businessman, has been governor since 2016 of North Dakota, which is the third largest oil and natural gas producer in the country. Burgum, if confirmed by the Senate, would manage US federal lands including national parks and wildlife refuges, as well as oversee relations with 574 federally recognized Native American tribes.Major concerns have loomed over the country’s wildlife refuges and public lands as Trump prepares to enter the White House for a second term. Throughout his campaign trail, Trump has repeatedly said “drill, baby, drill” and has vowed to carve up the Arctic national wildlife refuge in Alaska’s northern tundra for oil and gas drilling.The Sierra Club, the country’s largest non-profit environmental organization, said: “It was climate skeptic Doug Burgum who helped arrange the Mar-a-Lago meeting with wealthy oil and gas executives where Donald Trump offered to overturn dozens of environmental rules and regulations in exchange for $1bn in campaign contributions.”The April meeting at Trump’s club earlier this year prompted Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the country’s top ethics watchdog, as well as House Democrats, to investigate the dinner over constitutional and campaign violations.“If that weren’t disqualifying enough, he’s long advocated for rolling back critical environmental safeguards in order to let polluters profit. Doug Burgum’s ties to the fossil fuel industry run deep and, if confirmed to this position, he will surely continue Donald Trump’s efforts to sell out our public lands to his polluter pals. Our lands are our nation’s greatest treasure, and the interior department is charged with their protection,” the Sierra Club continued.Similarly, the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation policy organization focused on land and energy issues across the western states, said: “Doug Burgum comes from an oil state, but North Dakota is not a public lands state. His cozy relationship with oil billionaires may endear him to Donald Trump, but he has no experience that qualifies him to oversee the management of 20% of America’s lands.”It went on to add: “If Doug Burgum tries to turn America’s public lands into an even bigger cash cow for the oil and gas industry, or tries to shrink America’s parks and national monuments, he’ll quickly discover he’s on the wrong side of history.”The Center for Biological Diversity equally condemned the nomination, saying that Burgum would be a “disastrous secretary of the interior who’ll sacrifice our public lands and endangered wildlife on the altar of the fossil fuel industry’s profits”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBurgum was not always aligned with Trump’s extreme climate agenda. He has said he believes that climate change is real and in 2021 had called for North Dakota to be carbon neutral by 2030, advocating for a plan that retained the state’s fossil fuel industries while investing in carbon capture and storage technologies to offset emissions.At the time, environmental groups supported Burgum’s pledge, but noted the impracticality of relying on unproven carbon capture technology rather than a transition away from fossil fuels.“Could be worse for sure,” said Jared Huffman, a progressive Democrat of California and senior member of the House natural resources committee who has championed climate action. “I look forward to trying to work productively with him.”Burgum’s views on matters outside of climate and energy, however, have long been reactionary. He signed a number of bills targeting LGBTQ+ people in North Dakota, including ones that banned gender-affirming care for minors, restricted drag shows, and banned trans people from using bathrooms and shower facilities that match their gender identity in prisons, domestic violence shelters or state university families. More

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      RFK Jr could have disastrous global impact on public health, experts fear

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      The appointment of a US health secretary with anti-vaccine views could cause deaths and have profound consequences around the world, global health experts fear.Robert F Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump’s pick for the position, has a history of spreading misinformation on vaccines and questioning the science of HIV and Aids.His nomination has been greeted with bemusement and alarm. One global health activist, speaking on background, said the move was akin to making the disgraced doctor Andrew Wakefield, who falsely claimed that the MMR vaccine caused autism, the UK’s health secretary.Prof Sir Simon Wessely, a regius professor of psychiatry at King’s College London, said of the move: “That sound that you just heard was my jaw dropping, hitting the floor and rolling out of the door.”Prof Sir Andrew Pollard, the director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, said there was real concern that Kennedy might use the platform “to pursue the same anti-science positions on life-saving public health interventions that he has advanced previously”.He added: “If this makes families hesitate to immunise against the deadly diseases that threaten children, the consequence will be fatal for some.”Prof Beate Kampmann, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said the measles vaccine had averted more than 60m deaths worldwide in the last 25 years.“Progress will be rapidly lost in societies where vaccine hesitancy is promoted – as I fear will be the case in the US if Kennedy is appointed,” she said. Beyond US shores, the influence “could swing either way”, she said. “My worry is that polarisation on the topic will further increase.”The US is a huge force in global health as the largest funder and the home to many big pharmaceutical companies and leading health research institutes. The decisions of its regulators, such as the Food and Drug Administration, are closely watched by their equivalents elsewhere.Some of those institutions are likely to be disrupted by Kennedy’s pledge to “clear out corruption” at US health agencies and potentially eliminate entire departments. But the impact of a Trump administration on global health will be broader than any policies pursued by Kennedy alone. Trump could reinstate plans to withdraw from the World Health Organization and is almost certain to cut funding to UNFPA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency that works in many poorer countries.As under all Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan, NGOs expect there to be a “global gag rule” banning recipients of US health funding from performing or promoting abortions anywhere in the world, which will potentially expand to cover even recipients of humanitarian aid.Kennedy’s stance on vaccination is being watched warily. Globally, routine vaccination coverage has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels. Lower immunisation rates led to a 20% annual increase in measles cases in 2023.Kennedy has previously made common cause with anti-vaccine groups overseas. In June 2019 he visited Samoa, where the measles vaccine was being blamed for the deaths of two babies a year earlier. It later emerged that the deaths had been caused by incorrect preparation of the vaccine mixture.Immunisation rates halved to 31% and not long after his visit a measles outbreak ended up infecting more than 57,000 people and killed 83, including children. Even as the outbreak raged, Kennedy wrote to the Samoan prime minister suggesting it might have been caused “by a defective vaccine” rather than inadequate coverage. Kennedy said previously he bore no responsibility for the outcome.His nomination was greeted with cautious civility in Berlin, where Kennedy made a name for himself as a coronavirus sceptic during the pandemic. The health minister, Karl Lauterbach, a qualified doctor, offered his congratulations but couched it in language that made his scepticism clear. “Here’s to a constructive collaboration. Will certainly not be just easy. But the choice of the voters is to be respected,” he wrote on X.Kennedy managed to enter Germany in 2020 despite tight travel restrictions in order to address coronavirus sceptics at a rally in the capital. He became a hero of the so-called Querdenker anti-coronavirus conspiracy theorist group, speaking to a demonstration attended by about 18,000 people.Kennedy drew parallels between his presence in Berlin, as a “fighter against totalitarianism”, and his uncle John F Kennedy’s appearance there in June 1963 during the cold war when he said the city had previously been a front against totalitarianism.On Friday, individuals and groups linked to the Querdenker movement welcomed the appointment, with some claiming Kennedy would “save the rest of the world”.The Hartmannbund association of German doctors voiced its concern about the overall effect a Trump presidency could have on Germany’s healthcare system. Its chair, Klaus Reinhardt, warned of the potential impact of any trade war between the US and Europe on the supply of medicines, saying issues over tariffs could greatly increase health costs and the individual contributions currently required by Germany’s health insurers.Scientific leaders say another pandemic is inevitable and that while during the Covid-19 pandemic Trump’s Operation Warp Speed aided the development, approval and mass manufacture of vaccines in record times, similar US leadership under Kennedy appears less likely.On other issues, experts are waiting for more detail on Kennedy’s plans. He has pledged to tackle chronic diseases and address the issue of overly processed foods. Leadership in those areas could be welcome in a world where diabetes rates have doubled in the past three decades.Many global health activists said they would agree with Kennedy that big pharma has questions to answer, but that companies should not be falsely accused of making vaccines that harm people; rather, they should be asked why so much of the world does not have access to affordable medicines. More

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      Mike Pence urges Senate Republicans to reject RFK Jr for US health secretary

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      Mike Pence, the former vice-president, urged Senate Republicans on Friday to reject Donald Trump’s choice of Robert F Kennedy Jr as health secretary – although he cited Kennedy’s support for abortion rights, while other critics are most outraged at his stance against vaccines.Pence’s comments came as public alarm mounted among Democrats and in health circles about Kennedy, while there were bipartisan warnings that another of Trump’s choices, the far-right congressman Matt Gaetz for attorney general, faces “an uphill battle” to win confirmation in the US Senate, despite Republicans winning the majority in the upper congressional chamber.Pence cited his conservative views on abortion for his opposition to Kennedy’s elevation to secretary of health and human services (HHS).“The Trump-Pence administration was unapologetically pro-life for our four years in office. There are hundreds of decisions made at HHS every day that either lead our nation toward a respect for life or away from it, and HHS under our administration always stood for life,” Pence said in a statement released by his conservative non-profit, Advancing American Freedom.“I believe the nomination of RFK Jr to serve as Secretary of HHS is an abrupt departure from the pro-life record of our administration and should be deeply concerning to millions of Pro-Life Americans who have supported the Republican Party and our nominees for decades.”Prominent medical professionals have joined leading Democrats in speaking out against Kennedy, who has embraced a multitude of debunked health-related conspiracy theories, and whose proposed elevation to the government’s top health job represents “a clear and present danger to the nation’s health” and “a catastrophe”, according to some critics.“I think this is an extraordinarily bad choice. He does not plan to lean on evidence and rigorous analysis to make decisions but instead to use his own ideas,” Dr Ashish Jha, Covid-19 coordinator for the Biden White House and dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, told CNN.Dr Richard Besser, former acting director of the powerful US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told the network that Kennedy’s views criticizing childhood vaccines, including the false claim that they cause autism, were “dangerous”.“Frankly, I find it chilling. He has done so much to undermine the confidence that people have in that incredible intervention,” he said.Trump has been assembling a cabinet for his second term in office, making announcements this week from his residence in Florida, and on Thursday named Kennedy to lead HHS and its associated agencies.He praised the politician, a former independent presidential candidate and outcast from the Democratic Kennedy political dynasty, at a black-tie gala at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday night.“If you like health and if you like people that live a long time, it’s the most important position,” he said. Directly addressing Kennedy, who was in the ballroom of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and private resort club, he added: “We want you to come up with things and ideas, and what you’ve been talking about for a long time.”Democrats were quick to express outrage. The California representative Robert Garcia called it “fucking insane” and described Kennedy as “a tin foil hat conspiracy theorist”.The Massachusetts representative Jake Auchincloss promised to “fight back in Washington to protect the integrity” of federal public health agencies if Kennedy is confirmed by the Senate.“RFK Jr is a conspiracist & quack who threatens the health of Americans. He’s not simply angling for more sunshine & exercise (no one disagrees with that). He seeks to overturn evidence-driven, peer-reviewed research on medicines & more,” Auchincloss posted to X.Shares in several of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies and vaccine manufacturers, including Moderna, AstraZeneca and GSK, plummeted on Friday in reaction to the news.Kennedy has previously said “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective” but told NBC in a post-election interview that he “won’t take away anybody’s vaccines”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump on Thursday nominated a vocal ally of his to be interior secretary – Doug Burgum, the Republican North Dakota governor. The role would put him in charge of national parks and public lands, and he has strong links to the fossil fuel industry, where many companies have strong appetites for government permits to drill and mine on federal land.Republicans will have a majority of at least 53-47 seats in the chamber during the next Congress, but even so, two other of Trump’s picks are already receiving bipartisan pushback: Gaetz and the former Democratic congresswoman turned Republican Tulsi Gabbard, named for director of national intelligence. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton once described her as a “favorite of the Russians”.Gaetz resigned as a US representative for Florida on Wednesday, in effect suspending the planned release on Friday of a report by the House of Representatives ethics committee into allegations of sexual misconduct, including that he had sex with a 17-year-old girl, which he has denied. His nomination as the nation’s leading law enforcement officer was seen by some as a direct challenge by Trump to the incoming Republican Senate majority to defy his authority.“For me the message to the administration is simply that Matt Gaetz has a very long, steep hill to get across the finish line and it will require the spending of a lot of capital,” North Dakota’s Republican senator Kevin Cramer told the Washington Post.“That ethics report is clearly going to become a part of the record.”On Friday, Joni Ernst, Republican senator for Iowa, also said the report was expected to feature prominently in a confirmation hearing. “We’ll talk about it for certain, but I know he’s going to have an uphill battle [for confirmation],” she told NBC News.Other Republicans demanded the release of the report, including Washington congressman Dan Newhouse and Texas senator John Cornyn.Meanwhile former defense secretary and Republican US senator Chuck Hagel published an opinion piece in the New York Times challenging Trump’s controversial nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, as a potential “danger” to political independence, good ethics and progress towards equality in the US military. He also questioned the potential for Trump to sidestep Senate confirmations.Trump has signaled he could resort to rare recess appointments, the archaic process allowing a president to install his nominees while Congress is not in session. More

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      With these outrageous appointments, Trump is showing us exactly how he intends to rule | Jonathan Freedland

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      He wasn’t kidding. Donald Trump really does want to rule as an extremist strongman, with contempt for the planet, for America’s allies and for the rule of law. He’s made that crystal clear this week, announcing one bombshell appointment after another, each one a declaration of intent. Few things tell you more about a president than their hires – personnel is policy, as they used to say in Ronald Reagan’s White House – and Trump is telling us exactly who he is.The latest name added to the roster is a storied one: Robert F Kennedy Jr, now lined up for the role of health secretary. You may have known of Bobby Kennedy. Bobby Kennedy may be a hero of yours. But, boy, his son is no Bobby Kennedy. Once an admired environmental campaigner, now he is an anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist who promotes treatments that don’t work – such as hydroxychloroquine for Covid – and rails against those that do, spreading the long-debunked claim that childhood vaccines are linked to autism and opposing fluoridation of water to prevent tooth decay. Apparently unchastened by the pandemic, Kennedy believes US public health officials have been too focused on infectious diseases. Or as he memorably put it: “We’re going to give infectious disease a break for about eight years.” If deadly pathogens could lick their lips, they would.At least the RFK nod was not a surprise: Trump had long said he wanted to let Kennedy “go wild” with the nation’s health. More of a jawdropper is the new president’s choice for attorney general, the most senior law enforcement officer in the land: Matt Gaetz. For two years, Gaetz was under federal investigation for child sex trafficking and statutory rape. (No charges were brought.) Until this week, his fellow members of the House of Representatives were running their own ethics committee inquiry into Gaetz – handily halted, thanks to his resignation just days before they were about to report – examining, besides the allegations of underage sexual abuse, accusations that he engaged in illicit drug use, displayed to colleagues, on the floor of the House, nude photos and videos of previous sexual partners, converted campaign funds for personal use and accepted gifts banned under congressional rules.Some wonder if naming such a man as head of the US justice department is a diversionary tactic, designed to distract attention from the clutch of other nominations that are scarcely less outrageous, in the hope that those will look reasonable by comparison. In this view, Trump knows that Gaetz will never be attorney general, that his nomination will be blocked in the Senate where, even though the Republicans have a majority, too many will balk. Gaetz is chum, thrown into the water to satisfy the piranhas, so that Trump can quietly ensure his other nominees get through. And what a rum bunch they are.As director of national intelligence, overseeing 18 separate intelligence agencies including the CIA and NSA, Trump has turned to Tulsi Gabbard, a fringe Democratic congresswoman before she defected to the Republicans, best known for meeting Bashar al-Assad while the Syrian dictator was busy slaughtering hundreds of thousands of his own people, and for parroting Kremlin talking points.When Russia invaded Ukraine, Gabbard was swift to blame the west, even repeating the Moscow propaganda line that the US had stationed secret biolabs across Ukraine. One of Vladimir Putin’s mouthpiece TV channels took to referring to Gabbard as Russia’s “girlfriend”. When asked if she was, in fact, a Russian agent, the talking head on the Kremlin-backed network replied: “Yes.” Now consider that at the core of the US relationship with its allies – including Britain – is intelligence-sharing and ask yourself whether the likes of MI6 could in all conscience share what they know with such a person.Her proposed counterpart over at the Pentagon, set to be in charge of the mightiest, richest military in human history, is the weekend host of Fox News’s breakfast show, Pete Hegseth. Admittedly, he served in Iraq and Afghanistan – and as a prison guard in Guantánamo Bay – but Hegseth has never run a whelk stall, let alone one of the world’s biggest organisations, employing close to 3 million people. His rank inexperience would be worrying enough, until you become familiar with what he believes.He’s covered in tattoos, including symbols favoured by the Christian nationalist far right, among them the slogan Deus Vult and the Jerusalem cross, which celebrates the medieval Crusades when Christians earned their spurs slaughtering infidel Muslims and Jews. These days, he backs the ultra-right Jewish fundamentalists who seek to rebuild the ancient temple on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, the site revered by Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif, a move so incendiary it’s a byword for triggering holy war.Hegseth will find company in Trump’s choice of ambassador to Israel, former Arkansas governor and evangelical Christian Mike Huckabee. Like Hegseth, Huckabee is against a two-state solution, insists on calling the West Bank by its biblical Hebrew name – Judea and Samaria – and is adamant that “There’s no such thing as an occupation.” In 2008 he said, “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian”.All of which makes you wonder how those many Arab and Muslim American voters in Michigan and elsewhere, persuaded that Trump had to be a better option for the Palestinians than Kamala Harris, feel now.We’ve barely got to Lee Zeldin, Trump’s choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency, despite having repeatedly voted against clean water and clean air legislation, and having expressed doubts over whether climate breakdown is “as serious a problem” as people say it is. Or to the self-confessed puppy killer who will head the Department of Homeland Security. Or indeed the man who will lead the new department reviewing government contracts, including, in an arrangement open to spectacular corruption, contracts with his own companies: namely, Elon Musk.Still, you get the picture. How, then, to make sense of these choices? Some hope it’s no more than an opening bid by Trump, the arch-negotiator: offer the Senate something obviously unacceptable, then haggle from there. Others wonder if it’s part of a dark, deliberate strategy, by which Trump, the agent of chaos, appoints those who are not so much disruptors as wreckers, men and women who can be relied on to make the agencies they lead collapse in failure. When the federal government is a smoking ruin, then all power will have to reside in the single man at the top.My own view is simpler. At the heart of it is the quality all would-be strongmen value most: loyalty. Trump knows that a character as tawdry as Gaetz, despised by his own colleagues, would owe everything to him. As attorney general, he would do whatever Trump asked, working his way through Trump’s enemies list, prosecuting whoever had crossed his boss, delivering the retribution Trump yearns for.What’s more, Gaetz and the rest are a kind of test, one that Putin deploys often. You push your allies to defend what they know cannot be defended, to make concessions they would once have considered unpalatable. As the analyst Ron Brownstein put it this week, “Each surrender paves the way for the next.” It is, he says, “a cardinal rule of strongman dominance”.So now it is up to the Republicans in the Senate. Will they abase themselves yet further, and nod through this parade of ghouls and charlatans? Or will they at last find their backbone and say no to the would-be autocrat who has taken over their party and now looms over all three branches of the US government? After all we’ve seen these last eight years, what do you think is the answer?

      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More

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      in US Politics

      To the stars vowing to flee Trump’s America: maybe your excruciating endorsements were part of the problem | Marina Hyde

      by

      I wish celebrities would learn the art of the French exit. But they can’t, which is why Eva Longoria has announced she no longer lives in America. “I get to escape and go somewhere,” she explained. “Most Americans aren’t so lucky – they’re going to be stuck in this dystopian country.” What’s brought this on, apart from the obvious? “Whether it’s the homelessness or the taxes … it just feels like this chapter in my life is done now.” Great to learn that Eva dislikes both homelessness and taxes. America’s loss of this major political thinker is some other country’s gain – and this highly called-for intervention reminds us why celebrities should speak their brains even more often. If only into a pillow, or an abyss.As always in these moments of the silly voters making a silly mistake, many stars have pledged to follow her. We’ll see. Either way, celebrities seem totally unaware that these high-handed statements of first-class migration are not the admonishment to the lesser orders that they are meant to be, and may even encourage them.But then, stars have always been totally unaware of how very little they bring to this particular party. The last few days of the Harris campaign were an increasingly excruciating riot of celebrity bandwagonning. Did the Kamala campaign ask man-born-in-Pennsylvania Richard Gere to make his video for her – or did the actor freelance one out of fear of not having “used his platform”? It was certainly Richard’s most critically misunderstood electoral outing since his address to the Palestinians before their 2005 elections. “Hi, I’m Richard Gere,” that one began, “and I’m speaking for the entire world …”If anything good were to come out of the wreckage of the Harris campaign, let it be the final death of the idea that showbiz endorsements can help swing elections. They can’t. Not one bit. Not even if it’s Taylor Swift in the 2024 US presidential election, not even when it was Russell Brand in the 2015 British general election, and not even if they have tens of millions of followers. (It does move the dial, however, if you own the platform.) Election issues and politicians swing elections.The minuscule amount of positive data we have on celebrity endorsements suggests they might have some effect in getting their fans to register to vote and volunteer for campaigns. I suspect these days that is more than offset by the perception of elitism that actively harmed the Harris campaign and others before it. If anything could turn you hard Maga, it’s watching Lady Gaga sing Edge of Glory at Kamala’s eve-of-polling-day concert – the worst thing she’s been in since Joker II – and then discovering that Oprah, who also appeared, had billed the Harris campaign $1m via her company. This week, Winfrey insisted she wasn’t paid personally, with the Harris campaign simply required to pay for “production costs” on an earlier “townhall” featuring her, Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ben Stiller, Chris Rock and Jennifer Lopez. Hmm. If only there was some billionaire – but the good kind! – or even just some mega-rich folk involved in said event, who could perhaps have picked up the wage bill herself/themselves, rather than siphon it off the campaign.Meanwhile, it is easier to leave Twitter than America, as I think Marcus Aurelius once remarked. In the week the Guardian exited X – though not in the French style – you couldn’t move for people informing you they were herding with almost impossible dignity over to Bluesky.And it does feel slightly hilarious that huge numbers of people who have spent the past decade-plus shrieking about the evils of social media – usually on social media – have been “liberated” from one platform, only to promptly rush and enslave themselves to another. Really? You can see it all stretching ahead of you – fun period, emergence of Blueskyocracy, the first Bluesky cancellation of someone, the exponentially intensifying purity spiral, followed by legacy titles or legacy humans announcing an exit from that one too. It’s all such a predictable timesuck. Bluesky might be the new email.Speaking of which, when people ask me for my email, I have to tell them very truthfully that I am so old-fashioned that I only have one – my Guardian one. I always used to follow this up by saying something along the lines of “I know, it’s ridiculous. If I ever stopped working there, no one would be able to contact me.” But now I keep thinking – oh my God! No one would be able to contact me via email! THE MODERN DREAM!This has felt particularly desirable since the election, when I’ve been drowning in emails from the multiple liberal publications I already subscribe to, stagily rending their garments and assuring me that “we do this for you”. It seems like every cloud has a silver lining – ideally a gold one, with all sorts of titles dreaming of the Trump subscription bump they got last time around. Again: we’ll see.My unfashionable view is that the world would benefit from less partisan media, not more. Over in the US for the election, I mistakenly kept turning on CNN for news, and was genuinely shocked at the offering since the last time I seriously paid attention to it (admittedly some years ago now). It didn’t really even have headlines on the hour, let alone coverage of “news”, and appeared to be a talking shop that saw itself purely as an active agent for the Harris campaign. To this outside observer, it didn’t seem to be doing anything different from Fox News, except that it was doing it for the other side.And it doesn’t even work. Retreating into ideas of “resistance” is a big part of how we got here. People hate on Trump for cashing in with his merchandise, but isn’t rather a lot of the current liberal media convulsion just another form of Trump merchandise? Off-brand, yes. But still Trump merchandise – and as tacky, intentionally commercial and likely to lead to regret in the end as the official stuff.

      Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

      A Year in Westminster: John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar. On Tuesday 3 December, join Crace, Hyde and Crerar as they look back at a political year like no other, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at guardian.live More

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      in US Politics

      Trans Americans brace for Trump’s ‘sinister’ return: ‘It’s almost intolerable’

      by

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      This weekend, Atticus Sparks plans to attend a six-hour concealed weapons permit class. He’s not a gun person, but as an 18-year-old trans man, he’s concerned he might someday need to own one, “just in case”. Since Donald Trump’s election, Sparks has faced online threats of violence and sexual assault from the president-elect’s supporters.View image in fullscreen“Hopefully I won’t ever need a gun,” Sparks, who lives in South Carolina, said. “But everyone here is so pro-gun. I work across from a gun store, and I always see people carrying around loaded rifles.”Along with taking his concealed carry class, Sparks faces the more banal tasks of making sure all of his documentation is in order. This week, he met with an advocate about getting his name legally changed but was told that due to the sluggish pace of family court, he probably won’t get a court date until next summer.An existential threat, and a bureaucratic nightmare: for trans people across America, Trump’s victory represents a terrifying acceleration of the discriminatory policies that conservative lawmakers have already put in place in states across the country.Republicans spent almost $215m on anti-trans ads this election. (Sample line: Kamala Harris “is for they/them – not you”.) Trump’s official platform, Agenda 47, promises to “cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, radical gender ideology, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children” and “keep men out of women’s sports”, a reference to trans women and girls playing on teams that correspond to their identity.The president-elect has also proposed a ban on federal funding for gender-affirming care, and said he would push schools to “promote positive education about the nuclear family” – shorthand for an emphasis on conservative Christian gender roles and values in public classrooms.Experts and advocates warn that Republican control in Washington DC could roll back LGBTQ+ rights decades, threatening trans healthcare, marriage equality and the overall safety of the queer community.Facing this new reality, Alex, a teacher in Texas, reached out to a crisis hotline three times in the past week. “It’s sort of the most depressed I’ve been in a long time,” he said. “It’s like you get used to tolerating a certain amount of not OK, and having to hide and sort of being pushed down, but it feels like it’s hit a level where it’s almost intolerable.”Though some of Alex’s co-workers know he is trans, his students do not. He considers himself “stealth” at work, which means he conceals his trans identity to fit in with cisnormative standards. (Because of this, Alex used a pseudonym in this piece.)“The big thing people don’t recognize is that they most likely have interacted with a trans person without knowing,” Alex said. “I use the men’s locker room at the gym every morning, and no one gets hurt or upset. I guarantee for every single person, [Trump’s victory] is going to impact someone they love, or the loved ones of someone they love, and they just don’t know it.”View image in fullscreenThe Trevor Project, a non-profit focused on suicide prevention efforts for LGBTQ+ youth, reported a 700% increase in calls, texts and messages to its crisis hotline after election day. Youth experiencing thoughts of depression, self-harm and suicide are encouraged to contact the organization – though, according to 19th News, there are “long hold times at an especially vulnerable time for LGBTQ+ people”.Corinne Goodwin, executive director of Eastern PA Trans Equity Project, wrote in an email that since the election, the non-profit had seen a 600% increase in calls to its infoline for people seeking resources and support. Attendance at peer-led support groups rose by 200%, and requests for assistance with gender or name change markers increased by 1,000%.The day after the election, Goodwin said, the group received a call from a transgender person who lives in a very rural part of Pennsylvania. The caller said that four of their neighbors had come to their house the night before, pounding on their front door and threatening to assault them for being transgender. The person called the police, who refused to investigate, citing no proof of an incident.“This is an example of what many transgender people fear, that not only will their rights be reduced or taken away, but that the most reactionary elements in our society will feel emboldened to harm them,” Goodwin wrote.In Rochester, New York, Javannah J Davis leads Wave Women Inc, a non-profit supporting underserved Bipoc trans and gender non-conforming individuals. “The challenges are going to get worse before it gets better,” she said. “People are scared. That’s the main feeling going through the community: fear.”Davis says her goal is to help as many trans people as possible navigate the serpentine process of legally changing their names before the end of the year.Mike, a trans man in his 60s, leads support groups in Pennsylvania. “People talk about moving to another country, but the reality is that’s just not realistic,” he said. (Mike used a pseudonym and did not want his exact age printed to prevent being identified by his employer.)Sparks, the 18-year-old, plans to move to a state that allows greater access to gender-affirming care. This year, South Carolina banned access to care for trans youth, also prohibiting public funds such as Medicaid from being used to provide healthcare for transgender people of any age.View image in fullscreenSouth Dakota also restricts access to gender-affirming care for trans youth. So, in some ways, the morning after the election was “just another day for them”, says Morgan Peterson, a 25-year-old administrative assistant at Transformation Project, which serves trans people in the state.Peterson, who is non-binary, says many clients decided to move next door to Minnesota, a state with better healthcare options. “For me, I’m not on hormones, and I’m very fortunate, so I’m pretty determined to stay here and fight for people,” they said.Zaya Perysian, a 22-year-old content creator from Los Angeles, renewed her passport this week. She has no plans to leave the country and considers herself somewhat buffered by her state’s blue status. But she wants to be prepared, just in case.“It seems like we’re in the early stages of something much darker for the future of this country when it pertains to minority communities,” Perysian said. “The last time Trump won, we were like, ‘It’ll all be fine,’ and it mostly was. But this time, it’s different. There’s something that feels so sinister behind it. A lot of us just want to be prepared because you never know what type of legislation they are going to try to pass to erase us from public society, or history.”Kendall, a 47-year-old from Pennsylvania, planned to marry her partner next summer. They imagined a big, fairytale wedding, maybe in Europe. But as the election approached, the couple, both trans women, decided they didn’t want to take their chances. They feared a Trump presidency could signal the end of marriage equality. They eloped in September.“We had a few people over to our apartment and did it,” Kendall said. (She asked to use a pseudonym due to fears for her safety.) “We did it in our living room. People asked, ‘Was it nice?’ We tried to play it off like we wanted something intimate, but the real reason is we needed it to be legal.”Now, Kendall wonders: “God knows how long we’ll be allowed to be married.”Shane Whiteside, who is 30 and lives in South Carolina, also hopes to make it legal with his fiancee before Trump’s election. “I told her, I know we didn’t want to rush this, but I’m absolutely terrified that if I don’t get married to you right now, the state is not going to let me, because they’ll take away same-sex marriage,” he said.View image in fullscreenIn the days after the election, some lawmakers and pundits scapegoated transgender people for Kamala Harris’s loss. Such messaging echoes past retrograde thinking from John Kerry’s failed 2004 bid: at the time, politicians on both sides blamed the loss on the senator’s support for civil unions.The US representative Seth Moulton, a Democrat from Massachusetts, told the New York Times: “Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face. I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”Trans individuals are already more likely to experience gender-based violence, poverty, and housing insecurity than cis Americans. Comments like Moulton’s add to the pain they feel as they prepare for a hostile administration.“It’s really a bunch of bullshit coming from both sides when it pertains to trans people,” said Perysian. “We’re just exhausted. We’re just trying to find our own American dream here, and unfortunately our future in this country has become less and less bright. I’ve heard a lot of trans people say that after this election, it feels like our best days are behind us.”Now, trans individuals cling to any shreds of hope they can find. Alex felt it when his co-workers hugged him the morning after Trump’s win. Mike feels it at his trans support group. Kendall feels it when she watches old clips of Mr Rogers being a good neighbor.Sparks relates to a quote he saw on social media this week: “For every bigot, there’s going to be an ally.”“Community and trans people don’t just go away,” Sparks said. “They may take it out of schools and stuff, but it’s not like we’re going to disappear. We just won’t have a word for what we’re feeling because they won’t teach it to us.”For Perysian, though, “It’s not about hope. It’s more about waiting and seeing.” More