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      Anti-opioid groups are ‘optimistic’ about Trump’s tariffs. Will the move help tackle the fentanyl crisis?

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      Anti-opioid campaigners in the US have welcomed Donald Trump’s threat to hit Mexico, China and Canada with increased trade tariffs if they do not curb the smuggling of the powerful drug driving the US opioid epidemic.Families and doctors grappling with a crisis that has claimed about 900,000 lives say the move may signal that a second Trump administration will finally get serious about tackling the flow of fentanyl into the US. But they also warn that much more needs to be done to reduce demand for opioids and to rein in the power of the pharmaceutical industry which created the epidemic.Trump said last week that he will issue an executive order on his return to the US presidency next month imposing a 25% tariff on goods from Mexico and Canada until their governments clamp down on the smuggling of fentanyl and other drugs into the US, and on people crossing the northern and southern borders illegally.The president-elect also said he will impose a 10% additional tariff on imports from China as the leading manufacturer of the precursor chemicals used by drug cartels to manufacture fentanyl, a highly potent synthetic opioid that is now the single largest cause of drug overdose deaths in the US.Ed Bisch, who lost his 18-year-old son Eddie to a prescription opioid overdose in 2001, said that tariffs are a sign that Trump “means business”.“I’m optimistic that the threat of substantial tariffs will lead to major cooperation in reducing the fentanyl poisoning of America,” he said.Bisch and other campaigners also say that some of Trump’s cabinet choices may signal a greater engagement with the crisis by the next administration, particularly as Robert F Kennedy Jr, who is nominated as health secretary, was a heroin user and the vice-president-elect, JD Vance, wrote a bestselling book, Hillbilly Elegy, about growing up in a household and region hit by drug addiction.Trump campaigned in 2016 and again this year on commitments to tackle the opioid epidemic which has devastated regions of America in ways that are often unseen in other parts. The crisis dragged entire communities deeper into poverty, drove up crime and greater dependency on welfare, and tore families apart.Millions of children have been raised by their grandparents because the intervening generation was imprisoned, dead or in no condition to parent. In West Virginia, the state worst hit by the epidemic, nearly half of all grandparents are raising their grandchildren.The opioid crisis has also played an important part in undermining public confidence in government institutions and medical practice in parts of the US because the epidemic grew out of the pharmaceutical industry pushing the wide prescribing of narcotic pain killers from which drug makers made billions of dollars with the complicity of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The epidemic then evolved as illegal supplies of heroin and then fentanyl drove up the death toll.But critics say Trump failed to follow through on his campaign promises in 2016 and his next administration will be a test of how really committed is he is on the issue in the face of what is likely to be major pushback from the drug industry.As president in 2017, Trump declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency.“No part of our society, not young or old, rich or poor, urban or rural has been spared this plague,” he said at the time.But two years later, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) criticised the Trump administration for a lack of coordination of efforts and failing to fulfill a legal requirement to issue a national drug control strategy.Robert Kent, who served as general counsel for the White House office of national drug control policy under Joe Biden, credits Trump with declaring the epidemic an emergency and establishing an opioid commission that issued guidelines on how to combat the crisis.“In Trump’s first term, he was the one who declared an opioid public health emergency, which is still in effect. The problem was there were no concrete actions taken specifically as a result. He didn’t put significant new resources into it,” he said.Kent said that the Biden administration put a greater emphasis on “harm reduction” such as the provision of overdose antidotes and test strips allowing drug users to detect fentanyl. But he fears those may be in danger from Republicans who see such measures as enabling drug use.Andrew Kolodny, director of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing and one of the first doctors to raise the alarm about the dangers of mass prescribing prescription painkillers, said harm reduction was necessary but did not get to the root causes of the epidemic.“It’s not hard for Trump to do better than Biden did on opioids. There were some good things that came out of the Biden administration. It was nice to see the federal government move more in a direction of harm reduction. But beyond that there wasn’t really that much done so by Biden,” he said.“When Biden ran for office, he put out a platform on how he would address the opioid crisis if he was president, and it was an excellent platform. But he never really implemented the plan.”Kolodny said that if Trump wants to have a significant impact in reducing opioid addiction he needs to create cheaper and easier access to treatment.“The vast majority of people with opioid use disorder actually want help for it. The reason they keep using fentanyl is that it’s much easier to get fentanyl and cheaper to get fentanyl than it is to get yourself onto buprenorphine or methadone treatment or find a doctor or programme that will very quickly enroll you in treatment when you ask for it,” he said.Researchers are still trying to decipher a drop in overdose deaths in the US last year. They believe better treatment and prevention are playing a part. The Drug Enforcement Administration said earlier this month that the amount of fentanyl found laced into other drugs had dropped and that they were therefore less potent and dangerous. The DEA head, Anne Milgram, attributed that to the Biden administration’s targeting of Mexican cartels and their supply chains.But Kent is cautious.“There’s a lot of people running around because we’ve seen a slight reduction in overdose deaths feeling like that’s mission accomplished when we’re only losing 93,000 people versus 111,000 a year. I would never define that as success in my world. Even within those numbers, underserved communities are being higher impacted at this point. In Black and brown communities the numbers are going up while the other numbers are going down. So there’s work to be done,” he said.Kent said he agrees with the need for an increased focus on the border.“We need to increase the number of staff at the border, just for a whole bunch of reasons, including illicit drugs coming across. There needs to be an investment in screening technology. And there needs to be a continued effort with China, trying to convince China to work with its chemical companies to stop selling the chemical precursors to the Mexican cartels so they can create the fentanyl,” he said.Bisch and others whose lives have been hit by the opioid epidemic are also keen to see broader reform of a system that enabled the drug companies to push mass prescription of opioids on the public in ways not permitted in other countries.Bisch supports Trump’s nomination for attorney general, Pam Bondi, who as Florida’s attorney general cracked down on doctors and “pill mills” churning out opioid prescriptions to anyone who would pay. In 2010, Florida dispensed more opioid prescriptions than every other US state combined as people travelled from across the country to buy the painkillers in bulk. Bisch wants to see Bondi use federal laws to prosecute the drug company executives who made false claims about the safety of prescription opioids in order to get them approved.He also backs Trump’s nomination of Kennedy, who has accused the FDA of putting the financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry ahead of people’s health by effectively encouraging the prescribing of too many drugs and the selection of Marty Makary to head the FDA. Makary has said doctors in the US prescribe too many medications compared with the rest of the world.“The best way to lower drug costs in the US is to stop taking drugs we don’t need,” he told the US Senate in September.In nominating Makary, Trump said the “FDA has lost the trust of Americans and lost sight of its primary goal as a regulator”. He said Makary and Kennedy would work together to “properly evaluate harmful chemicals poisoning our nation’s food supply and drugs”.Bondi is expected to have a relatively easy path to approval by the US Senate. But Kennedy and Makary may face a more difficult time. Kennedy, in particular, will face scrutiny over his rejection of vaccines. But Kolodny said they will also be up against the pharmaceutical industry.“I’ll actually be shocked if Kennedy gets confirmed and if Makary gets confirmed for FDA commissioner because big pharma doesn’t want them, and big pharma has a lot of muscle on Capitol Hill,” he said. More

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      Joe Biden issues pardon for son Hunter as Trump rails against ‘miscarriage of justice’ – US politics live

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      President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to pardon those convicted after storming the US Capitol in Washington on January 2021 and took the opportunity to raise the issue.“Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?“Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social social media platform.A loving act of mercy by a father who has already known much sorrow? Or a hypocritical political manoeuvre reminiscent of his great foe? Maybe both can be true.Joe Biden’s announcement on Sunday that he had pardoned his son Hunter, who is facing sentencing in two criminal cases, is likely to have been the product of a Shakespearean struggle between head and heart.On the one hand, Biden is one of the last great institutionalists in Washington. “From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making,” he said in an unusually direct and personal statement on Sunday. To undermine the separation of powers goes against every fibre of his political being.On the other hand, Biden is nothing without family. His speeches are peppered with references to his parents. As a senator, he once took a train from Washington to Wilmington, Delaware, so he could blow out the candles on a birthday cake for his eight-year-old daughter, Ashley, at the station, then cross the platform and take the next train back to work.Biden was profoundly shaped by the death of his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden, and 13-month-old daughter Naomi in a car accident and, much later, the death of his son Beau from brain cancer. In that context, Hunter’s status as the first child of a sitting president to face criminal charges will have pained his father in what Ernest Hemingway called “the broken places”.Read my full analysis below
      Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter. From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted. Without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form. Those who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, are typically given non-criminal resolutions. It is clear that Hunter was treated differently.
      The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election. Then, a carefully negotiated plea deal, agreed to by the Department of Justice, unraveled in the court room – with a number of my political opponents in Congress taking credit for bringing political pressure on the process. Had the plea deal held, it would have been a fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter’s cases.
      No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong. There has been an effort to break Hunter – who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.
      For my entire career I have followed a simple principle: just tell the American people the truth. They’ll be fair-minded. Here’s the truth: I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice – and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.
      Hunter Biden issued a statement following his father’s announcement“I have admitted and taken responsibility for my mistakes during the darkest days of my addiction – mistakes that have been exploited to publicly humiliate and shame me and my family for political sport,” Hunter Biden said in a statement on Sunday, adding he had remained sober for more than five years.“In the throes of addiction, I squandered many opportunities and advantages … I will never take the clemency I have been given today for granted and will devote the life I have rebuilt to helping those who are still sick and suffering.”Hello and welcome to our live coverage of US politics.On Sunday night, before boarding a plane to Angola, US president Joe Biden issued a pardon to his son Hunter – something he had repeatedly said he would not do.Biden said he hoped the American people would understand his decision to issue the pardons over convictions on federal gun and tax charges.“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong,” he said.Hunter Biden was scheduled to be sentenced for his conviction on federal gun charges on 12 December.He was scheduled to be sentenced in the tax case four days later. Joe Biden is just weeks away from leaving office. More

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      With his pardon of son Hunter, Joe Biden delivers a heartfelt hypocrisy

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      A loving act of mercy by a father who has already known much sorrow? Or a hypocritical political manoeuvre reminiscent of his great foe? Maybe both can be true.Joe Biden’s announcement on Sunday that he had pardoned his son Hunter, who is facing sentencing in two criminal cases, is likely to have been the product of a Shakespearean struggle between head and heart.On the one hand, Biden is one of the last great institutionalists in Washington. “From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making,” he said in an unusually direct and personal statement on Sunday. To undermine the separation of powers goes against every fibre of his political being.On the other hand, Biden is nothing without family. His speeches are peppered with references to his parents. As a senator, he once took a train from Washington to Wilmington, Delaware, so he could blow out the candles on a birthday cake for his eight-year-old daughter, Ashley, at the station, then cross the platform and take the next train back to work.Biden was profoundly shaped by the death of his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden, and 13-month-old daughter Naomi in a car accident and, much later, the death of his son Beau from brain cancer. In that context, Hunter’s status as the first child of a sitting president to face criminal charges will have pained his father in what Ernest Hemingway called “the broken places”.Hunter was convicted this summer of lying about his drug use when he bought a gun. Joe Biden categorically ruled out a pardon or commutation for his son, telling reporters: “I abide by the jury decision. I will do that and I will not pardon him.” Hunter also pleaded guilty in a separate tax evasion trial and was due to be sentenced in both cases later this month.Biden reportedly spent months agonising over what to do. The scales were almost certainly tilted by Donald Trump’s victory in last month’s presidential election. The prospect of leaving Hunter to the tender mercies of Trump’s sure-to-be politicised, retribution-driven justice department was too much to bear. Biden typically takes advice from close family and is likely to have reached the decision after talking it over during what was an intimate Thanksgiving weekend.“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong,” the president said in a statement, calling it “a miscarriage of justice”.He added: “There has been an effort to break Hunter – who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”Joe Biden’s defenders will certainly contend that, if Hunter had been an ordinary citizen, the gun case would not have come this far, and his father was simply righting that wrong. Republicans spent years hyping investigations into Hunter that failed to produce a shred of evidence linking his father to corruption.Eric Holder, a former attorney general, wrote on social media that no US attorney “would have charged this case given the underlying facts. After a five-year investigation the facts as discovered only made that clear. Had his name been Joe Smith the resolution would have been – fundamentally and more fairly – a declination. Pardon warranted.”It was also noted that this is hardly the first time pardons have smacked of nepotism. Bill Clinton as president pardoned his half-brother for old cocaine charges, and Trump pardoned the father of Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, for tax evasion and retaliating against a cooperating witness, though in both cases those men had already served their prison terms. Trump also used the dog days of his first presidency to pardon the rogues’ gallery of Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone.And yet for many Americans there will be something jarring about the double standard of a president pardoning a member of his own family ahead of numerous other worthy cases. Republicans in the House of Representatives naturally pounced with more hyperbole about the “Biden crime family”.But there were also more thoughtful objections. Jared Polis, the Democratic governor of Colorado, wrote on social media: “While as a father I certainly understand President Joe Biden’s natural desire to help his son by pardoning him, I am disappointed that he put his family ahead of the country. This is a bad precedent that could be abused by later Presidents and will sadly tarnish his reputation.”Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman turned Trump critic, said on the MSNBC network: “Joe Biden repeatedly said he wouldn’t do this so he repeatedly lied. This just furthers cynicism that people have about politics and that cynicism strengthens Trump because Trump can say, ‘I’m not a unique threat. Everybody does this. If I do something for my kid, my son-in-law, whatever, look, Joe Biden does the same thing.’ I get it but this was a selfish move by Biden, which politically only strengthens Trump. It’s just deflating.”The Trump context is impossible to ignore in this moral maze. Next month he will become the first convicted criminal sworn in as president, though three cases against him have all but perished. He is already moving to appoint loyalists to the FBI and justice department.Michelle Obama once advised, when they go low, we go high. On Sunday Joe Biden, 82 and heading for the exit with little to lose, decided to go low. Perhaps it was what any parent would have done. More

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      Joe Biden issues ‘full and unconditional’ pardon to son Hunter

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      Joe Biden has issued “a full and unconditional” pardon to his son Hunter Biden covering convictions on federal gun and tax charges, the US president said in a statement released by the White House on Sunday.The decision marks a reversal for the president, who had repeatedly said he would not use his executive authority to pardon his son or commute his sentence.Hunter Biden was scheduled to be sentenced for his conviction on federal gun charges on 12 December. He was scheduled to be sentenced in the tax case four days later.In the statement, Joe Biden said that he had long maintained that he would “not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted”.But, he argued, “it is clear that Hunter was treated differently”, adding that the charges in the case “came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election”.Hunter Biden was found guilty in Delaware in June on three felony counts relating to his purchase of a handgun in 2018. He had written on his gun-purchase form, falsely, that he was not a user of illicit drugs.He pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges in Los Angeles in September, opting for an “open” plea, where a defendant pleads guilty to the charges and leaves his sentencing fate in the hands of the judge.The tax charges carried up to 17 years behind bars and the gun charges were punishable by up to 25 years, though federal sentencing guidelines were expected to call for far less time and it was possible the president’s son would have avoided prison time entirely.The pardon covers all “offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024, including but not limited to all offenses charged or prosecuted”.Joe Biden said on Sunday evening that his son had been prosecuted when “without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form”.He noted in the statement that “those who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, are typically given non-criminal resolutions”.Biden accused his political opponents of singling out his 54-year-old son.“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong,” he said.“There has been an effort to break Hunter – who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”Biden departed for Angola later on Sunday evening for what may be his last foreign trip as president before leaving office.Speculation had been mounting that the president would issue a pardon since Hunter was seen with his father in Nantucket over the Thanksgiving break.Donald Trump had said in October that he would not be surprised if Hunter Biden were to receive a pardon.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I wouldn’t take it off the books,” Trump said. “See, unlike Joe Biden, despite what they’ve done to me, where they’ve gone after me so viciously … And Hunter’s a bad boy.”On Sunday, Trump reacted with outrage, writing on his social network: “Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!” Just one day earlier, though, Trump had reminded Americans that he himself had previously used the pardon power to wipe away convictions of those close to him. In his final weeks in office, Trump pardoned Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in law, Jared Kushner, as well as multiple allies convicted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. On Saturday, Trump announced plans to nominate the elder Kushner to be the US ambassador to France.Republicans have long zeroed in on Hunter Biden’s difficulties – questions around lucrative foreign consultancies, broken relationships and a crack cocaine addiction – in an effort to politically damage his father.A laptop Hunter Biden left in a Delaware repair shop that made its way into Republican hands formed a scandal in the closing days of the 2020 election. Republicans claimed that the so-called “laptop from hell”, which featured images of Hunter posing with guns, sex workers and crack cocaine, was suppressed by media favorable to Democrats.Hunter Biden later published a book, Beautiful Things: a Memoir, that detailed his struggles as a drug addict. The Biden family denied more serious accusations that Hunter’s profitable financial arrangements with businesspeople in Ukraine and China amounted to graft using the family name.James Comer, one of the Republicans leading congressional investigations into Biden’s family, denounced the pardon. “The charges Hunter faced were just the tip of the iceberg in the blatant corruption that President Biden and the Biden Crime Family have lied about to the American people,” Comer wrote on X. “It’s unfortunate that, rather than come clean about their decades of wrongdoing, President Biden and his family continue to do everything they can to avoid accountability.”“I have admitted and taken responsibility for my mistakes during the darkest days of my addiction – mistakes that have been exploited to publicly humiliate and shame me and my family for political sport,” Hunter Biden said in a statement on Sunday, adding he had remained sober for more than five years.“In the throes of addiction, I squandered many opportunities and advantages … I will never take the clemency I have been given today for granted and will devote the life I have rebuilt to helping those who are still sick and suffering.”Hunter Biden’s legal team filed Sunday night in both Los Angeles and Delaware asking the judges handling his gun and tax cases to immediately dismiss them, citing the pardon.In the statement announcing the pardon, Joe Biden said that for his “entire career” he had followed a simple principle: to tell the truth to the American people.“Here’s the truth: I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice – and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a president would come to this decision.”Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. More

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      Wisconsin’s Ben Wikler joins race for Democratic National Committee chair

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      Wisconsin Democratic leader Ben Wikler joined the race to lead the Democratic National Committee on Sunday, promising “to take on Trump, Republican extremists, and move our country forward”, as the party looks to rebuild from its losses in the November election.In a video posted on social networks, Wikler, 43, touted his state party’s success in organizing to flip 14 state legislative seats and send Senator Tammy Baldwin back to Washington DC in November, and in previously campaigns to win control of the state supreme court and re-elect governor Tony Evers. Wikler, a former podcaster, Air America radio producer and headline writer for The Onion, also stressed his new media expertise.Wikler who has been involved in Democratic party politics since age 11, previously served as a producer on comedian-turned-politician Al Franken’s radio show and as Washington director for the progressive action group MoveOn, where he played a role in the successful battle to save the Affordable Care Act.“Our values – the core belief that our economy should work for working people, and that every person has inherent dignity and deserves freedom and respect – are American values,” Willer wrote on Bluesky. “But they’re not MAGA values. The richest and most powerful people want to divide us and enrich themselves.”“We’ve got to make sure that we are reaching people with the message that we are on their side and fighting for them,” Wikler told Reuters in a telephone interview.Wikler, who has served as chair of the Democratic party of Wisconsin since 2019, is among several candidates looking to replace Jaime Harrison, the current chair who is not seeking re-election when the party votes early next year.Former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, Minnesota Democratic chief Ken Martin and New York state senator James Skoufis also are vying to become the new Democratic chair.Democrats are trying to chart the way forward after losing the White House and control of the Senate, as well as failing to retake the House of Representatives.Wikler said the national party could learn from organizing efforts he has overseen in Wisconsin, even though Kamala Harris narrowly lost the state to Trump.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWikler said Democrats also need to focus on the president-elect’s economic agenda, which he claimed will favor wealthy Americans rather than working families.“For Democrats, this is a critical time to unite and fight back against Trump’s plans,” Wikler said.Wikler’s entry into the race was welcomed by the teachers union leader Randi Weingarten, who wrote that he “understands how to organize and communicate”, and journalist Connie Schultz, who knows Wikler from his time as spokesperson for her husband, Senator Sherrod Brown. More

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      Conspiracy theorist Kash Patel, Trump’s pick to lead FBI, faces Senate blowback

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      Donald Trump’s plan to nominate as FBI director the “deep state” conspiracy theorist Kash Patel, a virulent critic of the bureau who has threatened to fire its top echelons and shut down the agency’s headquarters, is facing blowback in Congress as US senators begin to flex their muscles ahead of a contentious confirmation process.Politicians from both main parties took to the Sunday talk shows to express starkly divergent views on Patel, whom Trump announced on Saturday as his pick to lead the most powerful law enforcement agency in the US. The move is dependent on the incumbent FBI chief, Christopher Wray, who Trump himself placed in the job in 2017, either being fired or resigning.It is already clear that confirming Patel through the US Senate is likely to be less than plain sailing. Mike Rounds, a Republican senator from South Dakota, indicated that Patel could face a tough confirmation battle.Rounds pointedly sang the praises of the existing FBI director in an interview with ABC’s This Week. He said that Wray, who still has three more years of his 10-year term to serve, was a “very good man”, adding that he had “no objections about the way that he is doing his job right now”.The senator also emphasised the separation of powers between president and Senate, signaling possible trouble for Patel. Rounds said he gave presidents “the benefit of the doubt”, but also emphasised that “we have a constitutional role to play … that’s the process”.Other Republican senators rallied to Patel’s side. Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas, told CBS’s Face the Nation that he believed Patel would be confirmed.“Patel is a very strong nominee to take on the partisan corruption of the FBI.”Bill Hagerty, a Republican senator from Tennessee, said on NBC’s Meet the Press that he would vote to confirm Patel. “Kash is the best at uncovering what’s happened to the FBI and I look forward to seeing him taking it apart,” he said.Patel is a Trump loyalist who has published children’s books featuring “King Donald”. He has long denigrated the FBI as a pillar of what he calls the “deep state” or the “corrupt ruling class”.In an interview with Shawn Ryan in September, Patel vowed to “shut down” the FBI’s headquarters in Washington DC and reopen the building the following day as a “museum of the deep state”.He has also threatened to use the power of federal law enforcement to go after those he claims are responsible for corrupting the federal government, a list of whom he published in his memoir. Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden’s current national security adviser, was among that list: Patel called him “one of the corrupt actors of the first order”.Sullivan was asked by ABC’s This Week whether he was worried personally about Patel’s potential leadership of the FBI, given the threats against him. He declined to comment, saying he was wholly focused on keeping the country safe in the remaining 50 days of his term in office.But he did highlight that Biden had kept Wray on as FBI chief, despite having inherited the official from Trump. Sullivan said that Wray served “with distinction, entirely insulated from politics or the partisan preferences of the current sitting president. This is a good, deep bipartisan tradition that President Biden has adhered to.”Jamie Raskin, a House Democrat from Maryland, challenged the claim by Trump and Patel that the FBI had been politically weaponised under Biden to go after Republicans. He pointed out on CNN’s State of the Union that over the past four years the FBI had prosecuted the disgraced Democratic senator from New Jersey, Bob Menendez, and the Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar.“I think that’s what they mean when they talk about politicization in the deep state – anybody who doesn’t do the will of Donald Trump,” Raskin said.According to an Axios report on Sunday, Trump had initially planned to appoint Patel as deputy FBI director but changed his mind after his pick to head the agency, the state attorney general of Missouri, Andrew Bailey, failed to impress him. Raising Patel to the number one position makes the move far more politically loaded.Despite the storm he is generating, Trump shows no sign of moderating his leadership choices for his upcoming administration. Over the weekend he tapped Charles Kushner, father of his son-in-law Jared Kushner and a convicted felon whom Trump pardoned in 2020, as US ambassador to France.On Sunday, Trump announced on Truth Social that he had chosen his daughter Tiffany’s father-in-law, Massad Boulos, to be senior adviser on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs. Boulos, a Lebanese billionaire, was active in Trump’s presidential campaign as a liaison with Arab American and Muslim leaders.Trump has also picked a county sheriff, Chad Chronister, from Florida to head the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The agency will have a key role in attempting to fulfill Trump’s pledge to staunch the cross-border flow of fentanyl and other drugs into the US, which is already causing diplomatic tensions with Canada and Mexico.Chronister’s father-in-law, Edward DeBartolo, was pardoned by Trump three years ago on a 1998 conviction for involvement in a gambling fraud case. DeBartolo, the former owner of the San Francisco 49ers American football team, was fined $1m and suspended by the NFL for a year. More

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      How anti-woke spin hit home for Donald Trump | Letters

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      While Nesrine Malik is right in stating that woke talking points weren’t a key part of Kamala Harris’s campaign, she is incorrect in concluding that progressive stances on social issues were in no way responsible for Donald Trump’s election victory (‘Woke’ didn’t lose the US election: the patrician class who hijacked identity politics did, 25 November). Like Malik, I see structural issues as the primary determining factor, my focus as a Democratic activist being on an economy touted as thriving but in fact failing to benefit a populace struggling with obscenely high grocery prices. But having heard Harris equivocate rather than reject controversial statements that were catnip to Trump, I can assure you that there was palpable cultural antagonism too.Those ads of Trump packed a punch, not least “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you”, which capitalised on Harris’s failure to clarify her 2019 support (based on a reading of constitutional law) for taxpayer-funded gender-affirming surgeries for prisoners. But just as Harris failed in this regard in 2024, the Democratic leadership has mangled election messaging over many years – opening itself to charges of cultural (certainly not economic) extremism.I find it interesting that Malik has to define “defund the police” after claiming that “even a cursory glance shows” it “is not to abolish policing”. No, a cursory glance at this ludicrous slogan implies, however unintentionally, just that. And to refuse to believe that anti-woke propaganda, sometimes false but often made possible by Democrats’ own missteps, played a part in the disastrous 2024 election results is to refuse the obvious.Karen Thatcher-SmithSonoma, California, US Nesrine Malik argues that a “cursory glance” would show that “defunding the police” was never about abolishing the police but rather a call to invest in preventive measures. This rather begs the question: why on earth did progressives campaign with such a slogan? It is hard to imagine populist agent provocateurs coming up with a more effective means of separating well‑meaning progressives from the public at large.Alex CampbellBrighton, East Sussex Nesrine Malik is right that the “common enemy is the way in which society itself is designed”. The economic moguls ruling the patrician class successfully sold to many a self-fulfilling investment in a fearful characterisation of wokeness as an absurd and impertinent intrusion in our lives. It is a compelling, too-easy answer when an underlying fear of loss of privilege or self‑challenging the pain of false beliefs around our rightful place in the social order is at stake. Inertia rules – for the moment.Genuine, universal change is hard. It’s hard for the privileged to give up their luxuries and for the oppressed to imagine deserving and enjoying a better life in a truly egalitarian society.Wokeness itself is not the problem. There is no such thing as woke, there is only waking. It is a never-ending process. It is a journey that we must all undertake – towards a society that fully values and expresses the spirituality, democracy, caring, sharing, learning and joy inherent in a naturally evolving life, and no one must be left behind.Daniel O’SullivanMcLeans Ridges, New South Wales, Australia More

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      Doug Burgum could soon be driving Trump’s ‘drill, baby, drill’ promises on public lands

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      View image in fullscreenOf all Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees so far, Doug Burgum has stood out for appearing to be one of the most conventional.The billionaire governor of North Dakota – like most picks to lead the Department of the Interior, the largest landowner in the US west – comes from a western state. He is not a conspiracy theorist, he hasn’t been investigated for sex trafficking. Unlike the president-elect’s pick to lead the Department of Energy, he is not a fracking CEO.“He’s not a lunatic,” said Patrick Donnelly, the great basin director for the Center for Biological Diversity. “He’s not someone wholly inappropriate for the job. But I fear the way his extractive agenda will play out in public lands.”Over the next four years, Burgum is poised to radically remake the agency that oversees 500m acres (200m hectares) of public lands, including national parks and wildlife refuges. A former software executive and one-time climate pragmatist, Burgum has become closely enmeshed with oil and gas industry executives.Burgum led the Trump campaign’s development of its energy policy. After Trump asked oil executives to steer $1bn toward his campaign, Burgum promised them Trump would halt Joe Biden’s “attack” on fossil fuels. As Trump makes good on his promise to “drill, baby, drill”, Burgum will be overseeing the department that expedites those drilling permits.“There’s going to be an effort to get every ounce of fuel out of the ground and burn it,” said Daniel R Patterson, a former environmental protection specialist for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), a division of interior, who filed a whistleblower complaint during the first Trump administration. “And if we do that, we’re burning ourselves.”Burgum had long had an affinity for Teddy Roosevelt, the US president who established the national parks system and was a champion of the outdoors. Roosevelt was from New York, but had a special connection to the Dakotas, seeking solace in the region’s sweeping badlands.The 26th president was also known for his machiavellian political philosophy. “Teddy Roosevelt encouraged America to speak softly and carry a big stick,” Burgum said at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee. “Energy dominance will be the big stick that President Trump will carry.”In addition to managing the interior department, Trump has also tasked Burgum with serving as an “energy czar”, overseeing energy policy across the federal government at the helm of a new “national energy council”.He will be, in essence, a fox guarding the henhouse – in a position to tear down environmental regulations, and ramp up extraction. “We’re going to see a hard turn, to almost complete hostility to conservation interests,” said Patterson.With Burgum at the head of the department, Patterson added, “the direction from DC is going to be to permit as much resource exploitation as possible. And interior employees are going to be asked to push the boundaries of the law more.”Burgum’s zeal for extraction – and his focus on ramping up oil and gas production – could make him more efficient and effective than Trump’s previous interior secretaries. Trump’s first interior leader, Ryan Zinke, racked up 18 ethics investigations in just under two years. His replacement David Bernhardt was also dogged by allegations of ethics violations – and was investigated for carrying on his work as an oil industry lobbyist even after he joined the administration.Burgum’s relatively short political career has not been without scandal. During his short-lived presidential bid, he drew attention for offering $20 gift cards to people who would donate $1 to his campaign, so he would have enough individual donors to make the Republican primary debate stage. But until quite recently, Burgum was viewed as a relative moderate.Initially, he was known for his bipartisanship and pragmatism. Tribal leaders in North Dakota have credited him with smoothing tenuous relationships between tribal and state governments, and though he urged the federal government to take quicker action to clear out protesters of the Dakota Access Pipeline, he advocated against using force after taking over as governor toward the end of the standoff.He was never a progressive champion of climate action – but he promoted the same “all of the above” approach to energy that Democratic administration have supported, backing North Dakota’s powerful oil and gas industry while also encouraging the development of renewable energy infrastructure. In 2021, he set a goal that North Dakota would stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by 2030, becoming “carbon neutral” – 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.But in the past year and a half, Burgum underwent a Maga conversion, becoming one of Donald Trump’s closest advisers on energy policy, coordinating closely with oil industry executives.At a now infamous meeting between Trump and oil executives were Burgum and Harold Hamm – the head of Oklahoma-based energy company Continental Resources. The two men are close allies in politics and business.Hamm has donated to Burgum’s political campaigns ($250,000 to his presidential bid), and help finance his pet projects (giving $50m to fund the Theodore Roosevelt library in North Carolina). His Continental Resources, which is the largest oil and gas leaseholder in North Dakota, also leases land from Burgum’s family for oil and gas extraction.And their chumminess blossomed as Hamm, who has become one of Trump’s biggest benefactors and advisers, reportedly helped talk up Burgum at Mar-a-Lago. As a profile of Hamm in the industry publication Hart Energy asserts: “When Harold Hamm talks US energy, President-Elect Donald Trump listens.”Burgum and Hamm worked in tandem to shore up support for Trump among industry executives. And a now infamous meeting with executives where Trump asked for $1bn in support, Burgum promised that if elected, Trump would “stop the hostile attack against all American energy” on “day one”, according to a recording obtained by the Washington Post.In his dual role as energy czar and interior secretary, environmentalists are bracing for him to gut regulations and speed-up permitting in ecologically vulnerable regions – further opening up the Arctic national wildlife refuge in Alaska for oil and gas exploration, or welcoming uranium and coal development in areas bordering the Grand Canyon.Trump has given Burgum one diktat: drill. Conservationists fear Burgum is likely to oblige not with sweeping action, but by way of a thousand cuts to environmental rules and regulations, allowing not only oil and gas companies, but also mining companies and other businesses unencumbered access to public lands.“The reality is, BLM approves everything that comes in front of them, and that’s true no matter who is present in the White House,” said Donnelly of the Center for Biological Diversity. Of greater concern, he said, is how that permitting happens.“That’s something I really fear, because the ramifications of the first Trump administration are still extremely present in our lives,” he said.During his first administration, Trump oversaw the rollback of more than 125 environmental rules, many with the aid of the interior department, whose secretary will wield vast power over how environmental regulations are interpreted and implemented.For example, the BLM created new rules to roll back restrictions on methane releases from oil and gas wells. A US district court eventually found the rule to be flawed, but then a Wyoming court struck down Obama-era restrictions on methane that preceded the Trump rule. All the while, companies were allowed to release methane unfettered.Burgum could also help Trump gut the interior department, reducing staff at key offices that oversee vast areas of public land – undermining the department’s ability to monitor public lands and enforce regulations. Career interior employees may also choose to retire or leave.“Public employees largely do these jobs because they believe in the public interest,” said Patterson. “If a new political boss comes in and tries to turn the agency into a giant bulldozer to pave the way for moneyed interests, they may not want to be a part of that.”There were 4,900 fewer employees at the interior department at the end of Trump’s first term compared to the beginning. “We know there’s a big emphasis and thrust of the incoming administration on reducing the size of the federal government, and we worry that BLM will once again be in the crosshairs,” said Robert Dewey, vice-president for government relations with the non-profit group Defenders of Wildlife. “If it is targeted, that would have an impact on their ability to balance conservation along with their other objectives. And we worry that wildlife would suffer as a consequence.”The administration faced several complaints and lawsuits over its rushed or inadequate environmental reviews, including over its environmental impact statement (EIS) for an oil and gas leasing program in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that environmentalists called “slapdash”. In 2020, Patterson filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that the BLM district office ignored requirements in the National Environmental Policy Act, in one case allowing a gold mining operation to create toxic pit lake, rather than requiring it to build a more expensive and less polluting system for wastewater. Patterson also alleged retaliation, and the complaint was eventually dismissed in a legal settlement.“Right now, one of the only things standing in the way between this extractive boom, you know, ruining our public lands and driving species to extinction, are bedrock environmental laws,” said Donnelly. “And groups like ours, who are willing to stop these things.”If Burgum and the incoming Trump administration are able to dismantle those laws, he said, it could have consequences that persist well beyond the next administration. “This could be extremely devastating for the future,” he said. More