Summary
Here is a summary of the key recent developments:
An attorney representing two women who he says testified before the House ethics committee has claimed that the former congressman Matt Gaetz paid both women for sex and that one of the women alleged she witnessed Gaetz having sex with a minor. The new allegations were revealed by the attorney Joel Leppard during an interview with ABC News on Monday – less than a week after Gaetz resigned from Congress following his nomination by Donald Trump to serve as attorney general in his second administration.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a lawsuit against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) seeking more information about how the agency might carry out Donald Trump’s plans for a mass deportation program.
Donald Trump appears to be planning to attend a SpaceX Starship rocket launch on Tuesday in the latest indication of influence of the company’s founder, Elon Musk, on the president-elect and his orbit.
The field of potential appointees to lead the Trump administration’s treasury department has widened to include Marc Rowan who founded and runs one of the nation’s largest public equity firms, and Kevin Warsh a central banker who from 2006 to 2011 served as a governor for the Federal Reserve, Reuters reports.
Dick Durbin, a Democratic senator from Illinois, is vowing to get as much information about Matt Gaetz to his colleagues in the Senate to show “how dangerous he would be” if he becomes the US’s next attorney general.
A Democratic incumbent on North Carolina’s supreme court held an extremely small lead over her Republican challenger as the last counties work to complete their official tallies. Associate Justice Allison Riggs had trailed on election night by roughly 10,000 votes to Jefferson Griffin, a state court of appeals judge. But that margin dwindled last week as election boards in the state’s 100 counties reviewed information associated with tens of thousands of provisional and absentee ballots and added voting choices of those that qualified for counting to totals.
A Georgia appeals court on Monday canceled oral arguments that were scheduled for next month on the appeal of a lower court ruling allowing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to continue to prosecute the election interference case she brought against Trump, the Associated Press reports.
Trump allies have lashed out angrily at Joe Biden for his decision to permit Ukraine to use long-range US missiles to launch attacks inside Russia for the first time, in what the Kremlin has termed an “escalation” in the war. Key Trump surrogates, including his son Donald Trump Jr, hardline congressional Republicans, and other backers have accused Biden of seeking to spark “world war three” before Trump’s presidential inauguration in January.
Donald Trump has announced former Wisconsin congressman Sean Duffy as his nomination for secretary of transportation. Duffy is known for having been a cast member on the reality show, The Real World. His wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy, hosts Fox and Friends Weekend, and was also a cast member on The Real World.
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ACLU files lawsuit to gain information about Trump mass deportation plans
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a lawsuit against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) seeking more information about how the agency might carry out Donald Trump’s plans for a mass deportation program.
The US president-elect has vowed to deport millions of undocumented immigrants upon taking office, a threat that he has doubled down on since winning the presidential race earlier this month. On Monday, Trump confirmed a report that he intended to declare a national emergency to activate military resources as part of the mass deportation operation.
The new lawsuit comes after the ACLU Foundation of Southern California (ACLU SoCal) filed a Freedom of Information Act (Foia) request seeking details on how Ice’s privately chartered flights might be expanded to expedite deportations. According to the ACLU, Ice failed to respond to the Foia request, which was filed in August.
“For months, the ACLU has been preparing for the possibility of a mass detention and deportation program, and Foia litigation has been a central part of our roadmap,” said Kyle Virgien, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s national prison project. “A second Trump administration underscores the urgency of our litigation.”
According to the ACLU, planes chartered by the Ice Air Operations network assisted in the deportation of more than 140,000 people last year, and immigrant rights’ advocates fear that the program could be vastly expanded to further Trump’s agenda:
