Closing summary
Donald Trump this weekend made clear he would pardon rioters facing charges or convicted of involvement in January 6, while saying members of the bipartisan House committee that investigated the violence “should go to jail”. That prompted a response from its vice-chair, Republican former congresswoman Liz Cheney, who rejected his criticism, saying: “Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power.” Meanwhile, the supreme court turned aside an effort by Trump’s attorneys to lift the gag order imposed on him in his hush-money case.
Here’s what else happened today:
Jason Miller, a top adviser to Trump, said the House committee that investigated January 6 destroyed evidence, but provided no proof for his claim. He also slightly walked back Trump’s quip that the lawmakers involved should be jailed.
Markwayne Mullin, a Republican senator, said the January 6 committee members do not “have a reason to be afraid now”, but that their work is worth of investigating.
Jim Clyburn, a veteran Democratic congressman, warned that Trump’s comments should be taken seriously, adding that they were reminiscent of the rhetoric that led to the rise of Jim Crow.
Two senators proposed a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on supreme court justices, but it faces long odds.
Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican who will chair the Senate judiciary committee next year, sent the FBI director and his deputy a letter saying they should resign for not cooperating with Congress and politicizing the bureau.
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Donald Trump’s nominee for defense secretary is back on Capitol Hill for more meetings with Republican senators, including Joni Ernst, whose views on him are seen as vital to his chances of confirmation.
Ernst, a combat veteran and sexual assault survivor, has signaled hesitance with confirming Hegseth, after reports emerged of his excessive drinking and poor treatment of women, including a sexual assault allegation.
Hegseth and Ernst met again today, but it wasn’t clear if the senator had made up her mind about Trump’s Pentagon pick. As he left her office, Hegseth said that it was a “very good meeting”, but little else.
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Top Senate Republican calls on FBI director and deputy to step down
Chuck Grassley, the long-serving Iowa senator who will chair the chamber’s judiciary committee next year, has called for the FBI director, Christopher Wray, and his deputy to resign, saying they politicized the agency and refused to cooperate with him.
Should Wray and his deputy FBI director, Paul Abbate, heed Grassley’s call, it would clear the way for Senate Republicans to confirm the former defense official Kash Patel to the job. Patel has drawn concern for calling for the imprisonment of journalists and vowing to radically downsize the FBI.
In a letter sent to Wray, Grassley wrote:
Rather than turn over a new leaf at the FBI, you’ve continued to read from the old playbook of weaponization, double standards, and a relentless game of hide-and-seek with the Congress. As your tenure as FBI director comes to an end, I want to take this opportunity to tell you where you went wrong, for the benefit of the bureau and that of your successor.
Grassley went on to criticize Wray and Abbate for not being forthcoming enough on a range of matters, including sexual harassment claims made by female FBI employees, the vetting of evacuees from Afghanistan, and its agents’ search of Mar-a-Lago for classified materials Donald Trump was accused of hiding there.
Grassley concludes:
For the good of the country, it’s time for you and your deputy to move on to the next chapter in your lives. I’ve spent my career fighting for transparency, and I’ve always called out those in government who have fought against it. For the public record, I must do so once again now. I therefore must express my vote of no confidence in your continued leadership of the FBI. President-elect Trump has already announced his intention to nominate a candidate to replace you, and the Senate will carefully consider that choice. For my part, I’ve also seen enough, and hope your respective successors will learn from these failures.
If they do not step down, Trump has the power to fire them.
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In his interview with NBC, Donald Trump also mulled putting his health secretary nominee, Robert F Kennedy Jr, in charge of researching the very vaccines he has pushed conspiracy theories against. Here’s more, from the Guardian’s Robert Tait:
Donald Trump has said Robert F Kennedy Jr, his nominee for health secretary, may investigate a supposed link between vaccines and autism – despite a consensus among the medical establishment debunking any such connection.
In a wide-ranging interview with NBC, the US president-elect claimed an investigation was justified by the increasing prevalence of autism diagnoses among American children over the past 25 years.
“When you look at what’s going on with disease and sickness in our country, something’s wrong,” Trump said after the interviewer, Kristen Welker, asked him if he wanted to see some vaccines eliminated – a position for which Kennedy has argued.
“If you take a look at autism, go back 25 years, autism was almost nonexistent. It was, you know, one out of 100,000 and now it’s close to one out of 100.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one out of every 36 children in the US were diagnosed with autism in 2020, compared with one in 150 in 2000.
Kennedy, a noted vaccine sceptic, has repeatedly peddled discredited theories that the conditions is caused by childhood vaccinations.
“I do believe that autism does come from vaccines,” he said in a 2023 Fox News interview in which he called for more vaccine testing.
“We should have the same kind of testing place or control trials that we have for other every other medication. Vaccines are exempt from pre-licensing control trials, so that there’s no way that anybody can tell the risk profile of those products, or even the relative benefits of those products before they’re mandated. We should have that kind of testing.”
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Top Trump adviser accuses January 6 committee of destroying evidence, without proof
Jason Miller, a top adviser to Donald Trump, went on CNN earlier today to defend the president-elect’s assertion that the bipartisan House committee tasked with investigating the January 6 insurrection destroyed evidence.
Trump used that claim to then argue that the lawmakers who took part in the investigation should go to jail. The assertion appears factually wobbly, since the committee’s report and its evidence remains easily accessible online.
Asked in the CNN interview if Trump would have Kash Patel, his nominee to lead the FBI, go after the committee members, Miller responded:
I do have to take issue with saying that the select committee didn’t go and destroy records. They have wiped everything out …
Other committees have looked through and said that those records are gone, that they don’t exist, that they’re not there. Even Republicans who are now in charge have said that those records are gone, that they’re not there. So I would completely take issue with that. We’re going to have to agree to disagree, but they got rid of it.
But he seemed to moderate Trump’s comments slightly, arguing that the president-elect expects Patel and Pam Bondi, Trump’s pick for attorney general, “to apply the law equally”:
He wants everyone who he puts into key positions of leadership, again, whether that’s Pam Bondi as the AG, Kash Patel, the FBI, or anybody else, to apply the law equally to everybody. Now, that means, if you’re somebody who’s committed some very serious crimes, who’s committed very serious felonies, who’s, for example, leaked confidential information, in direct violation of laws that are in place, well, then, obviously, that sets you up for different things …
But as far as the politics aspect, if you listen to the entire interview with President Trump, he said he’s going to leave that up to the law enforcement agents in charge, including Pam Bondi and Kash Patel.
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The idea is not new.
Similar bills, like the Supreme Court Tenure Establishment and Retirement Modernization Act of 2023, which was introduced in the US house of representatives and has more than 60 co-sponsors, also calls for 18-year terms for supreme court justices and the establishment of a process for the president to appoint a new justice every two years.
Another bill introduced this year by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, called the Judicial Modernization and Transparency Act, also called for overhauling the supreme court. But unlike the amendment proposed by Welch and Manchin, this would not limit their terms, but rather the total number of justices, allowing for expanding the court from nine to 15.
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The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law says supreme court justices are getting appointed at younger ages and living longer than they used to, which means they are sitting on the court longer than usual.
Donald Trump appointed more justices during his first term than Barack Obama or George W Bush did during each of their two-term presidencies respectively.
About two-thirds of Americans support imposing term limits on the members of the nation’s highest court, according to the results of the the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Constitution Day Civics Survey released in September.
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Although Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who co-authored the proposed amendment to limit the supreme court justice terms with Welch, is seen as an obstructionist by Democrats, this latest proposal is a popular idea within the party.
The progressive House member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez last year said: “We have a broad level of tools to deal with misconduct, overreach and abuse of power in the supreme court [that] has not been receiving the adequate oversight necessary in order to preserve their own legitimacy.
“And in the process, they themselves have been destroying the legitimacy of the court, which is profoundly dangerous for our entire democracy.”
Manchin left the party in May and registered as an independent after criticism for pushing against Joe Biden’s ambitious legislative goals, like those related to tackling the climate crisis or taxing the wealthy.
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Senator Pete Welch of Vermont took to X to announce his amendment to impose term limits on supreme court justices. He wrote:
No other major democracy in the world gives lifetime seats to judges who sit on their highest court. It leads to divisive confirmation processes and reduced trust from the public.
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The day so far
Donald Trump this weekend made clear he would pardon rioters facing charges or convicted of involvement in January 6, while saying members of the bipartisan House committee that investigated the violence “should go to jail”. That prompted a response from its vice-chair, Republican former congresswoman Liz Cheney, who rejected his criticism, saying: “Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power”. Meanwhile, the supreme court turned aside an effort by Trump’s attorneys to lift the gag order imposed on him in his hush-money case.
Here’s what else has happened today so far:
Markwayne Mullin, a Republican senator, said the January 6 committee members do not “have a reason to be afraid now”, but that their work is worth of investigating.
Jim Clyburn, a veteran Democratic congressman, warned that Trump’s comments should be taken seriously, adding that they were reminiscent of the rhetoric that led to the rise of Jim Crow.
Two senators proposed a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on supreme court justices, but it faces long odds.
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Senators propose amendment to institute term limits for supreme court justices
The Democratic senator Peter Welch and independent senator Joe Manchin have proposed a constitutional amendment that would impose term limits on supreme court justices, saying such a move is necessary to restore faith in the nation’s highest court.
“The current lifetime appointment structure is broken and fuels polarizing confirmation battles and political posturing that has eroded public confidence in the highest court in our land. Our amendment maintains that there shall never be more than nine justices and would gradually create regular vacancies on the Court, allowing the President to appoint a new justice every two years with the advice and consent of the United States Senate,” said Manchin, who is weeks away from concluding his 14 years of representing West Virginia.
The senators cited one of many surveys that found dismal approval ratings for the court, where conservatives have a six-justice supermajority and liberals a three-justice minority. Welch, a recent arrival in the chamber who represents Vermont, said:
Taking action to restore public trust in our nation’s most powerful Court is as urgent as it is necessary. Setting term limits for Supreme Court Justices will cut down on political gamesmanship, and is commonsense reform supported by a majority of Americans.
Here’s how their proposal would work:
The amendment would institute nonrenewable, 18-year terms for new U.S. Supreme Court Justices, with a new term starting every two years …
The proposed amendment would not adjust the tenure of sitting Justices, but rather institute a transition period to maintain regular vacancies as current Justices retire. During that period, 18-year terms will begin every two years, regardless of when a current Justice leaves the bench. Once a current Justice retires, the newly appointed Justice will serve out the remainder of the next open 18-year term. The amendment would not change the overall number of Justices on the Court.
It’s unlikely the idea will go far, particularly with Republicans in January assuming the majority in the chamber tasked with confirming the president’s appointments to the supreme court.
It’s also proven difficult to win ratification of constitutional amendments. None has been approved since 1992, and the process typically requires the approval of supermajorities in the Senate and House of Representatives, as well as the legislatures in three-fourths of states.
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Police in Pennsylvania are reportedly questioning a man in connection with the murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, in New York City last week.
News of Thompson’s murder was greeted with sympathy and cheers on some corners of social media, particularly from people who are critical of the insurer’s treatment of its customers. Over the weekend, the Democratic congressman Ro Khanna reacted to that sentiment by saying it is a sign that the US healthcare system needs real reform. Here’s more:
Progressive congressperson Ro Khanna has sympathy for the murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson – yet at the same time is not surprised that the killing reignited a national dialogue about inequities in the US healthcare system, he said in an interview on Sunday.
‘It was horrific,’ the California Democrat said on ABC This Week with respect to the slaying of Thompson, whose survivors include his widow and two sons ages 16 and 19. ‘I mean, this is a father we’re talking about – of two children, and … there is no justification for violence.
‘But the outpouring afterwards has not surprised me.’
Khanna told the show’s host, Martha Raddatz, that he agreed with fellow liberal and US senator Bernie Sanders when he wrote recently on social media: ‘We waste hundreds of billions a year on health care administrative expenses that make insurance CEOs and wealthy stockholders incredibly rich while 85 million Americans go uninsured or underinsured. Health care is a human right. We need Medicare for all.
‘After years, Sanders is winning this debate,’ Khanna said, referring to the Vermont senator’s support for a single-payer national health insurance system seen in other wealthy democracies.
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Rightwing figures on social media are celebrating news that Daniel Penny has been acquitted of charges related to the chokehold death of Jordan Neely on a New York City subway train.
A jury acquitted the Marine Corps veteran Penny on a charge of criminally negligent homicide, after last week deadlocking on a manslaughter charge that the judge then ordered dismissed.
In reaction to the news, the Republican congressman Eli Crane wrote on X:
Massive vibe shift and a huge win for our nation.
The commentator Matt Walsh said:
Daniel Penny now has his freedom. He should also have the Medal of Freedom for the courage he displayed on the train that day, and during the ordeal that followed. Maybe with Trump coming in, that might actually happen.
The Trump ally Charlie Kirk wrote:
Marine hero Daniel Penny has been found NOT GUILTY. He has been acquitted!! Thank God!!
Here’s more about the verdict:
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Just after midnight, Donald Trump made this somewhat strange post on Truth Social:
The Democrats are fighting hard to get rid of the Popular Vote in future Elections. They want all future Presidential Elections to be based exclusively on the Electoral College!
He did not say which Democrats he was referring to, and the comment seems at odds with the public views of some in the party, at least before the 2024 election.
If there’s any aspect of US elections that Democrats want to change, it would be the electoral college, not the popular vote. Some in the party complain that the system favors the GOP, particularly since since George W Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016 both won the presidency in those years despite not winning the popular vote. Kamala Harris’s running mate Tim Walz even mentioned getting rid of the electoral college during the campaign.
Trump, of course, won both the electoral college and popular vote on 5 November – a decisive victory that abolishing the electoral college would not have prevented.
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Shasti Conrad, chair of the Washington state Democrats, has formally launched a bid to become one of the vice-chairs of the Democratic National Committee, which will hold leadership elections in February.
In a statement announcing her candidacy, Conrad touted the $9m the state party has raised since she became chair last year and noted that Washington state bucked the national trend of shifting toward Republicans in the presidential election last month.
“I am asking for the votes of every Democratic National Committee member to be your next Vice Chair to bring the tools that helped Washington State Democrats succeed to a national platform,” Conrad said.
“I believe in the power of partnership. Our policies are popular. Our values are American values. Together, let’s lead our party out of the wilderness and start improving the lives of all Americans again.”
The DNC has four vice-chair posts to fill, and at least one other candidate, the pro-Palestinian advocate and longtime DNC member James Zogby, has already launched a bid. David Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 Parkland shooting turned gun safety activist, is also considering a run.
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In an interview with CNN, the Democratic congressman James Clyburn said Donald Trump’s comments about jailing the January 6 committee members should be taken seriously.
“Those are his words. We ought to believe him when he says it. And I know there are people already saying, ‘Oh, he doesn’t mean that.’ OK, go and look and see … what he did after the 2016 election. We got a precursor way back then to what’s now being called Project 2025,” Clyburn said.
The South Carolina lawmaker also warned that the last time a president like Trump took office, states imposed Jim Crow laws:
I’ve studied history all of my life, and I’m telling you, what I see going on, what I hear coming from those people who are planning to work in this administration should be concerned for everybody. I know what happened. The history is very clear what happened the last time we had a presidential election that portended this, Jim Crow became the law of the land. And that’s where we’re headed if we aren’t careful.
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Supreme court rejects Trump's attempt to lift gag order in hush-money case
The supreme court has turned down a request by Donald Trump’s attorneys to order the lifting of the gag order imposed on the president-elect in his hush-money case.
In a brief order, the court denied a petition from Trump’s attorneys that was addressed to Samuel Alito, a member of its conservative supermajority.
Juan Merchan, the New York judge who presided over the trial that saw Trump convicted of 34 felony business fraud charges, imposed the gag order in March, which currently prevents the incoming president from making public statements about prosecutors, court staff and their families. Here’s more:
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In his weekend interview with NBC News where he said members of the January 6 committee should be jailed, Donald Trump also made clear that he planned to stick with his promise to pardon those charged over the attack on the Capitol. Here’s more, from the Guardian’s Michael Sainato:
In his first sit-down television news interview since winning a second presidency in November’s election, Donald Trump renewed promises to pardon his supporters involved in the attack on the US Capitol in early 2021.
He also doubled down on promises of mass deportations and tariffs in the conversation with NBC’s Meet the Press host, Kristen Welker – the latter of which he acknowledged could cause Americans to pay more after riding voters’ complaints about higher prices back to the White House at the expense of Vice-President Kamala Harris.
“I’m going to be acting very quickly. First day,” Trump said in the interview, claiming convicted Capitol attackers had been put through a “very nasty system”.
“I know the system,” said Trump, himself convicted in May by New York state prosecutors of criminally falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels. “The system’s a very corrupt system.”
Trump said there may be some exceptions to his pardons over an attack on the Capitol that was meant to keep him in the Oval Office after losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden – and which was linked to multiple deaths, including the suicides of traumatized law enforcement officers. He referenced previously debunked claims of anti-Trump law enforcement infiltrating his supporters’ ranks and agitating the attack.
Yesterday on CNN, the Republican senator Markwayne Mullin was asked for his thoughts on Donald Trump’s comments about prosecuting members of the January 6 committee.
He said the now-shuttered House investigation was worthy of investigation, and repeated Trump’s factually dubious assertions that they destroyed evidence, but stopped short of calling for the members’ jailing. “I don’t think they have a reason to be afraid now,” Mullin said. He continued:
I think that investigation should be in looked into if there was criminal activity that took place with the January 6 committee. There was a lot of questions that didn’t get answered. There was a lot of information that was destroyed. Why did they destroy it? Why didn’t they? Why did they refuse to allow a lot of people to testify, or their testimony to actually become public? If the American people want to know that, then maybe we do another hearing.
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Adam Schiff, the California senator-elect who served on the January 6 committee during his just-concluded time in the House, responded to Donald Trump’s call for his jailing.
Writing on X, Schiff said:
When Trump violated his oath, I stood up to him. When he tried to overturn the 2020 election, the January 6th Committee stood in defense of our democracy. Threats to jail us will not deter us. Nothing will stop me from doing my duty to the American people.
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Liz Cheney says Trump 'lied about the January 6th select committee'
In his interview with NBC News, Donald Trump said the January 6 committee “deleted and destroyed all evidence”, before insisting he was not responsible for the violent attack on the Capitol.
“And Cheney was behind it. And so was [Democratic chair] Bennie Thompson and everybody on that committee. For what they did, honestly, they should go to jail,” Trump said.
The committee’s report and its evidence remains publicly available, and Liz Cheney, the Republican former congresswoman who served as the body’s vice-chair, said in a statement that Trump was not telling the truth about its work:
This morning, President-elect Trump again lied about the January 6th Select Committee, and said members of the Committee ‘should go to jail’ for carrying out our constitutional responsibilities. Here is the truth: Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power. He mobilized an angry mob and sent them to the United States Capitol, where they attacked police officers, invaded the building, and halted the official counting of electoral votes. Trump watched on television as police officers were brutally beaten and the Capitol was assaulted, refusing for hours to tell the mob to leave. This was the worst breach of our Constitution by any president in our nation’s history. Donald Trump’s suggestion that members of Congress who later investigated his illegal and unconstitutional actions should be jailed is a continuation of his assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.
Donald Trump knows his claims about the select committee are ridiculous and false, as has been detailed extensively, including by Chairman Thompson in this July 2023 letter. There is no conceivably appropriate factual or constitutional basis for what Donald Trump is suggesting – a Justice Department investigation of the work of a congressional committee – and any lawyer who attempts to pursue that course would quickly find themselves engaged in sanctionable conduct.
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Liz Cheney hits back after Trump says January 6 committee members should be jailed
Good morning, US politics blog readers. In his first sit-down interview since winning the presidential election, Donald Trump made clear to NBC News on Sunday that he planned to upend an array of governing norms as soon as he gets into the White House. The president-elect said he would pardon most January 6 insurrectionists, and that the former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney and other lawmakers who served on the bipartisan House committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol “should go to jail”. That prompted a furious riposte from Cheney, who was ousted from Congress’s lower chamber two years ago over her break from Trump.
“Here is the truth: Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power,” Cheney said in a statement, where she also called for the justice department special counsel, Jack Smith, to release evidence he gathered into Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. We’ll see if any other former members of the committee speak out today.
Here’s what else is going on today:
Joe Biden speaks at the Tribal Nations Summit in Washington DC at 3.45pm ET, then parties with members of Congress at their Holiday Ball at 6pm.
Andy Kim of New Jersey and Adam Schiff of California, both Democrats, are expected to be sworn into the Senate today, after resigning their seats in the House to take up their new roles.
Congress is continuing work on a massive year-end defense spending bill that will be one of the last things it does before the new Republican majority takes their seats next year.
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