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Summary
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal trial over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election has dismissed the case, hours after special counsel Jack Smith asked to end the case. Smith is planning to release a final report into his investigations into Trump’s classified documents and election interference cases, CNN reports. Prosecutors say they will continue to pursue the case against two of Trump’s employees. JD Vance responded to the news by tweeting: “If Donald J. Trump had lost an election, he may very well have spent the rest of his life in prison.” On Truth Social, Donald Trump himself wrote that the cases were “a political hijacking, and a low point in the History of our Country”.
Donald Trump said on Monday he would sign an executive order imposing a 25% tariff on all products coming in to the United States from Mexico and Canada and additional tariffs on China. “On January 20th, as one of my many first Executive Orders, I will sign all necessary documents to charge Mexico and Canada a 25% Tariff on ALL products coming into the United States, and its ridiculous Open Borders,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. Trump said the tariffs would remain in place until the two countries clamp down on drugs, particularly fentanyl, and migrants crossing the border illegally. In a follow-up post, Trump announced that the US “will be charging China an additional 10% Tariff, above any additional Tariffs, on all of their many products coming into the United States of America”.
In a statement, Liu Pengyu, a Chinese embassy spokesperson, said China had taken steps to combat drug trafficking after an agreement was reached last year between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping. “The Chinese side has notified the US side of the progress made in US-related law enforcement operations against narcotics,” Liu said. “All these prove that the idea of China knowingly allowing fentanyl precursors to flow into the United States runs completely counter to facts and reality,” Liu said.
Neither the US nor China would win a trade war, the Chinese embassy in Washington added. “About the issue of US tariffs on China, China believes that China-US economic and trade cooperation is mutually beneficial in nature,” Liu said in a statement. “No one will win a trade war or a tariff war,” Liu said.
Canada’s deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland, released a statement saying country places the highest priority on border security and the integrity of its shared border with the US. The statement did not mention the tariffs directly. It also said that the Canada Border Services Agency, the US Drug Enforcement Administration and US Customs and Border protection “work together every single day to to disrupt the scourge of fentanyl coming from China and other countries.”
Trump and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau spoke on Monday night about trade and border security, Reuters reported, citing a Canadian source directly familiar with situation.
Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden will attend Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, a White House spokesperson told Reuters. “The president promised that he would attend the inauguration of whomever won the election,” said Andrew Bates, senior deputy press secretary at the White House. “He and the First Lady are going to honor that promise and attend the inauguration.”
Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner has dropped his office’s lawsuit against Elon Musk and his America Pac. Krasner had sued Musk over his super Pac’s $1m-a-day lottery, where swing state voters were entered into a drawing every day before the presidential election in exchange for signing a petition.
Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has said that leaders of so-called “sanctuary cities” should have to explain why they deserve federal funding and warned that they could lose their funding. Greene, who has been tapped to lead a subcommittee called the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) under Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, told Fox News she wants to question officials on whether they’re using federal funds to “harbor illegal criminal aliens”.
Trump’s pick for the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth, faces renewed scrutiny over sexual assault allegations as Republican lawmakers are reportedly uncomfortable after a number of claims have surfaced. The concerns come as Hegseth was also revealed to have criticized several key US alliances, including Nato, as well as allied countries such as Turkey and international institutions such as the UN, and has said that US troops should not be bound by the Geneva conventions.
The identities of private donors funding Donald Trump’s presidential transition are being kept secret, in a break with precedent, that is obscuring which groups, businesses or wealthy individuals are supporting his second presidential launch.
Rand Paul, a Republican senator of Kentucky, has criticized Donald Trump’s proposed use of the US military to conduct mass deportations of immigrants when he returns to the White House. While Paul still supports Trump’s plans to expel millions of immigrants from the US, the lawmaker has opposed using the US military to do so, arguing that law enforcement would be better suited.
Gavin Newsom, California governor, has announced that the state may offer state tax rebates for electric vehicle purchases if the incoming Trump administration cuts the federal tax credit for electric vehicles. In a statement on Monday, Newsom said that if the Trump administration eliminates the federal tax credit for electric vehicles he would propose creating a new version of the state’s Clean Vehicle Rebate Program, phased out in 2023, which funded 594,000 cars and saved more than 456m gallons of fuel.
Internal rivalries spilled into public view on Monday as Boris Epshteyn, a top adviser to Donald Trump, found himself at the center of an ouster effort over accusations he asked potential administration nominees to pay monthly consulting fees in exchange for lobbying for them to the president-elect.
