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Here is the latest on the Matt Gaetz report:
China has renewed efforts to curry favour in Pacific island nations, a new report has found, after charting a “resurgence” in Beijing-backed aid and infrastructure funding.
Over the past decade, China has lavished billions of dollars on Pacific island nations, part of ongoing efforts to build influence in competition with the US and its allies.
Having cut back on Pacific aid at the height of the Covid pandemic, China’s commitments have climbed in recent years, Australia’s Lowy Institute said in a new study.
“Beijing has emerged from a pandemic-induced lull with a more competitive, politically targeted model of aid engagement,” the thinktank said in its annual Pacific aid report on Wednesday.
“The uptick in Chinese spending has been accompanied by a resurgence in new Chinese project commitments, signalling a revival in its ambition to engage in major infrastructure works in the Pacific.”
Australia – traditionally the Pacific’s partner of choice – remained the largest donor.
But US funding now narrowly trails that of China, the second-largest bilateral donor in the region, authors Alexandre Dayant and Riley Duke said.
In 2022, the most recent year with complete data, China spent $256m – up nearly 14% from three years earlier.
Australia spent $1.5bn, and the US $249m – both figures falling after a sharp increase the previous year.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin expressed regret Wednesday that his Chinese counterpart chose not to hold talks with him during meetings of Southeast Asian defense chiefs in Laos, calling it a setback for the entire region.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations is holding security talks in Vientiane at a time of increasing maritime disputes with China and as the transition to a new U.S. president approaches.
The decision by Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun “is a setback for the whole region,” Austin said after the first day of meetings.
“It’s unfortunate. It affects the region because the region really wants to see us, two significant players in the region, two significant powers, talk to each other, and that reassures the entire region,” he said.
There was no immediate comment from China on its decision not to meet with Austin.
Trump nominates Pete Hoekstra as ambassador to Canada
Trump has nominated his former ambassador to the Netherlands, Pete Hoekstra, as his ambassador to Canada. Here is how his first day as ambassador to the Netherlands went.
In a statement released a moment ago, the president-elect said:
I am very pleased to announce that former Ambassador, and former Congressman, Pete Hoekstra, has been nominated as my United States Ambassador to Canada. Pete is well-respected in the Great State of Michigan - A State we won sizably. He represented Michigan’s 2nd District in Congress for nearly 20 years, where he was also Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and was a great help to our Campaign as Chairman of the Michigan Republican Party.
I overhauled the disastrous NAFTA Agreement, the worst Trade Deal in the History of the United States, which was switched to the USMCA (Mexico/Canada), which no one thought could be done. We brought Trade with Mexico and Canada to a level playing field for our wonderful Farmers and Working Families. In my Second Term, Pete will help me once again put AMERICA FIRST. He did an outstanding job as United States Ambassador to the Netherlands during our first four years, and I am confident that he will continue to represent our Country well in this new role. Thank you, Pete!
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The US senate has blocked a measure to stop the sale of mortar rounds to Israel, Reuters reports.
Seventy-nine of the 100 senators have now opposed a resolution that would have blocked sales of tank rounds to Israel, while 18 approved it and one voted present.
The Senate is due to vote later today on two other resolutions that would stop shipments of two other types of offensive military equipment.
All of the votes in favour of the measure came from Democrats, while “no” votes came from both Democrats and Republicans. Approval would have been a marked departure from decades of US congressional support for Israel, which for years was the biggest recipient of US military assistance.
The “resolutions of disapproval” were filed by Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, and co-sponsored by a handful of Democrats.
Backers hope that forcing a vote would encourage Israel’s government and President Joe Biden’s administration to do more to prevent Israel from killing more civilians, and particularly children. Israeli forces have killed 17,400 children in Gaza in just over a year.
More detail now on the measure on tank rounds.
US Senate has blocked legislation that would have halted the sale of some weapons to Israel, which had been introduced out of concern about the human rights catastrophe, and extremely high number of civilians and children Israeli forces have killed in the Palestinian territories.
As voting continued, 59 of the 100 senators opposed a resolution that would have blocked sales of tank rounds to Israel, while 15 supported it.
Senate blocks measure to halt sales of tank rounds to Israel
The senate has blocked a measure that would have halted the sales of tank rounds to Israel, Reuters reports. Voting continues on the other measures.
The resolutions being voted on are to block the sale of 120mm mortar rounds, joint direct attack munitions (JDAMS), and tank rounds. They must pass both the Senate and the House of Representatives with a simple majority. If they pass, they go to the president.
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Trump likely to choose Johns Hopkins surgeon Martin Makary to lead FDA - report
Trump will probably choose Johns Hopkins surgeon and writer Martin Makary to lead the Food and Drug Administration, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Wednesday.
Makary raised concerns about a number of public health issues during the Covid-19 pandemic, touting the protection from natural immunity and opposing Covid vaccine mandates.
The FDA is the world’s most influential drug regulator with a more than $7 billion budget. It is responsible for approving new treatments and assuring they are safe and effective before entering the biggest and most lucrative market. It has regulatory authority over human and veterinary drugs, biological medicines, medical devices and vaccines.
The agency is also responsible for maintaining safety standards for the food supply, tobacco, cosmetics, and products that emit radiation.
Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the Trump transition team, said he would not speculate on or get ahead of any announcement.
As FDA commissioner, Makary would report to the head of the Department of Health and Human Services.
To lead HHS, Trump has nominated Robert F Kennedy Junior, an environmental activist who has spread misinformation about the safety of vaccines and one of several unconventional Trump picks for top administration jobs.
As a doctor, Makary was a co-developer of the Surgery Checklist, a routine for surgeons that improved patient outcomes and has been spread around the globe by the World Health Organization.
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North Carolina Republican legislators gave final approval Wednesday to a series of political power moves that would weaken the incoming governor and other Democratic elected officials in the ninth-largest state, the Associated Press reports.
They’re contained in a massive bill sprinkled with a new round of Hurricane Helene relief provisions and rushed through a lame-duck General Assembly session.
The Senate voted along party lines for the 131-page measure, which would alter yet again how the State Board of Elections is appointed, likely leading to a GOP majority on a panel now controlled by Democrats. It also would move up in 2025 several post-election deadlines after Republican complaints that counties took too long this month to count provisional and absentee ballots, especially in light of an extremely close Supreme Court race.
The House approved the same measure Tuesday night, so the bill goes next to the desk of outgoing Democratic Governor Roy Cooper, who has blasted the effort as “massive power grabs.” Other Democrats called provisions unconstitutional. Any veto override attempt would happen early next month.
The measure was approved less than 24 hours after it was made broadly public in the final weeks before Republicans’ veto-proof majority ends, after electoral defeats in the House this month.
Federal investigators 'established trail of payments from Gaetz to women who testified he paid them for sex' – report
The New York Times reports that, "Federal investigators established a trail of payments from Matt Gaetz, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice to be attorney general, to women including some who testified that Mr. Gaetz hired them for sex”.
The story cites a document obtained by the New York Times and a lawyer who represents some of the women.
The story continues:
Federal investigators established a trail of payments from Matt Gaetz, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice to be attorney general, to women including some who testified that Mr. Gaetz hired them for sex, according to a document obtained by The New York Times and a lawyer representing some of the women.
The document, assembled by investigators during a three-year sex-trafficking investigation into Mr. Gaetz, is a chart that shows a web of thousands of dollars in Venmo payments between Mr. Gaetz and a group of his friends, associates and women who had drug-fueled sex parties between 2017 and 2020, according to testimony that participants are said to have given to federal and congressional investigators.
At the parties, women, and a girl who was 17 at the time, were paid for sex, according to accounts of the participants’ testimony from people briefed on what they said.
Sanders addresses Senate ahead of vote to prevent further arms sales to Israel
Bernie Sanders is addressing the Senate now.
“I will tell you that our role [in the world] is significantly diminished if we continue to support Netanyahu,” he says. It will diminish the US’s ability to critique other countries for their human rights records.
The war on Gaza is supported by American taxpayer dollars, as is the mass starvation of children, Sanders days.
He is speaking ahead of a vote on the joint resolutions of disapproval (JRDs), introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders in September, would prevent the Pentagon from sending another $20bn to Israel as it continues its assault on Gaza – which has killed at least 43,000 people, most of them women and children.
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Trump could change his mind on the selection of Vought, Reuters reports, and there were other candidates for the role as recently as earlier this week, according to one of the sources.
The Trump transition team and Vought did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump repeatedly denied when campaigning for president that he had any links to Project 2025, although many of its authors were former officials from his first administration, including Vought.
At OMB, Vought will work with X CEO Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to carry out Trump’s campaign pledge to slash government spending and regulations.
Musk and Ramaswamy have been tapped by Trump to co-lead a newly created Department of Government Efficiency, an entity Trump has indicated will operate outside the confines of government.
President-elect Donald Trump is planning to tap conservative loyalist Russell Vought to be the director of the US Office of Management and Budget, according to two sources close to his transition effort who spoke to Reuters, putting him at the helm of a powerful agency that helps decide a president’s policy priorities and how to pay for them.
Vought was OMB chief in Trump’s first term and would play a key role in rolling back government regulations and setting budget priorities. In this position, he would be in a position to implement a policy known as Schedule F, which would in practice strip thousands of federal employees of some key civil service protections.
Vought helped produce a blueprint called Project 2025 by a coalition of conservative groups for a second Trump White House term. One of its proposals is to dramatically restructure the government so that appointed conservatives have power over key decisions typically relegated to civil servants.
Today so far
Members of the House ethics committee were appeared to be deadlocked whether to release a report on their investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct involving Donald Trump’s attorney general pick, Matt Gaetz. The former Florida congressman, shepherded by vice president-elect JD Vance, held meetings with key Senate allies involved in the Cabinet confirmation process at the Capitol on Wednesday, as Senate Democrats officially requested the files from the FBI’s probe into whether Gaetz engaged in child sex trafficking.
Meanwhile, the Republican House speaker Mike Johnson announced that transgender women are not permitted to use women’s bathrooms in the Capitol building, weeks after the election of the first transgender member of Congress, Sarah McBride. She responded: “I’m not here to fight about bathrooms. I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families.”
Also:
Trump announced he has chosen the former acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, as his nominee to serve as US ambassador to Nato. Trump is also expected to name his pick for treasury secretary as soon as today.
Trump’s lawyers asked the judge overseeing his Manhattan hush-money criminal case for permission to make yet another play for dismissal.
Defense secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed the Biden administration will allow Ukraine to use US-supplied antipersonnel landmines to help fight off Russian forces.
Austin said women in the US military “make us stronger” as Trump’s pick for his successor, Pete Hegseth, faces scrutiny for previous remarks suggesting banning women from combat roles.
Tech entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy laid out their plans for the new Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. They pointed to recent Supreme Court rulings that they say can be used to take power away from federal agencies.
A vote to block arms sales to Israel will be held on Wednesday in the Senate. The joint resolutions of disapproval (JRDs), introduced by the senator Bernie Sanders would prevent the Pentagon from sending another $20bn to Israel as it continues its assault on Gaza.
The state of Texas offered thousands of acres of land to Trump “to construct deportation facilities” and aid in his plans to begin a mass deportation of migrants as soon as he takes office.
More than 60 members of Congress have written to Biden calling on him to use his presidential clemency powers to reunite families, address unfair sentencing policies, and begin to tackle the scourge of mass incarceration, which they said was eroding “the soul of America”.
Rudy Giuliani should be held in civil contempt for continuing to lie about two election workers to whom he already owes $148m for defaming, lawyers for the two women wrote in a court filing Wednesday.
The request comes months after Giuliani agreed in court to never again accuse Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss of election fraud. Despite that agreement earlier this year, Giuliani continued to spread lies about them on his live-streamed show.
“You would think that they wouldn’t be allowed to take all my property until the thing was affirmed on appeal and I got a chance to show them that they never let me show the tapes that show them quadruple counting the … ballots,” he said during one episode on 12 November.
“Then … another one is, uh, they’re passing these little, little hard drives that we maintain were used to fix the machines, right, and they say it was candy. Well, you look at it … looks like a hard drive to me, and they told me it was a hard drive and there’s no proof that it was candy.”
Joe Biden awards Medal of Freedom to Cecile Richards, former president of Planned Parenthood, in a private ceremony.
The White House shared the commendation with the press:
With absolute courage and conviction, Cecile Richards fearlessly leads us forward to be the America we say we are – a Nation of freedom. Carrying her parents’ torch for justice, she’s led some of our Nation’s most important civil rights causes – to lift up the dignity of workers, defend and advance women’s reproductive rights and equality, and mobilize Americans to exercise their power to vote. A leader of utmost character, she has carved an inspiring legacy that endures in her incredible family, the countless lives she has made better, and a Nation seeking the light of equality, justice, and freedom.
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Biden urged to use clemency powers to tackle ‘crisis’ of US mass incarceration
More than 60 members of Congress have written to Joe Biden calling on him to use his presidential clemency powers to reunite families, address unfair sentencing policies, and begin to tackle the scourge of mass incarceration, which they said was eroding “the soul of America”.
Biden has 61 days before he leaves the White House in which he could pardon or commute the sentences of incarcerated Americans. The letter, signed by a number of prominent Democratic politicians and spearheaded by the progressive politician Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, urges Biden to act while he still can.
“Now is the time to use your clemency authority to rectify unjust and unnecessary criminal laws passed by Congress and draconian sentences given by judges,” the letter demands.
Biden’s clemency power is one of the most concrete tools at his disposal during the lame-duck period of his presidency. During his term in the White House, he has already granted 25 pardons and 132 commutations, including for people imprisoned for simple possession of marijuana and several court-martialed from the military because of their sexual orientation.
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Democrat accuses ethics committee chair of 'betraying process'
Susan Wild, the ranking Democrat on the House ethics committee, accused the committee’s chair, Michael Guest, of “betraying the process” and mischaracterizing the meeting.
She said that the committee voted on whether to release the report but were in deadlock along party lines.
“In order to affirmatively move something forward, somebody has to cross party lines and vote with the other side,” Wild told reporters, noting that there were five Democrats and five Republicans on the committee.
She said that the committee will reconvene on 5 December to discuss.
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Texas offers thousands of acres to Trump for ‘deportation facilities’
The state of Texas has offered thousands of acres of land to Donald Trump “to construct deportation facilities”.
Texas land commissioner Dawn Buckingham wrote in a letter to Trump that her “office is fully prepared to enter into an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or the US border patrol to allow a facility to be built for the processing, detention, and coordination of the largest deportation of violent criminals in the nation’s history”.
In October, Buckingham’s office, the Texas general land office (GLO), purchased 355,000 acres (144,000 hectares) of land – equivalent to half the size of Rhode Island. Of this, 1,402 acres have been offered to the federal government.
The land sits on a ranch in Starr county in the Rio Grande valley on the US-Mexico border.
Terms of the purchase were not disclosed, but Buckingham writes in his letter that the land was purchased from a woman who previously had refused to let state officials build a border wall on her property. Now, the state plans to build 1.5 miles (2.4km) of the border wall where they were once denied.
The rest of the 353,598 acres, collectively known as “Brewster Ranch”, located near Big Bend national park, were purchased in October for roughly $245m from billionaire and tobacco tycoon Brad Kelley, the state’s largest private landowner. It was one of the most significant public purchases of land in the history of Texas.
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More than two weeks after election day, there are more than half a million ballots left to count in California, and one of the most closely watched US House races remains too close to call with a razor-thin margin between Michelle Steel and Derek Tran.
Democratic challenger Tran has a 314-vote lead over the Republican incumbent in the congressional contest in the southern California district. Republicans already control the US House, as well as the Senate, but picking up the seat would be a big win for Democrats, who lost it to Steel in 2020.
Although Steel initially had a commanding lead, the race became neck and neck as election workers tallied more ballots. There are nearly 40,000 ballots left to process in Orange county and more than 30,000 in Los Angeles county, where the district is based.
House ethics committee chair says no agreement on releasing Gaetz report
Michael Guest, the chair of the House ethics committee, told reporters that “there was not an agreement by the committee to release the report” on Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general.
Guest did not say if the committee took an official vote, but did not say when it would meet again.
The committee is evenly split between the two parties.
The panel has previously said it was investigating claims that Gaetz “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”.
The justice department launched its own inquiry into accusations that Gaetz engaged in a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl, but the department closed its investigation last year without filing charges. Gaetz has consistently denied the allegations.
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Sean Casten, a Democratic congressman from Illinois, has threatened to move to force a vote on the House floor to release the House ethics committee’s report on Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general.
If the House ethics committee does not vote to release the Gaetz report on Wednesday, Casten said he will introduce a privileged resolution forcing a vote to require the committee to release its report.
“The allegations against Matt Gaetz are serious. They are credible. The House ethics committee has spent years conducting a thorough investigation to get to the bottom of it,” he said in a statement.
“If the Ethics Committee chooses to withhold this information, later today I will introduce a privileged resolution to require a vote by the full House of Representatives on the release of the Gaetz report.”
Tech entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have laid out their plans for the new Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published today.
The pair said they will follow recent Supreme Court rulings that they say can be used to take power away from federal agencies to reduce rules that are unnecessary, costly and inefficient, Reuters reports.
With an electoral mandate and the 6-3 conservative majority in the court, Musk and Ramaswamy said, the panel has an opportunity to enact substantial structural downsizing within the federal government.
“The two of us will advise DOGE at every step to pursue three major kinds of reform: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions and cost savings,” they wrote.
The panel will give its list of regulations to president-elect Donald Trump, “who can, by executive action, immediately pause the enforcement of those regulations and initiate the process for review and rescission,” they wrote.
Senate to vote on Bernie Sanders resolution to block arms sales to Israel
A vote to block arms sales to Israel will be held on Wednesday in the Senate.
The joint resolutions of disapproval (JRDs), introduced by the senator Bernie Sanders in September, would prevent the Pentagon from sending another $20bn to Israel as it continues its assault on Gaza – which has killed at least 43,000 people.
The resolutions to be voted on the floor, and would block the sale of 120mm mortar rounds, joint direct attack munitions (JDAMS), and tank rounds, must pass both the Senate and the House with a simple majority. If they pass, they go to the president.
The Sanders-led effort to stop the flow of arms to Israel comes after the country failed to meet the US-imposed deadline of 12 November to increase humanitarian aid and allow at least 350 trucks into Gaza a day. Despite Israel’s failure, the US took no action.
Joe Biden marked his 82nd birthday on Wednesday as Democrats began searching for a younger generation of party leaders following Kamala Harris’s morale-sapping defeat in this month’s presidential election.
Democrats are engaged in seeking replacements for the octogenarian leadership represented by the president and 84-year-old Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker who was recently re-elected to a 20th term as a member of Congress and continues to wield much influence.
New leadership may also be on the horizon in the Senate, where the Democrats’ leader, Senator Chuck Schumer, is 73 and recently oversaw the loss of the party’s single-seat majority to the Republicans, who have just replaced their 82-year-old leader, Mitch McConnell.
At 54, Hakeem Jeffries, Pelosi’s successor as the party’s leader in the House, is less vulnerable to challenge on age-related grounds, but youth – at least in relative terms – is on Democrats’ minds as they contemplate the road to recovery from a catastrophic reversal at the polls.
The party is looking at a younger generation of state governors to emerge as presidential candidates in four years’ time, many of whom would have been in the mix had Biden passed the torch earlier and had there been an open primary or had he not immediately endorsed Harris when he finally stepped aside. They include Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, 51, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who is 53, Gavin Newsom, 57, of California, 49-year-old Jared Polis, the governor of Colorado, and Andy Beshear, 46, the governor of Kentucky.
Future leadership may also be available in the person of Pete Buttigieg, 42, the transportation secretary, who has been notably effective in arguing the Democrats’ case in conservative forums like Fox News.
Sarah McBride responds to Capitol bathroom ban
Sarah McBride, the first out transgender person elected to Congress, has issued a longer statement after Republican House speaker Mike Johnson announced that transgender women are not permitted to use women’s bathrooms in the Capitol building.
“I’m not here to fight about bathrooms. I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families,” McBride said in a statement posted to X.
“This effort to distract from the real issues facing this country hasn’t distracted me over the last several days, as I’ve remained hard at work preparing to represent the greatest state in the union come January.”
The Delaware congresswoman-elect goes on to say that she is looking forward to getting to know her future colleagues on both sides of the aisle, adding: “Each of us were sent here because voters saw something in us that they value.
“I have loved getting to see those qualities in the future colleagues that I’ve met and I look forward to seeing those qualities in every member come January. I hope all of my colleagues will seek to do the same with me.”
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Democratic Representative Mark Pocan, who is the chair of the congressional Equality Caucus, has released a statement condemning Speaker Mike Johnson’s announcement that transgender women are not permitted to use women’s bathrooms in the Capitol building.
The statement reads:
Speaker Johnson’s holier-than-thou decree to ban transgender people from using bathrooms that align with their identity is a cruel and unnecessary rule that puts countless staff, interns, and visitors to the United States Capitol at risk.
How will this even be enforced? Will the serjeant at arms post officers in bathrooms? Will everyone who works at the Capitol have to carry around their birth certificate or undergo a genetic test? This policy isn’t going to protect anyone-but it is going to open the door to rampant abuse, harassment, and discrimination in the Capitol.
Republicans can’t even pass a Farm Bill or pass major appropriations bills, so they turn to using these cruel attacks to distract from their inability to govern and failure to deliver for the American people.
President-elect Donald Trump’s team is reportedly discussing with the digital asset industry whether to create a new White House post dedicated to crypto policy and is vetting candidates, Bloomberg reported this afternoon.
If created, it would be the first-ever crypto-specific White House job, per Bloomberg.
House Ethics committee begins meeting to discuss Gaetz - report
The House Ethics Committee meeting has begun, according to Politico and the Washington Post.
At the meeting, members are expected to discuss whether to release a report on their investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct involving Donald Trump’s attorney general pick, Matt Gaetz.
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Billionaire Elon Musk has released a statement on his influence over president-elect Donald Trump’s transition process.
In a post on X this afternoon, Musk said that “to be clear, while I have offered my opinion on some cabinet candidates, many selections occur without my knowledge and decisions are 100% that of the President.”
He went on to say that “the large number of loyal, good people at Mar-a-Lago who have worked for him for many years is also very telling. People can sometimes be very good at hiding their own bad moral character, but they cannot hide the moral character of their friends & colleagues.”
In the same post, Musk also describes Trump is that he is a “great guy with an excellent sense of humor.”
Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has criticized Donald Trump’s plan to deploy the military to carry out mass deportions, calling it a “terrible image” for the country.
In an interview with NewsMax on Tuesday, Paul, who is a member of the Senate Committee on homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, said that he was not “in favor of sending the Army in uniforms into our cities to collect people” adding that “that’s not what we use our military for; we never have, and it’s actually been illegal for over 100 years to bring the Army into our cities.”
“Our Army and our military are trained to shoot the enemy. They’re not trained to get a warrant to do what they’re doing,” Paul said, adding that “the police have a difficult job, but the people removing people from our country need to be a police enforcement domestic agency, not the military.”
He continued, “I’m not in favor of sending the Army in uniforms into our cities to collect people. I think it’s a terrible image.”
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Republican Representative Michael Guest, who chairs the House Ethics Committee, has told CNN that he has “reservations” about releasing the committee’s report on former representative Matt Gaetz.
“I have some reservations about releasing any unfinished work product” Guest reportedly said.
Guest also told the broadcaster that the committee will consider is whether to publicly release the report or send it directly to the Senate Judiciary Committee. He also did not confirm whether the committee would vote today on the report or sat how he would vote.
More than 60 members of Congress have written to Joe Biden calling on him to use his presidential clemency powers to reunite families, address unfair sentencing policies, and begin to tackle the scourge of mass incarceration, which they said was eroding “the soul of America”.
Biden has 61 days left before he leaves the White House in which he could pardon or commute the sentences of incarcerated Americans. The letter, signed by a number of prominent Democratic politicians and spearheaded by the progressive politician Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, urges Biden to act while he still can.
Updated
Today so far
Members of the House ethics committee are gathering this afternoon for a closed-door meeting to discuss whether to release a report on their investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct involving Donald Trump’s attorney general pick, Matt Gaetz. The former Florida congressman, shepherded by vice president-elect JD Vance, held meetings with key Senate allies involved in the Cabinet confirmation process at the Capitol on Wednesday, as Senate Democrats officially requested the files from the FBI’s probe into whether Gaetz engaged in child sex trafficking.
Meanwhile, the Republican House speaker Mike Johnson announced that transgender women are not permitted to use women’s bathrooms in the Capitol building, weeks after the election of the first transgender member of Congress, Sarah McBride. Also:
Trump announced he has chosen the former acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, as his nominee to serve as US ambassador to Nato. Trump is also expected to name his pick for treasury secretary as soon as today.
Trump’s lawyers asked the judge overseeing his Manhattan hush-money criminal case for permission to make yet another play for dismissal.
Defense secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed the Biden administration will allow Ukraine to use US-supplied antipersonnel landmines to help fight off Russian forces.
Austin said women in the US military “make us stronger” as Trump’s pick for his successor, Pete Hegseth, faces scrutiny for previous remarks suggesting banning women from combat roles.
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Linda McMahon, Donald Trump’s pick for education secretary, incorrectly claimed in 2009 that she had a bachelor’s degree in education on a questionnaire for a position on the Connecticut state board of education, according to reports.
The Washington Post reports that McMahon said at the time that she mistakenly thought her degree was in education because she did a semester of student teaching.
McMahon resigned from the state education board after the Hartford Courant told her it intended to write about the error, the paper reported.
Senate Republicans must soon consider several of Donald Trump’s cabinet picks whose nominations were met with intense criticism: Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, Matt Gaetz as attorney general, Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense and Robert F Kennedy Jr as secretary of health and human services.
Each of those cabinet announcements landed with somewhat of a thud on Capitol Hill, raising questions about whether the nominees will be able to muster the majority-level support needed in the Senate to get confirmed.
But the president-elect has proposed an archaic and in recent years little-used mechanism to get his nominees installed without Senate confirmation: recess appointments.
If Trump pursues a strategy of recess appointments, it could severely curtail the Senate’s power to serve as a check on the new president’s nominations and allow controversial picks to move forward.
Senate judiciary committee Democrats officially request FBI file on Gaetz
Senate judiciary committee Democrats have officially requested the FBI file on Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general.
In a letter obtained by Politico sent to FBI director Christopher Wray, Democratic members of the committee requested the evidentiary file from law enforcement’s probe into whether Gaetz engaged in child sex trafficking.
“In order for the Senate to perform its constitutional duty in this instance, we must be able to thoroughly review all relevant materials that speak to the credibility of these serious allegations against Mr. Gaetz,” the letter reads.
All panel Democrats except Georgia senator Jon Ossoff signed the letter, according to Politico.
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Speaker Mike Johnson’s announcement barring transgender women from using women’s bathrooms in the Capitol enacts into policy a push led by the Republican representative Nancy Mace.
Mace has led the charge against banning Sarah McBride, who is due to be sworn in as the first openly transgender member of Congress, from using the bathroom that corresponds with her gender identity.
“Sarah McBride doesn’t get a say. I mean, this is a biological man,” Mace told reporters on Monday, according to CNN. She added that McBride “does not belong in women’s spaces, women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, period, full stop”.
McBride responded on X by saying the issue was a distraction.
“Every day Americans go to work with people who have life journeys different than their own and engage with them respectfully, I hope members of Congress can muster that same kindness,” she wrote on X.
Mace’s bill came as Republicans have attacked transgender people as part of a broader political culture war strategy, limiting what bathrooms they can use and the youth sports teams they can play on.
Fourteen states currently have laws that prohibit transgender people from using the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ rights group.
Speaker Johnson announces policy banning trans women from some bathrooms in Capitol building
House speaker Mike Johnson has announced that transgender women are not permitted to use women’s bathrooms in the Capitol building.
“All single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House Office Buildings — such as restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms — are reserved for individuals of that biological sex,” Johnson said in a statement on Wednesday.
“It is important to note that each Member office has its own private restroom, and unisex restrooms are available throughout the Capitol.
“Women deserve women’s only spaces,” his statement concluded.
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As we reported earlier, Donald Trump has announced he has chosen the former acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, as his nominee to serve as US ambassador to Nato.
Trump’s choice is an unusual one, Associated Press writes, given that Whitaker’s background is in law enforcement and not in foreign policy.
The Nato post is a particularly sensitive one given Trump’s relationship with the alliance. During his first term, Trump criticized Nato and accused European members of not meeting their commitments to spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense.
Earlier this year, Trump warned Nato allies that if re-elected, he would “encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to countries that are “delinquent”.
“‘You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?’” Trump said. “‘No I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills.’”
Whitaker has been actively involved with the America First Policy Institute, a right-leaning think tank that has been working closely with Trump’s campaign to shape policy for his second term, Reuters writes.
The letter by Donald Trump’s lawyers asking Judge Juan Merchan for permission to make yet another play for dismissal came after prosecutors told the court that they planned on fighting back against Trump’s expected push for its dismissal following his win.
The Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s office contended that Merchan should schedule a timeline for Trump’s expected motion to dismiss, which prosecutors said they “intend to oppose”. They also said other proceedings in this case should be postponed until the dismissal issue is determined.
These latest developments suggest that Trump’s scheduled 26 November sentencing in his Manhattan criminal hush-money case is all but certainly postponed, given the litany of issues to be litigated.
Trump lawyers seek dismissal of hush-money case on immunity grounds
Donald Trump’s lawyers asked the judge overseeing his Manhattan hush-money criminal case for permission to make yet another play for dismissal, arguing that throwing out the case was necessary “in order to facilitate the orderly transition of Executive power” following his election victory.
Todd Blanche, Trump’s lead attorney and pick for deputy US attorney general, and Emil Bove, his choice for principal associate deputy attorney general, railed against the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, in their missive to Judge Juan Merchan, which was made public Wednesday.
Bragg’s office, they complained, “appears not to yet be ready to dismiss this politically-motivated and fatally flawed case, which is what is mandated by the law and will happen as justice takes its course”.
They noted that the justice department (DoJ) is poised to toss federal cases against Trump, given DoJ policy that bars prosecuting sitting presidents.
“As in those cases, dismissal is necessary here,” their filing contended. “Just as a sitting President is completely immune from any criminal process, so too is President Trump as President-elect.”
The attorneys requested a 20 December deadline for filing their pitch on why Trump’s election merits dismissal of this case.
House Republicans have renewed a push to pass a bill that would allow the treasury department to strip non-profit groups it deems to be supporting “terrorism” of their tax-exempt status.
The so-called “non-profit killer” bill would give the government broad powers to sanction civil society organizations. Progressive groups have rallied in opposition to the bill in recent days, arguing that Donald Trump’s administration could invoke it to punish his political opponents.
The bill, titled Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, or HR 9495, failed to clear the House of Representatives last week after members attempted to fast-track it by suspending House rules, which would have required a supermajority to pass.
When it failed, Republicans brought it back through the House rules committee – paving the way for a floor vote, this time requiring only a simple majority.
When it was first introduced, progressive activists warned that the bill would be used to crack down on Palestinian advocacy groups, which politicians frequently accuse of supporting Hamas – a US-designated terrorist organization.
The measure “would be profoundly damaging to all sorts of non-profits”, said American Civil Liberties Union federal policy counsel Kia Hamadanchy.
“There’s the stigma of being called a terrorist-supporting organization, there are banks who may not want to transact with you once you have that status, there are donors who may not want to give you money because they’re afraid, themselves, of being called supporters of terrorism.”
Trump 'deserves a cabinet that is loyal', says Vance
Vice president-elect JD Vance has said that Donald Trump “deserves a cabinet that is loyal to the agenda he was elected to implement.”
In a post to X, Vance credited Trump’s “major” electoral victory for the Senate’s Republican majority.
“His coattails turned a 49-51 senate to a 53-47 senate,” Vance wrote.
As we reported earlier, Vance is on Capitol Hill with Trump’s pick for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, as well as Marco Rubio, Trump’s choice for secretary of state, for meetings with key Republican Senators involved in the Cabinet confirmation process.
Josh Hawley, the Republican senator from Missouri, held a meeting with vice president-elect JD Vance and Matt Gaetz at the Capitol this morning, a meeting he described as “good”.
Scripps News reports that Hawley said Gaetz outlined his vision for the Justice Department’s house ethics investigation.
“The real question is, is Gaetz going to have the opportunity to answer this in a forum that is reasonable?” Hawley reportedly said.
CNN reports that Hawley said a confirmation hearing would allow Gaetz to answer questions about misconduct allegations against him. “My view is that we ought to move forward with this, do the hearing, let him respond to everything under oath,” Hawley said. “Give him a shot.”
“He’s denied everything, but the hearing is an opportunity for him to under oath in front of everybody, to walk through it,” he reportedly added.
Trump picks Matthew Whitaker for US ambassador to Nato
Donald Trump has named his former acting attorney general, Matthew G Whitaker, to be the US ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) in his upcoming administration.
“Matt is a strong warrior and loyal Patriot, who will ensure the United States’ interests are advanced and defended,” Trump said in a statement on Wednesday.
“Matt will strengthen relationships with our NATO Allies, and stand firm in the face of threats to Peace and Stability - He will put AMERICA FIRST.”
Whitaker served as acting attorney general in the first Trump administration after Jeff Sessions was ousted in 2018. He was seen as a partisan loyalist who was critical of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, the Washington Post reports.
He was previously seen as a contender for Trump’s attorney general, according to reports, and said the president-elect is “going to want someone that he knows, likes and trusts”.
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Vice president-elect JD Vance, who is at Capitol Hill today to shore up support for Matt Gaetz, has been tasked as the main liaison between the Trump-Vance transition team and Republican senators who could make or break Gaetz’s nomination as attorney general.
Vance is doing a lot of” the outreach “on the Senate side,” the Hill quoted one GOP senator as saying.
“I think he’s worked through the whole Judiciary Committee. He’s calling folks, trying to get a sense of where things are.”
Gaetz 'deserves a chance to make his argument why he should be attorney general,' says Lindsey Graham
South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, the outgoing top Republican on the House judiciary committee, was the first to meet with vice president-elect JD Vance and Trump’s pick for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, at the Capitol this morning.
Graham said he had a “good meeting” with Vance and Gaetz and described the confirmation process for Gaetz as becoming a “lynch mob”.
The former Florida congressman “will be held to account in the confirmation process. He deserves his chance to make his argument why (he) should be attorney general,” Graham told reporters after the meeting.
“I’m not going to be part of a process that leaks information that shouldn’t be leaked. I’m not going to legitimize the process to destroy the man, because people don’t like his politics,” he added.
American Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group, filed a motion on Tuesday night in federal court to compel the Justice Department to release all records related to its investigation off the former congressman Matt Gaetz, who Donald Trump has nominated to serve as his attorney general.
The group has been trying to get the documents since last year, when the Justice Department ended its inquiry into accusations that Gaetz engaged in a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl.
The department closed its investigation without filing charges, and Gaetz has consistently denied the allegations.
In its motion, American Oversight said that releasing the documents is “essential for transparency, accountability, and public trust”, arguing that the “American people deserve to know the facts before the Senate votes on his nomination.”
“Sex trafficking, obstruction of justice, and abuse of power are not the kind of questions that should hang over the head of someone being considered for US attorney general,” the watchdog’s executive director, Chioma Chukwu, said.
Vance arrives on Capitol Hill to shore up support for Trump's cabinet picks
Vice president-elect JD Vance has arrived at the Capitol this morning where he will spend the week arranging meetings between Donald Trump’s cabinet picks, Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth, and key Republican senators involved in their confirmation process.
Vance will be on Capitol Hill today to usher Gaetz, Trump’s pick for attorney general, around Senate offices as the House ethics committee meets to vote on releasing a report examining allegations of sexual misconduct against the former congressman, the Washington Post reports.
Vance is expected to sit in on some of the meetings, with CNN reporting that Louisiana senator John Kennedy, a member of the Senate judiciary committee, plans to meet with Gaetz and Vance today.
New York representative Elise Stefanik, Trump’s pick to serve as the ambassador to the UN, and Doug Collins, Trump’s pick for secretary of veterans affairs, will also meet with senators this week, according to CNN.
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The Biden administration’s move to allow Ukraine to use American supplied anti-personnel landmines comes despite the weapons being banned by scores of countries, including the UK.
Lloyd Austin, the US defense secretary, told reporters: “The landmines that we would look to provide them would be landmines that are not persistent, you know, we can control when they would self-activate, self-detonate and that makes it far more safer eventually than the things that they are creating on their own.”
A US official said it was a step that could help slow Russian advances in the east of the country, especially when used with other munitions from the US.
The US expects Ukraine to use the mines in its own territory, though it has committed not to use them in areas populated with its own civilians, the official said.
The US has provided Ukraine with anti-tank mines throughout its war with Russia, but the addition of anti-personnel mines aims to blunt the advance of Russian ground troops, the official added, speaking on condition of anonymity.
US approves antipersonnel land mines for Ukraine against Russian forces
The US defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, has confirmed the Biden administration will allow Ukraine to use US-supplied antipersonnel landmines to help fight off Russian forces, a further step after Washington granted Kyiv permission to use long-range missiles inside Russia.
Austin, speaking to reporters in Laos on Wednesday, said the shift in Washington’s policy on antipersonnel landmines for Ukraine follows changing tactics by the Russians, according to the AP.
Russian ground troops are leading the movement on the battlefield, Austin said, so Ukraine has “a need for things that can help slow down that effort on the part of the Russians”.
As we reported earlier, the Kremlin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov accused the US of prolonging the war in Ukraine and of “doing everything they can to do so”.
The US has temporarily closed its embassy in Kyiv after receiving warning of a “potential significant air attack”, advising American citizens to be prepared to move immediately to a shelter in the event of an air raid warning.
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Women in military 'make us stronger', says Austin
Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary, said women in the US military “make us stronger” as he prepares to shortly exit the top military post after four years.
“I have spent 41 years in uniform, three long tours in Iraq, one in Afghanistan, and everywhere I went on a battlefield, there were women in our formation,” Austin said in an interview with NBC News published this morning.
“I would tell you that, you know, our women are the finest troops in the world. Quite frankly, some of the finest in the world.”
His comments came after Donald Trump’s announcement that he had picked Pete Hegseth, a national guard veteran and Fox News presenter, to succeed Austin as secretary of defense.
Hegseth has made it clear, in his own book and in interviews, that he believes men and women should not serve together in combat units. During a podcast released this month, he said the military “should not have women in combat roles” and that “men in those positions are more capable”.
Austin, during his interview, argued that women “do impact readiness. They make us better. They make us stronger.”
However he did not weigh in on what he thinks about Trump’s choice of Hegseth, only saying that the president-elect “has the opportunity to nominate anyone that he chooses for any position, and certainly, you know, we respect that”.
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Donald Trump was attending the launch of SpaceX’s Starship rocket launch in Texas yesterday when he was asked whether he was reconsidering his controversial nomination of Matt Gaetz as attorney general.
“No,” the president-elect told reporters. He did not respond when asked how far he was willing to go to get Gaetz confirmed.
As we reported earlier, the House ethics committee is expected to meet today to vote on releasing a report examining allegations of sexual misconduct against the former Republican congressman.
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Former WWE executive Linda McMahon, who has been named as Donald Trump’s pick for education secretary, donated $814,600 to Trump’s 2024 campaign as of July.
She served in Trump’s cabinet in his first term as the administrator of the Small Business Administration from 2017 to 2019.
McMahon chaired America First Action, a Super PAC that backed Trump’s re-election campaign, raising $83m in 2020. She provided $6m to help Trump’s candidacy after he secured the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, according to the Associated Press.
In October, McMahon and her husband, Vince, were named in a new lawsuit involving WWE. The suit alleges that she and other leaders of the company allowed the sexual abuse of young boys at the hands of a ringside announcer, former WWE ring crew chief Melvin Phillips Jr.
The complaint specifically alleges that the McMahons knew about the abuse and failed to stop it.
An attorney for the McMahons told USA Today Sports that the allegations are “false claims” stemming from reporting that the couple deems “absurd, defamatory and utterly meritless”.
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US envoy travels to Israel in effort to secure Lebanon ceasefire
US envoy Amos Hochstein said he will travel to Israel on Wednesday to try to secure a ceasefire ending the war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah group after declaring additional progress in talks in Beirut.
Hochstein, who arrived a day earlier in Beirut, said he saw a “real opportunity” to end the conflict after the Lebanese government and Hezbollah agreed to a US ceasefire proposal, although with some comments.
Reuters reports that the diplomacy aims to end a conflict that has inflicted massive devastation in Lebanon since Israel went on the offensive against Hezbollah in September.
Although diplomacy to end the Gaza war has largely stalled, the Biden administration aims to seal a ceasefire in the parallel conflict in Lebanon before Donald Trump takes office in January.
“We are going to work with the incoming administration. We’re already going to be discussing this with them. They will be fully aware of what we’re doing,” Hochstein said.
Trump expected to invoke 'global gag rule' on abortion services
As he did in his first term, US president-elect Donald Trump is likely in January to invoke the “global gag rule”, officially called the Mexico City policy, which bans US federal funding for NGOs in foreign countries that provide abortion services or abortion advocacy.
The gag rule has a 40-year history of being applied by Republican presidents and rescinded by Democratic presidents. Every GOP president since the mid-1980s has invoked the rule, reports the Associated Press.
As one of his first acts as president in 2017, Trump expanded the rule to the extent that foreign NGOs were cut off from about $600m in US family planning funds and more than $11bn in US global health aid between 2017 and 2018 alone, according to the US Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, reports the AP.
The money – much of it intended for Africa – covered efforts such as preventing malaria and tuberculosis, providing water and sanitation, and distributing health information and contraception, which might also have repercussions for HIV prevention.
The policy stipulates that foreign NGOs that receive US government funding must agree to stop abortion-related activities, including discussing it as a family planning option — even when they are using non-US government funds for such activities.
The gag-rule policy “leads to more unintended, unwanted, unsupportable pregnancies and therefore an increase in abortion,” said Catriona Macleod, a professor of psychology at South Africa’s Rhodes University.
“This legislation does not protect life … it’s been called America’s deadly export,” said Macleod, who heads the university’s studies in sexuality and reproduction.
Trump’s transition team did not respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.
Donald Trump’s re-election as US president has prompted fears that he will cut off American support for Ukraine, forcing it into peace talks with Russia that would culminate in a settlement on terms favourable to Vladimir Putin.
However, as my colleague Andrew Sparrow reports, the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, has argued that Trump would not go that far.
Lammy and the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, had dinner with Trump in the autumn. Lammy discusses that too in an interview in the UK’s New Statesmen with George Eaton. Here are the key lines.
Lammy argued that Trump would not accept a deal over Ukraine that would look like a victory for Putin. Asked about Trump’s stance on Ukraine, Lammy said:
I’ve been a politician for 25 years and I understand the different philosophies at play. There’s a deep philosophical underpinning to friends in the Republican party that I’ve known for many years, thinking back to people like [former US secretary of state] Condoleezza Rice. Donald Trump has some continuity with this position, which is ‘peace through strength’.
What I do know about Donald Trump is that he doesn’t like losers and he doesn’t want to lose; he wants to get the right deal for the American people. And he knows that the right deal for the American people is peace in Europe and that means a sustainable peace – not Russia achieving its aims and coming back for more in the years ahead.
Lammy said he found Trump “very funny, very engaging and very charismatic” when he and Starmer met Trump for dinner at his home in New York. He also said Trump was “a consummate politician” and very interested in learning how Labour won the election in the UK.
Following Trump’s victory earlier this month, Lammy described his previous remarks about the US president-elect as being “deluded, dishonest, xenophobic, narcissistic” and a “neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath” as old news.
You can read Andrew’s full post on Lammy here.
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Trump loyalist Kash Patel in contention to be named FBI director
Donald Trump is keeping his controversial adviser Kash Patel in the running to be the next FBI director, according to two people familiar with the matter, as the transition team conducted interviews for the role on Monday night at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago club.
The existence of the interviews, made public in a since-deleted post by the vice president-elect JD Vance, underscored the intent to fire the current FBI director, Christopher Wray, years before his current term is up.
Vance revealed that he and Trump had been interviewing finalists for FBI director in a post responding to criticism he received for missing a Senate vote last night that confirmed one of Joe Biden’s nominees for the US court of appeals for the 11th circuit.
“When this 11th circuit vote happened, I was meeting President Trump to interview multiple positions for our government, including for FBI director,” Vance wrote.
Trump has a special interest in the FBI, having fired James Comey as director in 2017 over his refusal to close the investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, and then complaining about perceived disloyalty from Wray.
Patel’s continued position as a top candidate for the role makes clear Trump’s determination to install loyalists in key national security and law enforcement positions, as well as the support Patel has built up among key Trump allies.
The push for Patel – who has frequently railed against the “deep state” – has come from some of the longest-serving Trump advisers, notably those close to former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, a faction that got Trump’s personal lawyers picked for top justice department roles.
That faction has also suggested to Trump in recent days that if Patel gets passed over for the director role, he should be given the deputy FBI director position, one of the people said – a powerful job that helps run the bureau day to day and is crucially not subject to Senate confirmation.
The Federal Reserve must not remove Wells Fargo’s $1.95tn asset cap until the bank has fixed its risk management and compliance issues, top Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren told the US central bank on Wednesday, reports Reuters.
In a letter to Fed chair, Jerome Powell, and the central bank’s regulatory chief, Michael Barr, Warren said the Fed must reject Wells Fargo reported appeal to have the punishment imposed in 2018 lifted until it “can show that it can properly manage the risks associated with running a large bank”.
Spokespeople for Wells Fargo and the Fed declined to comment on the letter, which was seen by Reuters, according to the news agency.
Bloomberg reported in September that Wells Fargo had sent a third-party review of its risk and control overhauls to the Fed in an attempt to end the unprecedented cap imposed after the bank’s long-running fake accounts scandal and other issues.
Republican president-elect Donald Trump is to overhaul bank regulation and slash burdensome rules, boosting analysts’ expectations that the cap could be removed as early as next year and alarming many Democrats in favor of tough rules.
A prominent Wall Street critic and one-time presidential candidate, Warren will next year become the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee. Long a thorn in Wells Fargo’s side, Warren cannot force the Fed’s hand but her letter can pressure it to take a tough line and highlight the bank’s missteps, reports Reuters.
Warren pointed to a number of regulatory actions against Wells Fargo since 2018, including in September when the Comptroller of the Currency dinged the bank for shortcomings in policing money laundering. The country’s fourth-largest lender is still grappling with a class action lawsuit over its diversity hiring practices, she also noted.
Wells Fargo CEO, Charlie Scharf, has repeatedly said upgrading the bank’s risk and control framework has been a top priority, and the bank has convinced regulators to terminate six regulatory consent orders since 2019.
In response to Warren’s request at a 2018 hearing, Powell committed that the Fed would put any decision to lift the asset cap to a vote of its board of governors. On Wednesday, Warren reminded him of that promise and called on the Fed to make public any third-party review Wells submitted as part of its bid to lift the cap.
US president-elect Donald Trump will name who he has picked to be Treasury secretary as soon as Wednesday, Reuters reports, citing two sources familiar with the matter.
No one has been has been chosen yet for the role, CNN also reported.
You can take a look at the people who have been and still could be offered key positions when Trump takes office via this explainer:
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Australia’s ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, says Australia is “ready” for a second Trump presidency.
In a speech to the Sydney International Strategy Forum via video link, Rudd said “the team here at the embassy and the government of Australia are ready to work closely with the new Trump administration to continue to realise the benefits of what is a very strong economic and security partnership”.
You can listen to his comments here:
Russia on Wednesday accused the US of prolonging the “war in Ukraine” by stepping up weapons deliveries to Kyiv ahead of Donald Trump’s return to the White House, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Both Moscow and Kyiv are jockeying to secure an upper hand on the battlefield before Trump assumes office in January 2025.
The Republican has repeatedly criticised US support for Ukraine and claimed he could secure a ceasefire within hours – comments that have triggered fears in Kyiv and Europe about Ukraine’s ability to withstand the Russian attacks without US support.
Moscow has significantly escalated its aerial campaign this week, launching multiple deadly missile strikes and targeting Ukraine’s energy grid. Ukraine meanwhile has fired long-range US-supplied Atacms missiles at Russian territory for the first time since the White House authorised such strikes, drawing scorn and promises of retribution in Moscow, reports AFP.
“If you look at the trends of the outgoing US administration, they are fully committed to continuing the war in Ukraine and are doing everything they can to do so,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
According to AFP, Peskov was responding to the US saying it would soon provide Ukraine with antipersonnel landmines.
House ethics committee to vote on publication of Matt Gaetz report
The House ethics committee is expected to meet on Wednesday to vote on releasing a report examining allegations of sexual misconduct against former Republican representative Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the US justice department.
The panel has previously said it was investigating claims that Gaetz “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”.
The justice department launched its own inquiry into accusations that Gaetz engaged in a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl, but the department closed its investigation last year without filing charges. Gaetz has consistently denied the allegations.
Two women testified to congressional investigators that Gaetz paid them for sex and that he was seen having sex with the 17-year-old, a lawyer for the women has said.
As the ethics committee is evenly split between the two parties, it would take only one Republican siding with every Democrat on the panel to have the report released. But prominent Republicans, including House speaker Mike Johnson, have cautioned against releasing the report on Gaetz, who resigned his seat immediately after Trump announced his nomination as attorney general.
“I think that would be a Pandora’s box,” Johnson told CNN on Sunday. “I don’t think we want the House ethics committee using all of its vast resources and powers to go after private citizens, and that’s what Matt Gaetz is now.”
But other Republicans, including Senator Markwayne Mullin, have suggested the report should be at least made available to the senators who will vote on confirming Gaetz’s nomination.
“I believe the Senate should have access to that,” Mullin told NBC News on Sunday. “Now, should it be released to the public or not? I guess that will be part of the negotiations. But that should be definitely part of our decision-making.”
Donald Trump has chosen Mehmet Oz, best known for starring in his eponymous daytime talkshow for more than a decade and leaning heavily into Trumpism during his failed 2022 run for a Pennsylvania Senate seat, to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The cardiothoracic surgeon, who faced immense backlash from the medical and scientific communities for pushing misinformation at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, will oversee the agency that operates on a $2.6tn annual budget and provides healthcare to more than 100 million people.
“I am honored to be nominated by [Donald Trump] to lead CMS,” Oz posted on X on Tuesday. “I look forward to serving my country to Make America Healthy Again under the leadership of HHS Secretary [Robert F Kennedy Jr].”
In the announcement of Oz’s selection, Trump said that Oz will “make America healthy again” and described him as “an eminent Physician, Heart Surgeon, Inventor, and World-Class Communicator, who has been at the forefront of healthy living for decades”.
Oz has been on US television screens for nearly 20 years, first appearing on the Oprah Winfrey show in 2004. In that time, he’s talked to his audience about losing weight with fad diets and what it takes to have healthy poops and, toward the end of his run, touting hydroxychloroquine as a potential remedy for Covid-19.
You can see the full explainer on what to know about the New York University professor and surgeon turned television show host, and now Trump appointee, at this link:
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In case you missed it, here is our news article on Donald Trump picking the former WWE executive, Linda McMahon, for education secretary:
Here’s some more from the Associated Press’s education writer, Annie Ma, on some of the Department of Education’s key functions, and how Donald Trump has said he might approach them:
Student loans and financial aid
The education department manages approximately $1.5tn in student loan debt for more than 40 million borrowers. It also oversees the Pell grant, which provides aid to students below a certain income threshold, and administers the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which universities use to allocate financial aid.
The Biden administration has made cancellation of student loans a signature effort of the department’s work. Since Joe Biden’s initial attempt to cancel student loans was overturned by the supreme court, the administration has forgiven over $175bn for more than 4.8 million borrowers through a range of changes to programs it administers, such as Public Service Loan Forgiveness.
The loan forgiveness efforts have faced Republican pushback, including litigation from several GOP-led states.
Trump has criticized Biden’s efforts to cancel debt as illegal and unfair, calling it a “total catastrophe” that “taunted young people.” Trump’s plan for student debt is uncertain: He has not put out detailed plans.
Civil rights enforcement
Through its Office for Civil Rights, the education department conducts investigations and issues guidance on how civil rights laws should be applied, such as for LGBTQ+ students and students of color. The office also oversees a large data collection project that tracks disparities in resources, course access and discipline for students of different racial and socioeconomic groups.
Trump has suggested a different interpretation of the office’s civil rights role. In his campaign platform, he said he would pursue civil rights cases to “stop schools from discriminating on the basis of race.” He has described diversity and equity policies in education as “explicit unlawful discrimination” and said colleges that use them will pay fines and have their endowments taxed.
Trump also has pledged to exclude transgender students from Title IX protections, which affect school policies on students’ use of pronouns, bathrooms and locker rooms. Originally passed in 1972, Title IX was first used as a women’s rights law. This year, Biden’s administration said the law forbids discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation, but Trump can undo that.
College accreditation
While the education department does not directly accredit colleges and universities, it oversees the system by reviewing all federally recognized accrediting agencies. Institutions of higher education must be accredited to gain access to federal money for student financial aid.
Accreditation came under scrutiny from conservatives in 2022, when the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools questioned political interference at Florida public colleges and universities. Trump has said he would fire “radical left accreditors” and take applications for new accreditors that would uphold standards including “defending the American tradition” and removing “Marxist” diversity administrators.
Although the education secretary has the authority to terminate its relationship with individual accrediting agencies, it is an arduous process that has rarely been pursued. Under president Barack Obama, the department took steps to cancel accreditors for a now defunct for-profit college chain, but the Trump administration blocked the move. The group, the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, was terminated by the Biden administration in 2022.
Money for schools
Much of the education department’s money for K-12 schools goes through large federal programs, such as Title I for low-income schools and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Those programs support services for students with disabilities, lower class sizes with additional teaching positions, and pay for social workers and other non-teaching roles in schools.
During his campaign, Trump called for shifting those functions to the states. He has not offered details on how the agency’s core functions of sending federal money to local districts and schools would be handled.
The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a sweeping proposal outlining a far-right vision for the country that overlaps in areas with Trump’s campaign, offers a blueprint. It suggests sending oversight of programs for kids with disabilities and low-income children first to the Department of Health and Human Services, before eventually phasing out the funding and converting it to no-strings-attached grants to states.
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Trump has called for dismantling the education department: Here's what that would mean
Throughout his campaign, president-elect Donald Trump heaped scorn on the federal Department of Education, describing it as being infiltrated by “radicals, zealots and Marxists.”
He has picked Linda McMahon, a former wrestling executive, to lead the department. But like many conservative politicians before him, Trump has called for dismantling the department altogether – a cumbersome task that likely would require action from Congress.
The Associated Press has this short explainer on what that would mean:
The agency’s main role is financial. Annually, it distributes billions in federal money to colleges and schools and manages the federal student loan portfolio. Closing the department would mean redistributing each of those duties to another agency. The education department also plays an important regulatory role in services for students, ranging from those with disabilities to low-income and homeless kids.
Indeed, federal education money is central to Trump’s plans for colleges and schools. Trump has vowed to cut off federal money for schools and colleges that push “critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content” and to reward states and schools that end teacher tenure and enact universal school choice programs.
Federal funding makes up a relatively small portion of public school budgets – roughly 14%. Colleges and universities are more reliant on it, through research grants along with federal financial aid that helps students pay their tuition.
National Education Association says nominating McMahon as education secretary shows Trump 'could not care less about our students' futures'
The president of the National Education Association (NEA) said that the president-elect’s decision to name Linda McMahon as his pick for education secretary in his upcoming administration, shows “that he could not care less about our students’ futures”.
In a statement released on Tuesday after Donald Trump’s announcement, Becky Pringle criticised the naming of McMahon, the billionaire co-founder of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), and called on the Senate to reject “Trump’s unqualified nominee”. She warned that “McMahon’s only mission is to eliminate the Department of Education and take away taxpayer dollars from public schools”.
Pringle wrote:
Every student – no matter where they live, how much their family earns, or the color of their skin – deserves the opportunity, resources, and support they need to grow into their full brilliance. In every community across this country parents and educators are partners in this effort.
By selecting Linda McMahon, Donald Trump is showing that he could not care less about our students’ futures. Rather than working to strengthen public schools, expand learning opportunities for students, and support educators, McMahon’s only mission is to eliminate the Department of Education and take away taxpayer dollars from public schools, where 90% of students – and 95% of students with disabilities – learn, and give them to unaccountable and discriminatory private schools.
During his first term, Donald Trump appointed Betsy DeVos to undermine and ultimately privatize public schools through vouchers. Now, he and Linda McMahon are back at it with their extreme Project 2025 proposal to eliminate the Department of Education, steal resources for our most vulnerable students, increase class sizes, cut job training programs, make higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle class families, take away special education services for disabled students, and put student civil rights protections at risk.
She added:
Parents and educators will stand together to support students and reject the harmful, outlandish, and insulting policies being pushed by the Trump administration. They will make their voices heard, just as they did by resoundingly defeating vouchers in states like Colorado, Kentucky, and Nebraska.
The Department of education plays such a critical role in the success of each and every student in this country.
The Senate must stand up for our students and reject Donald Trump’s unqualified nominee, Linda McMahon. Our students and our nation deserve so much better than Betsy DeVos 2.0.”
In a statement on Tuesday, Trump extolled the “incredible” job McMahon has been doing as transition team co-chair and said:
As Secretary of Education, Linda will fight tirelessly to expand ‘Choice’ to every State in America, and empower parents to make the best Education decisions for their families. … We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort.”
More on this story in a moment, but first, here are some other key developments
Trump has chosen Mehmet Oz, best known for starring in his eponymous daytime talkshow for more than a decade and leaning heavily into Trumpism during his failed 2022 run for a Pennsylvania Senate seat, to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The cardiothoracic surgeon, who faced immense backlash from the medical and scientific communities for pushing misinformation at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, will oversee the agency that operates on a $2.6tn annual budget and provides healthcare to more than 100 million people.
Trump is keeping his controversial adviser Kash Patel in the running to be the next FBI director, according to two people familiar with the matter, as the transition team conducted interviews for the role on Monday night at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago club. The existence of the interviews, made public in a since-deleted post by the vice president-elect JD Vance, underscored the intent to fire the current FBI director, Christopher Wray, years before his current term is up.
Russia on Wednesday accused the US of prolonging the “war in Ukraine” by stepping up weapons deliveries to Kyiv ahead of Trump’s return to the White House. Both Moscow and Kyiv are jockeying to secure an upper hand on the battlefield ahead of Trump assuming office in January 2025.
Women’s health advocates in Africa are worried that Trump will again invoke the so-called global gag rule, a policy that cuts off US government funding for groups that offer abortion-related services. The gag rule has been imposed by all Republican presidents since 1984. In 2017, Trump expanded it, cutting foreign NGOs off not only from family planning money, but from broader US global health assistance covering malaria and tuberculosis prevention, water and sanitation, and the distribution of health information.
Australia’s ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, says Australia is ‘ready’ for a second Trump presidency. In a speech to the Sydney International Strategy Forum via video link, Rudd said: “The team here at the embassy and the government of Australia are ready to work closely with the new Trump administration to continue to realise the benefits of what is a very strong economic and security partnership.”
Updated
