Closing summary
More signs have emerged of how Donald Trump will make good on his pledge to transform the US government, once he is inaugurated president. The New York Times has reported that Aaron Siri, a lawyer who has challenged the approval of vaccines for polio, hepatitis B and other preventable diseases, is sitting in on interviews for job candidates conducted by Robert F Kennedy Jr. Separately, the Wall Street Journal says that Trump’s transition team is exploring ways to downsize or get rid of banking regulators that were created in the wake of the Great Depression, and which have repeatedly stepping in to stabilize the US economy in the decades since.
Here’s what else happened today:
Phil Murphy, New Jersey’s Democratic governor, has asked Joe Biden for federal help to learn more about the unexplained drones flying over his state.
Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic former House speaker, has been hospitalized after fracturing her hip in Luxembourg, during a trip to commemorate the Battle of the Bulge.
Daniel Penny, who was acquitted earlier this week on charges related to the chokehold death of an unhoused man on a New York City subway, will attend the US army-navy football game with JD Vance.
Anita Dunn, a former Biden White House adviser, criticized the pardon of Hunter Biden.
Trump said Republicans should repeal daylight savings time.
Texas has launched a legal challenge to laws enacted by Democratic states to shield doctors who prescribe abortion pills, the Associated Press reports.
The lawsuit by the Republican-led state against a New York doctor who prescribed abortion pills to a Texas woman could spark a fight over how abortion pills, which are the most common way the procedure is accessed, are prescribed. Here’s more, from the AP:
Texas has sued a New York doctor for prescribing abortion pills to a woman near Dallas, launching one of the first challenges in the U.S. to shield laws that Democrat-controlled states passed to protect physicians after Roe v. Wade was overturned.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed the lawsuit on Thursday in Collin County, and it was announced Friday.
Such prescriptions, made online and over the phone, are a key reason that the number of abortions has increased across the U.S. even since state bans started taking effect. Most abortions in the U.S. involve pills rather than procedures.
Mary Ruth Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, School of Law, said a challenge to shield laws, which blue states started adopting in 2023, has been anticipated.
And it could have a chilling effect on prescriptions.
“Will doctors be more afraid to mail pills into Texas, even if they might be protected by shield laws because they don’t know if they’re protected by shield laws?” she said in an interview Friday.
The lawsuit accuses New York Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter of violating Texas law by providing the drugs to a Texas patient and seeks up to $250,000. No criminal charges are involved.
Trump backs repeal of daylight saving time
In yet more Donald Trump policy news, the president-elect just weighed in on daylight saving time, saying on Truth Social he will support undoing it:
The Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate Daylight Saving Time, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t! Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation.
He’s not the only one in the GOP who’d like to see the seasonal time change – in which Americans set their clocks back an hour in the fall, and forward an hour in the spring – go away:
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The New York Times reports that Nancy Pelosi fell and broke her hip during her trip to Luxembourg.
Citing unnamed people close to the Democratic former House speaker, they said doctors were confident they could repair the damage in a “routine operation”, but it was not yet known if that would be done in Luxembourg or the United States.
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New Jersey’s recently elected Democratic senator Andy Kim said he went out last night with a police officer to Round Valley reservoir in the state, where he could see the unexplained drones flying over.
“The officer pointed to lights moving low over the tree line. Sometimes they were solid white light, others flashed of red and green,” Kim wrote on X.
He continued:
We oriented ourselves with a flight tracker app to help us distinguish from airplanes. We often saw about 5-7 lights at a time that were low and not associated with aircraft we could see on the tracker app. Some hovered while others moved across the horizon.
We saw a few that looked like they were moving in small clusters of 2-4. We clearly saw several that would move horizontally and then immediately switch back in the opposite direction in maneuvers that plane can’t do.
The police officer said they see them out every night. They only seem to start when it gets dark and they disappear before dawn. They get reports that they sometimes fly low over homes, especially up in the hills.
The officer said they’ve tried to get closer with use of a helicopter but that the drones would turn off the lights and go dark if approached.
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New Jersey governor asks Biden for federal help in figuring out origins of unexplained drones
New Jersey’s Democratic governor Phil Murphy is asking Joe Biden for more help from the federal government in determining the cause of a series of mysterious drones seen flying over the state.
In a letter sent to Biden today, Murphy wrote:
While I am sincerely grateful for your administration’s leadership in addressing this concerning issue, it has become apparent that more resources are needed to understand what is behind this activity. This week, the FBI testified in a joint subcommittee hearing before Congress that the federal government alone cannot address UAS [unmanned aircraft systems]. New Jersey residents deserve more concrete information about these UAS sightings and what is causing them.
Here’s more on the unknown drones and Murphy’s request to the president:
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Progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has picked up the support of two congressional caucuses in her bid to be named the top Democrat on the prominent oversight committee.
The Congressional Progressive Caucus announced its endorsement of Ocasio-Cortez, writing on X:
AOC’s fearless advocacy leading the Oversight Committee will help ensure Democrats retake the House in 2026. Our Caucus is proud to support her candidacy.
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s incoming leadership committee is also backing her, saying:
With her strong national profile and media presence, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez is critical in combating misinformation and ensuring the truth reaches the American people.
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Travis Timmerman, an American imprisoned in Syria for seven months, has been flown out of the country, the US military told AP.
A US official said Timmerman was flown out on a US military helicopter. The 29-year-old said he had gone to Syria on a Christian pilgrimage and was not ill-treated while in Palestine Branch, a notorious detention facility operated by Syrian intelligence.
He said he was freed by “the liberators who came into the prison and knocked the door down (of his cell) with a hammer”.
Timmerman said he was released Monday morning alongside a young Syrian man and 70 female prisoners, some of whom had their children with them.
He had been held separately from Syrian and other Arab prisoners and said he didn’t know of any other Americans held in the facility.
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Annoyance has been growing among politicians and law enforcement in New Jersey following proliferating reports of drone flights in recent weeks, including almost 50 on Sunday night alone. The Guardian’s Richard Luscombe has this report on the growing demand for answers:
The governor of New Jersey has demanded that Joe Biden take control of an investigation into mysterious and more frequent appearances of multiple large drones flying over his state amid mounting frustration that federal officials are downplaying the incidents.
Democrat Phil Murphy released on Friday a letter he wrote to the White House to express his “growing concern” after representatives from the Pentagon and FBI ruled out involvement by the US military, or hostile foreign actors, in numerous sightings of unexplained flying objects above about a dozen counties since the middle of November.
“It has become apparent that more resources are needed to fully understand what is behind this activity,” he wrote in the letter, published the same day that reports emerged of multiple drones breaching airspace at Naval Weapons Station Earle in Monmouth county.
“I respectfully urge you to continue to direct the federal agencies involved to work together until they uncover answers as to what is behind the UAS [unmanned aircraft systems] sightings.”
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Tens of millions of Americans cast ballots in the November election that sent Donald Trump back to the White House – and tens of millions of other did not bother. The Guardian’s Jedidajah Otte spoke to some of those in the latter group to learn why:
The 2024 US presidential election had been widely characterized as one of the most consequential political contests in recent US history. Although turnout was high for a presidential election – almost matching the levels of 2020 – it is estimated that close to 90 million Americans, roughly 36% of the eligible voting age population, did not vote. This number is greater than the number of people who voted for either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.
More than a month on from polling day, eligible US voters from across the country as well as other parts of the world got in touch with the Guardian to share why they did not vote.
Scores of people said they had not turned out as they felt their vote would not matter because of the electoral college system, since they lived in a safely blue or red state. This included a number of people who nonetheless had voted in the 2020 and 2016 elections.
While various previous Democratic voters said they had abstained this time due to the Harris campaign’s stance on Israel or for other policy reasons, a number of people in this camp said they would have voted for the vice-president had they lived in a swing state.
“I’m not in a swing state, and because of the electoral college my vote doesn’t count. I could have voted 500,000 times and it would not have changed the outcome,” said one such voter, a 60-year-old software developer with Latino heritage from Boston.
Donald Trump has made clear that ordering a draconian crackdown on undocumented immigrants will be one of the first things he does, once he becomes president. The Guardian’s Adrian Carrasquillo reports that migrant rights groups are preparing to fight back:
With Donald Trump ready to unleash his mass deportation policy in January, many local and national immigrant rights, legal aid and civil rights organizations are preparing for the unexpected.
During his campaign, Trump often spoke of launching – on day one – “the largest deportation program of criminals in the history of America”. Now that he has been elected, various rights groups are preparing for the uncertainty of how quickly and to what extent Trump will be able to execute his plans.
After his inauguration, these groups expect a flurry of executive orders around rescinding Joe Biden’s orders on immigration and facilitating efforts to deport people. Trump is likely to rescind old rules on who is a priority for deportation, making it clear that authorities will deport anyone at any time. NBC News reported there could be five executive orders on immigration.
Also expected is an immediate focus on criminals and work-site raids, which the former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) director and incoming “border czar” Tom Homan has confirmed.
“Trump’s going to try to go big and portray his effort as focused on criminals,” said Vanessa Cardenas, the executive director of America’s Voice. “But of course, they’re blurring the lines on who is considered a criminal.”
The day so far
More signs have emerged of how Donald Trump will make good on his pledge to transform the US government, once he is inaugurated president. The New York Times has reported that Aaron Siri, a lawyer who has challenged the approval of vaccines for polio, hepatitis B and other preventable diseases, is sitting in on interviews for job candidates conducted by Robert F Kennedy Jr. Separately, the Wall Street Journal says that Trump’s transition team is exploring ways to downsize or get rid of banking regulators that were created in the wake of the Great Depression, and which have repeatedly stepping in to stabilize the US economy in the decades since.
Here’s what else has happened today so far:
Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic former House speaker, has been hospitalized after sustaining an injury in Luxembourg, during a trip to commemorate the Battle of the Bulge.
Daniel Penny, who was acquitted earlier this week on charges related to the chokehold death of an unhoused man on a New York City subway, will attend the US army-navy football game with JD Vance.
Anita Dunn, a former White House adviser to Joe Biden, criticized the pardon of Hunter Biden.
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Remember Herschel Walker?
The former NFL player was a Republican candidate for Senate in Georgia two years ago, but lost to Democrat Raphael Warnock after allegations of a variety of problematic conduct by Walker emerged.
Walker has not been heard from much since then, and Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Patricia Murphy has revealed the reason why: he went back to school to get a degree he set aside to pursue a career in football.
Here’s more:
It’s not often that a story in politics makes you smile, especially these days. But that’s exactly what’s happening with the news that Herschel Walker, the former University of Georgia star running back, is graduating this week with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Georgia at the age of 62.
Like a lot of people, Walker had planned to get his degree long ago, but, as he explained, “life and football got in the way.” In his case, “life” meant a lot – starting with getting married and signing a multimillion-dollar contract to play for Donald Trump’s New Jersey Generals in the short-lived USFL. From there, he moved to Texas to play for the Dallas Cowboys before becoming a sort of journeyman – playing for three more NFL teams and eventually returning to Dallas to play for the Cowboys once again.
…
Despite Washington Republicans’ most aggressive defense during the campaign’s frenzied final weeks, Walker lost to Warnock in a runoff and quickly disappeared from public view. He put his house in Atlanta on the market, cut off contact from most of his political staff and, for all anybody knew, returned to Dallas where he’d started out.
But then, more than a year after the campaign ended, came a picture. It was Walker, tucked into a tight desk-and-chair combo, snapped in a classroom during summer school classes on UGA’s main campus in Athens. A call to the registrar’s office confirmed that he had quietly reenrolled as an undergraduate at UGA’s College of Family and Consumer Sciences where he began more than 40 years earlier. Yes, at the age of 62, Walker was a college student again.
It’s important here to say that this was no publicity stunt. There were no press releases to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution nor quiet tipoffs from Walker or his team. He simply seemed to be back in Athens to take care of long unfinished business.
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Kash Patel, whom Donald Trump nominated to replace Christopher Wray as director of the FBI, has locked down the support he needs from Republicans on a key Senate committee, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports:
Donald Trump’s nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, has broadly locked down support from Republicans on the Senate judiciary committee, paving the way for his confirmation to the role after the current director announced his intention to resign when the president-elect takes office in January.
The idea of securing support from the judiciary committee, according to two people familiar with the matter, is that if the committee reports out his nomination perhaps unanimously, it would make it politically harder for any skeptical Republicans to oppose him later.
Trump’s aides working on the controversial nominations all see the same handful of senators as potential hurdles, the people said: Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins – longtime senators with whom Trump has little leverage and are difficult to control.
In Patel’s case, his team would make the argument that McConnell, as an institutionalist, should trust the judiciary committee if it reports out the nomination, the people said. And if Patel gets McConnell’s backing, it would reduce the number of possible no votes below the four-vote threshold.
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Progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is facing resistance in her quest to become the top Democrat on one of the House’s more prominent committees.
The New York lawmaker has made a bid to become the ranking member on the House oversight committee, which is tasked with carrying out investigations and holding the government to account. The previous ranking member, Jamie Raskin, has opted for a job as the top Democrat on the judiciary committee, and Ocasio-Cortez is vying for the oversight committee slot against Virginia congressman Gerry Connolly.
Today, the leaders of the centrist New Democrat Coalition, which is currently the largest ideological caucus in the House, announced they were supporting Connolly for the job. Here’s what outgoing chair Annie Kuster and incoming chair Brad Schneider had to say:
New Dems are proud to endorse our colleague, friend, and fellow New Dem Rep Gerry Connolly for Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. Rep Connolly is a strong and talented communicator and a dedicated workhorse prepared to expertly lead the committee in defending our Democratic priorities and standing up to the Trump administration’s extremist actions. He is the right choice to advance the interests of our full caucus.
Throughout his sixteen years on the Committee, Rep. Connolly has been a courageous and formidable force fighting against extremist GOP conspiracy theories and advancing thoughtful, commonsense legislation. As we prepare for the new Trump administration and Republican-controlled Congress, the Oversight Committee Democrats will play a critical role in protecting our democratic institutions and pushing back on bad faith actors. We are fully confident that Rep Connolly will lead the committee with a no-nonsense approach and a steady hand.
Here’s more on Ocasio-Cortez’s bid to lead the oversight committee:
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Anita Dunn, a former top adviser to Joe Biden, criticized how the president handled the pardon of his son Hunter Biden.
Biden issued the pardon after months of denying he was considering such an act. It came after his son pleaded guilty to tax fraud charges and was convicted of charges related to lying on a background check to purchase a firearm.
Dunn, who left a White House senior adviser post in August to work for a Super Pac that backed Kamala Harris’s campaign, was asked about Biden’s decision at a New York Times event. She said:
I absolutely agree with the president’s decision here. I do not agree with the way it was done. I don’t agree with the timing and I don’t agree, frankly, with the attack on our judicial system.
She’s far from the only Democrat who was uncomfortable with Biden’s pardon of his son, or his allegations that Hunter was a victim of a “selective prosecution”:
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Pelosi hospitalized after unspecified injury in Luxembourg
Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic former speaker of the House of Representatives, sustained an injury while on an official visit to Luxembourg and was hospitalized, her office announced.
“While traveling with a bipartisan Congressional delegation in Luxembourg to mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi sustained an injury during an official engagement and was admitted to the hospital for evaluation,” spokesperson Ian Krager said.
“Speaker Emerita Pelosi is currently receiving excellent treatment from doctors and medical professionals. She continues to work and regrets that she is unable to attend the remainder of the CODEL engagements to honor the courage of our servicemembers during one of the greatest acts of American heroism in our nation’s history.”
He added that the 84-year-old, who just won another term representing her district that centers on San Francisco, “looks forward to returning home to the US soon”.
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Responding to the New York Times’s reporting that anti-vaccine attorney Aaron Siri has been by Robert F Kennedy Jr’s side as he interviewed candidates for jobs in the department on health and human services, Hillary Clinton quipped:
I think Trump voters may be surprised to learn they voted to make polio great again.
Donald Trump and JD Vance both plan to attend the army-navy football game held Saturday outside Washington, USA Today reports.
In addition to Daniel Penny, they’ve invited other guests expected to serve in their administration, or work closely with them. Here’s more, from USA Today:
President-elect Donald Trump is expected to attend the game, where he will meet with Pete Hegseth, his embattled nominee for Defense secretary. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Navy veteran who Trump has considered as a fallback option to replace Hegseth, will also reportedly join Trump as well.
Vance invites recently acquitted Daniel Penny to football game
JD Vance has invited Daniel Penny, who was this week acquitted of charges in the chokehold death of an unhoused man on a New York City subway, to attend the annual army-navy football game this weekend.
Writing on X, Vance said:
Daniel’s a good guy, and New York’s mob district attorney tried to ruin his life for having a backbone.
I’m grateful he accepted my invitation and hope he’s able to have fun and appreciate how much his fellow citizens admire his courage.
Penny has been a cause celebre for the right, with one Republican lawmaker saying he should be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor.
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Trump transition considering downsizing financial institutions created after Great Depression – report
US government institutions intended to stabilize the financial system during emergencies may be on the chopping block once Donald Trump is inaugurated, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Officials on his transition team are looking at ways to eliminate or downsize institutions like the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which was created after the Great Depression to prevent the bank runs that wiped out American’ savings at the onset of that long-lasting economic crisis.
Any such changes would require action from Congress, which may be difficult to pull off. Here’s more on what Trump is thinking of doing, from the Journal:
In recent interviews with potential nominees to lead bank regulatory agencies, Trump advisers and officials from his newfound Department of Government Efficiency have, for example, asked whether the president-elect could abolish the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., people familiar with the matter said.
Advisers have asked the nominees under consideration for the FDIC, as well as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, if deposit insurance could then be absorbed into the Treasury Department, some of the people said.
Any proposal to eliminate the FDIC or any agency would require congressional action. While past presidents have reorganized and rebranded departments, Washington has never shut down a major cabinet-level agency and rarely closed other agencies like the FDIC that are not.
Bank executives are optimistic that President-elect Donald Trump will ease a host of regulations on capital cushions and consumer protections, as well as scrutiny of consolidation in the industry. But FDIC deposit insurance is considered near sacred. Any move that threatened to undermine even the perception of deposit insurance could quickly ripple through banks and in a crisis might compound customer fears.
After several banks failed last year, customers panicked about whether their deposits were safe at smaller banks. Many fled to the biggest of big banks that are perceived to be so important that the government would never let them fail. Since then, banks have been calling for wider deposit insurance protections to keep smaller banks competitive.
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Lawyer advising RFK Jr challenged polio, hepatitis B vaccines
Aaron Siri, the lawyer that the New York Times reports has been sitting in on Robert F Kennedy Jr’s interviews with potential hires to fill the upper ranks for the department of health and human services, has a long history of challenging the certifications of vaccines.
He has filed petitions against the vaccines for polio, hepatitis B and other diseases, and also gone to court to challenge Covid-19 vaccine mandates. However, it remains unclear if Siri himself is looking for a role in health and human services, which Donald Trump nominated Kennedy to lead, or if he’ll remain outside government.
From the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington, here’s more of what we know about Siri’s involvement in the transition to Trump’s second term:
Trump-linked officials reportedly considering targeting bank stabilizer and polio vaccine
Good morning, US politics blog readers. We have fewer than 40 days to go until Donald Trump is inaugurated president of the United States, and more signs are emerging of how he might follow through on his plans to transform the country. The New York Times reports that Aaron Siri, a lawyer who has filed petitions challenging the approvals of vaccines against polio and several other diseases, has been by health and human services secretary nominee Robert F Kennedy Jr’s side as he has interviewed candidates for jobs in the department. It’s yet more evidence that, if he is confirmed, Kennedy could insert his discredited anti-vaccine views into the government.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump’s transition team is exploring ways to downside or combine major banking regulators, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, a key stabilizer of the sector that was created in the wake of the Great Depression. While the country has come a long way since that era-defining financial crisis, bank collapses still happen, and expect tons of pushback if the second Trump administration follows through on the plan.
Here’s what else is going on today:
Joe Biden is starting his day early, with a virtual meeting of G7 countries at 9.30am ET.
House Republicans announced their committee chairs for the next Congress. Notable, Biden nemeses Jim Jordan and James Comer will remain as chairs of the judiciary and oversight committees, respectively.
Xi Jinping is not expected to attend Trump’s inauguration, CBS News reports, after the president-elect invited the Chinese president.
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