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Summary
In a speech billed at promoting his economic accomplishments, Joe Biden warned Donald Trump against imposing tariffs and cutting taxes – two of the key planks of his successful re-election campaign. The president also defended America’s dominant role in global affairs, and said implementing Project 2025 would result in “economic disaster”.
Earlier in the day, Senate Democrats convened a hearing meant to explore the implications of Trump’s vow to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. Senate judiciary committee chair Dick Durbin said such deportations “would damage our economy and separate American families”. Lindsey Graham, the top-ranking Republican on the committee, promised senators would get to work on a “transformational border security bill” as soon as Trump takes office.
Here’s what else happened today:
Adam Schiff, a Democratic former member of the January 6 committee, said he did not think it was necessary for Biden to issue pre-emptive pardons to the panel’s members, despite Trump’s threats to jail them.
Mitch McConnell, the 82-year-old outgoing Senate Republican leader, suffered a fall, but has been cleared to get back to work.
The New York attorney general, Letitia James, reportedly told Trump’s attorneys she will keep pursuing the $454m-plus judgment levied against him for business fraud.
Matt Gaetz is joining rightwing broadcaster One America News Network as an anchor.
Trump was up late last night, writing weird stuff about Canada.
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Former January 6 committee member Schiff says pardons unnecessary despite Trump threat of jailing
Adam Schiff, a Democratic former member of the January 6 committee, said he did not think it was necessary for Joe Biden to issue pre-emptive pardons to those involved in the bipartisan House investigation of the attack on the Capitol.
In an interview over the weekend, Donald Trump alleged that the committee had destroyed its evidence, and the committee members “should go to jail”. The committee’s report and its supporting documents remain publicly available online.
Speaking at the Capitol, Schiff, who was just sworn in as a senator representing California, said:
I don’t think the incoming president should be threatening his political opponents with jail time. That’s not the kind of talk we should hear from the president in a democracy. Nor do I think that a pardon is necessary for the members of the January 6th Committee.
We’re proud of the work we did in that committee. It was fundamental oversight obligation to investigate the first attempt to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power in our history.
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Top Senate Republican McConnell injured in fall
Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell was injured in a fall today, but has been cleared to get back to work, his office said.
“Leader McConnell tripped following lunch. He sustained a minor cut to the face and sprained his wrist. He has been cleared to resume his schedule,” a spokesperson for the long-serving Senate Republican leader said.
McConnell, 82, is in his final weeks leading the party in the Senate. John Thune will be the GOP leader next year, when the party takes the majority in the chamber.
Last year, reports emerged that McConnell had suffered multiple falls, and he also repeatedly appeared to freeze up in public. He is expected to continue serving as a senator representing Kentucky through 2026, when his current term expires.
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Trump promises 'fully expedited approvals and permits' to billionaire investors in the US
Further deepening his unusually close ties with billionaires, Donald Trump has promised “fully expedited approvals and permits” to people who invest $1bn or more in the United States.
Writing on Truth Social, Trump said:
Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals. GET READY TO ROCK!!!
Trump has nominated several billionaires to his cabinet, and put the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, and fellow billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy in charge of the quasi-governmental “Department of Government Efficiency”. Here’s more about that:
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Dozens of Nobel laureates have banded together to urge the Senate to reject Robert F Kennedy Jr, the conspiracy theorist who Donald Trump nominated to lead the department of health and human services. Here’s more, from the Guardian’s Robert Tait:
Seventy-seven Nobel laureates have signed a letter urging the US Senate to reject Robert F Kennedy Jr as Donald Trump’s nominee for health and human services secretary, arguing that he is unfit and would put American public health “in jeopardy”.
It is believed to be the first time in living memory that Nobel prize winners have united against a presidential cabinet pick, and comes against a backdrop of Kennedy’s public support for discredited theories, including a claim that childhood vaccines cause autism.
In their letter, prize winners in the fields of medicine, chemistry, physics and economics castigate Kennedy for a “lack of credentials” and point out that he has been “a belligerent critic” of some of the agencies that he would oversee, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“The proposal to place Mr Kennedy in charge of the federal agencies responsible for protecting the public health of American citizens and for conducting the medical research that benefits our country and the rest of humanity has been widely criticised on multiple grounds,” the laureates say in the letter, first obtained by the New York Times.
Donald Trump’s picks for FBI director and attorney general have former federal prosecutors worried, the Guardian’s Peter Stone reports:
By tapping two combative ultra-loyalists to run the FBI and the justice department, Donald Trump has sparked fears they will pursue the president-elect’s calls for “revenge” against his political foes and sack officials who Trump demonizes as “deep state” opponents, say ex-justice department prosecutors.
Kash Patel and Pam Bondi, who Trump has nominated to run the FBI and Department of Justice, respectively, have been unswerving loyalists to Trump for years, promoting Trump’s false claims that his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden was due to fraud.
Patel was a top lawyer on the House intelligence panel under rightwing member Devin Nunes for part of Trump’s first term and then held a few posts in the Trump administration including at the national security council advising the president.
Bondi, a recent corporate lobbyist and an ex-Florida attorney general, defended Trump during his first impeachment and was active on the campaign trail during the late stages of his 2024 run.
Patel and Bondi have each echoed Trump’s calls for taking revenge against key Democrats and officials, including ones who pursued criminal charges against Trump for his aggressive efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat and his role in inflaming the January 6 attack on the Capitol that led to five deaths.
Trump has lavished praise on both picks, calling Patel a “brilliant lawyer” and “advocate for truth”, while hailing Bondi as “loyal” and “qualified”. But critics say their rhetoric and threats are “incredibly harmful to public trust” in the two agencies undermining the integrity of the FBI and justice department, and potentially spurring violence.
Alternatively, Merchan could choose to uphold the verdict and proceed to sentencing or delay the case until Trump leaves office.
Trump will be the first president, former or current, to be a convicted criminal.
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Manhattan district attorney suggests judge could halt Donald Trump's historic hush-money trial
In more Trump legal news, the president-elect might lose his months-long fight to reverse his conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records, the Associated Press reports.
Prosecutors are trying to convince Judge Juan M Merchan, acting justice of the New York state supreme court in New York county, to preserve Donald Trump’s hush money criminal conviction before he becomes president. This way, the case would be permanently suspended, allowing Trump’s conviction to stand and bar any attempts to appeal.
Trump’s legal team has urged Merchan to dismiss the case and argue letting it go on would cause unconstitutional “disruptions” to his presidency.
Some background: Trump has been convicted of manipulating documents to conceal a $130,000 payment to pornographic film actor Stormy Daniels in order to quiet her claim that they had sexual relations more than a decade ago. Trump denies any wrongdoing.
Here’s more, from the AP:
Prosecutors are urging a judge not to throw out President-elect Donald Trump’s hush money criminal conviction but suggesting a willingness to end the case in a way that would preserve the verdict while avoiding punishment or a protracted legal fight.
In court papers made public on Tuesday, the Manhattan district attorney’s office proposed an array of options for keeping the historic conviction on the books, including asking Judge Juan M. Merchan to consider treating the case the way he would when a defendant dies.
That would effectively put the case into a permanent state of suspended animation. Trump’s conviction would stand, but everything would freeze, including any appeal action. It is unclear if that option is viable under New York law.
“As applied here, this Court could similarly terminate the criminal proceeding by placing a notation in the record that the jury verdict removed the presumption of innocence; that defendant was never sentenced; and that his conviction was neither affirmed nor reversed on appeal because of presidential immunity,” prosecutors wrote in an 82-page filing.
Among the other options prosecutors proposed was delaying sentencing until after Trump leaves office in 2029. However, they were adamant that the conviction should stand, arguing that Trump’s impending return to the White House should not upend a jury’s finding.
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The day so far
In a speech billed at promoting his economic accomplishments, Joe Biden warned Donald Trump against imposing tariffs and cutting taxes – two of the key planks of his successful re-election campaign. The president also defended America’s dominant role in global affairs, and said implementing Project 2025 would result in “economic disaster”. Earlier in the day, Senate Democrats convened a hearing meant to explore the implications of Trump’s vow to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. Senate judiciary committee chair Dick Durbin said such deportations “would damage our economy and separate American families”. Lindsey Graham, the top-ranking Republican on the committee, promised senators would get to work on a “transformational border security bill” as soon as Trump takes office.
Here’s what else is going on:
New York attorney general Letitia James reportedly told Trump’s attorneys she will keep pursuing the $454m-plus judgment levied against him for business fraud.
Matt Gaetz is joining rightwing broadcaster One America News Network as an anchor.
Trump was up late last night, writing weird stuff about Canada.
Biden warns Project 2025 would be 'an economic disaster', if implemented
As he closed his speech at the Brookings Institution, Joe Biden singled out Project 2025 as being particularly harmful, and said he hoped Donald Trump does not follow the rightwing blueprint’s proposals to remake the US government.
“I pray to God the president-elect throws away Project 2025. I think it’d be an economic disaster for us and the region,” Biden said.
Trump has publicly repudiated Project 2025, but since winning re-election has appointed conservatives involved in drawing up the document to positions in his incoming administration. Here’s more on what they might do:
Biden encourages Trump to reject isolationism, asking, 'If we do not lead the world, what nation leads the world?'
With Donald Trump mulling pulling the country back from its international alliances and commitments, Joe Biden argued that it was essential that the United States remains dominant in global affairs.
“If we do not lead the world, what nation leads the world?” Biden, his voice raised, said in a speech to the Brookings Institution, a prominent Washington DC thinktank. “Who pulls Europe together, who tries to pull the Middle East together? How do in the Indian Ocean? What do we do in Africa? We, the United States, lead the world.”
Referring to economic policies pursued by his administration and others that Trump has vowed to reverse, Biden said: “My hope and belief is that the decisions and investments that are now so deeply rooted through the nation, it’s going to be politically costly and economically unsound for the next president to disrupt.”
Biden warns Trump's tariff, tax proposals would be a 'major mistake'
Joe Biden singled out Donald Trump’s proposals to impose steep tariffs on US allies and rivals alike and to extend tax cuts enacted during his first administration as policies that would undermine the economy’s health.
“By all accounts, the incoming administration is determined to return the country … [to] trickle-down economics, and another tax cut for the very wealthy that will not be paid for, or if paid for, is going to have a real cost, once again, causing massive deficits or significant cuts in basic programs of healthcare, education, veterans benefits,” Biden said.
“On top of that, he seems determined to impose steep, universal tariffs on all imported goods brought to this country on the mistaken belief that foreign countries will bear the cost of those tariffs, rather than the American consumer. Who do you think pays for this? I believe this approach is a major mistake. I believe we’ve proven that approach is a mistake over the past four years, but … we will know in time what will happen.”
Biden takes jabs at Trump in speech touting economic record
Joe Biden has generally refrained from criticizing Donald Trump since his presidential election victory, but subtly needled his Republican successor in a speech where the president defended his economic record.
“Next month, my administration will end, and a new administration will begin. Most economists agree the new administration is going to inherit a fairly strong economy, at least at the moment, an economy going through fundamental transformation that’s laid out a stronger foundation and a sustainable, broad-based, highly productive growth,” Biden said. “It is my profound hope that the new administration will preserve and build on this progress.”
Later on, Trump singled out Trump for criticism over his handling of the pandemic. “The previous administration, quite frankly, had no plan, real plan, to get us through one of the toughest periods in our nation’s history,” Biden said.
And though Trump campaigned on tearing up Biden’s legislative accomplishments – and has the votes to do it, thanks to Republican victories that will give them control of Congress – the president predicted that undoing his 2022 effort to overhaul the nation’s infrastructure will be impossible, since it benefits so many red states.
“We had infrastructure week for four years, nothing got built,” Biden said, in yet another dig at Trump.
“Everybody said when I wanted to have an infrastructure bill that mattered, over $1.3tn, we’d never get it done. We got it done. The next president has a gameplan I laid out, and by the way, he’s going to find, since I made a promise I’d invest as much in red states as blue, he’s gonna have trouble not doing it. He’s gonna have a lot of red state senators that are opposed to all of it and voted for it deciding it’s very much in their interest to build the facilities that are on the block.”
Updated
A Senate hearing on mass deportations ended on a bitter note, with a series of back-and-forths between Republicans on the committee and a majority witness invited to testify about the cost and economic impact of removing millions of immigrants from the labor force.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, repeatedly testified that he did not support “open borders” despite Republican senators claiming he did.
Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana spent his allotted time questioning Reichlin-Melnick about old tweets while Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, called him a part of the problem. A pre-election report published by the American Immigration Council, which supports comprehensive immigration reform, found that mass deportations on the scale Donald Trump has proposed would cost at least $315bn and would hurt the economy, especially in key industries like agriculture and construction
The exchanges underscored just how polarized Congress is over the issue and how little appetite there is for compromise in an area that was at the heart of Trump’s re-election pitch. In a sign that Democrats are scrambling for a response, several senators stressed their agreement with Republicans and Trump that immigrants with a criminal record should be deported, while also talking about the importance of protecting Dreamers.
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Former attorney general nominee Matt Gaetz joins rightwing One America News Network
Matt Gaetz, who resigned his seat in Congress after Donald Trump nominated him as his attorney general, only to withdraw his nomination after reports emerged of sexual misconduct, has joined the One America News Network (OAN), a rightwing outlet.
Starting in January, Gaetz will host a one-hour prime-time show aptly titled “The Matt Gaetz Show”, and also co-host a video podcast, the network announced.
“OAN is blazing a trail in media, embracing not just traditional news but the platforms where Americans are going – streaming, apps, podcasts, and social media. I couldn’t be more thrilled to join OAN’s forward-thinking team and be part of this revolutionary expansion,” Gaetz said in a statement.
New York attorney general refuses to back down from Trump’s $454m civil fraud judgment – report
New York attorney general Letitia James has told Donald Trump’s attorneys that she will continue pursuing a $454m civil fraud judgment her office won against the president-elect, despite his looming inauguration, the Hill reports.
Trump’s lawyers had asked her to support vacating the judgment, citing his presidential election victory. In a letter in response, James said: “Mr. Trump’s upcoming inauguration as the next president of the United States has no bearing on the pendency of defendants’ appeal in this action. “
An appeals court heard arguments in September in Trump’s challenge to the civil fraud judgment, which centered on claims that he inflated his wealth to secure better lending conditions. Here’s more:
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Art Arthur, a resident fellow at the anti-immigration Center for Immigration Studies, explained to senators why he believed it would be useful for local police to be involved in deportations.
Deportations are typically carried out by federal agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), but Arthur noted there was a relatively small number of Ice agents.
“When you allow police officers who are involved in their community, who are the first line actually putting hands on criminals, they’re going to be the person people who are best able to pull those individuals out of the community,” Arthur said.
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, was asked to weigh in on the GOP’s stated preference to deport people who have been ordered by the courts to leave the country, but have not yet done so.
“I think it’s important for people to understand that Ice already goes after people with criminal records all the time, and in fact, that has been the priority of the previous two to three or more presidential administrations, and is what’s Congress sets,” Reichlin-Melnick said.
“So the overwhelming majority of people who would be the targets of a mass deportation campaign do not have criminal records. They are people who have been living otherwise law-abiding lives in this country, living, working, and, in many cases, paying taxes.”
Among the witnesses before the Senate judiciary committee today is Foday Turay, an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia who is also undocumented.
He is protected from deportation to Sierra Leone by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which is meant for people brought into the country as children. In a statement to the judiciary committee, Turay explained what it would mean if that program ends for him and his family.
“I feel the consequences of mass deportation on a personal level, on a community level and on a societal level. On a personal level, my wife is here, and I have no family in Sierra Leone to help sustain me. I’m currently the bread winner in my family. If I were to be deported, my wife and our son would be left without money to pay the mortgage. My son would also be without a father. My deportation would hurt my own US citizen mother and my wife’s extended family, all of whom are United States citizens,” he said.
Turay also warned against the widespread deployment of immigration agents, saying it would chill the ability of prosecutors like himself to pursue criminals.
“As a prosecutor, I know how delicate the ties between law enforcement and immigrants can be if immigrants are afraid to cooperate with the police or prosecutors like myself because they’re afraid of deportation. We all suffer. When you have Ice agents patrolling courthouses and police stations, you create a category of people who are less willing to report crimes and less willing to cooperate with law enforcement in solving crimes. Mass deportation hurts all of us, our families, our community and our society.”
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Republican senator John Cornyn, the ranking member on the judiciary committee’s immigration subcommittee, gave a hint of which undocumented immigrants would be deported first.
“The American people are fed up with the lawlessness at the southern border, and in November, they tasked Republicans the job of cleaning it up, and that we will do,” Cornyn said.
“We have a big job ahead of us, no doubt. But by one estimate, there are already 1.3 to 1.6 million migrants who are under final orders of deportation, who are still in the country. That strikes me as a good place to start, people who have been entitled to full due process and hearing in front of an immigration court and are under final orders of deportation. What are they still doing here?”
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Republican senator Graham promises 'transformational border security bill' as soon as Trump takes office
The top Republican on the Senate judiciary committee, Lindsey Graham, said that as soon as the party takes control of the chamber next year, they’ll get to work on sending Donald Trump legislation to implement hardline immigration policies.
“In January of 2025, the Republican Senate will make its top priority a transformational border security bill that will be taken up and passed by the budget committee, increasing the number of bed spaces available to detain people instead of releasing them, increasing the number of Ice agents to deal with people who should be deported, finish the wall and put … technology on the border, so we’ll have operational control of the border. That’s going to be our top priority,” said Graham.
Trump and the Republicans have plenty of other priorities once they take power in Washington, but Graham said that border security was what they would address first.
“I want to cut taxes. We will cut taxes. But as to the Senate, transformational border security goes first through reconciliation,” Graham said, referring to the parliamentary procedure that will allow Republicans to circumvent a filibuster by Democrats in the Senate.
Graham vowed:
We’re going to start sending people out of the country that present a threat to us and should never been here to begin with.
Top Senate Democrat warns mass deportations 'would damage our economy and separate American families'
Democratic Senate judiciary committee chair Dick Durbin kicked off the hearing into Donald Trump’s plan for mass deportations by warning that such an effort would inhumane, prohibitively expensive and harmful to the US military.
Trump and his advisers have proposed using active-duty troops to deport every undocumented person in the country. In his opening statement, Durbin warned that doing so could harm the military’s readiness.
“Things change when you go from high flying campaign rhetoric to ground … Think about for a moment, using our military for a mass deportation plan. I’m sure it would have a damaging impact on the morale of the troops, rounding up people in their own communities at a time when we’re already facing the most serious recruitment challenge in years,” Durbin said.
“In addition to weakening our military, it would cost hundreds of billions of dollars to deport every undocumented immigrant our country. It would damage our economy and separate American families. Instead, we should focus on deporting those who are truly a danger to America, and we should give the rest a chance to earn legal status. They would have to register with the government, certainly pay their taxes and submit to serious background checks.”
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Senate committee opens hearing on harms of mass deportations
The Senate judiciary committee has just started its hearing focused on Donald Trump’s mass deportation plans, and the harms it could do to communities across the country.
In a memo issued yesterday, White House chief of staff Jeff Zients announced Joe Biden’s priorities for his final days in office.
While stressing that the list is non-exhaustive, Zients said the outgoing president would focus on getting federal judges confirmed by the Senate and allocating funding for projects approved by his signature laws, including the Chips Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. Zients also said Biden would make one last push to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza, and to put Ukraine in “the best position possible” in its war against Russia.
Notable, Zients did not mention any actions having to do with immigration.
Democratic senators call on Biden to take new steps to protect migrants before Trump arrives
With Donald Trump vowing to implement hardline immigration policies including mass deportations as soon as he takes office, a group of Democratic senators is asking Joe Biden to approve new policies they say would allow some migrants to remain in the country.
“Mass deportations would jeopardize the safety and security of millions of mixed-status families, sow deep distrust and fear in the communities we represent, and destabilize the U.S. economy,” seven senators representing Illinois, New Jersey, Nevada, New Mexico, Hawaii and California said today in a letter to Biden.
“We write now because the window to secure and finalize your administration’s policies is closing rapidly. We urge you to act decisively between now and the inauguration of the president-elect to complete the important work of the past four years and protect immigrant families.”
Among the steps the group proposes is expanding a program that shields from deportation citizens of certain countries that are determined to he unsafe. They also call to expedite processing of applicants for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which shields from deportation undocumented people brought into the US as children.
Democrats are likely to reiterate their call to the outgoing president at the Senate judiciary committee hearing on Trump’s mass deportation plan that is scheduled to start at 10am. You can read the full letter here.
Trump refers to Canada as state in strange social media post; Democrats to decry harms of mass deportations
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Donald Trump was having a certain kind of night last night – the sort of night where one mistakes Canada for a state, and prime minister Justin Trudeau for its governor. “It was a pleasure to have dinner the other night with Governor Justin Trudeau of the Great State of Canada. I look forward to seeing the Governor again soon so that we may continue our in depth talks on Tariffs and Trade, the results of which will be truly spectacular for all!” Trump said on Truth Social. Just 41 days remain until he can write this sort of thing from the White House.
Meanwhile, Democrats are using their final days in control of the Senate to shine a spotlight on the harms Trump’s vows of mass deportations would do to American communities. At 10am, the judiciary committee will convene a hearing on how the president-elect’s signature campaign promises will “separate American families, harm our armed forces and devastate our economy”. The Democrats have summoned a retired major general and an undocumented Philadelphia prosecutor who is temporarily shielded from deportation to testify. The GOP has called the mother of a Maryland woman who was raped and murdered, allegedly by an undocumented man.
Here’s what else is going on today:
More than 75 Nobel laureates have reportedly signed a letter asking senators not to confirm conspiracy theorist Robert F Kennedy Jr as secretary of the health and human services department, after Trump nominated him last month.
Joe Biden will defend his economic record in a speech from the Brookings Institution in Washington DC at 12.15pm.
Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, takes questions from reporters at 2pm.
