Category Archives: Donald Trump

Outcry over stalemate on Gaetz report; Trump reportedly considering Martin Makary for FDA – US politics live

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Democrat Susan Wild says committee chair Michael Guest mischaracterized meeting and committee will reconvene in December; Markary opposed Covid vaccine mandates

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”.

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House ethics committee deadlocked on whether to release Matt Gaetz report

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Panel met on Wednesday but didn’t reach a decision on releasing the report on Trump’s controversial AG pick

The House ethics committee deadlocked on releasing a report examining allegations of sexual misconduct against Matt Gaetz, the former Republican representative and Donald Trump’s choice to lead the US justice department, after the panel met behind closed doors on Wednesday.

Emerging from the meeting after roughly two hours, most members of the panel declined to offer details on their discussion, but the Republican chair, Michael Guest, told reporters that there was “not an agreement by the committee to release the report”.

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Thousands eager to escape Trump keen to snap up €1 Sardinian home, says mayor

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American applications would be fast-tracked although scheme is open to other nationalities, says mayor of Ollolai

The mayor of a small town in Sardinia has said thousands of Americans keen to escape Donald Trump have expressed an interest in moving there after he offered homes to them for as little as €1.

Francesco Columbu, the mayor of Ollolai, has staged similarly enticing initiatives in the past as a way to combat depopulation. He released more homes for sale after sensing he was on to a winner when Trump clinched a second term as US president in elections earlier this month.

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Who is Mehmet Oz, Trump’s pick to lead Medicare and Medicaid?

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Dr Oz, best known for his daytime talkshow, leaned heavily into Trumpism during his failed 2022 run for US Senate

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].”

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Trump picks former WWE executive Linda McMahon for education secretary

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Billionaire and former Senate candidate served in president-elect’s cabinet in first administration

Linda McMahon, co-chair of Donald Trump’s transition team, has been named as the president-elect’s pick for education secretary in his upcoming administration.

In a statement, Trump extolled the “incredible” job McMahon, the billionaire co-founder of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), 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.”

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Trump tariffs are coming, but some Chinese companies may already know how to avoid them

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Some experts liken tariffs to a game of whack-a-mole, with trade flows simply rerouted if the potential rewards are big enough

Businesses are bracing for the economic impact of a second Trump presidency, which, if his campaign promises are to be believed, will mean tariffs across nearly all imports to the US, especially those from China.

But amid the gloom over the spectre of a renewed global trade war, some manufacturers may be looking to those who already have a playbook on dealing with aggressive US levies, such as China’s solar companies.

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Trump picks Linda McMahon for education, and says he won’t reconsider Matt Gaetz nomination – live

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President-elect picks prominent donor and co-chair of transition team as education secretary; Trump won’t rethink Gaetz for attorney general despite mounting scrutiny

President-elect Donald Trump will join billionaire Elon Musk for a SpaceX launch in Texas later today, as reported by Reuters.

This will be the sixth test flight to space for SpaceX’s Starship rocket. The test launch is planned for 5pm ET.

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MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough brushes off backlash to his meeting with Trump

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Morning Joe host accuses critics of being disconnected from ‘the real world’ amid outcry over Mar-a-Lago visit

The Morning Joe star Joe Scarborough brushed off criticism of last week’s meeting with Donald Trump in Florida amid reports that the get-together was motivated by the liberal news network show host’s fear of retribution from the US president-elect.

Scarborough, along with his co-host, Mika Brzezinski, revealed during Monday’s broadcast that they personally met with Donald Trump last week to “restart communications” following their unrelenting opposition to his campaign for the White House.

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Trump reportedly picks Howard Lutnick as commerce secretary

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Billionaire founder of financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald was one of president-elect’s biggest fundraisers

Donald Trump has reportedly picked one of his biggest fundraisers for the position of commerce secretary.

Howard Lutnick, the billionaire founder of the financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald, will be nominated to serve as one of Trump’s principal advisers on commerce and international trade, the news website Axios reported.

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Trump reportedly doubts senators will back Matt Gaetz but still lobbies hard

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President-elect’s nominee for attorney general is dogged by sexual misconduct allegations

Donald Trump has reportedly told associates that Matt Gaetz, his nominee for attorney general, has a less than 50-50 chance of being confirmed by the Senate, even while pushing forward with his nomination amid damaging sexual misconduct allegations.

The president-elect has continued making calls in support of his beleaguered nominee despite resistance from Republican senators because he is confident his insistence will alter the standard for acceptable cabinet choices even if Gaetz fails, the New York Times reported.

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Trump selects Fox News contributor Sean Duffy as transport secretary

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Former Republican congressman from Wisconsin was also a cast member on MTV’s The Real World: Boston

Donald Trump has named Sean Duffy, a former Republican congressman from Wisconsin,and former cast member of the MTV show The Real World, to serve as the secretary of transportation. He was also a co-host on Fox Business but left that role on Monday, according to Fox News Media.

Duffy served in Congress from 2011 until 2019. Before being elected to public office, he was district attorney for Ashland county, Wisconsin, from 2002 to 2008 and previously had a reality TV show role. Duffy was a cast member on The Real World: Boston in 1997 where he would meet his wife, Fox news contributor Rachel Campos-Duffy.

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Matt Gaetz ‘paid for sex’, says lawyer for two women who testified to House committee – as it happened

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This live coverage has ended. Thanks for following along. You can read our full story on the latest allegations against Matt Gaetz below:

The reported tension between Elon Musk and Boris Epshteyn as they vie for status in Donald Trump’s inner circle of un-elected influencers involves the tech entrepreneur, Musk, challenging lawyer Epshteyn on the merits of his suggestions for senior appointments in the incoming Republican administration, according to Axios.

It quotes several unnamed sources, who’ve been giving accounts of the apparent strain between the two men bursting out into public rows, saying that Musk argues Epshteyn has too much sway over the names Trump is picking and considering for his cabinet and senior administration posts, while Epshteyn is “bristling” at Musk challenging him.

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Trump allies attack Biden for allowing Ukraine to use US missiles inside Russia

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President-elect’s surrogates accuse president of seeking to spark ‘world war three’ over decision to allow limited strikes

Allies of the president-elect, Donald Trump, have lashed out angrily at Joe Biden for his decision to permit Ukraine to use long-range US missiles to launch attacks inside Russia for the first time, in what the Kremlin has termed an “escalation” in the war.

Key Trump surrogates, including his son Donald Trump Jr, hardline congressional Republicans, and other backers have accused Biden of seeking to spark “world war three” before Trump’s presidential inauguration in January.

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ACLU files lawsuit to gain information about Trump mass deportation plans

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Suit made against Ice comes as Trump vows to deport millions of undocumented immigrants upon taking office

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a lawsuit against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) seeking more information about how the agency might carry out Donald Trump’s plans for a mass deportation program.

The US president-elect has vowed to deport millions of undocumented immigrants upon taking office, a threat that he has doubled down on since winning the presidential race earlier this month. On Monday, Trump confirmed a report that he intended to declare a national emergency to activate military resources as part of the mass deportation operation.

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Trump nominates big tech critic Brendan Carr to chair telecommunications regulator

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Carr has claimed Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft ‘censor’ Americans and criticized NBC for letting Harris appear on Saturday Night Live

President-elect Donald Trump will tap Brendan Carr, a critic of the Biden administration’s telecom policies and big tech, as chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), he has said in a statement.

Carr, 45, is the top Republican on the FCC, the independent agency that regulates telecommunications.

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‘Queen of polling’ J Ann Selzer quits after Iowa survey missed by 16 points

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Pollster announces she’s moving on ‘to other ventures’ after poll wrongly predicted strong shift in state to Kamala Harris

J Ann Selzer, the celebrated Iowa election pollster, announced on Sunday that she is moving on “to other ventures and opportunities”, two weeks after her survey in the state wrongly predicted a strong shift to Kamala Harris in the days before the election.

That poll, which projected a 47% to 44% lead for the vice-president over Donald Trump on the back of older women breaking for Democrats over the issue of reproductive rights, came three days before the national vote, giving Democrats false hope that Harris could win the White House decisively. When the votes were counted, Selzer was off by 16 points as the former president won the state decisively.

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Russia’s latest attack on Ukraine shows maximalist war aims remain unchanged

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As President-Elect Trump talks up negotiations, Putin has made clear his position hasn’t changed since launching invasion in 2022

Millions of Ukrainians woke up early on Sunday morning to a massive Russian missile and drone attack on their country’s infrastructure, the biggest assault from Moscow since the end of August and the first large-scale attack since the US election.

Donald Trump once promised to settle the Ukraine war in “24 hours” but the 120 missiles and 90 drones aimed at the nation’s utilities is a reminder that Moscow’s maximalist aspirations to cow and subjugate its neighbour remains unchanged.

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Keir Starmer promises Ukraine will be ‘top of the agenda’ at G20

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UK prime minister to meet world leaders at summit in Brazil that Vladimir Putin has declined to attend

Ukraine will be “top of the agenda” this week at a meeting of leaders from the world’s most powerful economies, Keir Starmer has pledged, though he said he had “no plans” to follow the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and speak directly to Vladimir Putin.

Starmer will meet world leaders on Monday at the G20 summit in Brazil, which the Russian president has declined to attend, sending his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, in his place.

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Will Melania be living in the White House for Trump’s second term? Probably not

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Incoming first lady is planning to split her time between New York and Florida during her husband’s presidency

Melania Trump will probably not be returning to the White House for the next four years with her husband, multiple sources told CNN this week, but rather will be splitting her time between Palm Beach, Florida, and New York City, where Barron is going to college.

For many observers it is unclear who might be more relieved by that decision: Melania, who famously did not love her life in DC the first time around, or the White House itself, where Trump’s wife once expressed her discontent by filling the halls with blood-red Christmas trees and destroying the historically beloved Rose Garden.

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Experts sound alarm as Trump mulls pardons for January 6 attackers

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Attorneys and lawmakers who oppose pardons for Capitol rioters would not be able to stop him, legal analysts warn

lf Donald Trump follows through on his promise to pardon people who participated in the January 6 riot at the US Capitol, attorneys and lawmakers who oppose such moves would not be able to stop him, according to legal experts.

If Trump does issue the pardons, it could indicate to many of his supporters that there was nothing illegal about the riot to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, and would undermine the US constitution, the experts said.

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