Category Archives: US Politics

Biden proposes Medicare and Medicaid cover weight-loss drugs for 7.4m people

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Move aims to tackle US’s chronic obesity problem, but poses a challenge to Trump’s incoming administration

The Biden administration is proposing to make “miracle” weight loss drugs free for low-income people and retirees, in a move aimed at tackling America’s chronic obesity problem but which throws down a gauntlet to the incoming president, Donald Trump.

The proposal, unveiled on Tuesday, would see expensive drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Zepbound covered by Medicaid and Medicare, the federal government programs for the poor and the elderly.

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China and Canada respond to Trump’s tariff threats and border comments – as it happened

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Corey Lewandowski, an adviser to Donald Trump, has said that he and the president-elect have “no concerns at all” regarding Pete Hegseth’s confirmation by the Senate as the next US secretary of defense.

During an appearance on NewsMax, Lewandowski was asked if Trump had any concerns about Hegseth and his nomination, to which Lewandowski responded: “We have no concerns at all.”

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Biden will attend Trump’s inauguration in January, says White House

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US president and Jill Biden to attend swearing-in of Trump, who did not attend Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden will attend Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, a White House spokesperson said on Monday.

“The president promised that he would attend the inauguration of whomever won the election,” said Andrew Bates, senior deputy press secretary at the White House, Reuters reported.

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Ex-official exits running for Trump team over Sebastian Gorka appointment

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Michael Anton, national security official in first Trump term, reportedly removed name from contention over feud

A frontrunner to be deputy national security adviser in Donald Trump’s administration reportedly withdrew from the running after learning that he would have to work with Sebastian Gorka, the president-elect’s choice as counter-terrorism adviser.

Michael Anton, a conservative speech writer and national security official in Trump’s first presidency, removed his name from contention over Gorka’s appointment against a backdrop of acrimonious past relations between the pair, the Washington Post reported.

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Ireland prices corporation tax loss from Trump policies at €10bn

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Figure costed for three multinationals repatriating to US after nomination for commerce secretary hits out at Ireland’s tax regime

Ireland’s prime minister has said the country could lose €10bn (£8.35bn) in corporate tax if just three US multinationals were repatriated to America under a hostile Donald Trump administration.

His remarks come just days after Trump nominated the Wall Street investor Howard Lutnick to lead the Department of Commerce with direct responsibility for trade.

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Trump Pentagon pick attacks UN and Nato and urges US to ignore Geneva conventions

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Revealed: Pete Hegseth writes scathingly of key institutions and says ‘If you love America, you should love Israel’

Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, has attacked several key US alliances such as Nato, allied countries such as Turkey and international institutions such as the United Nations in two recent books, as well as saying US troops should not be bound by the Geneva conventions.

At the same time, the man who would head America’s gigantic military has tied US foreign policy almost entirely to the priority of Israel, a country of which he says: “If you love America, you should love Israel.”

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RFK Jr will cut prescription drugs and increase weed and psychedelics access

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Trump’s health department pick has expressed distrust of pharmaceuticals and attacked ‘suppression of psychedelics’

Public health experts are concerned that, if confirmed, Donald Trump’s choice for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) – Robert F Kennedy Jr – could upend access to pharmaceutical drugs in favor of more experimental treatments.

Kennedy, who the president-elect picked earlier this month, has repeatedly expressed distrust for pharmaceuticals, and criticized the FDA for its “aggressive suppression of psychedelics”. On his podcast, he called the US “the sickest country in the world”, blaming its healthcare system for devoting billions to “the pills and the potions and the powders rather than on actually getting people healthy, building their immune systems”.

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Republican senator: ‘We’ll have lots of questions’ for Trump’s controversial picks

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Democrat Tammy Duckworth says Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard are unqualified for roles Trump wants them to fill

A prominent Republican US senator pledged on Sunday that Congress would not give blanket approval to Donald Trump’s controversial cabinet picks ahead of the congressional confirmation process, as a leading Democrat challenged the qualifications of some of them to serve.

Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma predicted lawmakers in the upper chamber will have tough questions in particular for the former Democratic congresswoman, Tulsi Gabbard, who was chosen by the president-elect as director of national security for his second administration.

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Hegseth’s views on women in combat ‘flat-out wrong’, Senator Duckworth says

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Democratic combat veteran says Trump’s pick for defense secretary is ‘inordinately unqualified’ for the job

Democratic US Senator Tammy Duckworth, who lost both her legs after the army Black Hawk attack helicopter she was piloting was shot down during the US war in Iraq, on Sunday ramped up criticism of Donald Trump’s nominee for defense secretary who argues women shouldn’t be on the front line.

Pete Hegseth is the former Fox News host and soldier tapped by the president-elect to lead the Pentagon and oversee the largest military force in the world, but he is steeped in controversy.

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Trump’s eldest son emerges as key voice influencing cabinet picks – report

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President-elect has become particularly reliant on his Donald Jr for advice, sources tell Reuters

Donald Trump Jr has emerged as the family’s most influential adviser of the moment as his father builds the most controversial cabinet in modern US history, sources close to Donald Trump’s eldest son say.

Trump Jr has in some cases promoted inexperienced loyalists over more qualified candidates for top positions in president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration.

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Trump picks Brooke Rollins to lead Department of Agriculture

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Choice of president of America First Policy Institute completes top cabinet picks for president-elect

Donald Trump has chosen Brooke Rollins, president of the America First Policy Institute, to be agriculture secretary.

“As our next Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke will spearhead the effort to protect American Farmers, who are truly the backbone of our Country,” the US president-elect said in a statement.

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John Bolton rips into Trump’s pick for counter-terrorism chief Sebastian Gorka

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Trump’s former national security adviser says Gorka is the ‘worst cabinet appointment in recent American history’

Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton has laid into Sebastian Gorka, the president-elect’s pick for counter-terrorism chief, as a “conman” whose selection is not “going to bode well for counter-terrorism efforts when the [national security council’s] senior director is somebody like that”.

Trump praised Gorka, an immigrant from Hungary, as a “tireless advocate for the America First Agenda and the MAGA Movement”.

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Trump’s pick for budget head worked on Project 2025 – and wants to bypass the US Senate

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Russell Vought led the Office of Management and Budget during Trump’s first term and is pushing for a workaround to install president-elect’s picks

Even before Donald Trump tapped Project 2025 architect Russell Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for a second time, Vought’s thinktank had gotten to work in recent weeks lobbying for recess appointments – a means by which Trump could attempt to circumvent the US Senate’s confirmation process.

Vought, who served as director of the OMB during Trump’s first term and of the thinktank he launched in 2021, is advocating for the archaic method to install Trump’s nominees, including Vought himself and some of Trump’s most heavily criticized picks.

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Trump makes flurry of choices including labor secretary and CDC chief

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President-elect picks Fox News personalities and key loyalists as he looks to fill crucial agency and advisory roles

In a flurry of announcements late Friday evening, Donald Trump released his picks for some of the most important agency and advisory roles in the country, further revealing his preference for Fox News personalities and those that are loyal to him.

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Trump’s picks of loyalists for financial posts ensures his economic agenda is unimpeded

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Howard Lutnick and Scott Bessent, commerce and Treasury nominees respectively, are sure to ignore economist’s warnings and follow Trump’s lead

Certain events happen during every presidential campaign. The parties crown their candidates. The candidates debate on live TV, with millions watching. Tens of millions heads to the polls. And at some point in this process, Jamie Dimon will be tipped as the next Treasury secretary.

Sure enough, the veteran boss of JPMorgan Chase – Wall Street’s de facto ambassador to the world – was, indeed, linked with the role this time around as the Kamala Harris and Donald Trump campaigns mulled their options in the final stretch of the 2024 presidential election.

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Trump picks hedge-fund investor Scott Bessent for treasury secretary

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Job is one of most powerful in Washington with huge influence over US economy and financial markets

Donald Trump nominated Scott Bessent, a longtime hedge-fund investor who taught at Yale University for several years, to be his treasury secretary, a statement from Trump confirmed on Friday. The job is one of the most powerful in Washington, with huge influence over America’s gigantic economy and financial markets.

The move to select Bessent is the latest as the president-elect starts to pull together the administration for his second term in the White House. The process so far has been marked largely by a focus more on personal and political loyalty to Trump than expertise and experience.

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Trump selects key Project 2025 figure Russ Vought to head budget office

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Vought, who led Office of Management and Budget during Trump’s first term, deeply involved in rightwing manifesto

Donald Trump has chosen Russ Vought, a key architect of Project 2025, the controversial conservative plan to overhaul the government, to be director of the US Office of Management and Budget, a powerful agency that helps decide the president’s policy priorities and how to pay for them.

Vought, who was OMB chief during Trump’s first term, would play a major role in setting budget priorities and implementing Trump’s campaign promise to roll back government regulations.

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Donald Trump announces picks for labor and treasury departments, CDC and surgeon general in flurry of nominations – as it happened

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In a new interview on Friday, Matt Gaetz revealed that he will not be returning to Congress next year.

Speaking to conservative talk show host Charlie Kirk, Gaetz, who withdrew his attorney general nomination yesterday, said:

“I’m still going to be in the fight, but it’s going to be from a new perch. I do not intend to join the 119th Congress,” CNN reports.

“There are a number of fantastic Floridians who’ve stepped up to run for my seat, people who have inspired with their heroism, with their public service. And I’m actually excited to see northwest Florida go to new heights and have great representation… I’m going to be fighting for President Trump. I’m going to be doing whatever he asks of me, as I always have. But I think that eight years is probably enough time in the United States Congress.”

“While the momentum was strong, it is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition.”

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Trump hush-money case sentencing postponed indefinitely

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President-elect spokesperson hails ‘decisive win’ as Judge Juan Merchan declines to provide new sentencing date

The sentencing in Donald Trump’s Manhattan criminal hush-money case has been postponed indefinitely while attorneys on both sides argue over its future given his recent election victory.

Judge Juan Merchan, who is overseeing Trump’s case, did not provide a new sentencing date in his one-page scheduling order on Friday.

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Leading Republican strategist rebukes Trump for bringing ‘chaos’ back

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Karl Rove says in Wall Street Journal that Trump has ‘created chaos and controversy’ before he’s even in office

As Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump’s first nominee for attorney general, withdrew after eight days amid allegations of sexual misconduct and more, and as Trump’s new pick, Pam Bondi, faced scrutiny of her own, a leading Republican strategist rebuked the president-elect for bringing “chaos” back to Washington.

“Inadequate vetting, impatience, disregard for qualifications and a thirst for revenge have created chaos and controversy for Mr Trump before he’s even in office,” said Karl Rove, once known as George W Bush’s “Brain”, in the Wall Street Journal.

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