Politics

By Ted Hesson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court on Friday ruled against outgoing Democratic President Joe Biden’s effort to protect immigrants illegally brought to the U.S. as children, siding with Texas just days before Republican President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals largely upheld a 2023 lower court judge’s decision that found a Biden administration regulation aimed at strengthening the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program did not remedy its legal deficiencies, but limited the scope of the ruling to the state of Texas.

The program for so-called “Dreamer” immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children provides 537,000 people with deportation relief and work permits, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data. The appeals court left in place a stay that allows current DACA enrollees to retain the quasi-legal status pending the outcome of litigation.

Trump plans to embark on a sweeping immigration crackdown after he takes office on Monday and aims to deport record numbers of immigrants in the U.S. illegally. The Republican president-elect sought to terminate the DACA program during his 2017-2021 presidency but was rebuffed by the Supreme Court. In a December interview, Trump said he was open to a deal with Democrats to protect Dreamers.

Biden issued a regulation in 2022 that aimed to fortify the legal standing of the DACA program but was challenged by Texas and a coalition of states with Republican attorneys general. The states argued DACA saddled their states with added healthcare and education costs.

Democrats and immigration advocates say DACA enrollees came to the U.S. through no fault of their own and now are law-abiding, contributing members of American society.

About 81 percent of DACA enrollees were Mexican, according to USCIS data. Other top countries include El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — With Donald Trump’s return to the White House only days away, Kamala Harris ‘ staff packed into her ceremonial office to watch her sign the desk, a tradition performed by her predecessors for decades. Her husband, Doug Emhoff, stood behind her to take a photo as she wielded her Sharpie marker.

“It is not my nature to go quietly into the night,” Harris said Thursday. “So don’t worry about that.”

But what is next for her?

“I’ll keep you posted,” she said.

Harris hasn’t made any plans for after leaving office Monday, apart from flying home to California. It will be the first time since 2004, when she became San Francisco’s district attorney, that she hasn’t held elected office.

There’s talk that she’ll write a book and speculation that she could run for governor or maybe president again. At 60 years old, Harris is still young in a political world where the last two presidents have set records as the oldest ever elected.

Donna Brazile, a longtime leader in the Democratic Party, recalled telling Harris that she needs to take a break and “learn what it’s like to oversleep” for a while. They both laughed, and Brazile said, “Yeah, you’ll never go back to being ordinary.”

Brazile was campaign manager for Al Gore, the last sitting vice president to run for the top job.

“I’ve had more people call me about what’s next for Kamala Harris than called me about what’s next for Al Gore,” she said.

Harris’ term was both ordinary and extraordinary. Like many of her predecessors, she spent her time tending to a portfolio of issues — migration, abortion rights and maternal health among them — and representing the country overseas. Sometimes she struggled to distinguish herself, a common challenge in a job that comes with little constitutional responsibility.

But Harris also made history as the first woman, Black person or person of South Asian descent to serve as vice president. And last year, Harris was thrust into an unprecedented situation when President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid and endorsed her as his successor.

There were only 107 days left in the campaign, leaving Harris in a sprint for the presidency. She instantly reset the terms of the race against Trump, who is nearly two decades older than her, but was unable to defeat him.

Many Democrats blamed Biden for running in the first place and putting Harris in an impossible position. Harris faced her own criticism, too.

Some said she should have sent a more populist message instead of focusing on Trump’s antidemocratic threats by campaigning with Liz Cheney, a former Republican congresswoman. She also failed to separate herself from Biden, who remains deeply unpopular with voters.

Minyon Moore, who chaired last year’s Democratic National Convention, downplayed the criticisms by saying “ifa, woulda, coulda, shoulda.”

With Harris facing such an unusual campaign, Moore said, “there was no road map for what she should have done.”

Harris hasn’t answered questions about her loss, nor has she shared her own perspective on the election. Her public remarks have been limited to rallying cries for students and others who are disappointed by Trump’s victory, especially after Democrats described him as an existential threat to the country.

“No one can walk away,” Harris said in one speech. “We must stay in the fight. Every one of us.”

Harris hoped to close out her term with an around-the-world trip to Singapore, Bahrain and Germany, a final opportunity to showcase her role on foreign policy. But she decided to stay in Washington as wildfires spread around Los Angeles. Her own house, in the Brentwood neighborhood, has been in an evacuation zone.

Harris didn’t travel to the area because she was concerned about diverting local resources from responding to the fire, according to an official in her office who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss her planning.

Despite canceling her overseas trip, Harris has signaled her interest in remaining involved on the global stage. She’s spent time in her final week in office making calls to foreign leaders including King Abdullah II of Jordan, Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo.

On Wednesday, she was in the Oval Office to watch Biden give his farewell address. He described her as “a great partner,” and they embraced after the speech.

Biden chose Harris as his running mate after her first presidential campaign stalled four years ago. After taking office, her schedule was limited by the coronavirus pandemic and her obligations on Capitol Hill. With the U.S. Senate evenly divided, she was often called on to cast tiebreaking votes, eventually setting a record as she helped advance judicial nominees and landmark legislation.

“She had to find her role,” said Joel Goldstein, a historian who has studied the vice presidency. “It took some time to figure it out.”

Moore remembered an Oval Office meeting with Harris and other senior advisers as Biden deliberated whom to nominate for the U.S. Supreme Court. Although it was unlikely that a liberal justice would have many opportunities to write majority opinions on a court dominated by conservatives, Moore said Harris focused on which candidate would harness the platform to issue dissenting opinions.

Harris wanted “somebody who could think through the nuances of writing those dissensions,” Moore said. Biden nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson, fulfilling his promise to put a Black woman on the bench, and she’s often drawn attention for her sharp dissenting opinions.

One of Harris’ original tasks, reducing migration from Central America, became a political burden. Republicans described her as the “border czar” and blamed her for illegal crossings. However, fewer migrants came from the countries where Harris focused her efforts.

She met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Munich shortly before the Russian invasion began three years ago, and she spent a week in Africa to lay the groundwork for renewed U.S. engagement.

Harris also traveled three times to Southeast Asia as the administration tried to reorient foreign policy to confront China’s influence.

“She had the perception that we could use even more of an emphasis on this occasionally overlooked part of the world,” said Phil Gordon, Harris’ national security adviser.

Abortion rights became a defining issue for Harris after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Biden was more hesitant on the topic, and Harris started headlining the White House’s efforts.

Lorraine Voles, Harris’ chief of staff, said the court decision was “a turning point” for the vice president.

“That opened up a lane for her in a way that maybe wasn’t there previously,” she said. “People were not focused on the issue of maternal health and reproductive health until people began to see it threatened.”

Nadia Brown, a Georgetown University government professor who focuses on Black women and politics, said Harris will “certainly go down in the history books” for breaking down racial and gender barriers in politics.

She said Harris’ time as vice president helped expand the views of “everyday Americans who might have misconceptions about what a leader could be or should be.”

The only question left is what Harris decides to do now.

“It’s not over,” Brown said. “But I’m not sure what that next chapter is.”

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The Texas judge who previously halted approval of the nation’s most common method of abortion ruled Thursday that three states can move ahead with another attempt to roll back federal rules and make it harder for people across the U.S. to access the abortion drug mifepristone.

Idaho, Kansas and Missouri requested late last year to pursue the case in federal court in Amarillo, Texas, after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a narrow ruling finding that abortion opponents who first filed the case lacked the legal right to sue.

The only federal judge based in Amarillo is Matthew Kacsmaryk, a nominee of former President Donald Trump who in recent years ruled against the Biden administration on several issues, including immigration and LGBTQ protections.

The states want the federal Food and Drug Administration to prohibit telehealth prescriptions for mifepristone and require that it be used only in the first seven weeks of pregnancy instead of the current limit of 10 weeks. They also want to require three in-person doctor office visits instead of none to get the drug.

That’s because, the states argue, efforts to provide access to the pills “undermine state abortion laws and frustrate state law enforcement,” according to court documents.

Meanwhile, Kacsmaryk said they shouldn’t be automatically discounted from suing in Texas just because they’re outside the state.

The American Civil Liberties Union said Thursday that the case should have been settled when the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously preserved access to mifepristone last year, where the justices issued a narrow ruling finding that abortion opponents who first filed the case lacked the legal right to sue.

Kacsmaryk’s decision “has left the door open for extremist politicians to continue attacking medication abortion in his courtroom,” the ACLU said.

The ruling comes days before Trump begins his second term as president, so his administration will likely be representing the FDA in the case. Trump has repeatedly said abortion is an issue for the states, not the federal government, though he’s also stressed on the campaign trail that he appointed justices to the Supreme Court who were in the majority when striking down the national right to abortion in 2022.

In the years since, abortion opponents have increasingly targeted abortion pills, largely due to most U.S. abortions being carried out using drugs rather than through surgical procedures. So far, at least four states — Indiana, Missouri, New Hampshire and Tennessee — have seen Republicans introduce bills aimed at banning pills. None take the same approach as Louisiana, which last year classified the drugs as controlled dangerous substances.

Previously, Kacsmaryk sided with a group of anti-abortion doctors and organizations that wanted the FDA to be forced to rescind entirely its approval of mifepristone in 2000.

Yet the states are pursuing a narrower challenge. Rather than target the approval entirely, they sought to undo a series of FDA updates that have eased access.

But while the states’ leaders are pushing to severely limit access to the drugs, voters in Missouri sent a different message in November when they approved a ballot measure to undo one of the nation’s strictest bans. In Idaho, abortion is banned at all stages of pregnancy. In Kansas, abortion is generally legal up until the 22nd week of pregnancy.

Across the U.S., 13 states under Republican legislative control bar abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with some exceptions, and four more ban it after the first six weeks — before women often know they’re pregnant.

Some Democratic-controlled states have adopted laws seeking to shield from investigations and prosecutions the doctors who prescribe the pills via telehealth appointments and mail them to patients in states with bans. Those prescriptions are a major reason a study found that residents of states with bans are getting abortions in about the same numbers as they were before the bans were in place.

Mifepristone is usually used in combination with a second drug for medication abortion, which has accounted for more than three-fifths of all abortions in the U.S. since the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.

The drugs are different than Plan B and other emergency contraceptives that are usually taken within three days after possible conception, weeks before women know they’re pregnant. Studies have found they’re generally safe and result in completed abortions more than 97% of the time, which is less effective than procedural abortions.

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Whitehurst reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Kimberlee Kruesi in Nashville, Tennessee, contributed.

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By Leah Douglas

(Reuters) – Immigrant farmworkers are preparing for incoming U.S. president Donald Trump’s promise of mass deportations, including by assigning guardians for their children if they are detained, according to groups providing them legal support.

Rising demand for such legal services reflects anxiety that Trump will follow through on a campaign vow to deport millions of undocumented immigrants once he is sworn in to office Jan. 20, something that could have an outsized impact on the country’s agricultural sector, which heavily relies on their labor.

About half of hired farmworkers nationwide lack legal immigration status, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and farm trade groups have warned deporting them could bring the country’s food production to a halt.

“The administration is not yet sworn in, but people are already afraid,” said Sarait Martinez, executive director of the Centro Binacional para el Desarrollo Indígena Oaxaqueño (CBDIO), an organization that supports indigenous Mexican farmworkers in the Central Valley of California.

Representatives of four U.S. rural and legal advocacy organizations, including CBDIO, told Reuters they have seen as much as a ten-fold increase in interest from immigrant farmworkers in workshops and resources they provide on what to do if confronted by immigration officials and how to ensure their family’s security if they are detained.

The workshops can include role-play confrontations with immigration officials and instructions on how to prepare for potential enforcement: like filling out forms assigning temporary guardians to their children, assigning an alternate to pick up pay, or giving permission for their children to travel internationally in the event they are deported.

Alfredo, a farmworker in Washington State who asked to be identified only by his first name due to concerns he could be targeted, said he is taking part in some of the trainings so he can pass along what he learns to fellow workers.

“We are definitely very concerned,” he told Reuters. “We really take pride in doing farm work, but it’s becoming very hard to look forward to going out to work.”

AGAINST THE CLOCK

In his first administration from 2017-21, Trump’s government conducted worksite raids at poultry processing plants and produce processing facilities in Nebraska.

The incoming Trump administration has said it will prioritize the deportation of people in the country illegally who pose a public safety or national security threat, but has not ruled out extending deportations more broadly to undocumented farmworkers.

“President Trump will enlist every federal power and coordinate with state authorities to institute the largest deportation operation of illegal criminals, drug dealers, and human traffickers in American history while simultaneously lowering costs for families and strengthening our workforce,” said Karoline Leavitt, spokeswoman for the Trump administration transition team.

Farm industry trade groups are worried about the potential impact on food production, and especially in California.

A third of U.S. vegetables and three-quarters of fruits and nuts are produced in the state, along with huge quantities of dairy and livestock, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

All that food is harvested and processed by about 400,000 farmworkers, according to state employment data. And about 75% of those are undocumented workers, according to the University of California-Merced Community and Labor Center.

Despite the high proportion of undocumented immigrants, there is little access to appropriate legal services for farmworkers in some of the state’s largest agricultural counties, said Ivette Chaidez Villarreal, civic engagement program director at Valley Voices, a workers’ rights and voter education group in the Central Valley.

Since November’s election, the organization has grown its work on immigration services due to a high volume of legal questions and requests from farmworkers. It is also working with other California groups to create a rapid response network to support workers who may be subject to raids, Villarreal said.

Farmworkers often struggle to access legal services because of their rural location, said Patricia Ortiz, immigration legal director at California Rural Legal Assistance, which is developing resources for farmworkers.

“It puts them in a more precarious situation than other workers,” she said.

Undocumented workers who have U.S.-born children are particularly worried about being separated from their families, said Martinez of CBDIO. About 4.4 million U.S.-born children live in a household with at least one unauthorized immigrant parent, according to the Pew Research Center.

Martinez said many of the workers her group is helping speak languages like Mixteco and Zapoteco, and not Spanish or English, and are seeking help with immigration paperwork and securing passports for their U.S.-born children.

Across the country in upstate New York, the Cornell Farmworker Program has increased its immigration workshops ten-fold since before the election, and expects to soon hold one every day, said director Mary Jo Dudley.

Using role-play, trainers show workers ways to respond to immigration officials if stopped on the street or approached at their homes, Dudley said.

“We’re working against the clock,” she said.

(Reporting by Leah Douglas; Editing by Aurora Ellis)

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By Raphael Satter and Alexandra Alper

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – When Donald Trump ordered the U.S. government to ban popular Chinese social media app TikTok in 2020, he said the “aggressive action” was necessary “to protect our national security.”

Now the Republican president-elect, who will assume his second term in the White House on Monday, is seeking to protect TikTok from a new law that gives TikTok parent ByteDance until Sunday to sell the app to an American buyer or be banned in the U.S. President Joe Biden, with just three days left in office, is being urged to give ByteDance more time to sell the app.

“We will put measures in place to keep TikTok from going dark,” Trump’s incoming national security adviser, U.S. Representative Mike Waltz, told Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” on Thursday.

So how could Trump or Biden prevent TikTok from going dark?

BIDEN TO THE RESCUE?

The TikTok law gives the president the authority to grant a one-time extension of up to 90 days on the deadline for a sale, if he certifies that there is a path for – and evidence of progress toward – a divestment, including “binding legal agreements,” which the law does not define.

Meeting those requirements would make it feasible for Biden to give ByteDance a nearly three-month reprieve, according to Colin Costello, an attorney with Freshfields and a former official in the Office of Director of National Intelligence. He said the binding legal agreement criteria could potentially be met by the signing of a simple “term sheet” between ByteDance and a prospective buyer, although no such deal appears on the horizon.

But to halt the ban on a longer term basis, Costello said, could require incoming President Trump to direct his Justice Department to “deprioritize” or not enforce the law, probably for a specified period of time. That would take a page from former President Barack Obama, whose administration in 2012 decided to use “prosecutorial discretion” to grant deportation relief to immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally as children.

In TikTok’s case it could give Congress time to consider a new bill that would give ByteDance another 270 days to find an American buyer before being shut down.

Still, the new law threatens to penalize the tech companies, that make TikTok available via their app stores — Apple Inc and Alphabet’s Google — and it is unclear whether their lawyers would risk continuing to offer the app.

“That would put Apple and Google … in a real spot,” said Costello. “Here they would have the president saying he was not going to enforce the law although they would still be in clear violation of the law.”

TRUMP COULD GET ‘CREATIVE’

Trump could issue an executive order, invoking the sweeping International Emergency Economic Powers Act, and claim that keeping TikTok is beneficial for national security, said Anupam Chander, a professor at Georgetown University’s Georgetown Law School who has followed the issue.

Trump could argue, for example, that such a move would keep users from fleeing to Chinese app RedNote, which is run directly from China and subject to Communist Party censorship. The order could tell tech companies like Apple or Google that they would face no consequences for flouting the law, for example by keeping TikTok in their app stores past the legally mandated deadline.

Such a scenario would not be without its challenges, Chander said.

“When the president can refuse to enforce the direct mandate of the law and promise the subjects of the law that it will not be enforced on them, that opens a can of worms,” he said.

“I don’t want to say it’s illegal,” he said. “It’s creative and it’s an affront to Congress, but when you give the president open-ended national security authority, he might exercise it in unexpected ways.”

SUPREME COURT TO RESCUE

The smoothest path for a TikTok rescue would be for the Supreme Court to issue a stay in the lawsuit the app has filed against the government, allowing the incoming Trump administration to make a fresh argument to the court to the effect that TikTok wasn’t so bad after all.

That would still represent a dramatic break from Trump’s past attacks on TikTok, but it would avoid plunging the government into a legal or constitutional morass.

But time is running short. The court has only one business day between now and Sunday, when the law’s divestment order kicks in.

“The Supreme Court could still rescue President Trump’s promise to keep TikTok alive,” Chander said. “We may find out tomorrow that it’s too late.”

(Reporting by Raphael Satter and Alexandra Alper; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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As he assumes the presidency for a second time, Donald Trump brings with him a broad expanse of business relationships and financial entanglements — and the possibility that those associations could influence his decision-making in the White House.

Trump’s team dismisses such concerns. “President Trump removed himself from his multibillion-dollar real estate empire to run for office and forewent his government salary, becoming the first President to actually lose net worth while serving in the White House,” Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “Unlike most politicians, President Trump didn’t get into politics for profit — he’s fighting because he loves the people of this country and wants to make America great again.”

But questions remain. Here’s a look at the various connections and potential conflicts in Trump’s second administration.

Launched in 2021, Winning Team Publishing is run by Donald Trump Jr. and Sergio Gor, a Trump adviser selected by the president-elect to run the White House personnel office. Gor also led the pro-Trump super PAC Right for America.

Trump has earned at least $11.6 million in royalties over the last two years from two of his books produced by Winning Team, according to financial disclosure statements filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.

“Letters to Trump” is an anthology of correspondence from celebrities and politicians written to him over the years. “Our Journey Together” features hundreds of photos from his first presidential term with captions “handpicked” by Trump. Another coffee table book, “Save America,” features reminiscences from Trump’s presidential campaigns and term in office, as well as a lengthy reflection about his brush with death during a July assassination attempt during a rally in Pennsylvania.

Campaign finance records show Trump’s political fundraising committees have paid Winning Team Publishing more than $242,000 for unspecified books and printing services.

The company also publishes titles written by Trump’s staunchest supporters, including GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro and conservative provocateur Charlie Kirk.

Trump’s name and image are branded on a dizzying array of merchandise that he promotes and profits from through licensing agreements, including Bibles, diamond-encrusted watches, gold-colored sneakers and guitars that cost as much as $10,000.

Thousands of copies of the “God Bless the USA” Bible Trump sells were printed in China, a country he has repeatedly accused of stealing American jobs and engaging in unfair trade practices. As president, Trump would be able to exempt Bibles and other religious texts from hefty tariffs he’s threatened to impose on imported Chinese products.

Trump’s endorsement of a line of guitars led to a “cease and desist” letter from Nashville-based Gibson Guitars. A company representative said in a brief statement the design of the Trump guitars infringes upon Gibson’s exclusive trademarks, particularly the body shape of the company’s iconic Les Paul model.

Judgments of more than half a billion dollars from civil lawsuits hang over Trump and will be more difficult to avoid than the criminal cases brought by the federal government and then abandoned after his election in November.

A New York judge ordered Trump and his companies earlier this year to pay more than $450 million after ruling he had manipulated his net worth in financial statements to secure favorable loans. That penalty came shortly after Trump was ordered to pay $83.3 million to the writer E. Jean Carroll for damaging her reputation after she accused him of sexual assault. A separate jury awarded Carroll $5 million from Trump for sexual abuse and defamation.

Trump has appealed the rulings in the fraud case and one of the Carroll cases. His latest financial disclosure list more than $101 million in liabilities stemming from the two cases.

As president, Trump can’t pardon himself for penalties imposed in civil cases unrelated to his official government duties, said Richard Briffault, a professor at Columbia Law School in New York. And because the trials have already occurred, he’ll have difficulty arguing the cases are an undue burden on his time.

The constellation of high-end golf resorts Trump owns or manages generated hundreds of millions of dollars for him in 2024 and may pull in even greater sums once he’s back in the Oval Office.

Trump’s financial disclosure reported close to $267 million in “golf-related” income, with another $161 million in combined “golf and hotel” proceeds from his Doral golf club in Miami.

During his first term, Trump frequently promoted his golf courses and routinely played at them with a large, taxpayer-funded entourage in tow, leading to criticism that he was using the power of the presidency to enrich himself. Trump pushed to host the international Group of Seven summit at the Doral property in 2019. But he dropped the plan amid accusations he would violate the emoluments clause of the Constitution that bans presidents from receiving gifts or payments from foreign governments.

The golf courses may also attract foreign officials and special interest groups hoping to gain access and curry favor by spending large sums at Trump properties.

Since the start of Trump’s first term in office, the cost to join his private Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, has soared to $1 million, allowing wealthy people to mix pleasure with politics and government business during his frequent visits to the club.

While Trump collects income from Mar-a-Lago — $111 million over the last two years — he’s been accused of charging the U.S. Secret Service “exorbitant” room rates of more than $800 per night for agents assigned to protect him when he traveled there and to other Trump family properties.

Who Trump meets with while at Mar-a-Lago and what he discusses are largely hidden from public view. The Secret Service has no electronic systems to screen or monitor presidential visitors to the estate, according to a 2020 federal appeals court ruling.

Trump launched his social media platform, Truth Social, in early 2022, after he was banned from major sites such as Facebook and the platform formerly known as Twitter following the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

While he’s since been reinstated to both, Trump has often used Truth Social for more personal commentary, leaving traffic on X and other platforms for more formal statements and pronouncements. The company hasn’t disclosed how many users it has, so it’s hard to know how broad Trump’s reach there is.

But what is clear is that Trump is the primary player in Trump Media & Technology Group, which started trading on the NASDAQ stock market in March. The incoming president has a majority stake in the company, and said shortly after his general election win that he had “NO INTENTION OF SELLING” his shares, which have significantly boosted Trump’s net worth, and at that time were valued at around $3.5 billion.

Trump has promised to make America the “crypto capital of the planet” as he returns to the White House, a promise that would likely pay off for him personally.

Amidst the 2024 campaign, Trump launched a new venture to trade cryptocurrencies that he has promoted on the same social media accounts he used for his campaign. His two eldest sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, have also posted about their new platform, called World Liberty Financial, as has his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, who is married to Eric and also serves as co-chair of the Republican National Committee.

The new moneymaking venture could explode in value if Trump pushes through legislative and regulatory changes long sought by crypto advocates.

During his first term, Trump said he was “not a fan” of cryptocurrency but he has since taken a more favorable view — from announcing in May that the campaign would begin accepting donations in cryptocurrency to attending a Bitcoin conference in Nashville, promising to make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the planet” and create a Bitcoin “strategic reserve” using the currency that the government currently holds.

Several of Trump’s cabinet nominees, including Commerce Secretary nominee Howard Lutnick and Trump’s pick for the Securities and Exchange Commission, Paul Atkins, have substantial cryptocurrency investments.

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NEW YORK (AP) — The Democratic Party’s left wing has warned for decades that America is moving toward an oligarchy in which a handful of billionaires controls much of the nation’s wealth and political power.

President Joe Biden elevated such concerns from the Oval Office for the first time this week, just before he leaves office. In the hours that followed Biden’s farewell address, progressives responded with a combination of appreciation, bemusement and frustration.

“Now he tells us,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., wrote on X, referring also to Biden’s ideas for the U.S. Supreme Court. “Biden speaks out against dark money, for climate action, and for SCOTUS term limits. I pressed four years for this speech.”

For much of the last four years, progressives were among Biden’s biggest cheerleaders. And many remain supportive. But for others, the Democratic president’s words were too little and far too late as the leader of a political party that has increasingly welcomed big-dollar donors even as it railed against President-elect Donald Trump’s cozy relationships with others, tech titan Elon Musk chief among them.

The debate over the influence of billionaires in U.S. politics could have major implications for the policies that come out of Washington and the political landscape in future elections.

While Trump has cast himself as a fighter for the working class, the incoming Republican president is set to assemble the wealthiest presidential administration in history. He has tapped more than a dozen billionaires to take government posts, including Musk, the world’s richest man, with a net worth exceeding $400 billion.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is co-hosting a reception with billionaire Republican donors next week for Trump’s inauguration, the latest sign of the Facebook founder’s embrace of the president-elect.

Democrats hope to undermine Trump’s appeal with working-class voters by casting him as beholden to the billionaire class and trying to tie him to Musk, who once backed Biden and his Democratic predecessor, President Barack Obama.

According to the White House archives, Biden had not uttered the word “oligarchy” in the context of American politics until this week. And yet he made the influence of billionaires in U.S. politics a major focus of his final scheduled Oval Office address.

“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead,” Biden said with Vice President Kamala Harris and his family looking on. He pointed to “a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a few ultra-wealthy people and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked.”

Few Democratic members of Congress criticized the outgoing president publicly, as Whitehouse did, but key figures in the party’s far-left wing — especially those close to independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders — were less cautious.

“It’s cowardly that after representing the oligarchs for 50 years in office, he calls out this threat to our nation with just days left in his presidency,” said Nina Turner, a national co-chair for Sanders’ last presidential campaign. “(Biden) enabled, benefited from and emboldened the system that threatens us all, while he will ride off into the sunset and won’t feel the harms of what’s been built.”

White House spokesman Andrew Bates pushed back against such criticism, noting that many party leaders praised the speech.

“President Biden’s call to action resonated with a wide range of Democrats and others because it is in line with the values that, over these last four years, led to the most significant breakthroughs for working Americans since the New Deal,” Bates said. “Like he said (on Wednesday), it’s crucial to keep that flame lit and continue working against abuse of power by rich special interests and billionaires who want to profit ant the expense of American taxpayers.”

Tiffany Muller, executive director of End Citizens United, a Democratic-aligned organization fighting to eliminate big money from politics, penned an op-ed Thursday describing Trump’s inauguration next week as “the beginning of an oligarchy that’s been 15 years in the making.”

She acknowledged that the trend, enabled by the 2010 Supreme Court ruling for which her group is named that allowed wealthy donors to bypass political donation limits, is not exclusive to Trump’s party.

“To be clear, Citizens United has allowed both parties to raise money from the billionaire class and large corporations. And Vice President Kamala Harris pulled in more total donations in the 2024 presidential race than her opponent did,” Muller wrote. “But Trump is elevating his donors to major positions within the federal government.”

Sanders, the self-described democratic socialist who has warned of a rising oligarchy in the United States for decades, thanked Biden for his choice of words. The Vermont senator cited the president again during a confirmation hearing for Trump’s pick for Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a billionaire himself.

“What Biden said last night is that we’re moving toward an oligarchy,” Sanders said as he questioned Bessent. “Do you think that when so few people have so much wealth and so much political power that that is an oligarchic form of society?”

Bessent pushed back: “Well, I would note that President Biden gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to two people who I think would qualify for his oligarchs.”

Bessent was not wrong.

Biden earlier this month awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor to Democratic megadonor George Soros and billionaire fashion magnate Ralph Lauren. And in the closing days of the presidential election, Harris’ campaign elevated Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, as a top surrogate, though Cuban was not critical to her campaign the same way Musk was to Trump’s with his advocacy on his X social media platform and his funding of pro-Trump super PACs.

Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, described “a sense of whiplash,” suggesting that Biden is “desperate to placate” some billionaires while condemning others. Hauser said he wished that Biden’s team and its allies on the center-left were as pugnacious over the last two years.

Faiz Shakir, a former Sanders campaign chief who launched a bid for Democratic National Committee chair earlier this week, said in an interview that Trump delivered a more compelling message to working-class voters in the last election at times. Shakir was critical of Cuban’s role in the closing days of the election as well.

Marianne Williamson, who ran a long-shot presidential primary campaign against Biden and is now running for DNC chair, declined to give Biden credit for his latest remarks.

“This is news?” she said of the outgoing president’s assessment. She added that America has been ruled by an oligarchy for years and called tech billionaires like Musk “Oligarchy 2.0.”

Neither Shakir nor Williamson is considered a front-runner in the DNC chair’s race. And those who are have been less critical of the influence of money in Democratic politics.

Elsewhere in the progressive movement, there was some appreciation that Biden raised concerns about oligarchy in American politics at all.

“Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex warning gave language to an idea that has been referenced ever since,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “Biden’s warning about oligarchs, calling on Americans to stand guard, is a call to action that will be felt for years.”

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Cooper reported from Phoenix. AP writer Isabella Volmert in Detroit contributed.

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By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A growing number of lawmakers are urging President Joe Biden to grant a reprieve to prevent TikTok from going dark in the United States as soon as Sunday, warning millions of creators and businesses could be hurt.

“We’re asking for the ability to be able to try rationally to resolve this issue so TikTok does not go dark,” Democratic Senator Ed Markey said on Thursday. “Let’s take a breath, try to step back, buy some time, try to figure this out.”

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer spoke to Biden urging him to extend by 90 days a deadline for Chinese-owner ByteDance to sell TikTok U.S. assets and prevent a ban of the app used by 170 million Americans, an aide to Schumer said.

“It’s clear that more time is needed to find an American buyer and not disrupt the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans, of so many influencers who have built up a good network of followers,” Schumer said.

Congress in April ordered ByteDance to sell TikTok within 270 days, citing national security concerns. The Justice Department said this month “TikTok’s collection of reams of sensitive data about 170 million Americans and their contacts makes it a powerful tool for espionage” for China.

A White House official said on Thursday that given that the Jan. 19 deadline date is “over a holiday weekend a day before inauguration, it will be up to the next administration to implement.” The White House previously said Biden did not plan to issue an extension.

On Wednesday, Reuters reported TikTok plans to shut U.S. operations of its social media app on Sunday, when a federal ban is set to take effect, barring a last-minute reprieve.

Markey and fellow Democratic senators Cory Booker and Chris Van Hollen wrote Biden asking him to grant an extension.

“Over the past few days, it has become clear that, without action from you, TikTok will likely go dark on Sunday, with serious consequences for the 170 million Americans and 7 million businesses that rely on TikTok,” the senators wrote. “Your administration represents the last chance to avoid a TikTok shutdown on Sunday,” they wrote.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Leslie Adler and Bill Berkrot)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden is weighing action aimed at advancing the Equal Rights Amendment, which would prohibit discrimination based on sex, before he leaves office on Monday, the Washington Post reported on Thursday citing people familiar with discussions.

(Reporting by Jasper Ward; Editing by Chris Reese)

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NEW YORK (Reuters) – The United States should keep oversight of potential problems in the U.S. bond market, President-elect Donald Trump’s Treasury Secretary pick Scott Bessent told Congress on Thursday, referring to Wall Street billionaire Howard Lutnick’s plan to clear Treasury futures through a UK firm.

Lutnick’s BGC Group brokerage last year launched a futures exchange and plans to add U.S. Treasury futures in the first quarter this year.

That FMX Futures Exchange has partnered with London Stock Exchange Group’s London Clearing House (LCH), stoking concerns among some U.S. lawmakers that the United States could lose control and oversight of certain Treasury market trades.

With a value of around $28 trillion, the U.S. Treasury market is the world’s biggest bond market and is crucial to the U.S. government’s ability to finance itself, as well as for global financial stability.

During Bessent’s Thursday confirmation hearing, Senator John Cornyn asked him if “a proposal for an entity to clear U.S. Treasury futures at the London Clearing House” could have financial stability repercussions, alluding to FMX.

“Some argue that the Bank of England would have control over a, heaven forbid, a default scenario … in this critical market, instead of the U.S.,” he said.

Bessent said resolution authority over the U.S. Treasury market should remain in the country.

“It is important for the U.S., for U.S. Treasuries, for us to be able to resolve any stress issues in the market in the U.S.,” he said, adding he planned to investigate the issue.

Bessent noted that the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008, which caused global markets to plummet, was triggered by issues with its UK subsidiary.

Lutnick is a Trump backer who lost out on the Treasury Secretary role to Bessent but was instead picked to lead Trump’s trade and tariff strategy as head of the Commerce Department.

An FMX spokesperson said the FMX Futures Exchange is fully approved by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the U.S. derivatives regulator, to list U.S. Treasury futures contracts.

LCH is registered with the CFTC to clear futures contracts, a spokesperson at the London-headquartered company said.

“LCH holds all futures customer collateral in the U.S. onshore, as required by the CFTC for the protection of such funds and assets belonging to U.S. firms,” the spokesperson added in an emailed statement.

(Reporting by Davide Barbuscia in New York; Editing by Nia Williams)

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