Politics

By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Canada’s new finance minister Dominic LeBlanc and Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly met aides to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump in Florida on Friday to discuss the risks of imposing new trade tariffs, the Canadian government said.

Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on imports from Canada when he takes office in January unless the country reduces the flow of migrants and fentanyl into the United States.

LeBlanc’s office said in a statement after the meeting that it had a “positive, productive” engagement with Trump’s pick for Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, and the president-elect’s pick for Interior Secretary, Doug Burgum.

LeBlanc’s office said a day earlier that the two ministers would highlight “the negative impacts that the imposition of 25% tariffs on Canadian goods would have on both Canada and the United States.”

The meeting focused on Canada’s efforts to combat fentanyl trafficking and illegal migration and the ministers outlined efforts taken by Canada in that direction while agreeing to continue further talks in the coming weeks, the Canadian statement on Friday added.

Earlier this month, the Canadian government pledged to invest C$1.3 billion ($902.34 million) toward border security over six years under a plan that would focus on surveillance, intelligence and technology.

Friday’s meeting took place as Trump continues to belittle embattled Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on social media. On Christmas Day, he referred to the leader of the close U.S. ally as “Governor Justin Trudeau of Canada” and again alluded to the country becoming the 51st U.S. state.

Trudeau, whose party looks set to lose power early next year, is under increasing pressure from lawmakers in his own party to step down.

He flew to Florida in late November to meet with Trump after the Republican first vowed to slap new tariffs on Canada.

($1 = 1.4407 Canadian dollars)

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Ross Colvin, Nicholas Yong and Diane Craft)

source

NEW YORK (AP) — As a Democrat who immersed himself in political news during the presidential campaign, Ziad Aunallah has much in common with many Americans since the election. He’s tuned out.

“People are mentally exhausted,” said Aunallah, 45, of San Diego. “Everyone knows what is coming and we are just taking some time off.”

Television ratings — and now a new poll — clearly illustrate the phenomenon. About two-thirds of American adults say they have recently felt the need to limit media consumption about politics and government because of overload, according to the survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Smaller percentages of Americans are limiting their intake of news about overseas conflicts, the economy or climate change, the poll says. Politics stand out.

Election news on CNN and MSNBC was taking up too much of Sam Gude’s time before the election, said the 47-year-old electrician from Lincoln, Nebraska. “The last thing I want to watch right now is the interregnum,” said Gude, a Democrat and no fan of President-elect Donald Trump.

The poll, conducted in early December, found that about 7 in 10 Democrats say they are stepping back from political news. The percentage isn’t as high for Republicans, who have reason to celebrate Trump’s victory. Still, about 6 in 10 Republicans say they’ve felt the need to take some time off too, and the share for independents is similar.

The differences are far starker for the TV networks that have been consumed by political news.

After election night through Dec. 13, the prime-time viewership of MSNBC was an average of 620,000, down 54% from the pre-election audience this year, the Nielsen company said. For the same time comparison, CNN’s average of 405,000 viewers was down 45%.

At Fox News Channel, a favorite news network for Trump fans, the post-election average of 2.68 million viewers is up 13%, Nielsen said. Since the election, 72% of the people watching one of those three cable networks in the evening were watching Fox News, compared to 53% prior to election day.

A post-election slump for fans of the losing candidate is not a new trend for networks that have become heavily identified for a partisan audience. MSNBC had similar issues after Trump was elected in 2016. Same for Fox in 2020, although that was complicated by anger: many of its viewers were outraged then by the network’s crucial election night call of Arizona for the Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden, and sought alternatives.

MSNBC had its own anger issues after several “Morning Joe” viewers became upset that hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski visited Trump shortly after his victory last month. Yet while the show’s ratings are down 35% since Election Day, that’s a smaller drop than the network’s prime-time ratings.

CNN points out that while it has been suffering in the television ratings, its streaming and digital ratings have been consistent.

MSNBC can take some solace in history. In previous years, network ratings bounce back when the depression after an election loss lifts. When a new administration takes office, people who oppose it are frequently looking for a gathering place.

“I’ll be tuning back in once the clown show starts,” Aunallah said. “You have no choice. Whether or not you want to hear it, it’s happening. If you care about your country, you have no choice but to pay attention.”

But the ride may not be smooth. MSNBC’s slide is steeper than it was in 2016; and there’s some question about whether Trump opponents will want to be as engaged as they were during his first term. People are also unplugging from cable television in rates that are only getting more rapid, although MSNBC believes it has bucked this trend eating away at audiences before.

The poll indicates that Americans want less talk about politics from public figures in general. After an election season where endorsements from celebrities like Taylor Swift made headlines, the survey found that Americans are more likely to disapprove than approve of celebrities, large companies and professional athletes speaking out about politics.

Still, Gude is among those discovering other ways to get news to which he does want to pay attention, including on YouTube.

MSNBC is also in the middle of some corporate upheaval that raises questions about potential changes. Parent company Comcast announced last month that the cable network is among some properties that will spin off into a new company, which will give MSNBC new corporate leadership and cut its ties to NBC News.

Some of the Americans who have turned away from political news lately also had some advice for getting them engaged again.

Gude said, for example, that MSNBC will always have a hard-core audience of Trump haters. But if the network wants to expand its audience, “then you have to talk about issues, and you have to stop talking about Trump.”

Kathleen Kendrick, a 36-year-old sales rep from Grand Junction, Colorado, who’s a registered independent voter, said she hears plenty of people loudly spouting off about their political opinions on the job. She wants more depth when she watches the news. Much of what she sees is one-sided and shallow, she said.

“You get a story but only part of a story,” Kendrick said. “It would be nice if you could get both sides, and more research.”

Aunallah, similarly, is looking for more depth and variety. He’s not interested “in watching the angry man on the corner yelling at me anymore,” he said.

“It’s kind of their own fault that I’m not watching,” he said. “I felt they spent all this time talking about the election. They made it so much of their focus that when the main event ends, why would people want to keep watching?”

—-

The poll of 1,251  adults was conducted Dec. 5-9, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.

—-

Sanders reported from Washington. David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.

source

WASHINGTON (AP) — A ninth U.S. telecoms firm has been confirmed to have been hacked as part of a sprawling Chinese espionage campaign that gave officials in Beijing access to private texts and phone conversations of an unknown number of Americans, a top White House official said Friday.

Biden administration officials said this month that at least eight telecommunications companies, as well as dozens of nations, had been affected by the Chinese hacking blitz known as Salt Typhoon.

But deputy national security adviser Anne Neuberger told reporters Friday that a ninth victim had been identified after the administration released guidance to companies about how to hunt for Chinese culprits in their networks.

The update from Neuberger is the latest development in a massive hacking operation that has alarmed national security officials, exposed cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the private sector and laid bare China’s hacking sophistication.

The hackers compromised the networks of telecommunications companies to obtain customer call records and gain access to the private communications of what officials have said is a a limited number of individuals. Though the FBI has not publicly identified any of the victims, officials believe senior U.S. government officials and prominent political figures are among those whose whose communications were accessed.

Neuberger said Friday that officials did not yet have a precise sense how many Americans overall were affected by Salt Typhoon, in part because the Chinese were careful about their techniques, but that a “large number” were in the Washington-Virginia area.

Officials believe the goal of the hackers was to identify who owned the phones and, if they were “government targets of interest,” spy on their texts and phone calls, she said.

The FBI said most of the people targeted by the hackers are “primarily involved in government or political activity.”

Neuberger said the episode highlighted the need for required cybersecurity practices in the telecommunications industry, something the Federal Communications Commission is to take up at a meeting next month. In addition, she said, the government was planning additional actions in coming weeks in response to the hacking campaign, though she did not say what they were.

“We know that voluntary cyber security practices are inadequate to protect against China, Russia and Iran hacking of our critical infrastructure,” she said.

The Chinese government has denied responsibility for the hacking.

source

By Tim Reid

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Donald Trump said Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has asked to visit him at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida on Friday night.

Part way through a Truth Social post on Friday morning, Trump referred to his Mar-a-Lago home, saying “Bill Gates asked to come, tonight. We miss you and x! New Year’s Eve is going to be AMAZING!!! DJT.” Trump provided no further details.

Emails and calls to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation asking about a potential Gates visit to Mar-a-Lago were not immediately answered.

Gates has been critical of Trump in the past, particularly over his first administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but Gates publicly congratulated Trump on his Nov. 5 election victory and expressed hope they could work together.

Some of the biggest tech sector companies in the U.S. have pledged donations to Trump’s inaugural fund as they seek more favorable relations with the Republican president-elect before he takes office on Jan. 20.

In November, Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Meta has donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, a company spokesperson told Reuters on Dec. 12.

Other tech companies that are donating $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund include Amazon and Uber Technologies.

(Reporting by Tim Reid in Washington; Editing by Howard Goller)

source

By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Canada’s new finance minister Dominic LeBlanc and Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly will meet aides to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump in Florida on Friday to discuss the risks of imposing new trade tariffs, the Canadian government said.

Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on imports from Canada when he takes office in January unless the country reduces the flow of migrants and fentanyl into the U.S.

LeBlanc’s office said in a statement on Thursday that the two ministers would highlight “the negative impacts that the imposition of 25% tariffs on Canadian goods would have on both Canada and the United States.”

The office added that Friday’s meeting will also focus on Canada’s efforts to combat fentanyl trafficking and illegal migration.

The meeting will take place as Trump continues to belittle embattled Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on social media. On Christmas Day, he referred to the leader of the close U.S. ally as “Governor Justin Trudeau of Canada” and again alluded to the country becoming the 51st U.S. state.

Trudeau, whose party looks set to lose power early next year, is under increasing pressure from lawmakers in his own party to step down.

He flew to Florida in late November to meet with Trump after the Republican first vowed to slap new tariffs on Canada.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Ross Colvin and Nicholas Yong)

source

ATLANTA (AP) — Republicans plan to move quickly in their effort to overhaul the nation’s voting procedures, seeing an opportunity with control of the White House and both chambers of Congress to push through long-sought changes that include voter ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements.

They say the measures are needed to restore public confidence in elections, an erosion of trust that Democrats note has been fueled by false claims from President-elect Donald Trump and his allies of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. In the new year, Republicans will be under pressure to address Trump’s desires to change how elections are run in the U.S., something he continues to promote despite his win in November.

The main legislation that Republicans expect to push will be versions of the American Confidence in Elections Act and the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, said GOP Rep. Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, chair of the Committee on House Administration, which handles election-related legislation. The proposals are known as the ACE and SAVE acts, respectively.

“As we look to the new year with unified Republican government, we have a real opportunity to move these pieces of legislation not only out of committee, but across the House floor and into law,” Steil said in an interview. “We need to improve Americans’ confidence in elections.”

Republicans are likely to face opposition from Democrats and have little wiggle room with their narrow majorities in both the House and Senate. Steil said he expects there will be “some reforms and tweaks” to the original proposals and hopes Democrats will work with Republicans to refine and ultimately support them.

New York Rep. Joe Morelle, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said there was an opportunity for bipartisan agreement on some issues but said the two previous GOP bills go too far.

“Our view and the Republicans’ view is very different on this point,” Morelle said. “They have spent most of the time in the last two years and beyond really restricting the rights of people to get to ballots – and that’s at the state level and the federal level. And the SAVE Act and the ACE Act both do that – make it harder for people to vote.”

Morelle said he wants to see both parties support dedicated federal funding for election offices. He sees other bipartisan opportunities around limiting foreign money in U.S. elections and possibly imposing a voter ID requirement if certain safeguards are in place to protect voters.

Democrats say some state laws are too restrictive in limiting the types of IDs that are acceptable for voting, making it harder for college students or those who lack a permanent address.

Morelle said he was disappointed by the GOP’s claims in this year’s campaigns about widespread voting by noncitizens, which is extremely rare, and noted how those claims all but evaporated once Trump won. Voting by noncitizens is already illegal and and can result in felony charges and deportation.

“You haven’t heard a word about this since Election Day,” Morelle said. “It’s an Election Day miracle that suddenly the thing that they had spent an inordinate amount of time describing as a rampant problem, epidemic problem, didn’t exist at all.”

Before the November election, House Republicans pushed the SAVE Act, which passed the House in July but stalled in the Democrat-controlled Senate. It requires proof of citizenship when registering to vote and includes potential penalties for election officials who fail to confirm eligibility.

Republicans say the current process relies on an what they call an honor system with loopholes that have allowed noncitizens to register and vote in past elections. While voting by noncitizens has occurred, research and reviews of state cases have shown it to be rare and typically a mistake rather than an intentional effort to sway an election.

Under the current system, those seeking to register are asked to provide either a state driver’s license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number. A few states require a full Social Security number.

Republicans say the voter registration process is not tight enough because in many states people can be added to voter rolls even if they do not provide this information and that some noncitizens can receive Social Security numbers and driver’s licenses. They believe the current requirement that anyone completing a voter registration form sign under oath that they are a U.S. citizen is not enough.

They want to force states to reject any voter registration application for which proof of citizenship is not provided. Republicans say that could include a REAL ID-compliant driver’s license, a passport or a birth certificate.

In Georgia, a perennial presidential battleground state, election officials said they have not encountered any hiccups verifying the citizenship status of its nearly 7.3 million registered voters. They conducted an audit in 2022 that identified 1,634 people who had attempted to register but were not able to be verified as U.S. citizens by a federal database.

A second audit this year used local court records to identify people who said they could not serve as a juror because they were not a U.S. citizen. Of the 20 people identified, six were investigated for illegal voting, though one of those cases was closed because the person had since died.

“What we’ve done by doing those audits is give voters confidence that we do not have noncitizens voting here in Georgia,” said Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state. “And when society is highly polarized, you have to look at building trust. Trust is the gold standard.”

Raffensperger, a Republican who supports both voter ID and proof of citizenship requirements, credits the state’s early adoption of REAL ID and use of automatic voter registration for ensuring voter lists are accurate. The latter is something he hopes more Republicans will consider, as he argued it has allowed Georgia election officials to use the motor vehicle agency’s process to verify citizenship and track people moving in and around the state.

“You have to get it right because you’re talking about people’s priceless franchise to vote,” Raffensperger said.

If Congress does pass any changes, it would fall to election officials across the country to implement them.

Raffensperger and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, said it would be a mistake to move the country to a single day of voting, something Trump has said he would like to see happen, because it would eliminate early voting and limit access to mail ballots. Both methods are extremely popular among voters. In Georgia, 71% of voters in November cast their ballots in person before Election Day.

Both said they hoped lawmakers would look to what is working in their states and build off those successes.

“We’ve proven time and time again in our states that our elections are secure and are accurate,” Benson said.

source

By Jasper Ward

(Reuters) -U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has picked Miami-Dade County Commissioner Kevin Marino Cabrera to serve as ambassador to Panama after having threatened for the U.S. to reassert control over the Panama Canal it handed over 25 years ago.

Trump described Cabrera as “a fierce fighter for America First principles” who he said has been instrumental in driving economic growth and fostering international partnerships.

“Few understand Latin American politics as well as Kevin – He will do a FANTASTIC job representing our Nation’s interests in Panama!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social on Wednesday.

On Sunday, Trump threatened to reassert U.S. control over the Panama Canal, which it administered for decades before handing it over to Panama in 1999.

Trump said the Central American country, with whom the U.S. has had diplomatic relations since 1903, is “ripping us off on the Panama Canal, far beyond their wildest dreams.”

He accused Chinese soldiers of illegally operating the canal and “always making certain that the United States puts in Billions of Dollars in ‘repair’ money but will have absolutely nothing to say about ‘anything.’”

Panama’s President Jose Raul Mulino has said China had no influence on the canal’s administration, and on Thursday added that there were no Chinese soldiers at the canal.

“There are no Chinese soldiers in the canal for the love of God, the world is free to visit to the canal,” he said in a speech on Thursday.

China does not control or administer the canal, but a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison Holdings, has long managed two ports located on the canal’s Caribbean and Pacific entrances.

(Reporting by Jasper Ward; Additional reporting by Elida Moreno in Panama City; Editing by Frank McGurty and Chris Reese)

source

By Jasper Ward

(Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday nominated Miami-Dade County Commissioner Kevin Marino Cabrera to serve as ambassador to Panama.

Trump described Cabrera as “a fierce fighter for America First principles” who he said has been instrumental in driving economic growth and fostering international partnerships.

“Few understand Latin American politics as well as Kevin – He will do a FANTASTIC job representing our Nation’s interests in Panama!” he said in a post on Truth Social.

The announcement of his pick for ambassador comes after Trump threatened to reassert U.S. control over the Panama Canal, which it administered for decades before handing over to Panama in 1999.

Trump said the Central American country, with whom the U.S. has had diplomatic relations since 1903, is “ripping us off on the Panama Canal, far beyond their wildest dreams.”

In a post on Truth Social on Wednesday, Trump accused Chinese soldiers of illegally operating the canal and “always making certain that the United States puts in Billions of Dollars in ‘repair’ money but will have absolutely nothing to say about ‘anything.’”

Panama’s President Jose Raul Mulino has said China had no influence on the canal’s administration.

China does not control or administer the canal, but a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison Holdings, has long managed two ports located on the canal’s Caribbean and Pacific entrances.

(Reporting by Jasper Ward; Editing by Frank McGurty and Chris Reese)

source

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump promised on Tuesday to “vigorously pursue” capital punishment after President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of most people on federal death row partly to stop Trump from pushing forward their executions.

Trump criticized Biden’s decision on Monday to change the sentences of 37 of the 40 condemned people to life in prison without parole, arguing that it was senseless and insulted the families of their victims. Biden said converting their punishments to life imprisonment was consistent with the moratorium imposed on federal executions in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.

“Joe Biden just commuted the Death Sentence on 37 of the worst killers in our Country,” he wrote on his social media site. “When you hear the acts of each, you won’t believe that he did this. Makes no sense. Relatives and friends are further devastated. They can’t believe this is happening!”

Presidents historically have no involvement in dictating or recommending the punishments that federal prosecutors seek for defendants in criminal cases, though Trump has long sought more direct control over the Justice Department’s operations. The president-elect wrote that he would direct the department to pursue the death penalty “as soon as I am inaugurated,” but was vague on what specific actions he may take and said they would be in cases of “violent rapists, murderers, and monsters.”

He highlighted the cases of two men who were on federal death row for slaying a woman and a girl, had admitted to killing more and had their sentences commuted by Biden.

On the campaign trail, Trump often called for expanding the federal death penalty — including for those who kill police officers, those convicted of drug and human trafficking, and migrants who kill U.S. citizens.

“Trump has been fairly consistent in wanting to sort of say that he thinks the death penalty is an important tool and he wants to use it,” said Douglas Berman, an expert on sentencing at Ohio State University’s law school. “But whether practically any of that can happen, either under existing law or other laws, is a heavy lift.”

Berman said Trump’s statement at this point seems to be just a response to Biden’s commutation.

“I’m inclined to think it’s still in sort of more the rhetoric phase. Just, ‘don’t worry. The new sheriff is coming. I like the death penalty,’” he said.

Most Americans have historically supported the death penalty for people convicted of murder, according to decades of annual polling by Gallup, but support has declined over the past few decades. About half of Americans were in favor in an October poll, while roughly 7 in 10 Americans backed capital punishment for murderers in 2007.

Before Biden’s commutation, there were 40 federal death row inmates compared with more than 2,000 who have been sentenced to death by states.

“The reality is all of these crimes are typically handled by the states,” Berman said.

A question is whether the Trump administration would try to take over some state murder cases, such as those related to drug trafficking or smuggling. He could also attempt to take cases from states that have abolished the death penalty.

Berman said Trump’s statement, along with some recent actions by states, may present an effort to get the Supreme Court to reconsider a precedent that considers the death penalty disproportionate punishment for rape.

“That would literally take decades to unfold. It’s not something that is going to happen overnight,” Berman said.

Before one of Trump’s rallies on Aug. 20, his prepared remarks released to the media said he would announce he would ask for the death penalty for child rapists and child traffickers. But Trump never delivered the line.

One of the men Trump highlighted on Tuesday was ex-Marine Jorge Avila Torrez, who was sentenced to death for killing a sailor in Virginia and later pleaded guilty to the fatal stabbing of an 8-year-old and a 9-year-old girl in a suburban Chicago park several years before.

The other man, Thomas Steven Sanders, was sentenced to death for the kidnapping and slaying of a 12-year-old girl in Louisiana, days after shooting the girl’s mother in a wildlife park in Arizona. Court records show he admitted to both killings.

Some families of victims expressed anger with Biden’s decision, but the president had faced pressure from advocacy groups urging him to make it more difficult for Trump to increase the use of capital punishment for federal inmates. The ACLU and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops were some of the groups that applauded the decision.

Biden left three federal inmates to face execution. They are Dylann Roof, who carried out the 2015 racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S history. _______

Associated Press writers Jill Colvin, Michelle L. Price and Eric Tucker contributed to this report.

source

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former U.S. President Bill Clinton was discharged from a Washington hospital on Tuesday after being treated for the flu, his deputy chief of staff said in a post on X.

Clinton, 78, was hospitalized on Monday at Georgetown University Medical Center with a fever, his deputy chief of staff, Angel Urena, said.

(Reporting by Ismail Shakil and Eric Beech)

source