Politics

(Reuters) – Companies ranging from finance majors to Silicon Valley behemoths are pledging donations to Donald Trump’s inaugural fund as business leaders rush to ensure a favorable relationship with the U.S. president-elect after his November election win.

Trump is set to take office in January and executives are hoping a positive rapport with his administration, such as the one Tesla boss Elon Musk has established, could mean notable benefits for their companies.

Below is a list of companies that are contributing funds for Trump’s inauguration for his second term in the White House.

ROBINHOOD MARKETS

Retail trading platform Robinhood Markets donated $2 million, a company spokesperson said.

UBER TECHNOLOGIES

Uber Technologies and its CEO Dara Khosrowshahi donated $1 million each, a company spokesperson told Reuters.

AMAZON.COM

Amazon is donating $1 million. The company will also air the inauguration event on its Prime Video service, an Amazon spokesperson said.

META PLATFORMS

Meta Platforms has donated $1 million, a company spokesperson told Reuters.

OPENAI

CEO Sam Altman is planning to make a personal donation of $1 million to the inaugural fund, an OpenAI spokesperson confirmed.

“President Trump will lead our country into the age of AI, and I am eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead,” Altman said in a statement.

BANK OF AMERICA AND GOLDMAN SACHS

Bank of America, the second-largest U.S. lender, and investment bank Goldman Sachs plan to contribute to Trump’s inaugural committees, but have yet to decide on the amount, spokespersons for each bank said.

(Reporting by Jaspreet Singh, Deborah Sophia, Harshita Mary Varghese and Rishi Kant in Bengaluru; Editing by Pooja Desai)

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By Michael Martina

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday proposed three bills aimed at cracking down China’s role in the U.S. fentanyl crisis, with measures that would set up a U.S. task force to disrupt narcotics trafficking and pave the way for sanctions on Chinese entities.

China is the dominant source of chemical precursors used by Mexican cartels to produce fentanyl, while Chinese money launderers have become key players in the international drug trade, U.S. authorities say.

The proposed legislation would help hold China’s ruling Communist Party (CCP) accountable for “directly fueling the fentanyl crisis through its state subsidies of precursors,” said the House of Representatives’ select committee on China, on which all of the sponsors of the bills sit.

One bill, The CCP Fentanyl Sanctions Act introduced by Democratic Representative Jake Auchincloss, would codify authorities for the U.S. to cut off Chinese companies from the U.S. banking system, including vessels, ports and online marketplaces that “knowingly or recklessly” facilitate shipment of illicit synthetic narcotics.

“This is state-sponsored poisoning of the American people,” Auchincloss said at an event introducing the legislation. “The genesis of this is squarely on the mainland of the People’s Republic of China.”

Two other bills would create a task force of U.S. agencies to conduct joint operations to disrupt trafficking networks, and allow for the imposition of civil penalties on Chinese entities that fail to properly manifest or follow formal entry channels when shipping precursors to the U.S., the committee said.

There is growing consensus in Republican circles close to President-elect Donald Trump that Beijing has exploited, even engineered, the synthetic opioid epidemic to harm Americans, something Beijing denies.

China says it has some of the strictest drug laws in the world, and that the U.S. needs to curb narcotics demand at home.

China’s anti-drugs authorities have always cracked down on incidents linked to missing drug-making chemicals, Lin Jian, a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, told a regular news conference on Wednesday, when asked about the bills.

With little time remaining in the current congressional term, the bills would likely need to be reintroduced next year after the new Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3.

Raja Krishnamoorthi, the top Democrat on the select committee, wrote in an article this month that it was “time to get tough” on Beijing over fentanyl.

(Reporting by Michael Martina, Additional reporting by Liz Lee in Beijing; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

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By Andrea Shalal and Gram Slattery

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Eight Republican senators are unsure about supporting former Democratic member of congress Tulsi Gabbard to become America’s top spy, according to a Trump transition source and a second source with knowledge of the issue, increasing doubts about whether her nomination will secure Senate confirmation.

A Trump associate in close contact with the team trying to push the president-elect’s nominees through the Senate also said there was serious pessimism about whether Gabbard could secure the votes she needs to become director of national intelligence.

The three sources requested anonymity to discuss the matter.

The transition team source and the source familiar with the issue said eight Republican senators harbored doubts about supporting the former lawmaker because she was unprepared to answer tough questions during an initial round of meetings last week on Capitol Hill.

Her failure to address those questions sufficiently, her 2017 visit to Syria to meet then-Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and her lack of significant intelligence experience fueled those concerns, the sources said.

In a statement, Trump transition spokesperson Alexa Henning noted that no Republican senator has publicly said they would vote against Gabbard.

“There is not one GOP Senator on the record that opposes Lt. Col. Gabbard’s nomination,” Henning said. “Again, this is anonymous sources desperately trying to hold on to power, so they hide behind the media to spread these falsities that directly subvert the will of the American people.”

If Trump fails to sway the eight Republicans, he would need the support of five Democrats, which could prove difficult, one source said. Republicans will control the chamber 53-47 in the new congress, which will be sworn in on Jan. 3.

The sources declined to identify the eight senators.

Another person close to the transition team was more optimistic about Gabbard securing Senate approval but said several Republican senators and senators-elect plausibly could vote against Gabbard, including Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, John Curtis and Mitch McConnell.

Aides to McConnell, the Republican minority leader, Collins and Murkowski did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for Senator-elect Curtis said he has not commented on any nominees and will carefully examine the record and qualifications of all of them.

DOUBTS OVER EXPERIENCE, VIEWS ON RUSSIA

Trump’s selection of the former Democratic U.S. representative from Hawaii and combat veteran to be the nation’s top intelligence official sent shock waves through the national security establishment, raising fears over politicization of the intelligence community.

In addition to visiting Syria and her lack of intelligence experience, Gabbard has been viewed as soft on Russia. Critics point to her opposition to U.S. military aid to Ukraine for its battle to reclaim territory seized by Moscow since its 2022 full-scale invasion, her assertions that Kyiv cannot win, and what they say is her parroting of Kremlin views.

Nearly 100 former national security officials signed a statement this month criticizing Trump’s decision to nominate Gabbard and calling for closed Senate hearings to review government information about her.

But supporters of the one-time Trump critic say she has a healthy skepticism about U.S. military intervention abroad in keeping with Trump’s America First ideology. She endorsed Trump for president and appeared at campaign rallies.

It is far from clear that Gabbard’s nomination is doomed.

Some senators closely aligned with Trump have endorsed her and said they expect her confirmation. No Republican has opposed her publicly, although some have said they want more information, and any that do risk a primary challenge if they are up for re-election in 2026.

Trump’s selection of Matt Gaetz as attorney general shocked many on Capitol Hill and he quickly stepped aside as nominee. But the president-elect has since pushed even harder for his remaining nominees, by inviting them to his Florida home and to his box at last weekend’s Army-Navy football game.

One Republican congressional aide said the mood on Capitol Hill had changed in recent days. Before Gabbard began meeting with members, several lawmakers were leaning toward voting against her, but there has been “a shift to a more neutral tone” and a sense that Republicans will confirm Gabbard’s nomination in fear of retribution from Trump, said the aide.

Gabbard was in the Senate on Tuesday, meeting with Republican Senators Chuck Grassley, Dan Sullivan, Rand Paul, Murkowski and Collins, and Democrats Jon Ossoff and John Fetterman.

Asked after meeting Fetterman whether she was confident she would be confirmed, Gabbard told reporters she looked forward to meeting senators “as we continue the process.”

As director of national intelligence, Gabbard would be principal intelligence adviser to the president and overseer of the 18 agencies comprising the U.S. intelligence community, responsible for coordinating their activities and a budget that in fiscal 2024 totaled more than $106 billion for civilian and military intelligence programs.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal and Gram Slattery; Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Erin Banco; Writing by Jonathan Landay; Editing by Don Durfee and Daniel Wallis)

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President-elect Donald Trump sued the Des Moines Register and its pollster for “brazen election interference” in publishing a survey the weekend before the election that showed Democrat Kamala Harris with a surprising lead of three percentage points in the state.

The Register’s parent Gannett Co. on Tuesday dismissed the lawsuit as meritless and said it would vigorously defend its First Amendment rights.

The lawsuit continues the president-elect’s campaign against media outlets he feels have wronged him. ABC this past weekend agreed to pay $15 million toward a Trump presidential library in order to settle a defamation lawsuit against George Stephanopoulos for inaccurately saying Trump had been found civilly liable for rape.

The Des Moines survey, done by since-retired pollster J. Ann Selzer, was considered shocking for indicating that an earlier Trump lead in the Republican-leaning midwestern state had been erased. In the actual election, Trump won Iowa by more than 13 percentage points.

“There was a perfectly good reason nobody saw this coming: because a three-point lead for Harris in deep-red Iowa was not reality,” the lawsuit said. “It was election-interfering fiction.”

The poll increased enthusiasm among Democrats, compelled Republicans to divert campaign time and money to areas in which they were ahead, and deceived the public into thinking Democrats were doing better than they actually were, Trump charged.

The lawsuit was filed late Monday in Polk County district court in Iowa. It cites Iowa consumer fraud law, and doesn’t ask for specific monetary damages, but rather wants a trial jury to award triple the amount of what it determines actual damages to be.

Whatever happens legally, the case could have a chilling effect beyond Iowa. Trump said in legal papers that he wanted it to deter “radicals from continuing to act with corrupt intent in releasing polls manufactured for the purpose of skewing election results in favor of Democrats.”

Lark-Marie Anton, Des Moines Register spokeswoman, said the newspaper acknowledged the pre-election poll did not reflect Trump’s ultimate margin of victory and released the data and a technical explanation.

“We stand by our reporting on the matter and believe a lawsuit would be without merit,” she said.

Selzer did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. But she told PBS in Iowa last week that “it’s not my ethic” to set up a poll to deliver a specific response. She said she was mystified about what motivation people would think she had.

“To suggest without a single shred of evidence that I was in cahoots with somebody, I was being paid by somebody, it’s all just kind of, it’s hard to pay too much attention to it except that they are accusing me of a crime,” she said.

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Associated Press correspondents Tom Beaumont in Des Moines and Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska contributed to this report. David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.

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By Katharine Jackson and Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. congressional negotiators reached a tentative deal on Tuesday on a stopgap funding bill to avert a partial government shutdown, provide about $100 billion in disaster aid and $10 billion to farmers, Republican lawmakers said.

A Democratic source familiar with the talks confirmed the outline of the tentative deal.

Congressional aides were preparing legislation that could be unveiled in the House of Representatives as soon as Tuesday and be ready for votes later in the week. The Senate aims to then pass it before current funding runs out at midnight ET Friday (0500 GMT Saturday) and promptly send it to President Joe Biden to sign into law.

The measure would largely keep the roughly $6.2 trillion federal budget running at its current level, funding everything from the military to air traffic controllers to federal securities markets regulators.

The bill “is coming together. Bipartisan work is ongoing. We’re almost there,” Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters at a press conference.

Johnson leads a narrow and restive 219-211 Republican majority and has repeatedly over the past year had to rely on Democratic support to pass major legislation.

Representative Pete Aguilar, the No. 3 House Democrat, told reporters that his colleagues want to carefully read the deal that was negotiated.

“We want to see the details,” he said. “We hope that Speaker Johnson puts this out soon so that we can vote. … We want to make sure the numbers are right.”

Representative Chip Roy, a hardline Republican who typically opposes new spending bills, derided the deal.

“Swamp is going to swamp, right?” he said. “This is not the way to do business.”

Johnson said the bill would include $10 billion in economic aid for farmers.

Republican Representative Glenn Thompson, who chairs the House Agriculture Committee, welcomed the assistance, as wide-ranging farm programs were set to expire at the end of the year.

“The $10 billion is a great start, and I think it’s going to send the right signals to the market that most farmers and ranchers are going to be able to get eligible to the credit that they need to borrow in order to plant a crop or raise a herd,” Thompson said.

Republican Representative Pete Sessions told Reuters that the measure also contains around $100 billion in funding for hurricane, wildfire and other natural disaster recovery efforts.

Reuters reported on Monday that the legislation would keep government funding flowing through March 14.

Congress’ failure to address the gap between federal revenue and spending has contributed to the rising national debt – currently north of $36 trillion.

Congress will have to address that again early next year, when a 2023 deal to extend the nation’s “debt ceiling” expires. Failure could shock bond markets with potentially severe economic consequences.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan and Katharine Jackson; Editing by Scott Malone and Mark Porter)

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By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – President-elect Donald Trump’s lawyers have urged a judge to overturn his conviction on criminal charges stemming from hush money paid to a porn star because of alleged juror misconduct.

Much of the court filing, which was dated Dec. 3 and made public on Tuesday, was redacted from public view. The nature of the alleged juror misconduct was not immediately clear.

A spokesperson for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office brought the charges, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump on Monday lost a separate bid to dismiss the case. The Republican businessman-turned politician, who is preparing to begin his second White House term on Jan. 20, had argued that the Supreme Court’s July ruling recognizing immunity from prosecution for a president’s official acts meant the verdict could not stand.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

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By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York Mayor Eric Adams lost a bid to narrow his five-count federal corruption indictment as a judge declined on Tuesday to dismiss a bribery charge related to luxury travel benefits provided by a Turkish official, with the trial set for April.

U.S. District Judge Dale Ho denied a motion by lawyers for the Democratic mayor to dismiss the bribery charge. The defense had cited a June U.S. Supreme Court decision in favor of the former mayor of an Indiana city also charged by federal prosecutors with corruption in seeking the dismissal.

President-elect Donald Trump on Monday said he would consider pardoning Adams after he takes office on Jan. 20. Trump, a Republican, suggested Adams was targeted for criticizing President Joe Biden’s handling of migration, one of Trump’s signature campaign issues.

“I think that he was treated pretty unfairly,” Trump told reporters on Monday, though he said he would have to review the facts of the case.

Asked about Trump’s comments later on Monday, Adams said he should not have been charged.

“I have an attorney that is going to look at every avenue to ensure I get justice,” Adams told reporters. “I did nothing wrong.”

Adams, 64, a former police officer who rose to the rank of captain, took office in January 2022. He has resisted calls to resign and pushed ahead with plans to seek reelection next year to lead the most populous U.S. city.

Federal prosecutors in September charged Adams with accepting more than $90,000 in discounted luxury hotel stays and flight upgrades from Turkish officials in exchange for pressuring city fire officials in 2021 to let Turkey open its new consulate in Manhattan despite safety concerns.

Adams was serving as Brooklyn borough president at the time, but had won the Democratic primary for mayor – all but ensuring he would win the general election in liberal New York City.

Adams has pleaded not guilty to one count of bribery, two counts of solicitation of a campaign contribution from a foreign national, one count of wire fraud and one count of wire fraud conspiracy.

‘QUESTION FOR THE JURY’

Defense lawyer Alex Spiro on Oct. 8 asked Ho to dismiss the bribery count but not the other four charges.

Spiro cited the Supreme Court’s conclusion that it is not a crime for state and local officials to accept gratuities such as gift cards or framed photographs as a token of appreciation. Spiro said Adams never agreed to take any specific official act in exchange for a benefit.

In a 30-page ruling, Ho wrote that the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office’s charges were legally sufficient for a trial.

“Whether or not Adams used his official position as Brooklyn Borough President to exert pressure on the FDNY is a factual question for the jury to resolve,” the judge wrote, referring to New York’s fire department.

In a statement, Spiro said the fact that it took Ho several months to rule showed the prosecution’s case was contrived.

“This case was simply invented to harm Mayor Adams,” Spiro said.

The trial is set to open on April 21.

Ho on Tuesday also denied a request by Adams to push the start date forward to April 1 so it could finish well in advance of the June 2025 Democratic mayoral primary, where he faces several challengers.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Will Dunham and Bill Berkrot)

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By Jason Lange

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – About two in five Americans view U.S. President-elect Donald Trump favorably, fewer than when the Republican was on the cusp of his first presidential term, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll showed.

Some 41% of respondents in the three-day poll, which closed on Sunday, said they viewed Trump favorably, while 55% viewed him unfavorably as his Jan. 20 inauguration approached.

That was down from Trump’s 51% favorability rating in December 2016 after his stunning victory in that year’s election, even though for months he had garnered ratings around 40%. The post-election boost carried into the initial months of his 2017-2021 term.

The absence of a bounce this year – his favorability ratings have hovered around 40% in recent months – could be a sign of deepening political polarization between Republicans and Democrats. In December 2016, about a quarter of Democrats viewed Trump favorably. This month, only about one in 10 did so.

Early in Trump’s first term, his presidential job approval ratings reached a high of 48% in Reuters/Ipsos surveys conducted between February and April of 2017.

By mid-2017, amid accusations that Trump mishandled classified documents and pressured a top law enforcement official to stop probing his campaign’s alleged ties to Russia, the Republican’s approval ratings fell to around 40% and largely stayed there for the rest of his term.

Current President Joe Biden entered office in 2021 with a 55% approval rating but the Democrat’s popularity has also slipped, hovering close to 40% since early 2022 following a chaotic military withdrawal from Afghanistan and as consumer prices surged.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Sunday showed approval of Biden at 38%, just above the lowest level of his term, 35%, in October.

Trump’s lowest approval rating during his first presidential term was 33% in December 2017.

The latest poll, conducted online and nationwide, gathered responses from 1,031 U.S. adults, with a margin of error of about 3 percentage points.

(Reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Scott Malone and Richard Chang)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris acknowledged on Tuesday Democrats’ disappointment in her failed bid for the White House, but urged supporters not to walk away from upcoming political battles.

Harris, who has kept a low profile in the weeks since her Nov. 5 loss to Republican Donald Trump and Democrats’ loss of control of both houses of Congress, told a conference of young adults that the fight for equality, rights and a fair economy must go on.

“Many people have come up to me telling me they feel tired, maybe even resigned,” Harris said at Prince George’s Community College, in Largo, Maryland.

“Folks have said to me that they’re not sure whether they have the strength, much less the desire, to stay in the fight. But let me be clear: No one can walk away. No one can walk away. We must say in the fight, every one of us.”

Democrats are agonizing over the Nov. 5 election results, which saw Harris lose all seven battleground states, the Electoral College vote and the popular vote to Trump.

Harris did not address her own future, including the possibility of a 2026 bid to be governor of her home state of California or another presidential run in 2028.

(Reporting by Reuters Washington bureau; Editing by Mark Porter)

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By Jody Godoy

(Reuters) – U.S. Department of Justice antitrust head Jonathan Kanter said on Tuesday that he will step down on Friday, capping off a three-year tenure in which he aimed to reinvigorate competition law in the U.S..

Kanter and his counterpart at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, Lina Khan, have sought to revive antitrust enforcement in the U.S. as a check on corporate power, drawing praise from Democrats and some Republicans.

“Plutocracy is its own kind of dictatorship,” Kanter said in a farewell address on Tuesday. “When companies larger and more powerful than most world governments threaten individual liberty with coercive private taxation and regulation, it threatens our way of life,” he said.

Some attorneys and business groups have criticised Khan and Kanter’s agenda and supported a return to a more limited view of antitrust that has prevailed for four decades.

But President-elect Donald Trump’s antitrust picks are not seen as likely to drastically curtail enforcement.

Gail Slater, an aide to incoming Vice President JD Vance, is poised to take over for Kanter once she is confirmed. Before being tapped as Trump’s running mate, Vance praised Khan’s efforts and said that corporations can engage in “tyrannical” behavior.

At least until Trump takes office, Kanter’s deputy Doha Mekki will lead the antitrust division. After that point, Trump could appoint a different acting head of the division.

Kanter has kicked the DOJ’s antitrust division into high gear, bringing cases against Apple, Alphabet’s Google, Ticketmaster and Visa, and winning a groundbreaking legal victory over Google in a case over its dominance in online search that was brought during President-elect Donald Trump’s first administration.

The DOJ under Kanter also brought cases that successfully block a tie up between JetBlue and American, JetBlue’s proposed $3.8 billion merger with Spirit Airlines and the $2.2 billion merger of Penguin Random House, the world’s largest book publisher, and rival Simon & Schuster.

Kanter warned in his speech that the DOJ’s antitrust work faces an existential threat without full access to funding from the merger filing fees it collects.

(Reporting by Jody Godoy in New York; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

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