Politics

By Lizbeth Diaz

(Reuters) – Every day, Nidia Montenegro spends hours checking her cellphone, hoping to receive a long-awaited appointment with U.S. border officials to seek asylum in the United States.

The 52-year-old Venezuelan migrant in Mexico says she fears her appointment will not come before President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20, when he has vowed to scrap a slew of programs that have allowed migrants to enter the U.S. legally – including the government app that Montenegro is using to try and get her appointment.

That could leave thousands of migrants like Montenegro in limbo and facing the choice of trying to cross into the U.S. illegally, staying in Mexico, or returning home.

Given those options, Montenegro says she would return home, more fearful of the violence she has encountered while traveling through Mexico than the hardship she left behind in Venezuela.

“I am traumatized. If I don’t get the appointment, I will go back,” she said, disheartened.

“There is always the threat of cartels that kidnap us,” added the woman, who says despite thinking about returning home she does not have the money to do so.

A dozen migrants interviewed in Mexico by Reuters said they would prefer to return to their countries despite the ongoing issues that drove them to migrate, such as poverty, lack of employment, insecurity, and political crises.

That is too small a sample size to draw clear conclusions of how migrants will react after Trump takes office, and much will depend on exactly what policies he implements and how.

But it does highlight the hard choices likely to face many after Jan. 20.

The violence in Mexico weighs heavily on any decision.

Montenegro told Reuters she was kidnapped along with two nephews and dozens of others, including children, on the day she arrived in southern Mexico from Guatemala two months ago. Two days later, the group managed to escape.

Now she lives confined in a shelter in the southern state of Chiapas, fearing criminals in the area will kidnap her again.

Organized crime has established extensive human trafficking networks across Mexico, making the journey north through the country treacherous. Mexico is plagued by violence, with around 30,000 people murdered a year and over 100,000 people officially registered as missing.

Many migrants are extorted, beaten, raped, forced to commit crimes, and even killed. Mexican government attempts to slow the arrival of migrants at the U.S. border, by busing and flying non-Mexican migrants to the country’s south, add to the risk.

Mexico’s presidency and National Migration Institute did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The International Organization for Migration told Reuters that in the last seven years, it has assisted several thousand migrants — especially Central Americans — return voluntarily from Mexico to their home countries, including victims of violence. However, it declined to provide specific figures.

“I cry every day and ask God to take me back, I don’t want to be here anymore… this is horrible,” said Yuleidi Moreno, a Venezuelan migrant who fears staying in Mexico. Through tears she said she had been the victim of violence, but declined to give any further details.

A Venezuelan official familiar with migration issues said that currently, between 50 and 100 compatriots request what is called “voluntary return” each week from Mexico, either covering costs themselves or with state assistance. “There are serious calamity cases like kidnappings, sexual exploitation, a myriad of issues, and some want to return immediately.”

Despite the risks, others will persist, whether joining caravans, paying a human trafficker, or clinging to the hopes of a U.S. government border appointment.

“I trust I will arrive before Mr. Trump takes office,” said Johana, a young Venezuelan migrant planning to cross from Guatemala to Mexico this week. “If it’s not by appointment, there’s always a way,” she added.

(Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz; Additional reporting by Tamara Corro in Coatzacoalcos; Editing by Ana Martinez, Stephen Eisenhammer and Alistair Bell)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Jill Biden was departing Tuesday on her final solo foreign trip as first lady, a six-day, four-country jaunt through Italy, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar that wraps with her and President-elect Donald Trump joining other dignitaries in Paris to celebrate the reopening of Notre Dame cathedral.

Biden will focus throughout the trip on the issues she has championed as first lady, including support for military families, education, and research into cancer and women’s health, and will also highlight U.S. partnerships in these areas with the countries hosting her, according to her office.

She is the first Italian American to become first lady and has planned a side trip to her ancestral hometown of Gesso, the tiny Sicilian village where her father’s family hailed from.

Paris is the final stop to help celebrate the reopening of Notre Dame. The cathedral was painstakingly reconstructed after fire nearly destroyed it five years ago.

Trump, who was U.S. president at the time of the fire, announced on Monday that he also will travel to the French capital to join other VIPs attending the high-security event.

Jill Biden has become somewhat of a world traveler as first lady. Tuesday’s trip will be her 10th solo excursion outside of the U.S.. She also has accompanied her husband, President Joe Biden, on several of his foreign trips.

On her own, she has led the U.S. delegations to both the pandemic delayed Tokyo Olympics in 2021 as well as this year’s Games in Paris, traveled to Ukraine shortly after the invasion by Russia, and has visited Latin America and Africa. In October, she attended the inauguration of Mexico’s first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum.

Biden was scheduled to depart Tuesday evening after teaching her English and writing classes at Northern Virginia Community College. She arrives Wednesday at Naval Air Station Sigonella in Catania, Italy, to meet with personnel and deliver remarks as part of Joining Forces, her White House initiative to support military families. Her father, Donald Jacobs, was a Navy signalman during World War II.

The first lady then stops in Gesso, Italy, before continuing on to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, for a day’s worth of events on Thursday. The schedule includes a tour of Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi as part of the Biden Cancer Moonshot program, and participation in a conversation about the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research at the Milken Institute Middle East and Africa Summit.

Biden will also visit with Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak, chairwoman of the General Women’s Union and the Family Development Foundation, and president of the Supreme Council for Motherhood and Childhood, in Abu Dhabi.

On Friday in Doha, Qatar, the first lady will highlight the two countries’ interests in education and health with separate visits to the Qatar Foundation and Weill Cornell Medicine – Qatar, respectively.

She’ll also be a guest at a dinner banquet hosted by Sheikha Moza bint Nasser to celebrate the royal family wedding of Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani and Sheikha Fatima bin Nasser bin Hassan Al Thani at the Al-Wajba Palace in Doha.

Biden is the keynote speaker Saturday at the Doha Forum, where policy leaders discuss global challenges, before she travels to Paris for the Notre Dame reopening. She is scheduled to return to Washington on Sunday.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Democrats reelected Chuck Schumer as party leader on Tuesday as the party moves into a deeply uncertain time, with no real consensus on a strategy as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office.

Schumer faced no opposition in the party leadership elections, in which Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin was also reelected to the No. 2 spot and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar became the new No. 3. In a statement, Schumer, of New York, said he was honored to move the party forward “during this crucial period for our country.”

“Our preference is to secure bipartisan solutions wherever possible and look for ways to collaborate with our Republican colleagues to help working families,” Schumer said. “However, our Republican colleagues should make no mistake about it, we will always stand up for our values.”

While Schumer remains popular with his colleagues, it is a bleak moment for Senate Democrats, who had been hopeful that they could hold the majority for the third election in a row. Instead they lost four seats and will be in the minority, 53-47, as Trump takes office and pressures the Senate to quickly confirm his Cabinet nominees.

Unlike eight years ago, when opposition to Trump’s narrow election win fueled enthusiasm in their party, Democratic lawmakers and many of their voters are exhausted and looking for answers.

So far, Democrats have stayed relatively quiet on Trump’s nominees and plans for office – a stark contrast from the loud opposition to Trump when he was elected eight years ago. Schumer has declined to comment on specifics of any nominees, instead allowing Republican reaction to dominate the conversation.

On Monday, Schumer wrote a public letter to South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the incoming Republican majority leader, asking him to resist Trump’s pressure to allow him to appoint some of his nominees without a Senate vote and to insist on full FBI background checks for all nominees. But he has said little else about Trump’s upcoming presidency.

While some have been more aggressive — Washington Sen. Patty Murray, chairwoman of the Senate Health, Labor, Education and Pensions Committee, said that Trump’s nomination of Robert Kennedy Jr. to lead the Health and Human Services Department is “dangerous” and “nothing short of disaster” — several Democratic senators say they are saving their strength and figuring out a focus.

“Everybody’s in kind of in a wait-and-see mode right now,” said Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, who is part of Schumer’s leadership team. “Under the previous Trump administration, there was chaos all the time, all the time. And I do think it is important to pick your battles.”

It’s still unclear which battles they will pick. And Democrats have differing opinions on how to fight them.

Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, who is also in Democratic leadership, says that “anyone who has a grand strategy is full of crap,” but thinks that Democrats, for now, “need to keep things simple.”

“We need to talk about people, protect people, advocate for people,” Schatz said. “Do not talk about protecting institutions. Do not talk about advocating for institutions. It’s a not just a rhetorical shift, but an attitudinal shift. We have to remind ourselves, that we’re not fighting for programs and projects and line items and agencies or norms. We’re fighting for people.”

Virginia Sen. Mark Warner said that he’s spent a lot of time reflecting, and “I don’t think anyone can claim this was a policy election,” and Democrats need to look at cultural issues. Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman says Democrats just need to “pace ourselves” and avoid the “massive freakout” of Trump’s last term.

Democrats should be preparing, says Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal. He says Schumer is picking his battles “very thoughtfully and strategically.”

“We’re thinking about how we protect against using the FBI, or the prosecutorial authority of the Justice Department for retribution against critics,” said Blumenthal. “How we elevate these issues in a way that American people understand them.”

Democrats know better now, after eight years, “the extraordinary challenges we’re going to face,” Blumenthal said.

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HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump is underscoring his intention to block the purchase of U.S. Steel by Japanese steelmaker Nippon Steel Corp., and he’s pledging to use tax incentives and tariffs to strengthen the iconic American steelmaker.

Trump had vowed early in the presidential campaign that he would “instantaneously” block the deal, and he reiterated that sentiment in a post on his Truth Social platform on Monday night.

“I am totally against the once great and powerful U.S. Steel being bought by a foreign company” and will use tax incentives and tariffs to make U.S. Steel “Strong and Great Again, and it will happen FAST!” he wrote.

“As President,” he continued, “I will block this deal from happening. Buyer Beware!!!”

President Joe Biden, like Trump, also opposes Nippon Steel’s purchase of Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel. Biden’s White House in September said that it had yet to see a report from the secretive Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which was reviewing the transaction for national security concerns. The committee, which is chaired by the treasury secretary and includes other Cabinet members, can recommend that the president block a transaction, and federal law gives the president that power.

Ahead of the November election, the proposed merger carried political importance in Pennsylvania, a critical swing state that Trump eventually won. Biden publicly sided with the United Steelworkers, the labor union, in seeking to reject the deal.

When he announced his opposition in a March statement, Biden said: “U.S. Steel has been an iconic American steel company for more than a century, and it is vital for it to remain an American steel company that is domestically owned and operated.”

Nippon Steel has said it is the only company that can make the necessary investment in U.S. Steel’s factories and strengthen the American steel industry. Both Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel on Tuesday released statements in support of the acquisition.

“This transaction should be approved on its merits. The benefits are overwhelmingly clear. Our communities, customers, investors, and employees strongly support this transaction, and we will continue to advocate for them and adherence to the rule of law,” U.S. Steel said.

The deal follows a long stretch of protectionist U.S. tariffs that analysts say has helped reinvigorate domestic steel, including U.S. Steel. U.S. Steel’s shareholders have approved the deal, but the United Steelworkers oppose it.

In a statement Tuesday, the union said the deal carries “serious long-term implications for U.S. economic and national security.”

“It’s clear that President Trump understands the vital role a strong domestic steel industry plays in our national security, as well as the importance of the jobs and communities the industry supports,” the union said.

The deal has drawn bipartisan opposition in the U.S. Senate, including from the incoming vice president, Republican Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, although the federal government’s objections to the deal have drawn criticism that the opposition is political.

Some U.S. Steel workers would prefer Nippon Steel acquire the company, given that it appears to have a better financial balance sheet than another potential buyer, Cleveland-Cliffs.

U.S. Steel “provided a very, very good life for our families for a lot of years,” said Jack Maskil, a vice president at the Steelworkers local branch in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania. “And we feel that with the Nippon deal that a lot more families for futures to come will be able to share the same.”

West Mifflin Mayor Chris Kelly said he met with Nippon Steel executives and found himself satisfied by their commitments. Located southeast of Pittsburgh, West Mifflin is home to U.S. Steel’s Mon Valley Works–Irvin Plant.

“There’s no question in my mind that it’s the best deal moving forward,” Kelly said at a panel hosted on Tuesday by the conservative think tank Hudson Institute, where Maskil was also speaking.

Trump’s statement came two weeks after Nippon Steel’s vice chairman, Takahiro Mori, visited Pittsburgh and Washington to meet with lawmakers, local officials and workers in an ongoing persuasion campaign.

That campaign has included Nippon Steel’s promises to boost its capital commitments beyond the original deal and, more recently, a pledge that it won’t import steel slabs that would compete with U.S. Steel’s blast furnaces.

As part of its proposed $14.9 billion purchase of U.S. Steel, Nippon Steel also pledged to invest at least $1.4 billion in USW-represented facilities, not to conduct layoffs or plant closings during the term of the basic labor agreement, and to protect the best interests of U.S. Steel in trade matters.

___

Boak reported from Washington.

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ATLANTA (AP) — As he concludes his time as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Jaime Harrison is downplaying his party’s November loss to President-elect Donald Trump and arguing Democrats avoided even greater losses that parties in power have faced around the world.

But he acknowledged that Democrats must do a better job of selling the party’s priorities and accomplishments for the working class. He also called for continued nationwide investments in party infrastructure and better use of non-legacy media.

“I can’t tell you how disappointed I am that Kamala Harris is not going to be the next president of the United States,” Harrison said in an interview Monday. But “the political pendulum in this country has been swinging swiftly, back and forth,” he added, and “we got to buckle up and get ready for it” to continue.

Harrison made similar arguments in a memo being distributed Tuesday to Democratic Party leaders and donors around the country.

“Although Democrats did not achieve what we set out to do, Trump wasn’t able to capture the support of more than 50% of the electorate and Democrats beat back global headwinds that could’ve turned this squeaker into a landslide,” Harrison wrote, comparing Democrats’ losses in the U.S. to the more sweeping defeats that parties in power suffered in democratic nations around the world since the coronavirus pandemic and global inflation.

It is not surprising, of course, for a chairman to defend his party’s performances even after disappointing elections. Harrison, President Joe Biden’ s pick in 2021 to lead the national party during his term, and other top Democrats have been sharply criticized after Trump’s victory, particularly by progressives who argue the party is seen as having abandoned working-class voters.

Harrison pointed to victories for Sens.-elect Ruben Gallego in Arizona and Elissa Slotkin in Michigan, and the reelections of Sens. Jacky Rosen of Nevada and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin.

Republicans still ousted Democratic senators in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Montana on their way to a majority. But Harrison noted the GOP’s House majority will be threadbare — the final count is pending — and that Democrats flipped some Republican seats.

At the state level, Harrison noted Democratic romps in North Carolina’s statewide offices, legislative gains in a conservative state like Arkansas and stripping Republicans of outright control of the Alaska statehouse.

“It was a mixed bag,” he said.

Trump swept all seven battleground states against Harris, the Democratic vice president, and won the popular vote for the first time in three presidential runs. The president-elect cut into key Democratic constituencies: people of color, younger voters and union supporters.

He gained a larger share of Black and Latino voters than he did in 2020, most notably among men under age 45, according to AP VoteCast, a nationwide survey of more than 120,000 voters. And his coalition increasingly included rank-and-file union members, a critical constituency in states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Harrison said Trump has the ability to scramble traditional coalitions but not remake them permanently. He acknowledged Trump’s appeal yet framed him as a unique figure whose reach cannot be replicated easily, if at all, by other Republicans.

“It’s the same thing with Barack Obama, right? Sometimes in politics, they’re cultural figures … that can build different coalitions,” Harrison said. “And those coalitions don’t last once they step off of the dais.”

If there is a glaring gap for Democrats, Harrison said, it is not necessarily in policy positions but in communicating accomplishments and priorities to voters. He argued that Biden’s legislative agenda — tax overhauls, new energy investments, pandemic aid — helped the very working-class voters who propelled Trump.

“Maybe we gotta do a better job of selling,” he said, tipping his cap to Republicans’ use of podcasts and all manner of targeted media to reach voters. “There’s a lot of things that we can do in that space,” he said.

Asked whether that means wading more eagerly into conservative spaces or Democrats starting more outlets and shows of their own, Harrison said, “All of it.” He added that he wants to invest some of his time on that issue after leaving office in February.

Harrison has no plans to weigh in on the election for his successor. The hundreds of DNC members will cast their ballots in February among a growing field, including two well-regarded state chairs from the upper Midwest: Ken Martin of Minnesota and Ben Wikler of Wisconsin.

Unlike Harrison, who ran the DNC as an extension of Biden’s political operation at the White House, the new chairman will have more of a blank slate and a freer hand — but perhaps more pressure in a party without a singular leader.

The DNC chief, however, will have a more direct hand in setting the party’s presidential nominating calendar for 2028. The committee at Biden’s behest moved South Carolina’s primary ahead of Iowa and New Hampshire, and moved Michigan to the opening weeks of the calendar, elevating more racially diverse states over the overwhelmingly white states that led the process for decades. South Carolina four years ago delivered Biden his first primary victory after he lost Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.

Harrison, who is Black and a South Carolina native, encouraged his successor not to undo Biden’s overhaul given the importance of Black voters to the party.

“We moved around the schedule to put more diverse voices at the table to decide the most powerful person on the face of this planet,” he said. “You can’t pull that back. You cannot make major changes without there being some consequences for the most loyal demographic in this party.”

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NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump will attend the reopening celebration for Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris this weekend, his first foreign trip since the election.

The cathedral is set to reopen Saturday after more than five years of reconstruction following a devastating fire in 2019 that engulfed and nearly destroyed the soaring Paris landmark. The ceremonies being held Saturday and Sunday will be high-security affairs, with about 50 heads of state and government expected to attend.

Trump announced that he will be among them in a post on his Truth Social site Monday evening.

“It is an honor to announce that I will be traveling to Paris, France, on Saturday to attend the re-opening of the Magnificent and Historic Notre Dame Cathedral, which has been fully restored after a devastating fire five years ago,” he wrote. “President Emmanuel Macron has done a wonderful job ensuring that Notre Dame has been restored to its full level of glory, and even more so. It will be a very special day for all!”

The trip will be Trump’s first abroad since he won November’s presidential election. He traveled to Scotland and Ireland in May 2023, as a candidate, to visit his local golf courses.

Trump was president in 2019 when a massive fire engulfed Notre Dame, collapsing its spire and threatening to destroy one of the world’s greatest architectural treasures, known for its mesmerizing stained glass.

Trump watched the inferno in horror, along with the rest of the world.

“So horrible to watch the massive fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris,” he wrote on what was then named Twitter, offering his advice to the city.

“Perhaps flying water tankers could be used to put it out. Must act quickly!” he wrote.

French officials appeared to respond shortly after, nothing that “All means” were being used to extinguish the flames, “except for water-bombing aircrafts which, if used, could lead to the collapse of the entire structure of the cathedral.”

Trump also spoke with Macron and Pope Francis at the time to offer his condolences and said he had offered them “the help of our great experts on renovation and construction.”

Trump and Macron have had a complicated relationship.

During Trump’s first term in office, Macron proved to be among the world leaders most adept at managing the American president’s whims as he tried to develop a personal connection built in no small part on flattery.

Macron was the guest of honor at Trump’s first state dinner and Trump traveled to France several times. But the relationship soured as Trump’s term progressed and Macron criticized him for questioning the need for NATO and raising doubts about America’s commitment to the mutual-defense pact.

As he ran for a second term this year, Trump often mocked Macron on the campaign trail, imitating his accent and threatening to impose steep tariffs on wine and champagne bottles shipped to the U.S. if France tried to tax American companies.

After Trump won another term last month, Macron rushed to win favor with the president-elect. He was among the first global leaders to congratulate Trump — even before The Associated Press called the race in his favor — and beat UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer to the punch in delivering a congratulatory phone call.

“Congratulations, President @realDonaldTrump,” Macron posted on X early on Nov 6. “Ready to work together as we did for four years. With your convictions and mine. With respect and ambition. For more peace and prosperity.”

Macron and other European leaders are trying to persuade Trump not to abandon America’s support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s nearly three-year invasion. European leaders hope to convince Trump that a victory by Russia would be viewed as a defeat for the U.S. — and for the incoming president, by extension — hoping to sell him on the need to pursue an end to the war more favorable to Kyiv than he might otherwise seek.

Trump over the weekend announced that he intends to nominate real estate developer Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to serve as ambassador to France. The elder Kushner was pardoned by Trump in December 2020 after pleading guilty years earlier to tax evasion and making illegal campaign donations.

The reopening of Notre Dame will be an elaborate, multi-day celebration, beginning Saturday.

Paris Archbishop Laurent Ulrich will preside at a reopening service that afternoon, banging on Notre Dame’s shuttered doors with his staff to reopen them, according to the cathedral’s website.

The archbishop will also symbolically reawaken Notre Dame’s thunderous grand organ. The fire that melted the cathedral’s lead roofing coated the huge instrument in toxic dust. Its 8,000 pipes have been painstakingly disassembled, cleaned and retuned.

Macron will attend and address the VIP guests.

After the service, opera singers Pretty Yende, from South Africa, and Julie Fuchs, from France; Chinese pianist Lang Lang; Paris-born cellist Yo-Yo Ma; Benin-born singer Angelique Kidjo; Lebanese singer Hiba Tawaji and others will perform at a concert Saturday evening, according to the show’s broadcaster, France Télévisions.

On Sunday morning, the Paris archbishop will lead an inaugural Mass and consecration of the new altar.

Nearly 170 bishops from France and other countries will join the celebration, along with priests from all 106 parishes in the Paris diocese. The Mass will be followed by a “fraternal buffet” for the needy.

Ile de la Cité, where the cathedral sits in the middle of the River Seine, will be blocked off to tourists for the events. A public viewing area with room for 40,000 spectators will be set up along the Seine’s southern bank.

___ Associated Press writer Zeke Miller contributed to this report from Washington.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Kash Patel has been well-known for years within Donald Trump’s orbit as a loyal supporter who shares the president-elect’s skepticism of the FBI and intelligence community. But he’s receiving fresh attention, from the public and from Congress, now that Trump has picked him to lead the FBI.

As he braces for a bruising and likely protracted Senate confirmation fight, Patel can expect scrutiny not only over his professed fealty to Trump but also for his belief — revealed over the last year in interviews and his own book — that the century-old FBI should be radically overhauled.

Here’s a look at some of what he’s proposed for the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency. How much of it he’d actually follow through on is a separate question.

The first FBI employees moved into the current Pennsylvania Avenue headquarters 50 years ago. The building since then has housed the supervisors and leaders who make decisions affecting offices around the country and overseas.

But if Patel has his way, the J. Edgar Hoover Building could be shut down, with its employees dispersed.

“I’d shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopen it the next day as a museum of the ‘deep state,’” Patel said in a September interview on the “Shawn Kelly Show.” “Then, I’d take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals. Go be cops. You’re cops — go be cops.”

Such a plan would undoubtedly require legal, logistical and bureaucratic hurdles and it may reflect more of a rhetorical flourish than a practical ambition.

In a book last year titled, “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth and the Battle for Our Democracy,” he proposed a more modest reform of having the headquarters moved out of Washington “to prevent institutional capture and curb FBI leadership from engaging in political gamesmanship.”

As it happens, the long-term fate of the building is in flux regardless of the leadership transition. The General Services Administration last year selected Greenbelt, Maryland, as the site for a new headquarters, but current FBI Director Christopher Wray has raised concerns about a potential conflict of interest in the site selection process.

In an interview last year with conservative strategist Steve Bannon, Patel repeated falsehoods about President Joe Biden and a stolen election.

“We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel said. The same applies for supposed “conspirators” inside the federal government, he said.

It’s not entirely clear what he envisions, but to the extent Patel wants to make it easier for the government to crack down on officials who disclose sensitive information and the reporters who receive it, it sounds like he’d back a reversal of current Justice Department policy that generally prohibits prosecutors from seizing the records of journalists in leak investigations.

That policy was implemented in 2021 by Attorney General Merrick Garland following an uproar over the revelation that the Justice Department during the Trump administration had obtained phone records of reporters as part of investigations into who had disclosed government secrets.

Patel himself has said that it’s yet to be determined whether such a crackdown would be done civilly or criminally. His book includes several pages of former officials from the FBI, Justice Department and other federal agencies he’s identified as being part of the “Executive Branch Deep State.”

Under the FBI’s own guidelines, criminal investigations can’t be rooted in arbitrary or groundless speculation but instead must have an authorized purpose to detect or interrupt criminal activity.

And while the FBI conducts investigations, the responsibility of filing federal charges, or bringing a lawsuit on behalf of the federal government, falls to the Justice Department. Trump intends to nominate former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi as attorney general.

Patel has been a fierce critic of the FBI’s use of its surveillance authorities under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and in his “Shawn Kelly Show” interview, called for “major, major reform. Tons.”

That position aligns him with both left-leaning civil libertarians who have long been skeptical of government power and Trump supporters outraged by well-documented surveillance missteps during the FBI’s investigation into potential ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign.

But it sets him far apart from FBI leadership, which has stressed the need for the bureau to retain its ability to spy on suspected spies and terrorists even while also implementing corrective steps meant to correct past abuses.

If confirmed, Patel would take over the FBI amid continued debate over a particularly contentious provision of FISA known as Section 702, which permits the U.S. to collect without a warrant the communications of non-Americans located outside the country for the purpose of gathering foreign intelligence.

Biden in April signed a two-year extension of the authority following a fierce congressional dispute centered on whether the FBI should be restricted from using the program to search for Americans’ data. Though the FBI boasts a high compliance rate, analysts have been blamed for a series of abuses and mistakes, including improperly querying the intelligence repository for information about Americans or others in the U.S., including a member of Congress and participants in the racial justice protests of 2020 and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Patel has made clear his disdain for the reauthorization vote.

“Because the budget of FISA was up this cycle, we demanded Congress fix it. And do you know what the majority in the House, where the Republicans did? They bent the knee. They (reauthorized) it,” Patel said.

In his book, Patel said a federal defender should be present to argue for the rights of the accused at all FISA court proceedings, a departure from the status quo.

Patel has advocated cutting the federal government’s intelligence community, including the CIA and National Security Agency.

When it comes to the FBI, he said last year that he would support breaking off the bureau’s “intel shops” from the rest of its crime-fighting activities.

It’s not clear exactly how he would intend to do that given that the FBI’s intelligence-gathering operations form a core part of the bureau’s mandate and budget. Wray, who’s been in the job for seven years, has also recently warned of a heightened threat environment related to international and domestic terrorism.

After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, then-FBI Director Robert Mueller faced down calls from some in Congress who thought the FBI should be split up, with a new domestic intelligence agency created in its wake.

The idea died, and Mueller committed new resources into transforming what for decades had been primarily a domestic law enforcement agency into an intelligence-gathering institution equally focused on combating terrorism, spies and foreign threats.

Frank Montoya Jr., a retired senior FBI official who served as director of the office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, said he disagreed with the idea of breaking out the FBI’s “intel shops” and viewed it as a way to defang the bureau.

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(Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said on Monday he had picked businessman Warren Stephens to be ambassador to Britain.

Trump made the announcement in a post on social media.

Stephens is chairman, president, and CEO of Stephens Inc., a privately owned financial services firm headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas, according to the firm’s website.

(Reporting by Katharine Jackson and Rami Ayyub)

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By Judith Langowski

(Reuters) – California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom on Monday announced he is seeking up to $25 million in additional funding for legal fights with the incoming administration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.

The announcement came on the first day of a special session of the California legislature dedicated to preparing the liberal state for the second term of conservative Trump. If approved by the legislature, the California Department of Justice and state agencies would get the extra funding for court battles in areas such as reproductive rights, environmental protection and immigration.

“The new litigation fund will help safeguard critical funding for disaster relief, health care, and other vital services that millions of Californians depend on daily”, the governor wrote in the proposal. He added the state plans to “defend against unlawful federal actions that could jeopardize not only tangible resources and the state’s economy” as well as protection of reproductive health care and civil rights.

The fights could also force the federal government to pay needed funding, Newsom said in a statement, citing successful legal skirmishes with the federal government during the first Trump administration.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, also a Democrat, said in a press conference, that his agency would staff up to be able to react quickly to Trump administration action with motions for restraining orders and injunctions.

California spent $42 million to support litigation in Trump’s first term between 2017-2022. The state filed over 120 lawsuits challenging Trump Administration actions.

The state assembly also has introduced bills geared toward protecting access to abortion medication and enforcing the Reproductive Privacy Act, Bonta said.

Newsom’s office expects the special budget legislation to be signed into law before Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.

(reporting by Judith Langowski; editing by Peter Henderson and David Gregorio)

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ON BOARD AIR FORCE ONE/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The White House on Monday defended President Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son, Hunter, and said the president believed his political opponents would have kept persecuting his son going forward.

“They would continue to go after his son,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Air Force One during a trip to Angola.

Jean-Pierre said this was not the first time a president had pardoned a family member.

Biden said in June that he would not pardon his son. In an interview with ABC News, Biden replied “yes” when asked if he would rule out pardoning Hunter.

Jean-Pierre declined to give details on why or how Biden had changed his mind.

Hunter Biden pleaded guilty in September to federal tax charges in federal court in Los Angeles and was due to be sentenced Dec. 16 under Mark C. Scarsi, a judge nominated by Republican President-elect Donald Trump. A jury found him guilty in June of making false statements on a gun background check; he was due to be sentenced for those charges this month as well.

Biden said on Sunday that his son had been selectively prosecuted and treated differently than others with similar situations.

Late on Sunday, Hunter Biden’s attorney filed to dismiss the indictments against him.

The president’s full and unconditional pardon “requires dismissal of the indictment against” Hunter Biden, the lawyer wrote in filings related to criminal tax and gun cases against him.

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt on Air Force One, Jeff Mason, Heather Timmons and Susan Heavey in Washington;Editing by Alistair Bell)

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