Politics

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (Reuters) – President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will attend President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, a White House spokesman said on Monday.

“The president promised that he would attend the inauguration of whomever won the election,” said Andrew Bates, senior deputy press secretary at the White House. “He and the First Lady are going to honor that promise and attend the inauguration.”

(Reporting by Heather Timmons on Air Force One and Nandita Bose in Washington; Editing by Chris Reese)

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By Andrew Goudsward

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A U.S. judge on Monday dismissed the federal criminal case accusing Donald Trump of attempting to overturn his 2020 election defeat after prosecutors moved to drop that prosecution and a second case against the president-elect, citing Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president.

The order from U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan puts an end to the federal effort to hold Trump criminally responsible for his attempts to hold onto power after losing the 2020 election, culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of his supporters.

The move came after Special Counsel Jack Smith, the lead prosecutor overseeing both cases, moved to dismiss the election case and end his attempt to revive a separate case accusing Trump of illegally retaining classified documents when he left office in 2021 after his first term as president.

It represents a big legal victory for the Republican president-elect, who won the Nov. 5 U.S. election and is set to return to  office on Jan. 20.

The Justice Department policy that the prosecutors cited dates back to the 1970s. It holds that a criminal prosecution of a sitting president would violate the U.S. Constitution by undermining the ability of the country’s chief executive to function. Courts will still have to approve both requests from prosecutors.

The prosecutors in a filing in the election subversion case said the department’s policy requires the case to be dismissed before Trump returns to the White House.

“This outcome is not based on the merits or strength of the case against the defendant,” prosecutors wrote in the filing. 

Prosecutors in the documents case signaled they will still ask a federal appeals court to bring back the case against two Trump associates who had been accused of obstructing that investigation.

Trump spokesman Steven Cheung hailed what he called “a major victory for the rule of law.”

Trump had faced criminal charges in four cases – the two brought by Smith and two in state courts in New York and Georgia. He was convicted in the New York case while the Georgia case, which also relates to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, is in limbo.

In a post on social media, Trump railed on Monday against the legal cases as a “low point in the History of our Country.”

The moves by Smith, who was appointed in 2022 by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, represents a remarkable shift from the special prosecutor who obtained indictments against Trump in two separate cases accusing him of crimes that threatened U.S. election integrity and national security. Prosecutors acknowledged that the election of a president who faced ongoing criminal cases created an unprecedented predicament for the Justice Department.

Chutkan left open the possibility that prosecutors could seek to charge Trump again after he leaves office, but prosecutors would likely face challenges bringing a case so long after conduct involved in the case happened.

Trump pleaded not guilty in August 2023 to four federal charges accusing him of conspiring to obstruct the collection and certification of votes following his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Trump, who as president will again oversee the Justice Department, was expected to order an end to the federal 2020 election case and to Smith’s appeal in the documents case.

Florida-based Judge Aileen Cannon, who Trump appointed to the federal bench, had dismissed the classified documents case in July, ruling that Smith was improperly appointed to his role as special counsel. 

Smith’s office had been appealing that ruling and indicated on Monday that the appeal would continue as it relates to Trump personal aide Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, a manager at his Mar-a-Lago resort, who had been previously charged alongside Trump in the case. Both Nauta and De Oliveria have pleaded not guilty, as did Trump.

In the 2020 election case, Trump’s lawyers had previously said they would seek to dismiss the charges based on a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in July that former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution over official actions taken while in the White House.

Trump denied wrongdoing in all cases and argued that the U.S. legal system had been turned against him to damage his presidential campaign. He vowed during the campaign that he would fire Smith if he returned to the presidency.

Trump in May became the first former president to be convicted of a crime when a jury in New York found him guilty of felony charges relating to hush money paid to a porn star before the 2016 election. His sentencing in that case has been indefinitely postponed.

The criminal case against Trump in Georgia state court involving the 2020 election is stalled.

(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward. Additional reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Scott Malone, Jonathan Oatis, Will Dunham and Bill Berkrot)

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One of the striking things about how furiously many people reacted to the news last week that MSNBC “Morning Joe” hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski met with President-Elect Donald Trump was how quaint their defenders sounded.

“It is insane for critics to NOT think all of us in the media need to know more so we can share/report more,” Jim VandeHei, co-founder of Axios and Politico, said on social media.

It would be journalistic malpractice for the hosts of a morning television news program not to take a meeting with a president-elect, right? But “Morning Joe” isn’t traditional journalism, and last week’s incident is a telling illustration of the broader trend of impartial fact-finding being crowded out in the marketplace by opinionated news and the expectations that creates.

Scarborough, a former congressman, and his wife, veteran newswoman Brzezinski, didn’t just talk about the presidential campaign from their four-hour weekday perch. They tirelessly and emotionally advocated for Democrat Kamala Harris, likening Trump to a fascist-in-waiting.

“They have portrayed themselves as bastions of integrity standing up to a would-be dictator,” says Frank Sesno, a former CNN Washington bureau chief now professor at George Washington University’s school of media and public affairs. “What the followers see is the daily procession of people on the show constantly talking about the evils of Donald Trump and then Joe and Mika show up and have high tea with the guy.”

The social media blowback was instant and intense. “You do not need to talk to Hitler to cover him effectively,” was one of the nicer messages.

More telling is the people who have responded with action.

“Morning Joe” had 770,000 viewers last Monday, its audience — like many shows on MSNBC — down from its yearly average of 1.09 million because some of the network’s liberal-leaning viewers have tuned away after what they regard as depressing election results. That’s the day Scarborough and Brzezinski announced they had met with Trump the previous Friday.

By Tuesday, the “Morning Joe” audience had slipped to 680,000, according to the Nielsen company, and Wednesday’s viewership was 647,000. Thursday rebounded to 707,000. It’s only three days of data, but those are the kind of statistics about which television executives brood.

“The audience for the polarized news-industrial complex has become unforgiving,” says Kate O’Brian, outgoing head of news of the E.W. Scripps Co.

The Washington Post learned this last month when it lost a reported 250,000 subscribers — presumably the bulk of them non-Trump supporters — after announcing it would not endorse a candidate for president. A draft of an editorial endorsing Harris had already been in the works.

Mixing news and opinion isn’t new; many U.S. newspapers in the 1800s were unabashedly partisan. But for most of the past century, there was a vigorous effort to separate the two. Broadcast television, licensed to serve the public interest, built up fact-based news divisions. What began to change things was the success of Fox News in building a conservative audience that believed it was underserved and undervalued.

Now there’s a vigorous industry catering to people who want to see their points of view reflected — and are less interested in reporting or any content that contradicts them.

The most notable trend in 2024 campaign coverage was the diminishing influence of so-called legacy news brands in favor of outlets like podcasts that offered publicity-hungry politicians a friendly, if not supportive, home. Trump, for example, visited several podcasters, including the influential Joe Rogan, who awarded Trump with an endorsement.

“I won’t even call it journalism,” Sesno says. “It’s storytelling.”

The past decade’s journey of Megyn Kelly is one illustration of how opinion can pay off in today’s climate. Once one of the more aggressive reporters at Fox News, she angered Trump in a 2015 debate with a pointed question about his treatment of women. She moved to the legacy outlet NBC News, but that didn’t work for her. She has since started a flourishing podcast with conservative, and Trump-friendly, opinion.

Among cable TV-based news brands, CNN has tried hardest to present an image of impartiality, even if many conservatives disagree. So the collapse in its ratings has been noteworthy: the network’s audience of 4.7 million people for its election night coverage was essentially half the 9.1 million people it had for the same night in 2020.

O’Brian is leaving Scripps at the end of the year because it is ending its 24-hour television news network after finding impartiality was a tough business. Scripps is continuing a streaming news product.

That’s the environment Scarborough and Brzezinski work in on “Morning Joe.”

“They are very talented show hosts,” Sesno says. “But they are not out on the front lines doing journalism, seeking truth in the way that a professional journalist does.”

Hours after the hosts’ announcement that they had met with Trump, an MSNBC colleague, legal contributor and correspondent Katie Phang, said on X that “normalizing Trump is a bad idea.” Scarborough had made a point of saying that was not what he was attempting to do.

“It’s not up to you or your corrupt industry to ‘normalize’ or not ‘normalize’ any politician who wins an election fair & square,” Christina Pushaw, the pugnacious aide to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, replied to Phang. “Americans had their say; Trump will be your president come January whether you ‘normalize’ it or not. I would suggests journos should accept reality.”

Quaintness alert: Sesno is among those who believe the “Morning Joe” hosts did the right thing.

Whatever the motivations — and there are some who believe that worries that a Trump administration could make life difficult very difficult for them was on the hosts’ minds — opening a line of communication to ensure that a show based on politics is not completely cut off from the thinking of a presidential administration makes business sense, he says. A little humility doesn’t hurt.

Even if her own job has proven that it’s not a great business now, Scripps’ O’Brian has seen enough focus groups of people who yearn for a more traditional journalism-based approach to believe in its importance.

“I think that there is still a need for nonpartisan news,” says the former longtime ABC News producer, “and maybe what brings it back to where it used to be will be an exhaustion from the hyper-polarized climate that we currently live in.”

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David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Special counsel Jack Smith moved to abandon two criminal cases against Donald Trump on Monday, acknowledging that Trump’s return to the White House will preclude attempts to federally prosecute him for retaining classified documents or trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat.

The decision was inevitable, since longstanding Justice Department policy says sitting presidents cannot face criminal prosecution. Yet it was still a momentous finale to an unprecedented chapter in political and law enforcement history, as federal officials attempted to hold accountable a former president while he was simultaneously running for another term.

Trump emerges indisputably victorious, having successfully delayed the investigations through legal maneuvers and then winning reelection despite indictments that described his actions as a threat to the country’s constitutional foundations.

“I persevered, against all odds, and WON,” Trump exulted in a post on Truth Social, his social media website.

He also said that “these cases, like all of the other cases I have been forced to go through, are empty and lawless, and should never have been brought.”

The judge in the election case granted prosecutors’ dismissal request. A decision in the documents case was still pending on Monday evening.

The outcome makes it clear that, when it comes to a president and criminal accusations, nothing supersedes the voters’ own verdict. In court filings, Smith’s team emphasized that the move to end their prosecutions was not a reflection of the merit of the cases but a recognition of the legal shield that surrounds any commander in chief.

“That prohibition is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Government stands fully behind,” prosecutors said in one of their filings.

They wrote that Trump’s return to the White House “sets at odds two fundamental and compelling national interests: on the one hand, the Constitution’s requirement that the President must not be unduly encumbered in fulfilling his weighty responsibilities . . . and on the other hand, the Nation’s commitment to the rule of law.”

In this situation, “the Constitution requires that this case be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated,” they concluded.

Smith’s team said it was leaving intact charges against two co-defendants in the classified documents case — Trump valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira — because “no principle of temporary immunity applies to them.”

Steven Cheung, Trump’s incoming White House communications director, said Americans “want an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and we look forward to uniting our country.”

Trump has long described the investigations as politically motivated, and he has vowed to fire Smith as soon as he takes office in January. Now he will start his second term free from criminal scrutiny by the government that he will lead.

The election case brought last year was once seen as one of the most serious legal threats facing Trump as he tried to reclaim the White House. He was indicted for plotting to overturn his defeat to Joe Biden in 2020, an effort that climaxed with his supporters’ violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

But the case quickly stalled amid legal fighting over Trump’s sweeping claims of immunity from prosecution for acts he took while in the White House.

The U.S. Supreme Court in July ruled for the first time that former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution, and sent the case back to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to determine which allegations in the indictment, if any, could proceed to trial.

The case was just beginning to pick up steam again in the trial court in the weeks leading up to this year’s election. Smith’s team in October filed a lengthy brief laying out new evidence it planned to use against him at trial, accusing him of “resorting to crimes” in an increasingly desperate effort to overturn the will of voters after he lost to Biden.

In dismissing the case, Chutkan acknowledged prosecutors’ request to do so “without prejudice,” raising the possibility that they could try to bring charges against Trump when his term is over. She wrote that is “consistent with the Government’s understanding that the immunity afforded to a sitting President is temporary, expiring when they leave office.”

But such a move may be barred by the statute of limitations, and Trump may also try to pardon himself while in office.

The separate case involving classified documents had been widely seen as legally clear cut, especially because the conduct in question occurred after Trump left the White House and lost the powers of the presidency.

The indictment included dozens of felony counts accusing him of illegally hoarding classified records from his presidency at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, and obstructing federal efforts to get them back. He has pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing.

The case quickly became snarled by delays, with U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon slow to issue rulings — which favored Trump’s strategy of pushing off deadlines in all his criminal cases — while also entertaining defense motions and arguments that experts said other judges would have dispensed with without hearings.

In May, she indefinitely canceled the trial date amid a series of unresolved legal issues before dismissing the case outright two months later. Smith’s team appealed the decision, but now has given up that effort.

Trump faced two other state prosecutions while running for president. One of them, a New York case involving hush money payments, resulted in a conviction on felony charges of falsifying business records. It was the first time a former president had been found guilty of a crime.

The sentencing in that case is on hold as Trump’s lawyers try to have the conviction dismissed before he takes office, arguing that letting the verdict stand will interfere with his presidential transition and duties.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office is fighting the dismissal but has indicated that it would be open to delaying sentencing until Trump leaves office. Bragg, a Democrat, has said the solution needs to balance the obligations of the presidency with “the sanctity of the jury verdict.”

Trump was also indicted in Georgia along with 18 others accused of participating in a sprawling scheme to illegally overturn the 2020 presidential election there.

Any trial appears unlikely there while Trump holds office. The prosecution already was on hold after an appeals court agreed to review whether to remove Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis over her romantic relationship with the special prosecutor she had hired to lead the case.

Four defendants have pleaded guilty after reaching deals with prosecutors. Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty.

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Associated Press writers Colleen Long, Michael Sisak and Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this story.

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NEW YORK (AP) — There’s no place like home for the holidays. And that may not necessarily be a good thing.

In the wake of the very contentious and divisive 2024 presidential election, the upcoming celebration of Thanksgiving and the ramp-up of the winter holiday season could be a boon for some — a respite from the events of the larger world in the gathering of family and loved ones. Hours and even days spent with people who have played the largest roles in our lives. Another chapter in a lifetime of memories.

That’s one scenario.

For others, that same period — particularly because of the polarizing presidential campaign — is something to dread. There is the likelihood of disagreements, harsh words, hurt feelings and raised voices looming large.

Those who make a study of people and their relationships to each other in an increasingly complex 21st-century say there are choices that those with potentially fraught personal situations can make — things to do and things to avoid — that could help them and their families get through this time with a minimum of open conflict and a chance at getting to the point of the holidays in the first place.

For those who feel strongly about the election’s outcome, and know that the people they would be spending the holiday feel just as strongly in the other direction, take the time to honestly assess if you’re ready to spend time together in THIS moment, barely a few weeks after Election Day — and a time when feelings are still running high.

The answer might be that you’re not, and it might be better to take a temporary break, says Justin Jones-Fosu, author of “I Respectfully Disagree: How to Have Difficult Conversations in a Divided World.”

“You have to assess your own readiness,” he says, “Each person is going be very different in this.”

He emphasizes that it’s not about taking a permanent step back. “Right now is that moment that we’re talking about because it’s still so fresh. Christmas may be different.”

Keep focused on why why you decided to go in the first place, Jones-Fosu says. Maybe it’s because there’s a relative there you don’t get to see often, or a loved one is getting up in age, or your kids want to see their cousins. Keeping that reason in mind could help you get through the time.

If you decide getting together is the way to go, but you know politics is still a dicey subject, set a goal of making the holiday a politics-free zone and stick with it, says Karl Pillemer, a professor at Cornell University whose work includes research on family estrangement.

“Will a political conversation change anyone’s mind?” he says. “If there is no possibility of changing anyone’s mind, then create a demilitarized zone and don’t talk about it.”

Let’s be honest. Sometimes, despite best efforts and intentions to keep the holiday gathering politics- and drama-free, there’s someone who’s got something to say and is going to say it.

In that case, avoid getting drawn into it, says Tracy Hutchinson, a professor in the graduate clinical mental health counseling program at the College of William & Mary in Virginia.

“Not to take the hook is one of the most important things, and it is challenging,” she says. After all, you don’t have to go to every argument you’re invited to.

If you risk getting caught up in the moment, consider engaging in what Pillemer calls “forward mapping.” This involves thinking medium and long term rather than just about right now — strategy rather than tactics. Maybe imagine yourself six months from now looking back on the dinner and thinking about the memories you’d want to have.

“Think about how you would like to remember this holiday,” he says. “Do you want to remember it with your brother and sister-in-law storming out and going home because you’ve had a two-hour argument?”

Things getting intense? Defuse the situation. Walk away. And it doesn’t have to be in a huff. Sometimes a calm and collected time out is just what you — and the family — might need.

Says Hutchinson: “If they do start to do something like that, you could say, `I’ve got to make this phone call. I’ve got to go to the bathroom. I’m going to take a walk around the block.’”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The chair of the Democratic National Committee informed party leaders on Monday that the DNC will choose his successor in February, an election that will speak volumes about how the party wants to present itself during four more years of Donald Trump in the White House.

Jaime Harrison, in a letter to members of the party’s powerful Rules & Bylaws Committee, outlined the process of how the party will elect its new chair. Harrison said in the letter that the committee will host four candidate forums — some in person and some virtually — in January, with the final election on Feb. 1 during the party’s winter meeting in National Harbor, Maryland.

The race to become the next chair of the Democratic National Committee, while an insular party affair, will come days after Trump is inaugurated for a second term. Democrats’ selection of a leader after Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 loss will be a key starting point as the party starts to move forward, including addressing any structural problems and determining how to oppose Trump.

Members of the Rules & Bylaws Committee will meet on Dec. 12 to establish the rules for these elections, which beyond the chair position will include top party roles like vice chairs, treasurer, secretary and national finance chair. The committee will also use that meeting to decide the requirements for gaining access to the ballot for those top party roles. In 2021, candidates were required to submit a nominating statement that included signatures from 40 DNC members and that will likely be the same standard for the 2025 campaigns.

“The DNC is committed to running a transparent, equitable, and impartial election for the next generation of leadership to guide the party forward,” Harrison said in a statement. “Electing the Chair and DNC officers is one of the most important responsibilities of the DNC Membership, and our staff will run an inclusive and transparent process that gives members the opportunity to get to know the candidates as they prepare to cast their votes.”

Two Democrats have announced campaigns for chair: Ken Martin, chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and a vice chair of the national party, and Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor and current commissioner of the Social Security Administration.

Other top Democrats are either considering a run to succeed Harrison or are being pushed by party insiders, including former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke; Michael Blake, a former vice chair of the party; Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin; Rahm Emanuel, the U.S. ambassador to Japan and a former Chicago mayor; Sen. Mallory McMorrow, majority whip of the Michigan Senate, and Chuck Rocha, a longtime Democratic strategist.

The next chair of the committee will be tasked with rebuilding a party demoralized by a second Trump victory. They will also oversee the party’s 2028 nominating process, a complex and contentious exercise that will make the chair central to the next presidential election.

Harrison, of South Carolina, made clear in his letter to the rules committee that the four forums hosted by the party would be live streamed and the party would give grassroots Democrats across the country the ability to engage with the process through those events. He also said he intends to remain neutral during the chair election.

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This story has been corrected to show that McMorrow is a senator, not a representative.

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By Gram Slattery

(Reuters) -Republican President-elect Donald Trump says he plans to fundamentally alter the U.S. relationship with NATO during his second four-year term and rapidly bring the war in Ukraine to a close.    On the campaign trail, he floated sending armed forces into Mexico to battle drug cartels and slapping expansive tariffs on friends and foes alike.    Here is a look at the foreign policy proposals Trump has pledged to advance once he takes office on Jan. 20:         NATO, UKRAINE AND EUROPEAN ALLIES    Trump has said that under his presidency, America will fundamentally rethink “NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission.” He has pledged to ask Europe to reimburse the U.S. for “almost $200 billion” in munitions sent to Ukraine, and he has not committed to sending further aid to the eastern European nation.    Trump cut defense funding to NATO during the latter part of his first term, and he has frequently complained America was paying more than its fair share.    On the war in Ukraine, he has said he would resolve the conflict even before his inauguration. However, he faces legal restrictions on negotiating with foreign leaders before taking office, and he has made little tangible progress on the issue since winning the Nov. 5 election.     He told Reuters in an interview last year that Kyiv may have to cede some territory to reach a peace agreement. Two Trump advisers told Reuters in June that they had presented a plan to end the war in Ukraine by conditioning any further weapons aid on Kyiv agreeing to sit down with Moscow for peace talks.    Vice President-elect JD Vance has signaled preliminary support for freezing battle lines at their prevailing positions as part of a negotiated settlement.    While Trump signaled in early April that he would be open to sending additional aid to Ukraine in the form of a loan, he remained mostly silent on the issue during contentious congressional negotiations over a $61 billion aid package later that month.         CHINA, TRADE AND TAIWAN    Trump frequently threatens to impose major new tariffs or trade restrictions on China as well as on some European allies.    His proposed Trump Reciprocal Trade Act would give him broad discretion to ramp up retaliatory tariffs on countries when they are determined to have put up trade barriers of their own. He has floated the idea of a 10% universal tariff, which could disrupt international markets, and at least a 50% tariff on China.    Trump has called for an end to China’s most favored nation status, a status that generally lowers trade barriers between nations. He has vowed to enact “aggressive new restrictions on Chinese ownership of any vital infrastructure in the United States,” and the official Republican Party platform calls for banning Chinese ownership of American real estate.    On Taiwan, Trump has declared that it should pay the U.S. for its defense as, he says, it does not give the U.S. anything and took “about 100% of our chip business,” referring to semiconductors. He has repeatedly said that China would never dare to invade Taiwan during his presidency.         MEXICO AND NARCOTICS     Trump has said he would designate drug cartels operating in Mexico as foreign terrorist organizations and order the Pentagon “to make appropriate use of special forces” to attack cartel leadership and infrastructure, an action that would be unlikely to get the blessing of the Mexican government.    He has said he would deploy the U.S. Navy to enforce a blockade against the cartels and would invoke the Alien Enemies Act to deport drug dealers and gang members in the U.S.     Civil rights groups and Democratic senators have pushed for the repeal of that act, passed in 1798, which gives the president some authority to deport foreign nationals while the country is at war.    The Republican Party platform also calls for moving thousands of troops deployed overseas to the U.S.-Mexico border to battle illegal immigration.         CONFLICT IN ISRAEL    After first criticizing Israeli leadership in the days after its citizens were attacked on Oct. 7, 2023, by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, Trump has said Hamas must be “crushed.” While his rhetoric has been bellicose, he has proposed few policy solutions, besides saying he would be tougher on Iran, which is closely linked to groups classified by the U.S. as terrorist organizations, including Hamas.    Trump also says he would seek to deport all “resident aliens” who are Hamas sympathizers. “Resident alien” is a legal term used to describe U.S. permanent residents, also known as green card holders.             CLIMATE    Trump has repeatedly pledged to pull out of the Paris Agreement, an international accord meant to limit greenhouse gas emissions. He pulled out of it during his term in office, but the U.S. rejoined the accord under Democratic President Joe Biden in 2021.         MISSILE DEFENSE    Trump has pledged to build a state-of-the-art missile defense “force field” around the U.S. He has not gone into detail, beyond saying that the Space Force, a military branch that his administration created, would play a leading role in the process.     In the Republican Party platform, the force field is referred to as an “Iron Dome,” reminiscent of Israel’s missile defense system, which shares the same name.        WORLD WAR THREE    Trump frequently warned that there would be a third world war if he did not win the election, a line that became a central part of his stump speech in the final months of the campaign.    “I’m telling you and I’ve made a lot of predictions and this is not a prediction because it’s so bad. I don’t want it to be a prediction. We’re heading into World War Three territory,” Trump said during a Fox News town hall in early September.    The former president often referenced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the conflict between Israel and Hamas, and ongoing tensions between Taipei and Beijing when making that prediction.

(Reporting by Gram Slattery; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Ross Colvin, Sandra Maler, Howard Goller, Deepa Babington and Jonathan Oatis)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A Republican senator has blocked the promotion of U.S. Army Lieutenant General Christopher Donahue, who commanded the military’s 82nd Airborne Division during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and was the last American soldier to leave the country in 2021.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the hold had been placed by Senator Markwayne Mullin, who did not respond to a request for comment on why he blocked the promotion.

The Pentagon on Monday said it was aware of the hold on Donahue, who had been nominated for a fourth star by President Joe Biden to lead the U.S. Army in Europe and Africa.

“We are aware that there is a hold on Lieutenant General Donahue,” Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters.

President-elect Donald Trump and his allies have decried the United States’ military withdrawal from Afghanistan and vowed to go after those responsible for it. In August, Trump said he would ask for the resignation of every senior official “who touched the Afghanistan calamity.”

“You have to fire people when they do a bad job. We never fire anybody,” Trump has said.

Reuters has reported that Trump’s transition team is drawing up a list of military officers to be fired, in what would be an unprecedented shakeup at the Pentagon.

While the image of Donahue, carrying his rifle down by his side as he boarded the final C-17 transport flight out of Afghanistan on in August 2021, has become synonymous with the chaotic withdrawal, he is seen in the military as one of the most talented Army leaders.

“The finest officer I ever served with, Chris Donahue is a generational leader who is now being held up for political purposes. At the tip of the spear defending this country for over three decades, he is now a political pawn,” Tony Thomas, the former head of U.S. Special Operations Command, posted on X.

Under Senate rules, one lawmaker can hold up nominations even if the other 99 all want them to move quickly.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican President-elect Donald Trump’s picks for his Cabinet have included some historic firsts, though women and people of color make up less of the overall number than they did when Democratic President Joe Biden first took office.

HISTORIC FIRSTS

Florida political operative Susie Wiles, who ran Trump’s 2024 campaign, is set to be the first woman to hold the high-profile position of White House chief of staff.

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, Trump’s pick for Secretary of State, would be the first person of Hispanic origin to hold that role if confirmed by his fellow senators.

Hedge fund executive Scott Bessent, nominee for Treasury Secretary, could become the first openly gay Republican Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate. The investor lives in South Carolina with his husband and two children.

Former U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard, with roots in both Samoan and Hawaiian cultures, would be the first director of national intelligence from the Pacific Islander community, according to Inclusive America, a non-profit that tracks diversity in government.

GENDER GAP

Trump has chosen eight women so far for his Cabinet, doubling the number from his first-term Cabinet selection. This is less than Biden’s first Cabinet made up of 11 women, which then rose to 13, a historical high for women serving concurrently, according to the Center for American Women and Politics. That compares with eight women during Barack Obama’s presidential Cabinet, five for George W. Bush and nine for Bill Clinton, according to the Center’s data.

RACE BREAKDOWN

Trump has so far picked four people of color for his Cabinet, representing about a fifth of it. That number is in line with his first term, but trails their roughly 40% share of the full U.S. population, according to the U.S. Census.

The number is also well below Biden’s Cabinet, which included 13 people of color, Obama’s with 10, Bush’s with six and Clinton’s with eight, according to Inclusive America.

GENERATIONAL BREAKDOWN

While Trump will be the oldest president to take office at age 78 – about five months older than Biden was at his Jan. 20, 2021 inauguration – the president-elect has chosen millennial and Gen-Z women for top roles.

Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, 40, the nominee for United Nations ambassador, will be the youngest person to hold this position if confirmed by the Senate.

Karoline Leavitt, 27, is also set to be the youngest White House press secretary ever, taking the highly visible job after working on Trump’s 2024 campaign.

EXPERIENCE

At least 16 of Trump’s Cabinet picks so far have experience in state or federal government, but not all in the direct field or department that they could oversee.

Three of the picks come from the industries that the secretaries will regulate: Bessent, Commerce Secretary nominee Howard Lutnick and Energy Secretary nominee Chris Wright.

DIDN’T I SEE YOU ON TV?

Many of the Cabinet selections have been TV regulars in recent years advocating on air for Trump’s agenda. But for at least four high-level selections, television has been their recent day job. This includes Dr. Mehmet Oz, who used to have his own medical talk show and has now been tapped to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Trump’s picks also include three recent Fox News employees: Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, Transportation Secretary nominee Sean Duffy, and Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, Trump’s pick for U.S. Surgeon General.

(Reporting by Bo Erickson and Andrea Shalal; Editing by Scott Malone and Lincoln Feast.)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump announced Friday that he’ll nominate billionaire hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, an advocate for deficit reduction, to serve as his next treasury secretary, one of several personnel decisions that he unveiled as he closed out the workweek.

Trump also said he would nominate Russell Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget, the same position he held during Trump’s first presidency. Vought was closely involved with Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for Trump’s second term that the GOP nominee tried to distance himself from during the campaign.

The announcements showed how Trump was trying to balance competing perspectives as he pursues an aggressive and sometimes contradictory economic agenda that includes cutting taxes, reducing government spending, putting tariffs on foreign imports and lowering prices for American consumers.

Although Bessent is closely aligned with Wall Street and could earn bipartisan support, Vought is known as a Republican hardliner on budget and cultural issues.

Trump said Bessent would “help me usher in a new Golden Age for the United States,” while Vought “knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end Weaponized Government.”

After announcing his choices for key financial posts, Trump kept up the pace of what has been a breakneck transition process.

Trump picked Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon, a rare Republican who is considered a stalwart union ally, as his labor secretary. He also said he would nominate Scott Turner, a former football player who worked in Trump’s first administration, to serve as his housing secretary.

More choices were named for health and national security positions. In less than three weeks since the election, Trump has announced decisions for almost his entire Cabinet.

Bessent, 62, is the founder of hedge fund Key Square Capital Management, after having worked on-and-off for Soros Fund Management since 1991. If confirmed by the Senate, he would be the nation’s first openly gay treasury secretary.

He told Bloomberg in August that attacking the U.S. national debt should be a priority, which includes slashing government programs and other spending.

“This election cycle is the last chance for the U.S. to grow our way out of this mountain of debt without becoming a sort of European-style socialist democracy,” he said then.

As of Nov. 8, the national debt stands at $35.94 trillion, with both the Trump and Biden administrations having added to it. Trump’s policies added $8.4 trillion to the national debt, while the Biden administration increased the national debt by $4.3 trillion, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a fiscal watchdog.

Even as he pushes to lower the national debt by stopping spending, Bessent has backed extending provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which Trump signed into law in his first year in office. Estimates from different economic analyses of the costs of the various tax cuts range between nearly $6 trillion and $10 trillion over 10 years. Nearly all of the law’s provisions are set to expire at the end of 2025.

Before becoming a Trump donor and adviser, Bessent donated to various Democratic causes in the early 2000s, notably Al Gore’s presidential run. He also worked for George Soros, a major supporter of Democrats. Bessent had an influential role in Soros’ London operations, including his famous 1992 bet against the pound, which generated huge profits on “Black Wednesday,” when the pound was de-linked from European currencies.

Bessent previously told Bloomberg that he views tariffs as a “one time price adjustment” and “not inflationary,” and he said tariffs imposed during a second Trump administration would be directed primarily at China. And he wrote in a Fox News op-ed this week that tariffs are “a useful tool for achieving the president’s foreign policy objectives,” such as encouraging allies to spend more on defense or deterring military aggression.

In addition, Bessent has floated ideas for how Trump could put pressure on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, whose term expires in May 2026. Last month, Bessent suggested Trump could name a replacement chair early, and let that person function as a “shadow” chair, with the goal of essentially sidelining Powell.

But after the election, Bessent reportedly backed away from that plan. Powell, for his part, has said he wouldn’t step down if Trump asked him to do so, and added that Trump, as president, wouldn’t have the authority to fire him.

Trump repeatedly attacked Powell during his first term as president for raising the Fed’s key rate in 2017 and 2018. During the 2024 campaign, he said that as president he should have a “say” in the central bank’s interest rate decisions. Presidents traditionally avoid commenting on the Fed’s policies.

Vought, 48, was the head of the Office of Management and Budget from mid-2020 to the end of Trump’s first term in 2021, having previously served as the acting director and deputy director. He’s paired a deep knowledge of government finances with his own Christian faith.

After Trump’s initial term ended, Vought founded the Center for Renewing America, a think tank that describes its mission as renewing “a consensus of America as a nation under God.”

The Center for Renewing America released its own 2023 budget proposal entitled “A Commitment to End Woke and Weaponized Government.” The proposal envisioned $11.3 trillion worth of spending reductions over 10 years and about $2 trillion in income tax cuts in order to bring the budget into surplus by 2032.

“The immediate threat facing the nation is the fact that the people no longer govern the country; instead, the government itself is increasingly weaponized against the people it is meant to serve,” Vought wrote in the introduction.

Vought’s proposed budget plan would cut spending on food aid through the Agriculture Department. There would be $3.3 trillion in spending reductions in the Health and Human Services Department in large part through how Medicaid and Medicare funds are distributed. It also contains about $642 billion in cuts to Affordable Care Act. The budgets for the Housing and Urban Development and Education departments would also be cut.

Vought’s budget ideas were independent of Trump, who has not entirely spelled out the details of his economic plans.

Trump’s choice for labor secretary, Chavez-DeRemer, 56, narrowly lost her reelection bid earlier this month. She received strong backing from union members in her district.

Chavez-DeRemer is one of a few House Republicans to endorse the “Protecting the Right to Organize” or PRO Act that would allow more workers to conduct organizing campaigns and would add penalties for companies that violate workers’ rights. The act would also weaken “right-to-work” laws that allow employees in more than half the states to avoid participating in or paying dues to unions that represent workers at their places of employment.

Trump said in a statement that she would help “ensure that the Labor Department can unite Americans of all backgrounds behind our Agenda for unprecedented National Success.”

In addition, Trump added to his health team on Friday evening. He chose Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, a general practitioner and Fox News contributor, to be surgeon general; Dr. Dave Weldon, a former Republican congressman from Florida, to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and Dr. Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins surgeon, as head of the Food and Drug Administration.

Trump previously said he would nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime spreader of conspiracy theories about vaccines, as health secretary.

Alex Wong was named as principal deputy national security adviser, while Sebastian Gorka will serve as senior director for counterterrorism. Wong worked on issues involving Asia during Trump’s first term, and Gorka is a conservative commentator who spent less than a year in Trump’s first White House.

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