Trump, Vance step up support for Hegseth as nomination faces uncertain prospects
Donald Trump and JD Vance have this morning made public expressions of support for Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary nominee whose prospects for confirmation have been rocked by allegations of excessive drinking and a sexual assault claim.
The messages may be an attempt to convince wary Senate Republicans to get over their concerns and vote for Hegseth’s confirmation. Here’s what Trump wrote, on Truth Social:
Pete Hegseth is doing very well. His support is strong and deep, much more so than the Fake News would have you believe. He was a great student – Princeton/Harvard educated – with a Military state of mind. He will be a fantastic, high energy, Secretary of Defense Defense, one who leads with charisma and skill. Pete is a WINNER, and there is nothing that can be done to change that!!!
Vance took up the call, writing on X:
Led by President Trump, we’re fighting for Pete Hegseth. And we’re doing so because Pete Hegseth wil fight for our troops.
For too long, the Pentagon has been led by people who lose wars. Pete Hegseth is a man who fought in those wars.
We’ve got his back.
In response, Hegseth wrote:
Thank you Mr. President. Like you, we will never back down.
Key events
Top House Democrats says ‘we’ll see if there’s common ground’ with ‘Department of Government Efficiency’
At his press conference today, Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said his party is willing to work with the new “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), as long as what it proposes is reasonable.
“It’s unclear to me what exactly the objective is related to this so-called DOGE initiative. From our perspective, we want a federal government that is effective and efficient in equilibrium. And, to the extent the other side of the aisle shares that objective, which is what is right for the American people, then we’ll see if there’s common ground as possible,” Jeffries told reporters.
The GOP will remain the majority party in the House of Representatives beginning next year, but only by a mere two seats. Jeffries implied that their slim control of the chamber will make working with the Democrats essential:
It’s clear that the incoming House Republican majority will not be able to do much without us.
A small number of Democrats have signaled a willingness to work with the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) on whatever it ends up doing.
DOGE’s function remains a bit of a mystery, owing to the fact that Donald Trump is not president yet and the department does not seem to be a real department, but rather more of an advisory body.
Nonetheless, Democratic congressman Ro Khanna has piped up recently to say he agrees with the broader contention made by Trump and the department’s co-chairs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy that there are some areas of the federal government where spending could indeed be cut back.
Today, Khanna responded on X to an anonymous senior Republican aide who cast doubt on DOGE’s viability.
“Two people who know nothing about how the government works pretending they can cut a trillion dollars, both with decent pulpits to preach from, and the ear of an unpredictable president? Disaster. The only good thing is that at some point they’ll overpromise and get bounced by Trump. But until then … disaster,” the aide told Punchbowl News.
Khanna responded:
Does this senior, anonymous Republican aide trashing @DOGE & @VivekGRamaswamy & @elonmusk happen to be someone who is pushing for a larger bloated defense budget and concerned the 5 primes may lose contracts? Asking not for a lobbyist, but the American people.
A moment of bipartisan comity followed, with Ramaswamy, a billionaire biotech entrepreneur who ran for the Republican presidential nomination, saying to Khanna:
The *quality* of defense spending matters far more than the quantity. Good for @RoKhanna asking some tough questions.
Yesterday, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy were on Capitol Hill to tout the “Department of Government Efficiency”, a novel, Trump-backed initiative to shrink the size of the US government. The Guardian’s George Chidi has a look at how it might work:
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, two technology billionaires with an anti-government axe to grind, aim to cut $500bn from the federal budget. They took to Capitol Hill on Thursday to explain their intentions to Republican lawmakers. But how, exactly, is the “Department of Government Efficiency” supposed to work?
For starters, it is not actually a department of anything in the government.
“Only Congress can create a department,” said David C Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown and an expert in administrative procedure. The organization proposed by Musk and Ramaswamy would instead be a government advisory committee, which would only have the power to make recommendations to Congress about government waste and inefficiency. Vladeck said: “Ironically, the government already has that position, which is part of the Office of Management and Budget.”
Off the bat, the “Doge” effort appears to be duplicative effort. Musk met with Mike Johnson, John Thune and other Republican leaders, and highlighted recommendations made by the Government Accountability Office – an independent agency led by the comptroller general – that could reduce the federal budget by as much as $200bn annually, if implemented.
Here’s more from the Guardian’s Dara Kerr on the appeals court ruling that brings TikTok closer to a ban in the United States – unless its Chinese parent company cuts ties with the popular social media app:
TikTok is one step closer to facing a ban in the US. A federal appeals court ruled on Friday to uphold a law that forces the hugely popular social media company to sell its assets to a US company or be barred from the country entirely. The decision is the latest twist in a years-long battle between TikTok, which is owned by Chinese-based ByteDance, and the US government.
“TikTok’s millions of users will need to find alternative media of communication,” said the judge, Douglas Ginsburg. “That burden is attributable to [China’s] hybrid commercial threat to US national security, not to the US government, which engaged with TikTok through a multi-year process in an effort to find an alternative solution.”
TikTok has said that divestiture is “not possible technologically, commercially, or legally”. The case is likely to move up to the US supreme court.
TikTok first brought this lawsuit against the justice department in May. The court’s three-judge panel said that the provisions of the law “survive constitutional scrutiny”.
Ginsburg wrote that the measure “was the culmination of extensive, bipartisan action by the Congress and by successive presidents. It was carefully crafted to deal only with control by a foreign adversary, and it was part of a broader effort to counter a well-substantiated national security threat posed by the PRC (People’s Republic of China)”.
Appeals court upholds law that could lead to TikTok ban
A federal appeals court has turned down a challenge from TikTok to a law that forces its Chinese parent company to find a buyer for the popular social media app in the US or face a ban, the Associated Press reports.
TikTok is set to be banned in the US in mid-January, unless it cuts ties with its parent company ByteDance before then. The firm and app are expected to appeal to the Supreme Court, but could also get a reprieve later next month, when Donald Trump takes office. Though his first administration viewed the app as a potential national security threat due to its ties with China, Trump recently said that he opposes the law intended to cut ties between the Chinese firm and TikTok.
Here’s more, from the AP:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the law, which requires TikTok to break ties with its China-based parent company ByteDance or be banned by mid-January, is constitutional, rebuffing TikTok’s challenge that the statute ran afoul of the First Amendment and unfairly targeted the platform.
“The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States,” said the court’s opinion. “Here the Government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States.”
TikTok and ByteDance — another plaintiff in the lawsuit — are expected to appeal to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump, who tried to ban TikTok during his first term and whose Justice Department would have to enforce the law, said during the presidential campaign that he is now against a TikTok ban and would work to “save” the social media platform.
The law, signed by President Joe Biden in April, was the culmination of a years-long saga in Washington over the short-form video-sharing app, which the government sees as a national security threat due to its connections to China.
The U.S. has said it’s concerned about TikTok collecting vast swaths of user data, including sensitive information on viewing habits, that could fall into the hands of the Chinese government through coercion. Officials have also warned the proprietary algorithm that fuels what users see on the app is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who can use it to shape content on the platform in a way that’s difficult to detect.
In an interview with CNN, Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal said he did not like the idea of Joe Biden issuing preemptive pardons to people who Donald Trump may target.
“I would oppose, in fact, strongly oppose, this kind of blanket, broad immunity,” said Blumenthal, who represents Connecticut.
“The way to stand up to a bully like Donald Trump is not to run and hide, it’s to confront him, and that’s what we ought to do if they misuse the Department of Justice. I was a prosecutor, US attorney and then state attorney general, and I believe the way to confront Donald Trump is to put together a defense team and a defense fund. I’d be happy to join it. And what we should do is support those people who are potentially in jeopardy. But there’s no way to offer this kind of immunity to everyone who may be a target of Donald Trump, because they will go after whoever doesn’t have that kind of pardon, and there are plenty of targets that they can assail.”
Biden considering preemptive pardons for potential targets of Trump retaliation
Joe Biden is considering preemptively pardoning people who Donald Trump and his allies have suggested retaliating against once the president-elect takes office, the Associated Press reports.
Here’s more:
The deliberations so far are largely at the level of White House lawyers. But Biden himself has discussed the topic with some senior aides, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity Thursday to discuss the sensitive subject. No decisions have been made, the people said, and it is possible Biden opts to do nothing at all.
Pardons are historically afforded to those accused of specific crimes – and usually those who have already been convicted of an offense — but Biden’s team is considering issuing them for those who have not even been investigated, let alone charged. They fear that Trump and his allies, who have boasted of enemies lists and exacting “retribution,” could launch investigations that would be reputationally and financially costly for their targets even if they don’t result in prosecutions.
While the president’s pardon power is absolute, Biden’s use in this fashion would mark a significant expansion of how they are deployed, and some Biden aides fear it could lay the groundwork for an even more drastic usage by Trump. They also worry that issuing pardons would feed into claims by Trump and his allies that the individuals committed acts that necessitated immunity.
Recipients could include infectious-disease specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci, who was instrumental in combating the coronavirus pandemic and who has become a pariah to conservatives angry about mask mandates and vaccines. Others include witnesses in Trump’s criminal or civil trials and Biden administration officials who have drawn the ire of the incoming president and his allies.
In addition to Fauci, Axios reports that former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Mark Milley and Republican former congresswoman Liz Cheney are among those being considered for pardons.
Donald Trump’s incoming cabinet appears set to be a collection of very, very wealthy people, the Guardian’s Robert Tait reports:
Enough billionaires and multimillionaires have been assembled by Donald Trump to fill key roles in his nascent administration to form a soccer team.
In a recruitment process that appears to mock his campaign’s appeal to working-class voters, the president-elect has brazenly tapped a gallery of mega-rich backers for key positions that, in some instances, will give them power to cut spending on public services that are used by the most poor and vulnerable.
At least 11 picks for strategic positions after Trump returns to the White House in January have either achieved billionaire status themselves, have billionaire spouses or are within touching distance of that threshold.
The net result will be the wealthiest administration in US history – worth a total of $340bn at the start of this week, before Trump further boosted its monetary value by trying to appoint at least three more billionaires.
Its collective wealth easily outstrips that of Trump’s first cabinet, formed after his 2016 election victory – which at the time was the richest US cabinet ever formed, containing such super-rich members as Rex Tillerson, the former chief executive of ExxonMobil, who was appointed secretary of state, and Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary, who had become wealthy through restructuring bankrupt companies.
It also throws into stark relief the relative impoverishment of the current cabinet of Joe Biden – collectively worth a relatively paltry $118m despite having been repeatedly derided by Trump as representative of a corrupt governing elite that was cheating ordinary working Americans.
Despite a steady drumbeat of media reports revealing instance of troubling behavior by Pete Hegseth, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that aides to Donald Trump believe he still has a path to confirmation:
Donald Trump’s aides working on Pete Hegseth’s nomination for defense secretary have told the Trump transition team they haven’t yet counted three Republican senators as being categorically opposed to his confirmation, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The president-elect’s pick to lead the Pentagon returned to Capitol Hill to meet with senators in an effort to shore up faltering support over allegations that he committed sexual assault, drank to excess, sexually pursued female subordinates and was ousted from two non-profits.
But Hegseth’s nomination team, which has met with senators themselves, have suggested to Trump’s orbit that he may ultimately prevail given that they have not hit the critical threshold of three “no” votes despite the slew of torrid headlines that have clouded the selection.
And while Trump himself has not expended any real political capital by calling holdouts on Hegseth’s behalf, the Trump aides working on his nomination have, both with senators and inside Trumpworld to ensure he has the president-elect’s backing.
Hegseth’s team, which includes aides who are close to the vice president-elect JD Vance and Trump’s eldest son Don Jr, represent a particularly powerful group that has the ability to reach Republican senators and the Trump inner circle.
The trickiest hurdle for Hegseth, the people said, appears for now at least to be convincing Republican senator Joni Ernst to back his nomination or ensuring her resistance does not embolden her close colleagues in the Senate to vote against him.
Trump, Vance step up support for Hegseth as nomination faces uncertain prospects
Donald Trump and JD Vance have this morning made public expressions of support for Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary nominee whose prospects for confirmation have been rocked by allegations of excessive drinking and a sexual assault claim.
The messages may be an attempt to convince wary Senate Republicans to get over their concerns and vote for Hegseth’s confirmation. Here’s what Trump wrote, on Truth Social:
Pete Hegseth is doing very well. His support is strong and deep, much more so than the Fake News would have you believe. He was a great student – Princeton/Harvard educated – with a Military state of mind. He will be a fantastic, high energy, Secretary of Defense Defense, one who leads with charisma and skill. Pete is a WINNER, and there is nothing that can be done to change that!!!
Vance took up the call, writing on X:
Led by President Trump, we’re fighting for Pete Hegseth. And we’re doing so because Pete Hegseth wil fight for our troops.
For too long, the Pentagon has been led by people who lose wars. Pete Hegseth is a man who fought in those wars.
We’ve got his back.
In response, Hegseth wrote:
Thank you Mr. President. Like you, we will never back down.
Trump defends Hegseth as he announces more administration roles
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Donald Trump announced a slew of new nominations for top administration officials last night, including ambassador to China, head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and a new role of “White House AI and crypto czar”. He also made clear he was sticking by his embattled nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth. Writing on Truth Social this morning, Trump said Hegseth “is doing very well”, even though it remains unclear if key senators will support his nomination to lead the Pentagon. The former Fox News host has spent the past few days on Capitol Hill, trying to win over Republican lawmakers in spite of reports of his excessive drinking, financial mismanagement of two charities, and a sexual assault allegation.
Back to the nominations Trump announced last night, former Georgia senator David Perdue will serve as ambassador to China, while tech entrepreneur and Elon Musk associate David Sacks has been appointed to the new crypto czar role – the latest sign that the Trump administration will be much friendlier to the digital asset industry than Joe Biden’s ever was.
Here’s what else is happening today:
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The US job market remains robust, according to just-released government data that showed the economy added 227,000 jobs in November, and the unemployment rate held steady at 4.2%.
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Joe Biden will deliver remarks from the White House at the 6pm ET performance of “The Eyes of the World: From D-Day to VE Day”, which honors World War II veterans.
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White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre parries with reporters at 2pm.
