Here are the key developments from the last few hours:

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  Donald Trump named Karoline Leavitt as his pick for White House press secretary. Leavitt, who would be the youngest White House press secretary in history, was the Trump campaign’s national press secretary and served as assistant press secretary during his last administration. “Karoline is smart, tough, and has proven to be a highly effective communicator,” Trump said in a statement.

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  Donald Trump said in a statement that he will appoint Doug Burgum as both interior secretary and the head of a new National Energy Council. Trump announced that the North Dakota governor would head up the department that handles oil and gas drilling on federal lands, rattling environmentalists who fear Burgum will pursue policies that will exacerbate the climate crisis.

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  The Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, said he is against the ethics committee releasing its report into drug use and sexual misconduct by Matt Gaetz, the former representative nominated by Donald Trump to serve as attorney general.

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  Donald Trump has appointed his campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung as the next White House communications director.

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  Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary nominee, was reportedly involved in a sexual assault investigation in 2017 – a surprise to Trump’s transition team – but no charges were filed.

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  Dick Durbin, the outgoing Senate judiciary committee chair, warned that Trump’s justice department will use its powers to “seek vengeance”.

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  Mike Pencecame out againstRobert F Kennedy Jr to lead the health department, citing the nominee’s support for abortion.

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  Scott Bessent, a hedge fund founder, and Howard Lutnick, the co-chair of Trump’s transition team, are reportedly in the running to head up the treasury.

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Karoline Leavitt was the Trump campaign’s national press secretary and served as assistant press secretary during his last administration.

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“Karoline is smart, tough, and has proven to be a highly effective communicator,” Trump said in a statement. “I have the utmost confidence she will excel at the podium, and help deliver our message to the American People as we, Make America Great Again.”

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}],”data”:{“alt”:”Woman in blazer behind police barrier.”,”caption”:”Karoline Leavitt at Trump’s criminal trial at state supreme court in New York, New York.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Doug Mills/Pool via Reuters”}}],”attributes”:{“pinned”:false,”keyEvent”:true,”summary”:false},”blockCreatedOn”:1731713787000,”blockCreatedOnDisplay”:”18.36 EST”,”blockLastUpdated”:1731714200000,”blockLastUpdatedDisplay”:”18.43 EST”,”blockFirstPublished”:1731713943000,”blockFirstPublishedDisplay”:”18.39 EST”,”blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone”:”18.39″,”title”:”President-elect Donald Trump names Karoline Leavitt as pick for White House press secretary”,”contributors”:[] ,”primaryDateLine”:”Fri 15 Nov 2024 20.14 EST”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Fri 15 Nov 2024 05.52 EST”},{“id”:”6737aac08f08462ddd0c5d4d”,”elements”:[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

Donald Trump said in a statement that he will appoint Doug Burgum as both interior secretary and the head of a new National Energy Council.

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Trump announced the North Dakota governor would head up the department that handles oil and gas drilling on federal lands, rattling environmentalists who fear Burgum will pursue policies that will exacerbate the climate crisis.

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“I am thrilled to announce that Doug Burgum, the Governor of North Dakota, will be joining my Administration as both Secretary of the Interior and, as Chairman of the newly formed, and very important, National Energy Council, which will consist of all Departments and Agencies involved in the permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation, transportation, of ALL forms of American Energy,” Trump said.

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“This Council will oversee the path to U.S. ENERGY DOMINANCE by cutting red tape, enhancing private sector investments across all sectors of the Economy, and by focusing on INNOVATION over longstanding, but totally unnecessary, regulation. With U.S. Energy Dominance, we will drive down Inflation, win the A.I. arms race with China (and others), and expand American Diplomatic Power to end Wars all across the World.”

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Politico reports that the Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, said he is against the ethics committee releasing its report into drug use and sexual misconduct by Matt Gaetz, the former representative nominated by Donald Trump to serve as attorney general.

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“I’m going to strongly request that the ethics committee not issue the report, because that is not the way we do things in the House,” Johnson said, hours after returning from a visit to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. “And I think that would be a terrible precedent to set.”

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The committee had reportedly been near to releasing its inquiry, but Gaetz’s resignation has thrown into question whether such a report can be made public once a lawmaker exits the House. Some senators from both parties have said it should be shared with them, so they can assess Gaetz’s candidacy to serve as the nation’s top law enforcement officer.

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Donald Trump has appointed his campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung as the next White House communications director.

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Replacing Ben LaBolt, Cheung will be tasked with steering Trump’s strategy of selling his presidency to the American people.

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In a statement on Friday, the Trump-Vance campaign said:

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Steven Cheung will return to the White House as assistant to the president and director of communications. Cheung was director of communications on the Trump-Vance 2024 presidential campaign and previously served in the Trump White House as director of strategic response.

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Donald Trump has not nominated anyone new for his cabinet yet today, but many names are flying around for top posts. Larry Kudlowcould reportedly return to his old job heading the National Economic Council, or even the treasury, while Mike Rogers, who just lost election to the Senate from Michigan, may be tapped to lead the FBI. Meanwhile, we have learned more about Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary nominee. He was reportedly involved in a sexual assault investigation in 2017 – a surprise to Trump’s transition team – but no charges were ever filed. The president-elect has taken to announcing his nominations in the later half of the day, so perhaps we will hear from him this afternoon.

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Here’s what else has happened today so far:

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  Dick Durbin, the outgoing Senate judiciary committee chair, warned that Trump’s justice department will use its powers to “seek vengeance”.

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  Mike Pencecame out againstRobert F Kennedy Jr to lead the health department, citing the nominee’s support for abortion.

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  Scott Bessent, a hedge fund founder, and Howard Lutnick, the co-chair of Trump’s transition team, are also reportedly in the running to head up the treasury.

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The outgoing Democratic chair of the Senate judiciary committee Dick Durbin warned that Donald Trump’s appointees to top justice department posts are a sign that he will direct prosecutors and law enforcement to retaliate against his political opponents.

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Durbin singled out the president-elect’s nomination of Todd Blanche, who defended Trump in his hush-money trial in New York,as deputy attorney general, and John Sauer, who argued before the supreme court in his immunity case, as solicitor general:

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Coupled with the announcement that he intends to nominate former Congressman Matt Gaetz to be attorney general, these selections show Donald Trump intends to weaponize the justice department to seek vengeance. Donald Trump viewed the justice department as his personal law firm during his first term, and these selections – his personal attorneys – are poised to do his bidding.

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The American people deserve a justice department that fights for equal justice under the law. This isn’t it.

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Democrats are losing control of the Senate at the beginning of next year, and it will be up to the incoming Republican majority to confirm Trump’s appointees.

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Donald Trump may be bringing Larry Kudlow, a top economic adviser during his first term, back to his administration, the Wall Street Journal reports.

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Kudlow is under consideration to perhaps lead the treasury department or the National Economic Council, which he led during Trump’s first term. In that job, he was often on television downplaying the severity of the economic collapse caused by Covid-19 and predicting a rapid recovery. Kudlow has since become a host on Fox Business Network.

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Here’s more, from the Journal:

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Donald Trump is considering tapping Fox Business Network host Larry Kudlow for a senior economic policy role in his administration, according to people familiar with the matter, amid the president-elect’s mounting frustration with jockeying for top jobs.

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Kudlow met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, the president-elect’s private Florida club, late this week, the people said. Trump’s advisers see Kudlow as a contender to lead the National Economic Council and possibly the Treasury Department.

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Kudlow and a spokeswoman for Trump’s transition team didn’t respond to requests for comment.

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Kudlow, 77, served as NEC director for nearly three years, remaining in the role until the end of Trump’s time in office. He has kept in regular touch with Trump.

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Kudlow has made regular appearances on Fox Business since leaving the White House. On his weekday show, Kudlow regularly touts Trump’s economic policy proposals. His allies have made appeals directly to Trump to bring him back into the administration, the people said.

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Kudlow’s stock has risen in Trump’s orbit amid what one adviser to the president called a “cold war” between two other leading candidates for senior economic roles in the second term: billionaire Cantor Fitzgerald Chief Executive Howard Lutnick and investor Scott Bessent.

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Mike Rogers, a Republican former representative who just narrowly lost election to the Senate representing Michigan, is in the running to be FBI director under Donald Trump, Fox News reports.

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Citing sources familiar with the situation, the broadcaster reports Rogers met with Trump’s transition team yesterday at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. Rogers is a former FBI special agent, who was under consideration to lead the bureau during Trump’s first term, a job that ultimately went to Christopher Wray.

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Here’s more, from Fox:

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Will the second time be the charm for one-time Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent and former Rep Mike Rogers?

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Rogers, the 2024 Republican Senate nominee in Michigan who lost his election last week by a razor-thin margin, met Thursday with President-elect Trump’s transition team regarding potentially serving as FBI director in the former and future president’s second administration, sources familiar tell Fox News.

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The meeting took place at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.

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Rogers worked as a special agent with the FBI in its Chicago office and who served as chair of the House Intelligence Committee during the final four years of his decade-long tenure in Congress, was interviewed in 2017 during Trump’s first administration to serve as FBI director after James Comey was dismissed.

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But Trump at the time decided to appoint Christopher Wray to the traditional ten-year term steering the federal law enforcement agency.

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Fox News host Pete Hegseth, who Donald Trump nominated to be defense secretary, was involved in a sexual assault investigation in California seven years ago, but no charges were filed against him, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

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The incident happened in 2017 at a hotel and golf course in the city of Monterey, but there were few details of how Hegseth was involved, or what happened. Here’s more, from the Chronicle:

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In a brief statement late Thursday, the city manager’s office in Monterey confirmed the sexual assault investigation, but provided few details.

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The city said the incident was reported to have happened between almost midnight on Oct. 7, 2017, and 7 a.m. the next morning at the Hyatt Regency Monterey Hotel and Spa on Del Monte Golf Course, less than a mile from Monterey Bay and across Highway 1 from the Naval Postgraduate School.

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“The Monterey Police Department investigated an alleged sexual assault at 1 Old Golf Course Road,” the city said. It said the victim’s name was confidential and that the alleged assault was reported on Oct. 12, 2017. The city said no weapons were involved, but that there was a report of “contusions to right thigh.”

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The city declined to release the police report, saying it was exempt from public disclosure, and said it would not make any further remarks on the probe.

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The Monterey County District Attorney’s Office did not reply to a request for comment late Thursday, but an online database indicated no criminal charges had been filed against Hegseth in that county.

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Vanity Fair reports that news of the allegation sent Trump’s transition team scrambling over the past few days:

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Donald Trump’s transition team scrambled Thursday after Trump’s incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles was presented with an allegation that former Fox & Friends cohost Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee to be Defense Secretary, had engaged in sexual misconduct. According to two sources, Wiles was briefed Wednesday night about an allegation that Hegseth had acted inappropriately with a woman. One of the sources said the alleged incident took place in Monterey, California in 2017.

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According to the transition source, the allegation is serious enough that Wiles and Trump’s lawyers spoke to Hegseth about it on Thursday. A source with knowledge of the meeting said that Hegseth said the allegation stemmed from a consensual encounter and characterized the episode as he-said, she-said.

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On Thursday evening, Hegseth’s lawyer Timothy Parlatore said: “This allegation was already investigated by the Monterey police department and they found no evidence for it.”

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Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung said: “President Trump is nominating high-caliber and extremely qualified candidates to serve in his Administration. Mr. Hegseth has vigorously denied any and all accusations, and no charges were filed. We look forward to his confirmation as United States Secretary of Defense so he can get started on Day One to Make America Safe and Great Again.”

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Mike Pence, who served as vice-president during Donald Trump’s first term, announced his opposition to appointing Robert F Kennedy Jr as secretary of health and human services, citing his views on abortion.

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“The Trump-Pence administration was unapologetically pro-life for our four years in office. There are hundreds of decisions made at HHS every day that either lead our nation toward a respect for life or away from it, and HHS under our administration always stood for life,” Pence said in a statement released by his conservative nonprofit, Advancing American Freedom.

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“I believe the nomination of RFK Jr. to serve as Secretary of HHS is an abrupt departure from the pro-life record of our administration and should be deeply concerning to millions of Pro-Life Americans who have supported the Republican Party and our nominees for decades.”

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During his presidential campaign, which he ended in August and announced his support for Trump, Kennedy said he is in favor of abortion being legal up to a certain point.

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Pence fell out with Trump after refusing to go along with his attempts to stop Joe Biden from taking office after the 2020 election. Nonetheless, his words may hold some sway with conservative senators opposed to abortion. Here’s the rest of his statement:

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For the majority of his career, RFK Jr. has defended abortion on demand during all nine months of pregnancy, supports overturning the Dobbs decision and has called for legislation to codify Roe v Wade. If confirmed, RFK, Jr. would be the most pro-abortion Republican appointed secretary of HHS in modern history.

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The pro-life movement has always looked to the Republican party to stand for life, to affirm an unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed.

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On behalf of tens of millions of pro-life Americans, I respectfully urge Senate Republicans to reject this nomination and give the American people a leader who will respect the sanctity of life as secretary of Health and Human Services.

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President-elect Donald Trump said on Thursday that North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, a wealthy former software company executive, will be his pick for interior secretary.

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“He’s going to head the Department of Interior, and it’s going to be fantastic,” a tuxedo-wearing Trump said at a gala at his Mar-a-Lago Florida retreat, adding that he would make an official announcement on Friday.

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Burgum, 68, has portrayed himself as a traditional, business-minded conservative. He ran against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination before quitting and becoming a loyal Trump supporter, appearing at fundraisers and advocating for Trump on television, Reuters reported.

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At the gala, which featured tech billionaire Elon Musk, actor Sylvester Stallone and members of his incoming administration, Trump praised his latest cabinet picks and made some of his longest remarks since his presidential election victory speech.

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“Nobody knew we were going to win it the way we won it,” Trump said.

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He teased Musk about his ongoing post-election stay at Mar-a-Lago. Musk is involved in some of Trump’s meetings at the oceanfront property.

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“I can’t get him out of here. He just loves this place. And I like having him here,” said Trump.

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At the end of the event, Musk mounted the stage.

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“The public has given us a mandate that could not be more clear. The people have spoken, the people want change,” he said.

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Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are asking Americans who are “high-IQ small-government revolutionaries” and willing to work over 80 hours a week to join their new Department of Government Efficiency – at zero pay.

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In a new X post on Thursday that doubled as a job announcement and another one of Musk’s trolling attempts, the account for the newly formed Doge wrote: “We don’t need more part-time idea generators. We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.”

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The name of the department, which is not part of the federal government, harkens back to a meme of an expressive shiba inu dog.

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“If that’s you, DM this account with your CV. Elon & Vivek will review the top 1% of applicants,” the statement added.

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In a separate post, Musk chimed in on the callout, saying: “Indeed, this will be tedious work, make lots of enemies & compensation is zero.”

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“What a great deal!” Musk, the richest man in the world, wrote with a laughing emoji. He has promised to reduce federal bureaucracy by a third and cut $2tn from US government spending, an endeavor he said “necessarily involves some temporary hardship”.

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Earlier this week, Donald Trump announced the appointment of Musk and Ramaswamy to Doge, saying: “Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies – essential to the ‘Save America’ movement.”

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Trump went on to describe the newly formed department as the “‘Manhattan Project’ of our time,” referring to the US-led research program during the second world war that sought to create the nuclear bomb, which killed an estimated 214,000 people in Japan in 1945.

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Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you all the latest news from Washington over the next few hours.

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We start with the news that Donald Trump’s nomination of Robert F Kennedy Jr as US secretary of health and human services has prompted widespread criticisms towards Kennedy, an anti-vaccine activist who has embraced a slew of other debunked health-related conspiracy theories.

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In a Truth Social post on Thursday, Trump claimed that Americans have been “crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies” and that Kennedy “will restore these Agencies to the traditions of Gold Standard Scientific Research, and beacons of Transparency, to end the Chronic Disease epidemic, and to Make America Great and Healthy Again!”

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In response to Kennedy’s nomination, Public Citizen, a progressive nonprofit organization focusing on consumer advocacy, said: “Robert F Kennedy Jr is a clear and present danger to the nation’s health. He shouldn’t be allowed in the building at the department of health and human services (HHS), let alone be placed in charge of the nation’s public health agency.”

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“Donald Trump’s bungling of public health policy during the Covid pandemic cost hundreds of thousands of lives. By appointing Kennedy as his secretary of HHS, Trump is courting another, policy-driven public health catastrophe,” the organization added.

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For more on that, see our full report here:

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In other news:

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  The FBI should investigate both Gaetz and Tulsi Gabbard before they are confirmed for their cabinet posts, Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton has said. Gabbard, who Trump nominated as director of national intelligence, is known for her tolerant view of Russian president Vladimir Putin and Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

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  Elon Musk reportedly met Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations on Monday, and discussed how to defuse tensions between Iran and the US, two Iranian officials told the New York Times. As Trump prepares to address conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, Musk, the world’s richest man, has been assisting in discussions with foreign officials, establishing himself as the country’s most influential civilian come January.

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  Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are seeking Americans who are “high-IQ small-government revolutionaries” and willing to work over 80 hours a week to join their new department, at zero pay. Trump named Musk to co-lead the newly created government efficiency department that sits outside the federal government.

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  Advocates have urged state governments to find new ways to defend immigrants and block Trump’s mass deportation plan. California shielded many non-citizen residents from removal in Trump’s first term but immigrants rights groups warn an aggressive, multi-pronged response will be needed.

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  A Democratic lawmaker will file a motion specifically mentioning Trump can only serve two terms, after the president-elect joked he would be willing to serve an unconstitutional third term as president while meeting with House Republicans on Wednesday.

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  Trump announced his former Georgia congressman Doug Collins as secretary of veterans affairs. Collins ran for Senate in 2020, finishing third in the primary. He also “provided counsel to Trump in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election as Trump sought to challenge Georgia’s election results”.

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Summary

Here are the key developments from the last few hours:

• Donald Trump named Karoline Leavitt as his pick for White House press secretary. Leavitt, who would be the youngest White House press secretary in history, was the Trump campaign’s national press secretary and served as assistant press secretary during his last administration. “Karoline is smart, tough, and has proven to be a highly effective communicator,” Trump said in a statement.

• Donald Trump said in a statement that he will appoint Doug Burgum as both interior secretary and the head of a new National Energy Council. Trump announced that the North Dakota governor would head up the department that handles oil and gas drilling on federal lands, rattling environmentalists who fear Burgum will pursue policies that will exacerbate the climate crisis.

• The Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, said he is against the ethics committee releasing its report into drug use and sexual misconduct by Matt Gaetz, the former representative nominated by Donald Trump to serve as attorney general.

• Donald Trump has appointed his campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung as the next White House communications director.

• Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary nominee, was reportedly involved in a sexual assault investigation in 2017 – a surprise to Trump’s transition team – but no charges were filed.

• Dick Durbin, the outgoing Senate judiciary committee chair, warned that Trump’s justice department will use its powers to “seek vengeance”.

• Mike Pence came out against Robert F Kennedy Jr to lead the health department, citing the nominee’s support for abortion.

• Scott Bessent, a hedge fund founder, and Howard Lutnick, the co-chair of Trump’s transition team, are reportedly in the running to head up the treasury.

Rudy Giuliani surrendered a Mercedes-Benz, watches and a ring on Friday to two Georgia election workers who successfully sued him for defamation, according to PoliticoO.

The former New York City mayor is still refusing to turn over other property to comply with a $148m judgment against him.

The car and other valuables are the first pieces of property, aside from access to his New York City apartment, Giuliani has been forced to hand over to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, who won the $148m defamation verdict against him in 2023.

Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said Matt Gaetz was an “absurd” choice for Donald Trump’s attorney general, during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper:

This is an absurd choice given that he has been outwardly under investigation by the House Ethics Committee, and then he resigned right before the report is to be released on charges of everything and allegations of sex trafficking and illicit drug use, and it appears as though a number of House members on both sides of the aisle has information about this.

Justin Trudeau recalled that the last time Donald Trump took office, he pledged to rip up the North American Free Trade Agreement, according to Reuters.

Trudeau made these comments among leaders of Pacific rim countries including the US and China on Friday, as they gathered in Peru for an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

Instead, Canada’s prime minister said, the nations worked hard to find ways to forge new terms, known as the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, that served as proof trade can be beneficial to all parties.

“It wasn’t easy. And nothing is going to be easy this time,” Trudeau said. “Little secret: there is no American administration that is automatically easy for a Canadian government. They take a very robust look at their own interests, and Canada adjusts.”

Karoline Leavitt, who would be the youngest White House press secretary in history, ran for election to the US House to represent New Hampshire’s 1st congressional district in 2022, losing in the general election, according to Iowa State University’s Archives of Women’s Political Communication.

Leavitt graduated from Saint Anselm College in the state in 2019, earning a degree in politics and communication. As a student during the 2016 election, she began working for Fox News. After graduating, she worked for Donald Trump and served as a presidential writer and assistant press secretary in the press office.

In June, CNN abruptly ended a live interview with Leavitt after she criticized the network’s debate moderators, Dana Bash and Jake Tapper, both of whom had hosted the debate between Trump and Joe Biden in Atlanta.

Leavitt described the debate as a “hostile environment on this very network” and accused the moderators of having a biased history with Trump. This led to a heated exchange with CNN presenter Kasie Hunt.

President-elect Donald Trump names Karoline Leavitt as pick for White House press secretary

Karoline Leavitt was the Trump campaign’s national press secretary and served as assistant press secretary during his last administration.

“Karoline is smart, tough, and has proven to be a highly effective communicator,” Trump said in a statement. “I have the utmost confidence she will excel at the podium, and help deliver our message to the American People as we, Make America Great Again.”

Donald Trump’s nomination of North Dakota’s Republican governor, Doug Burgum, as the interior secretary has prompted swift backlash from environmental advocacy groups alarmed at the incoming administration’s plans to use federal lands for oil and gas drilling.

Trump also announced in a statement on Friday his intention to make Burgum chair of a National Energy Council he intends to form to “oversee the path to U.S. ENERGY DOMINANCE” and to focus on “the battle for AI superiority”.

Burgum, a former businessman, has been governor since 2016 of North Dakota, which is the third largest oil and natural gas producer in the country. Burgum, if confirmed by the Senate, would manage US federal lands including national parks and wildlife refuges, as well as oversee relations with 574 federally recognized Native American tribes.

Major concerns have loomed over the country’s wildlife refuges and public lands as Trump prepares to enter the White House for a second term. Throughout his campaign trail, Trump has repeatedly said “drill, baby, drill” and has vowed to carve up the Arctic national wildlife refuge in Alaska’s northern tundra for oil and gas drilling.

The Sierra Club, the country’s largest non-profit environmental organization, said: “It was climate skeptic Doug Burgum who helped arrange the Mar-a-Lago meeting with wealthy oil and gas executives where Donald Trump offered to overturn dozens of environmental rules and regulations in exchange for $1bn in campaign contributions.”

The Guardian’s Maya Yang and Maanvi Singh wrote all about it:

Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida said that former representative Tulsi Gabbard, president-elect Donald Trump’s pick for national intelligence director, is “likely a Russian asset.”

“There’s no question I consider her someone who is likely a Russian asset,” Wasserman Schultz told MSNBC on Friday.

“Tulsi Gabbard is someone who has met with war criminals, violated the Department of State’s guidance and secretly, clandestinely went to Syria and met with [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad, who gassed and attacked his own people with chemical weapons,” she said. “She’s considered to be, essentially, by most assessments, a Russian asset.”

Members of the Democratic National Committee are already bracing for a fight to reorder the primary contests in the next presidential election.

“The 2024 calendar will absolutely not be the calendar for 2028,” Nebraska state party chair Jane Kleeb told NBC News.

At least half a dozen DNC members, state chairs and DNC officials said there will be a full reexamination of the order of the states before the 2028 Democratic primary.

Whatever calendar is settled on is a major factor to those presidential primary contenders, who spend most of their time and resources in states like South Carolina and Nevada, which serve to winnow down the pack before moving on to Super Tuesday.

Robert Tait

Donald Trump’s transition team has bypassed standard background checks by the Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI) on some of the president-elect’s cabinet nominees, it has been reported, minimising the chances of them being rejected for Senate confirmation based on any past transgressions or conflicts of interest.

Such background checks – a longstanding tradition for incoming presidential nominations dating back decades to the early cold war – have instead been outsourced to private investigators.

The revelation, first reported by CNN, comes as shock waves reverberate in Washington from at least three of Trump’s proposed appointees: Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F Kennedy Jr for attorney general, director of national intelligence and health secretary, respectively.

Moves to cut out the FBI appear to be in line with a pre-election memo drafted by his legal advisers and fit with Trump’s enduring suspicion that the agency is part of what, without evidence, he believes to be a “deep state” machine within the federal government bent on undermining him.

The bureau’s checks, based on convention rather than legislation, are intended to review nominees’ track records for criminal histories, conflicts of interest or personal liabilities that might disqualify a candidate from being given security clearance.

Here’s more context:

Wall Street ended a turbulent week with its biggest weekly losses in more than two months, as post-election optimism faded.

The S&P 500 fell 1.3% on Friday and 2.1% for the week, while the Nasdaq declined 3.15% for the week. Early gains fueled by Donald Trump’s pro-business election win and a Federal Reserve rate cut gave way to concerns over slower future rate cuts and inflation risks.

Stocks in tech, healthcare and consumer-staples sectors slid, while vaccine makers dipped upon Trump’s nomination of Robert F Kennedy Jr to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

The FBI said that the racist text messages being sent to Black people across the country are now targeting high school students and Latino and LGBTQ+ communities.

“Some recipients reported being told they were selected for deportation or to report to a re-education camp,” reads a statement from the FBI released Friday. “The messages have also been reported as being received via email communication.”

In the wake of the presidential election, college students and working professionals have received mass texts from unrecognized phone numbers.

The hate-filled rhetoric has been reported in at least 30 states. People of color in states including Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, New York, New Jersey, Nevada, the DC area and elsewhere reported receiving the messages.

The messages were sent to Black adults and students, including to high schoolers in Massachusetts and New York, and students at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), such as Alabama State University and other schools, including ones across Ohio, Clemson University, the University of Alabama and Missouri State.

President Joe Biden praised the cooperation among South Korea, Japan and the US in countering what he described as North Korea’s “dangerous and destabilizing cooperation with Russia”, according to the Associated Press.

Biden spoke at the start of a meeting in Peru on Friday with Yoon Suk Yeol, the South Korean president, and Shigeru Ishiba, the Japanese prime minister, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

The talks came amid heightened concerns about North Korea’s growing military partnership with Russia and Pyongyang’s stepped-up cadence of ballistic missile tests.

Biden celebrated the partnership between Japan and South Korea, two countries that have historical enmity but that under Biden’s presidency are now tightening security and economic ties as their corner of the world becomes more complicated.

Biden noted that it would be his last meeting with them but that the trilateral partnership should be preserved for years to come.

“I’m proud of how far we’ve come,” Biden said. “Whatever the issue, we’ve taken it on together.”

The meeting comes as North Korea has deployed thousands of troops to Russia to help Moscow try to claw back land in the Kursk border region that Ukraine seized earlier this year.

Iran sent a message to the Biden administration in October stating it was not attempting to kill Donald Trump, aiming to reduce tensions with the US, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The message, delivered through an intermediary, followed a September warning from the Biden administration that any Iranian attempt to kill Trump, then a Republican presidential candidate, would be considered “an act of war”.

Since Trump’s election victory last week, some Iranian former officials, analysts and media figures have encouraged Tehran to engage with the president-elect and adopt a more cooperative stance, despite Trump allies’ promises to reintroduce a hardline approach against Iran.

The news comes the same week Elon Musk, whom Trump named as one of the heads of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, reportedly met with Iran’s UN ambassador to discuss how to defuse tensions between Iran and the United States.

A former Virginia lawmaker has pleaded guilty to felony gun and drug charges and been sentenced to time already served in jail, according to the Associated Press.

Matt Fariss, who had served in the House of Delegates as a Republican since 2012 before running unsuccessfully last year as an independent, pleaded guilty Wednesday to meth possession and having a firearm while possessing an illegal drug, the Lynchburg News and Advance reported.

Judge Dennis Lee Hupp sentenced Fariss in Campbell circuit court to three years in prison and suspended all but 20 days, according to the News and Advance.

The appointment of a US health secretary with anti-vaccine views could cause deaths and have profound consequences around the world, global health experts fear.

Robert F Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump’s pick for the position, has a history of spreading misinformation on vaccines and questioning the science of HIV and Aids.

His nomination has been greeted with bemusement and alarm. One global health activist, speaking on background, said the move was akin to making the disgraced doctor Andrew Wakefield, who falsely claimed that the MMR vaccine caused autism, the UK’s health secretary.

Prof Sir Simon Wessely, a regius professor of psychiatry at King’s College London, said of the move: “That sound that you just heard was my jaw dropping, hitting the floor and rolling out of the door.”

Prof Sir Andrew Pollard, the director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, said there was real concern that Kennedy might use the platform “to pursue the same anti-science positions on life-saving public health interventions that he has advanced previously”.

He added: “If this makes families hesitate to immunise against the deadly diseases that threaten children, the consequence will be fatal for some.”

The Guardian’s Kat Lay and Kate Connolly explain what the latest appointment could mean:

After Donald Trump nominated him to lead the interior department and the new National Energy Council, Doug Burgum, North Dakota’s governor, wrote on X:

I’m deeply grateful to President @RealDonaldTrump for this amazing opportunity to serve the American people and achieve ENERGY DOMINANCE!

Expect that energy dominance to involve a lot of fossil fuels. Here’s more on what environmentalists fear Burgum as interior secretary could portend for fighting the climate crisis:

The Guardian’s Alice Herman has more on defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, who concerns experts for his adherence to a number of rightwing ideologies:

Extremism experts are sounding the alarm about Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, whose writings and online presence reveal someone immersed in a culture of rightwing Christianity, political extremism and violent ideation.

The Fox & Friends host, who has served in the US army but has no experience in government, drew shock from Pentagon officials when Trump nominated him. Hegseth’s books on American culture and the military, his commentary on Fox and his frequent posts on social media showcase his far-right ideology. On these platforms, Hegseth telegraphs paranoia and anger toward “leftists”, an ultra-masculine Maga persona and apparent revulsion toward service members who do not fit his vision – including women.

“The thing that really worries me, is both the ideology of Christian nationalism and what that’s going to mean for the kind of policies he tries to put in place for the defense department,” said Thomas Lecaque, a historian focusing on religion and political violence.