Trump formally secures Electoral College win as his nominees push for Senate support: Live updates
Robert F Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard head to Capitol Hill to drum up support ahead of confirmation hearings
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump has formally won the Electoral College and the presidency after Texas’ electors handed him the state’s 40 electoral votes Tuesday.
After Trump’s election win on November 5, his victory was formalized Tuesday as presidential electors gathered across the U.S.
It takes 270 electoral votes to win the Electoral College — Trump won 312 last month to Vice President Kamala Harris’s 226.
Thirteen of the electors are Republicans who took part in the fake electors plot in 2020, and some of them face criminal charges.
This comes as Trump’s choices for his cabinet headed to Capitol Hill to meet with senators ahead of their confirmation hearings. HHS secretary nominee Robert F Kennedy Jr. and the nominee to serve as the director of national intelligence, former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, went to the hill Tuesday to drum up support for their respective nominations.
Meanwhile, Trump has lost his latest bid to throw out his New York hush money conviction, with the judge overseeing the case rejecting his attorneys’ conjecture that he is protected by “presidential immunity”.
The president-elect appears likely to enter the White House as a convicted felon, though it remains unclear when, or if, the justice will continue to postpone a sentencing date.
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Senate’s progressive wing proposes bill to end the Electoral College and ‘restore democracy’
Three progressive Democratic senators have unveiled a constitutional amendment that aims to abolish the Electoral College, five weeks after Donald Trump stormed to victory in the presidential election by sweeping the battleground states.
Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Dick Durbin of Illinois and Peter Welch of Vermont presented their bill on Monday, saying it was time to “restore democracy” by doing away with the college system altogether and giving primacy to the popular vote, the total number of ballots cast by the American electorate.
“In an election, the person who gets the most votes should win. It’s that simple,” said Schatz.
Read more:
Senate’s progressive wing proposes bill to end the Electoral College
Senators propose abolition of ‘flawed and outdated’ system that ‘disenfranchises millions of Americans’
Trump meets TikTok CEO as platform fights US ban
Donald Trump reportedly met with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew on Monday to discuss the app’s potential ban by the US government.
The two men reportedly had a meeting at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, according to NBC News.
In the days leading up to the meeting, Trump had expressed some degree of sympathy for the company, saying he had a “warm spot” for the app, and promising that he’d “take a look” at the ban.
Read more:
Trump meets TikTok CEO as platform fights US ban
President-elect tried to ban TikTok in 2020 but changed his tone on it once he realized it could help him win
Republican report suggests Liz Cheney be criminally investigated because of work on Jan 6
Republicans released a 128-page report Tuesday which suggested that former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney be investigated for her work probing the January 6 Capitol riot.
The report looked at the “failures and politicization” of the now-dissolved January 6 Committee, claiming that President-elect Donald Trump was unfairly blamed for the attack.
“Speaker Pelosi’s multimillion-dollar Select Committee was a political weapon with a singular focus to deceive the public into blaming President Trump for the violence on January 6 and to tarnish the legacy of his first Presidency,” it says.
The conclusion argues that the FBI should investigate Cheney, claiming that her contact with witness Cassidy Hutchinson, a former Trump White House aide, amounted to witness tampering.
“January 6th showed Donald Trump for who is really is – a cruel and vindictive man who allowed violent attacks to continue against our Capitol and law enforcement officers while he watched television and refused for hours to instruct his supporters to stand down and leave,” Cheney said in a statement, according to The Hill.
She went on to note that “Chairman [Barry] Loudermilk’s (R-Ga.) ‘Interim Report’ intentionally disregards the truth and the Select Committee’s tremendous weight of evidence, and instead fabricates lies and defamatory allegations in an attempt to cover up what Donald Trump did. Their allegations do not reflect a review of the actual evidence, and are a malicious and cowardly assault on the truth. No reputable lawyer, legislator or judge would take this seriously.”
The rise and fall of Justin Trudeau as Canadian prime minister is on the brink
After nearly 10 years at the country’s helm, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is facing growing calls from his own party to resign.
Mr Trudeau’s latest crisis has been sparked by the sudden resignation of his finance minister Chrystia Freeland, amid a row over how best to handle US President-elect Donald Trump’s threatened trade tariffs.
Once the poster-boy for liberal politics, his popularity has waned and his approval rating has dipped below 30 per cent several times this year.
So what went wrong?
The rise and fall of Justin Trudeau as Canadian prime minister is on the brink
The Canadian prime minister was once a poster boy for liberalism but he now faces the latest in a series of crises that threaten his future
Trump formally clinches presidency with Electoral College win
Donald Trump has formally won the Electoral College and the presidency after Texas’ electors handed him the state’s 40 electoral votes Tuesday.
After Trump’s election win on November 5, his victory was formalized Tuesday as presidential electors gathered across the U.S.
It takes 270 electoral votes to win the Electoral College — Trump won 312 last month to Vice President Kamala Harris’s 226.
The votes of each state will be sent on to Congress next month, where Trump and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance will be declared the next president and vice president before they take office at noon on January 20.
Senators warn that Pete Hegseth’s hearings will echo Brett Kavanaugh’s with fervor from both sides
Senate Republicans fear that the confirmation hearings for secretary of defense nominee Pete Hegseth will be a repeat of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s heated 2018 hearings.
Both Kavanaugh and Hegseth have been accused of sexual misconduct and have rejected the allegations. Hegseth’s plan to release his accuser from a nondisclosure agreement is setting up the hearing to be filled with tension and fervor from both Democrats and Republicans.
Hegseth is set to push ahead with his nomination despite warnings from Senate Republicans that he’s likely to face a frenzy of uncomfortable questions about the sexual misconduct allegations and the claims against him of excessive drinking and financial mismanagement.
Read more:
Senators warn that Pete Hegseth’s hearings will echo Brett Kavanaugh’s
Texas Republican Senator tells secretary of defense nominee confirmation hearings will be ‘miserable experience’
Trump insiders reveal candid details about Melania and Barron’s relationship
Incoming First Lady Melania Trump is devoted to ensuring her 18-year-old son, Barron Trump, is happy and healthy which will likely make her role in the White House less visible than other first ladies, insiders say.
Melania, 54, strives for “open communication” with her son, who recently began attending college at New York University, to help him adjust to the spotlight, two sources familiar with the Trump family told People.
“Melania worries about the hate in the country and how it falls on her son, who is innocent of any of this,” a social source told the magazine.
Read more:
Trump insiders reveal candid details about Melania and Barron’s relationship
Melania is expected to deviate from a more traditional first lady role when Donald Trump enters the White House on January 20
Comment: Why Elon Musk should get every cent of his $56bn Tesla pay package
The moment my children became interested in the US election was not when Taylor Swift declared her support for Kamala Harris, it was when Elon Musk appeared alongside Donald Trump.
They’re late teenagers – young adults – and Musk is their hero. It’s not just that he’s the world’s richest man, although that adds considerable lustre. It’s because he breaks boundaries, not least with his attempts to award himself a $56bn pay package, compensation that a judge this week ruled excessive.
He’s also the future, their future. They admire the Tesla – ‘faster than a motorbike from traffic lights’ one said to me recently. They can take or leave X, it’s not their network. And the space rocket reversing into a dock, as neatly as any car – that video has been replayed in our household countless times.
Read more:
Why Elon Musk should get every cent of his $56 billion pay package
As Musk’s record-breaking Tesla pay day is back in the news, Chris Blackhurst says we shouldn’t be too hasty to agree with the judge saying he shouldn’t be awarded such a huge sum. Just ask the generation that lauds his achievements
Why is tech giant SoftBank investing over $100 billion in the US?
Japanese tycoon Masayoshi Son and President-elect Donald Trump have announced plans for technology and telecoms giant SoftBank Group to invest $100 billion in projects in the United States over the coming four years.
Trump said the investments in building artificial intelligence infrastructure would create 100,000 jobs, twice the 50,000 promised when Son pledged $50 billion in U.S. investments after Trump’s victory in 2016.
Son, a founder and CEO of SoftBank Group, is known for making bold choices that sometimes pay big and sometimes don’t. SoftBank has investments in dozens of Silicon Valley startups, along with big companies like semiconductor design company Arm and Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. The stock market rally and craze for AI has boosted the value of its assets, but it’s unclear whether its investments will create that many jobs.
Who is Masayoshi Son?
Why is tech giant SoftBank investing over $100 billion in the US?
Japanese tycoon Masayoshi Son has joined President-elect Donald Trump in announcing plans by technology and telecoms giant SoftBank Group to invest $100 billion in projects in the United States
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