Election 2024 live: Trump and Biden set for White House meeting as new border czar reveals death threats
Donald Trump continues to tap new cabinet members after resounding election win over Kamala Harris
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump will meet with Joe Biden at the White House this week to discuss transition plans as the Senate elects a new majority leader on Wednesday to replace the outgoing Mitch McConnell.
The president-elect has meawnhile announced that Tom Homan, the former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), will serve in his incoming administration as border czar and take responsibility for the mass deportation of illegal immigrants he promised on the campaign trail.
The president-elect wrote on his Truth Social platform overnight that Homan would be in charge of “the Southern Border, the Northern Border, all Maritime, and Aviation Security”.
He added: “I’ve known Tom for a long time, and there is nobody better at policing and controlling our Borders.
“Likewise, Tom Homan will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin.
“Congratulations to Tom. I have no doubt he will do a fantastic, and long awaited for, job.”
Homan told Fox and Friends on Monday morning that he has already begun receiving death threats by those opposed to his role.
Trump also looks set to appoint New York Representative Elise Stefanik as his ambassador to the UN.
‘There can only be one’: CNN contributor predicts future fallout between Trump and Elon Musk
Trump calls on next Senate leader to permit ‘recess appointments’
Donald Trump has called on the Republican senators vying to be the next majority leader of the upper chamber of Congress in place of the outgoing Mitch McConnell to permit him to appoint temporary cabinet members without Senate approval via recess appointments, demanding they reject any judicial nominations until he takes office.
Complaining that Senate approval takes too long in a Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump said anyone seeking the leadership position “must agree to Recess Appointments (in the Senate!)”, a tactic that would effectively allow him to place any person in his cabinet without formal approval.
“Sometimes the votes can take two years, or more. This is what they did four years ago, and we cannot let it happen again. We need positions filled IMMEDIATELY!” the president-elect wrote.
Hours after Trump’s statement, three senators running for the leadership position endorsed Trump’s idea.
Texas Senator John Cornyn agreed Trump has the power to do so and urged his colleagues to get Trump’s cabinet chosen quickly.
South Dakota Senator John Thune said recess appointments were an option “on the table” and Florida Senator Rick Scott said he backed Trump “100 percent”.
Ariana Baio has more.
Trump asks next Senate leader allow him to bypass approval for cabinet appointments
Trump asked Republican senators to block any judicial nominees for this time period – something that is unlikely to occur
Trump and Biden to meet at White House this week
Donald Trump will meet with President Joe Biden in the Oval Office this week, according to the White House.
The meeting, in which the two men are expected to discuss the transition of power in January, will be the president-elect’s first return to the White House since 2021 when he left office days after the January 6 Capitol riot and refused to attend Biden’s inauguration.
The awkward meeting is scheduled to take place at 11am on Wednesday, according to press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who said Biden extended the invitation to his predecessor and soon-to-be successor.
Despite the acrimony of the 2024 presidential race, Biden has promised a “peaceful transfer of power” on January 20 2025 – the date of Trump’s second inauguration.
Biden has said he will attend that ceremony, even though Trump did not return the favor in 2021.
Mike Bedigan reports.
Trump to meet with Biden at the White House this week
Biden invited Trump to the meeting, which is scheduled to take place at 11am on Wednesday
President-elect ‘told Vladimir Putin not to escalate war in Ukraine’ after securing election win
Donald Trump reportedly advised Russian President Vladimir Putin not to escalate the war in Ukraine in a phone call the day after the presidential election, a new report says.
As one of his first orders of unofficial business as the president-elect, Trump spoke with Putin on Thursday in a telephone conversation that he took from his home in Florida, according to The Washington Post.
He allegedly asked the Kremlin leader not to escalate his war and reminded him of America’s military presence in Europe.
It was one of several calls Trump took with other leaders from around the world in the hours after he won the 2024 presidential election.
He also spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Here’s more from Ariana Baio.
Trump told Putin not to escalate war in Ukraine days after the election, reports say
On the campaign trail, Trump has promised to end the Russia–Ukraine war
Elise Stefanik ‘offered UN ambassador role’ by Trump
The New York Congresswoman, one of the president-elect’s most loyal and outspoken supporters on Capitol Hill, has reportedly been offered a role once held by Nikki Haley in the new administration, according to Kaitlan Collins of CNN.
Stefanik is currently the House Republican Conference chair (having replaced the aforementioned Cheney in that role in 2021) and is therefore the fourth highest-ranking member of the GOP.
She was the youngest woman ever elected to Congress when she entered its halls in 2014 and was initially a Trump critic in the Paul Ryan era, only to then make
a name for herself by aggressively challenging witnesses at Trump’s first impeachment hearings in 2019 and then embracing his false 2020 election fraud narrative.
Trump derides Kamala Harris for campaigning with Liz Cheney: ‘BIG mistake'
In another post on Truth Social, Trump derided his defeated election rival Kamala Harris for campaigning with disaffected Republican Liz Cheney, calling the tactic “a BIG mistake” that had only served to angere conservatives and left Democrats “just plain scratching their heads in amazement”.
Donald Trump appoints immigration hardliner Tom Homan as border czar to oversee mass deportations
Good morning!
Donald Trump has announced that Tom Homan, the former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), will serve in his incoming administration as border czar and take responsibility for the mass deportation of illegal immigrants he promised on the campaign trail.
The president-elect wrote on his Truth Social platform overnight that Homan would be in charge of “the Southern Border, the Northern Border, all Maritime, and Aviation Security”.
He added: “I’ve known Tom for a long time, and there is nobody better at policing and controlling our Borders.
“Likewise, Tom Homan will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin.
“Congratulations to Tom. I have no doubt he will do a fantastic, and long awaited for, job.”
If you’re not familiar with Homan, here’s a taster.
The ex-ICE director was involved in the Heritage Foundation’s notorious Project 2025 proposal for Trump’s second term and told the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July that he had “a message for the millions of illegal aliens who Joe Biden allowed to enter the country in violation of federal law – start packing, because you’re going home.”
At a panel on immigration policy that same month, Homan said: “Trump comes back in January, I’ll be on his heels coming back, and I will run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen.”
And, last Thursday, he told Fox News he had “not politicked or asked… for a cabinet position” and that no offer had been made but added: “President Trump knows if he needs help securing that border I’m standing by.
“If he needs help running a deportation operation, I am standing by.”
Here’s more from Rhian Lubin and Josh Marcus.
Trump rehires Tom Homan, father of family separation policy
Homan presided over unprecedented ‘zero tolerance’ family separation program that severed thousands of migrant families, in some cases permanently
Bernie Sanders doubles down that people are ‘angry’ with Dems
Bernie Sanders has doubled down on his scathing remarks about the Democratic party having “abandoned” working-class voters, despite criticism from longtime friend and ally Nancy Pelosi.
The veteran Vermont senator reiterated that the US working class is “angry” but rejected the idea that the issue this election cycle had been with party “messaging.”
In a statement after Donald Trump sailed to victory over Kamala Harris, Sanders wrote that “it should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party, which has abandoned working-class people, would find that the working-class has abandoned them.”
The former House speaker and Democratic powerhouse Nancy Pelosi then slammed his remarks, saying she did not agree or “respect” them.
Speaking to MSNBC’s Meet The Press about Pelosi’s remarks, he said: “Nancy is a friend of mine, and we’ve worked together on many issues, but here is the reality, I have to say to Nancy, in the Senate, in the last two years, we have not even brought forth legislation to raise the minimum wage to a living wage, despite the fact that some 20 million people in this country are working for less than $15 an hour.
Jim Jordan denies Trump will carry out threats to go after his political rivals
House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan tamped down on worries that Donald Trump would weaponize the federal government against his political enemies on Sunday, even as Trump himself has publicly promised to do so.
Jordan was on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday and was presented with a list of Democrats whom Trump has said he would press the Justice Department to prosecute at various points during his campaign. Notably, the president has never had the power to launch such politically motivated criminal investigations or unwarranted prosecutions of their enemies.
But the Ohio congressman brushed away concerns, stating that Trump “didn’t do that in his first term” and pointed out that despite pledging his 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, to “lock her up”, did not actually direct the DoJ to do so at any point in his first presidency.
“I know, but I’m talking about Donald Trump’s second term. Going forward,” Bash pressed.
“I don’t think any of that’s going to happen, because we’re the party that’s against political prosecutions,” Jordan replied.
Can Jack Smith save Trump’s election interference case?
The special counsel is signaling an end of a yearslong investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
He is likely getting away with it, Alex Woodward reports:
Can Jack Smith save Trump’s election interference case?
The special counsel is signaling an end of a yearslong investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. He is likely getting away with it, Alex Woodward reports
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