House ethics chair accused of ‘betraying the process’ after committee deadlocked on releasing Gaetz report – US politics live | Trump administration

Key events

Trump could change his mind on the selection of Vought, Reuters reports, and there were other candidates for the role as recently as earlier this week, according to one of the sources.

The Trump transition team and Vought did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump repeatedly denied when campaigning for president that he had any links to Project 2025, although many of its authors were former officials from his first administration, including Vought.

At OMB, Vought will work with X CEO Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to carry out Trump’s campaign pledge to slash government spending and regulations.

Musk and Ramaswamy have been tapped by Trump to co-lead a newly created Department of Government Efficiency, an entity Trump has indicated will operate outside the confines of government.

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President-elect Donald Trump is planning to tap conservative loyalist Russell Vought to be the director of the US Office of Management and Budget, according to two sources close to his transition effort who spoke to Reuters, putting him at the helm of a powerful agency that helps decide a president’s policy priorities and how to pay for them.

Vought was OMB chief in Trump’s first term and would play a key role in rolling back government regulations and setting budget priorities. In this position, he would be in a position to implement a policy known as Schedule F, which would in practice strip thousands of federal employees of some key civil service protections.

Vought helped produce a blueprint called Project 2025 by a coalition of conservative groups for a second Trump White House term. One of its proposals is to dramatically restructure the government so that appointed conservatives have power over key decisions typically relegated to civil servants.

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Today so far

Members of the House ethics committee were appeared to be deadlocked whether to release a report on their investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct involving Donald Trump’s attorney general pick, Matt Gaetz. The former Florida congressman, shepherded by vice president-elect JD Vance, held meetings with key Senate allies involved in the Cabinet confirmation process at the Capitol on Wednesday, as Senate Democrats officially requested the files from the FBI’s probe into whether Gaetz engaged in child sex trafficking.

Meanwhile, the Republican House speaker Mike Johnson announced that transgender women are not permitted to use women’s bathrooms in the Capitol building, weeks after the election of the first transgender member of Congress, Sarah McBride. She responded: “I’m not here to fight about bathrooms. I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families.”

Also:

Trump announced he has chosen the former acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, as his nominee to serve as US ambassador to Nato. Trump is also expected to name his pick for treasury secretary as soon as today.

Trump’s lawyers asked the judge overseeing his Manhattan hush-money criminal case for permission to make yet another play for dismissal.

Defense secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed the Biden administration will allow Ukraine to use US-supplied antipersonnel landmines to help fight off Russian forces.

Austin said women in the US military “make us stronger” as Trump’s pick for his successor, Pete Hegseth, faces scrutiny for previous remarks suggesting banning women from combat roles.

Tech entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy laid out their plans for the new Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. They pointed to recent Supreme Court rulings that they say can be used to take power away from federal agencies.

A vote to block arms sales to Israel will be held on Wednesday in the Senate. The joint resolutions of disapproval (JRDs), introduced by the senator Bernie Sanders would prevent the Pentagon from sending another $20bn to Israel as it continues its assault on Gaza.

The state of Texas offered thousands of acres of land to Trump “to construct deportation facilities” and aid in his plans to begin a mass deportation of migrants as soon as he takes office.

More than 60 members of Congress have written to Biden calling on him to use his presidential clemency powers to reunite families, address unfair sentencing policies, and begin to tackle the scourge of mass incarceration, which they said was eroding “the soul of America”.

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Rudy Giuliani should be held in civil contempt for continuing to lie about two election workers to whom he already owes $148m for defaming, lawyers for the two women wrote in a court filing Wednesday.

The request comes months after Giuliani agreed in court to never again accuse Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss of election fraud. Despite that agreement earlier this year, Giuliani continued to spread lies about them on his live-streamed show.

“You would think that they wouldn’t be allowed to take all my property until the thing was affirmed on appeal and I got a chance to show them that they never let me show the tapes that show them quadruple counting the … ballots,” he said during one episode on 12 November.

“Then … another one is, uh, they’re passing these little, little hard drives that we maintain were used to fix the machines, right, and they say it was candy. Well, you look at it … looks like a hard drive to me, and they told me it was a hard drive and there’s no proof that it was candy.”

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Joe Biden awards Medal of Freedom to Cecile Richards, former president of Planned Parenthood, in a private ceremony.

The White House shared the commendation with the press:

With absolute courage and conviction, Cecile Richards fearlessly leads us forward to be the America we say we are – a Nation of freedom. Carrying her parents’ torch for justice, she’s led some of our Nation’s most important civil rights causes – to lift up the dignity of workers, defend and advance women’s reproductive rights and equality, and mobilize Americans to exercise their power to vote. A leader of utmost character, she has carved an inspiring legacy that endures in her incredible family, the countless lives she has made better, and a Nation seeking the light of equality, justice, and freedom.

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Updated at 17.39 EST

Biden urged to use clemency powers to tackle ‘crisis’ of US mass incarceration

More than 60 members of Congress have written to Joe Biden calling on him to use his presidential clemency powers to reunite families, address unfair sentencing policies, and begin to tackle the scourge of mass incarceration, which they said was eroding “the soul of America”.

Biden has 61 days before he leaves the White House in which he could pardon or commute the sentences of incarcerated Americans. The letter, signed by a number of prominent Democratic politicians and spearheaded by the progressive politician Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, urges Biden to act while he still can.

“Now is the time to use your clemency authority to rectify unjust and unnecessary criminal laws passed by Congress and draconian sentences given by judges,” the letter demands.

Biden’s clemency power is one of the most concrete tools at his disposal during the lame-duck period of his presidency. During his term in the White House, he has already granted 25 pardons and 132 commutations, including for people imprisoned for simple possession of marijuana and several court-martialed from the military because of their sexual orientation.

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Updated at 17.37 EST

Democrat accuses ethics committee chair of ‘betraying process’

Susan Wild, the ranking Democrat on the House ethics committee, accused the committee’s chair, Michael Guest, of “betraying the process” and mischaracterizing the meeting.

She said that the committee voted on whether to release the report but were in deadlock along party lines.

“In order to affirmatively move something forward, somebody has to cross party lines and vote with the other side,” Wild told reporters, noting that there were five Democrats and five Republicans on the committee.

She said that the committee will reconvene on 5 December to discuss.

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Updated at 16.46 EST

Texas offers thousands of acres to Trump for ‘deportation facilities’

The state of Texas has offered thousands of acres of land to Donald Trump “to construct deportation facilities”.

Texas land commissioner Dawn Buckingham wrote in a letter to Trump that her “office is fully prepared to enter into an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or the US border patrol to allow a facility to be built for the processing, detention, and coordination of the largest deportation of violent criminals in the nation’s history”.

In October, Buckingham’s office, the Texas general land office (GLO), purchased 355,000 acres (144,000 hectares) of land – equivalent to half the size of Rhode Island. Of this, 1,402 acres have been offered to the federal government.

The land sits on a ranch in Starr county in the Rio Grande valley on the US-Mexico border.

Terms of the purchase were not disclosed, but Buckingham writes in his letter that the land was purchased from a woman who previously had refused to let state officials build a border wall on her property. Now, the state plans to build 1.5 miles (2.4km) of the border wall where they were once denied.

The rest of the 353,598 acres, collectively known as “Brewster Ranch”, located near Big Bend national park, were purchased in October for roughly $245m from billionaire and tobacco tycoon Brad Kelley, the state’s largest private landowner. It was one of the most significant public purchases of land in the history of Texas.

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Updated at 16.48 EST

More than two weeks after election day, there are more than half a million ballots left to count in California, and one of the most closely watched US House races remains too close to call with a razor-thin margin between Michelle Steel and Derek Tran.

Democratic challenger Tran has a 314-vote lead over the Republican incumbent in the congressional contest in the southern California district. Republicans already control the US House, as well as the Senate, but picking up the seat would be a big win for Democrats, who lost it to Steel in 2020.

Although Steel initially had a commanding lead, the race became neck and neck as election workers tallied more ballots. There are nearly 40,000 ballots left to process in Orange county and more than 30,000 in Los Angeles county, where the district is based.

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House ethics committee chair says no agreement on releasing Gaetz report

Michael Guest, the chair of the House ethics committee, told reporters that “there was not an agreement by the committee to release the report” on Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general.

Guest did not say if the committee took an official vote, but did not say when it would meet again.

The committee is evenly split between the two parties.

The panel has previously said it was investigating claims that Gaetz “may have engaged in sexual misconduct and/or illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted a bribe, improper gratuity, or impermissible gift”.

The justice department launched its own inquiry into accusations that Gaetz engaged in a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl, but the department closed its investigation last year without filing charges. Gaetz has consistently denied the allegations.

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Updated at 15.59 EST

Sean Casten, a Democratic congressman from Illinois, has threatened to move to force a vote on the House floor to release the House ethics committee’s report on Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general.

If the House ethics committee does not vote to release the Gaetz report on Wednesday, Casten said he will introduce a privileged resolution forcing a vote to require the committee to release its report.

“The allegations against Matt Gaetz are serious. They are credible. The House ethics committee has spent years conducting a thorough investigation to get to the bottom of it,” he said in a statement.

“If the Ethics Committee chooses to withhold this information, later today I will introduce a privileged resolution to require a vote by the full House of Representatives on the release of the Gaetz report.”

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Tech entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have laid out their plans for the new Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published today.

The pair said they will follow recent Supreme Court rulings that they say can be used to take power away from federal agencies to reduce rules that are unnecessary, costly and inefficient, Reuters reports.

With an electoral mandate and the 6-3 conservative majority in the court, Musk and Ramaswamy said, the panel has an opportunity to enact substantial structural downsizing within the federal government.

“The two of us will advise DOGE at every step to pursue three major kinds of reform: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions and cost savings,” they wrote.

The panel will give its list of regulations to president-elect Donald Trump, “who can, by executive action, immediately pause the enforcement of those regulations and initiate the process for review and rescission,” they wrote.

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Senate to vote on Bernie Sanders resolution to block arms sales to Israel

A vote to block arms sales to Israel will be held on Wednesday in the Senate.

The joint resolutions of disapproval (JRDs), introduced by the senator Bernie Sanders in September, would prevent the Pentagon from sending another $20bn to Israel as it continues its assault on Gaza – which has killed at least 43,000 people.

The resolutions to be voted on the floor, and would block the sale of 120mm mortar rounds, joint direct attack munitions (JDAMS), and tank rounds, must pass both the Senate and the House with a simple majority. If they pass, they go to the president.

The Sanders-led effort to stop the flow of arms to Israel comes after the country failed to meet the US-imposed deadline of 12 November to increase humanitarian aid and allow at least 350 trucks into Gaza a day. Despite Israel’s failure, the US took no action.

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Joe Biden marked his 82nd birthday on Wednesday as Democrats began searching for a younger generation of party leaders following Kamala Harris’s morale-sapping defeat in this month’s presidential election.

Democrats are engaged in seeking replacements for the octogenarian leadership represented by the president and 84-year-old Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker who was recently re-elected to a 20th term as a member of Congress and continues to wield much influence.

New leadership may also be on the horizon in the Senate, where the Democrats’ leader, Senator Chuck Schumer, is 73 and recently oversaw the loss of the party’s single-seat majority to the Republicans, who have just replaced their 82-year-old leader, Mitch McConnell.

At 54, Hakeem Jeffries, Pelosi’s successor as the party’s leader in the House, is less vulnerable to challenge on age-related grounds, but youth – at least in relative terms – is on Democrats’ minds as they contemplate the road to recovery from a catastrophic reversal at the polls.

The party is looking at a younger generation of state governors to emerge as presidential candidates in four years’ time, many of whom would have been in the mix had Biden passed the torch earlier and had there been an open primary or had he not immediately endorsed Harris when he finally stepped aside. They include Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, 51, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who is 53, Gavin Newsom, 57, of California, 49-year-old Jared Polis, the governor of Colorado, and Andy Beshear, 46, the governor of Kentucky.

Future leadership may also be available in the person of Pete Buttigieg, 42, the transportation secretary, who has been notably effective in arguing the Democrats’ case in conservative forums like Fox News.

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Sarah McBride responds to Capitol bathroom ban

Sarah McBride, the first out transgender person elected to Congress, has issued a longer statement after Republican House speaker Mike Johnson announced that transgender women are not permitted to use women’s bathrooms in the Capitol building.

“I’m not here to fight about bathrooms. I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families,” McBride said in a statement posted to X.

“This effort to distract from the real issues facing this country hasn’t distracted me over the last several days, as I’ve remained hard at work preparing to represent the greatest state in the union come January.”

The Delaware congresswoman-elect goes on to say that she is looking forward to getting to know her future colleagues on both sides of the aisle, adding: “Each of us were sent here because voters saw something in us that they value.

“I have loved getting to see those qualities in the future colleagues that I’ve met and I look forward to seeing those qualities in every member come January. I hope all of my colleagues will seek to do the same with me.”

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Updated at 16.29 EST

Democratic Representative Mark Pocan, who is the chair of the congressional Equality Caucus, has released a statement condemning Speaker Mike Johnson’s announcement that transgender women are not permitted to use women’s bathrooms in the Capitol building.

The statement reads:

Speaker Johnson’s holier-than-thou decree to ban transgender people from using bathrooms that align with their identity is a cruel and unnecessary rule that puts countless staff, interns, and visitors to the United States Capitol at risk.

How will this even be enforced? Will the serjeant at arms post officers in bathrooms? Will everyone who works at the Capitol have to carry around their birth certificate or undergo a genetic test? This policy isn’t going to protect anyone-but it is going to open the door to rampant abuse, harassment, and discrimination in the Capitol.

Republicans can’t even pass a Farm Bill or pass major appropriations bills, so they turn to using these cruel attacks to distract from their inability to govern and failure to deliver for the American people.

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President-elect Donald Trump’s team is reportedly discussing with the digital asset industry whether to create a new White House post dedicated to crypto policy and is vetting candidates, Bloomberg reported this afternoon.

If created, it would be the first-ever crypto-specific White House job, per Bloomberg.

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House Ethics committee begins meeting to discuss Gaetz – report

The House Ethics Committee meeting has begun, according to Politico and the Washington Post.

At the meeting, members are expected to discuss whether to release a report on their investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct involving Donald Trump’s attorney general pick, Matt Gaetz.

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Updated at 14.37 EST