Military officials discussing how to respond to illegal orders under Trump – report
Officials at the Pentagon are having informal discussions about what to do if Donald Trump were to give an illegal order, such as deploying the military domestically, CNN reports.
They are also preparing for the possibility that he may change rules to be able to fire scores of career civil servants.
On the campaign trail, Trump has mulled sending the military after his political enemies, and also to turn back migrants at the southern border. US law generally prohibits active-duty troops from being deployed for law enforcement purposes. There are also fears he could gut the civil service in the Pentagon, and replace fired staff with employees selected for their loyalty to him.
Here’s more, from CNN:
Trump has suggested he would be open to using active-duty forces for domestic law enforcement and mass deportations and has indicated he wants to stack the federal government with loyalists and “clean out corrupt actors” in the US national security establishment.
Officials are now gaming out various scenarios as they prepare for an overhaul of the Pentagon.
“We are all preparing and planning for the worst-case scenario, but the reality is that we don’t know how this is going to play out yet,” one defense official said.
Trump’s election has also raised questions inside the Pentagon about what would happen if the president issued an unlawful order, particularly if his political appointees inside the department don’t push back.
“Troops are compelled by law to disobey unlawful orders,” said another defense official. “But the question is what happens then – do we see resignations from senior military leaders? Or would they view that as abandoning their people?”
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Updated at 15.34 EST
Key events
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Summaru
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
Donald Trump’s incoming presidency is set to threaten millions of Americans’ healthcare plans. Millions of Americans are at risk of losing health coverage in 2025 under Donald Trump’s forthcoming administration. More than 20 million Americans rely on the individual private health insurance market for healthcare, private insurance which is subsidized by the federal government.
Robert F Kennedy Jr, the former independent presidential candidate turned Trump surrogate, is reviewing candidate resumes for the top jobs at the US government’s health agencies in Donald Trump’s new administration, a former Kennedy aide and a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday.
A Chinese national who had been recently released from a mental hospital was ordered held Friday on trespassing charges after police say he tried to enter President-elect Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, the Associated Press reports. That entrance was in violation of a court order that he stay away from Mar-a-Lago following previous attempts.
Democratic US Representative Andrea Salinas has won reelection in Oregon’s 6th congressional District, beating Republican Mike Erickson to earn a second term in Congress after outraising him by millions of dollars. Oregon’s newest congressional district, the 6th was seen as leaning more toward Democrats, according to the Cook Political Report. That gave a slight advantage to the freshman Democratic incumbent, who also defeated Erickson in the 2022 election.
Women have won 60 seats in the New Mexico Legislature to secure the largest female legislative majority in US history, stirring expressions of vindication and joy among candidates who knocked on doors and found voters were ready.
A federal judge on Friday overturned Illinois’ ban on semiautomatic weapons, leaning on recent US supreme court rulings that strictly interpret the second amendment right to keep and bear firearms. Judge Stephen P McGlynn issued the lengthy finding in a decree that he said applied universally, not just to the plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit challenging the ban.
Speaking to the New York Times, Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic former House speaker who played a major role in the pressuring Joe Biden not to seek re-election, said she believed the president waited too long to exit the race, and erred in immediately endorsing Kamala Harris. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said.
Officials at the Pentagon are having informal discussions about what to do if Donald Trump were to give an illegal order, such as deploying the military domestically, CNN reports. They are also preparing for the possibility that he may change rules to be able to fire scores of career civil servants.
Just hours after Donald Trump’s election win on Tuesday, Black people across the US reported receiving racist text messages telling them that they had been “selected” to pick cotton and needed to report to “the nearest plantation”. While the texts, some of which were signed “a Trump supporter”, varied in detail, they all conveyed the same essential message about being selected to pick cotton. Some of the messages refer to the recipients by name.
Donald Trump, during a call with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday, handed the phone to Elon Musk, the New York Times is also reporting, confirming an earlier Axios story. It is not clear what the three men discussed or whether they touched on any change in US policy toward Ukraine in the wake of Trump’s election victory, the Times said.
The Biden administration has decided to allow US defense contractors to work in Ukraine to maintain and repair Pentagon-provided weaponry, Reuters is reporting, citing US officials. The contractors would be small in number and located far from the frontlines and will not be engaged in combat, an official told the news agency.
The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s 2020 election interference case has granted a request from the special counsel’s office to pause proceedings in his trial on charges related to trying to overturn the 2020 election. As we reported earlier, Jack Smith asked judge Tanya Chutkan to pause the case against the president-elect to “assess the unprecedented circumstances” in which the office finds itself.
This live coverage is ending now, thanks for following along.
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Updated at 21.37 EST
Oregon Democrat Andrea Salinas wins re-election to Congress
Democratic US Representative Andrea Salinas has won reelection in Oregon’s 6th congressional District, beating Republican Mike Erickson to earn a second term in Congress after outraising him by millions of dollars.
Oregon’s newest congressional district, the 6th was seen as leaning more toward Democrats, according to the Cook Political Report. That gave a slight advantage to the freshman Democratic incumbent, who also defeated Erickson in the 2022 election.
Salinas and Chavez-DeRemer became the first Latina members of Congress to represent Oregon when they were elected in the 2022 midterms.
This was Erickson’s fourth time running for Congress.
As of late October, federal campaign finance records showed Salinas had raised nearly $4.8m compared to Erickson’s roughly $460,000.
The boundaries of the 6th District were created during redistricting after the 2020 census. The district includes the state capital Salem and parts of Portland’s affluent southwestern suburbs. And while it also spans rural areas across a broad swath of the Willamette Valley, President Joe Biden would have carried it by about 13 points in 2020.
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Updated at 21.11 EST
The New York Times reports that Trump’s transition team is relying on two cabinet leaders and fossil fuel lobbyists to reshape the agencies that protect air, water, climate and pubic land.
The paper cites six sources familiar with the matter.
It reports that, “people working on the transition have already prepared a slate of executive orders and presidential proclamations on climate and energy. They include withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate agreement, eliminating every office in every agency working to end the pollution that disproportionately affects poor communities and shrinking the size of national monuments in the West to allow more drilling and mining on public lands.”
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Howard Lutnick, co-chair of Trump’s transition team, told CNN before Tuesday’s presidential election, however, that Kennedy was “not getting a job for HHS.”
Bigtree said Trump wanted to see Kennedy’s ideas for reducing chronic illness produce results within two years, especially in US children.
Kennedy last week said he would recommend fluoride be removed from public water supplies, falsely claiming on X the chemical is associated with numerous health issues including bone fractures and cancer. The American Dental Association says the decades-old intervention reduces tooth decay by more than 25% in adults and children.
“President Trump is giving him two years to show success,” Bigtree said. “President Trump is keenly interested in the selections that Bobby Kennedy thinks would get the job done.”
Kennedy will recommend scientists and doctors who “don’t have any conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical industry when it comes to the departments that are going to be dealing with drugs and vaccines,” Bigtree said.
Bigtree, an anti-vaccine activist, is chief executive of MAHA Action, a new organization named after Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again pledge that Bigtree said would also propose appointees to Kennedy.
Kennedy is being assisted by daughter-in-law Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, his former campaign manager, and investor Omeed Malik, the source familiar with the matter said.
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Robert F Kennedy Jr reviewing candidates for health agency jobs – report
Robert F Kennedy Jr, the former independent presidential candidate turned Trump surrogate, is reviewing candidate resumes for the top jobs at the US government’s health agencies in Donald Trump’s new administration, a former Kennedy aide and a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday.
Kennedy, of the famed political family, has been asked to recommend appointees for all regulatory health agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration, said Del Bigtree, who was director of communications for Kennedy’s campaign and remains close to the former candidate.
A source familiar with the matter, who declined to be identified, echoed that Kennedy had taken on that role. Trump’s transition team did not respond to a request for comment. In August, Kennedy, an environmental lawyer who has spread misinformation about vaccines, ended his presidential campaign and endorsed Trump in exchange for a role in Trump’s administration focused on public health. Kennedy says he is not anti-vaccine but for more rigorous testing of vaccines.
While he is looking for individuals to fill administration jobs, Kennedy could himself still take an official position in Trump’s administration or serve in an advisory capacity, according to Bigtree.
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The two men formed the 2nd Amendment Militia and then in the summer and fall of 2022 tried to recruit others to join them, prosecutors said. In September 2022, O’Dell’s home became a staging site as the two men collected firearms, ammunition, paramilitary gear and other supplies, according to the government’s evidence.
Prosecutors said Perry posted a TikTok video in September saying that their militia group was going to “go protect this country”, and another in early October saying the group would be “out huntin’”. Prosecutors said the two men viewed US Border Patrol agents as traitors for allowing immigrants to cross into Texas.
The day before they planned to leave for Texas, an FBI team using an armored vehicle served a search warrant on O’Dell’s home, and prosecutors said Perry fired 11 rifle shots at them. O’Dell and his girlfriend surrendered, but after exiting the house, Perry fought with agents.
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Two men who co-founded a militia group have been convicted of attempting to murder federal agents ahead of a trip to Texas where they intended to shoot people attempting to cross the US-Mexico border.
Jonathan S O’Dell, 34, of Warsaw, Missouri, and Bryan C Perry, 39, of Clarksville, Tennessee, also planned to shoot any federal agents who tried to stop them as they targeted migrants, according to the prosecution.
A jury at the US district court in Missouri deliberated for more than two hours before finding them guilty of more than 30 felony counts each, the chief federal prosecutor for western Missouri, Teresa Moore, announced Friday.
They both face at least 10 years in prison, and possibly life.
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Incoming female legislators in New Mexico include a crusading Republican advocate for crime victims, Republican Nicole Chavez, and Democrat Heather Berghmans, who defeated men in the general election and the primary against an incumbent senator accused of sexual harassment.
Berghmans, 36, of Albuquerque said people in her district appeared eager to hear from a new generation of female candidates. She will join the Senate as its youngest member after winning 60% of the general election vote.
“I did hear a lot of people at the doors who told me to my face that they were willing to vote for me just because I was a young woman,” said Berghmans, who campaigned on solutions to surging homelessness and the housing affordability crisis. “I think that people are excited to see new ideas and new faces and that women have been the ones to step up to run.”
Chavez won her state House seat in a relatively affluent Albuquerque neighborhood. She expressed pride in contributing to the new female legislative majority — and as her district’s first Latina legislator-elect.
But Chavez also said she campaigned to ensure a diversity of political values in preserving her party’s control of the only Republican-held House district in Albuquerque, amid a growing urban-rural partisan divide.
“I don’t believe in just recruiting women,” she said. “I think we should have diversity of all values.”
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Women in New Mexico secure largest female legislative majority in US history
Women have won 60 seats in the New Mexico Legislature to secure the largest female legislative majority in US history, stirring expressions of vindication and joy among candidates who knocked on doors and found voters were ready.
New Mexico voters are sending 11 additional women – Democrats and Republicans – to bump up female representation in the 112-member Legislature. Female state senators will still hold a minority of seats – 16 out of 42.
Women have made slow, steady advances in statehouse representation across the country, with one notable surge in the 2018 election cycle almost entirely among Democrats in a trend associated with the #MeToo movement and political engagement linked to the election of Donald Trump as president.
In 2018, Nevada became the first state to elect a female legislative majority, later expanding it to more than 60% of seats with majorities in the state Assembly and Senate. Female legislators in New Mexico will hold a 54% majority – though with many more seats.
The share of women in all state legislatures combined roughly tripled from about 11% in 1980 to 33% going into the November election, when women held 2,424 seats nationwide, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.
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Federal judge overturns Illinois ban on semiautomatic weapons
A federal judge on Friday overturned Illinois’ ban on semiautomatic weapons, leaning on recent US supreme court rulings that strictly interpret the second amendment right to keep and bear firearms.
Judge Stephen P McGlynn issued the lengthy finding in a decree that he said applied universally, not just to the plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit challenging the ban.
The Protect Illinois Communities Act, signed into law in January 2023 by Democratic Governor JB Pritzker, took effect on 1 January. It bans AR-15 rifles and similar guns, large-capacity magazines and a wide assortment of attachments largely in response to the 2022 Independence Day shooting at a parade in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park.
McGlynn’s order doesn’t take effect for 30 days.
“Sadly, there are those who seek to usher in a sort of post-constitution era where the citizens’ individual rights are only as important as they are convenient to a ruling class,” McGlynn, who was appointed by Donald Trump during his first term, wrote in his opinion.
“The oft-quoted phrase that ‘no right is absolute’ does not mean that fundamental rights precariously subsist subject to the whims, caprice, or appetite of government officials or judges.”
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Updated at 19.15 EST
Here is the video clip of Kamala Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, saying on Friday that the 2024 US election outcome is “hard to understand”.
The governor of Minnesota vowed to “keep fighting” Trump’s “hateful agenda”. Walz appeared to choke up during the speech in his home state. Harris and Walz lost by a landslide.
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Updated at 19.16 EST
A veteran California politician was caught up in last year’s Los Angeles city council racism scandal but refused to resign. Kevin de Léon has now been voted out, replaced by a younger progressive candidate, Ysabel Jurado.
Kevin de León, the Los Angeles councilor who was caught on tape alongside other LA politicians in a racist conversation but refused to resign (unlike Nury Martinez who did), lost his reelection bid to Ysabel Jurado.
— Taniel (@Taniel) November 8, 2024
Ysabel Jurado, a 34-year-old queer single mother who grew up in the neighborhood she will now represent, joins an expanding wing of young progressives on the Los Angeles city council. She will be the first Filipino American on the council.
Jurado won out over de León despite being targeted with a reported half million dollars in attack ads from the Los Angeles police union. Late in the campaign, she was recorded saying “F the police,” which she said was a reference to the song lyric, during a meeting with local college students.
The Los Angeles Times later reported that the student who asked Jurado the question that prompted her answer worked for Kevin de León.
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Updated at 19.19 EST
Nebraska Republican Don Bacon won a fifth term representing the Omaha-centered US House district on Friday, the Associated Press reports.
Bacon’s win edges Republicans closer to the 218 seats they need for control of the US House of Representatives, which would give them The current tally is 212 Republican seats to 199 Democratic seats, according to the Associated Press. If the Republicans win the House after winning the Senate and the presidency, they will have unified party control of the federal government.
Bacon defeated Democrat Tony Vargas, a state lawmaker, in a hard-fought rematch of their 2022 race. Unlike other GOP candidates in the solidly Republican state, Bacon had emphasized his bipartisan credentials and highlighted his vote for the Biden administration’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Joe Biden won the second district’s vote in the Electoral College in 2020, making it a top target as Democrats attempt to win back the House majority.
More context here:
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Updated at 18.40 EST
The Associated Press has more context on a series of people who have been arrested over the past few years after incidents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
In January 2020, two Palm Beach sheriff’s deputies opened fire on a Connecticut opera singer who sped through a checkpoint outside Mar-a-Lago while having a mental breakdown. She was not hit and was arrested nearby. She was later found not guilty by reason of insanity. She had been charged with aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer, fleeing arrest and resisting an officer without violence.
In March 2019, Chinese national Yujing Zhang gained access to Mar-a-Lago while carrying a laptop, phones and other electronic gear. That led to initial speculation that the Shanghai businesswoman might be a spy, but she was never charged with espionage. Text messages she exchanged with a trip organizer indicated she was a fan of the president and wanted to meet him or his family to discuss possible deals. She was found guilty of trespassing and deported.
In December 2019, the club’s security officers confronted another Chinese national, Jing Lu, then 56, for trespassing and told her to leave, but she returned to take photos. Lu was charged with loitering and resisting an officer without violence. She was later acquitted of trespassing but found guilty of resisting arrest.
On Thanksgiving weekend 2018, a University of Wisconsin student visiting the area with his parents walked into Mar-a-Lago by mingling with a group that was entering. He was arrested and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor.
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Chinese national held for trespassing Mar-a-Lago
A Chinese national who had been recently released from a mental hospital was ordered held Friday on trespassing charges after police say he tried to enter President-elect Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, the Associated Press reports.
That entrance was in violation of a court order that he stay away from Mar-a-Lago following previous attempts.
Zijie Li, 39, is being held without bond at the Palm Beach County Jail after being arrested Thursday when he arrived at Mar-a-Lago’s entrance gate in an Uber, the latest in series of contacts he has had with police and Secret Service agents at or near the estate since July.
Li, who lives in suburban Los Angeles on a student visa, had just been released from a mental health hospital, where he had been placed in late October after police found him found near the estate. He is now facing two counts of misdemeanor trespassing.
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Updated at 18.40 EST
Trump’s presidency a threat to millions of Americans’s healthcare plans
Donald Trump’s incoming presidency is set to threaten millions of Americans’ healthcare plans.
Marina Dunbar reports for the Guardian:
Millions of Americans are at risk of losing health coverage in 2025 under Donald Trump’s forthcoming administration.
More than 20 million Americans rely on the individual private health insurance market for healthcare, private insurance which is subsidized by the federal government.
These subsidies, programs that help lower the cost of health insurance premiums, increased the amount of assistance available to people who want to buy health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, dubbed Obamacare as a signature piece of legislation during Barack Obama’s administration.
For the full story, click here:
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Updated at 18.29 EST
In a statement on X, Illinois’s Democratic governor JB Pritzker vowed that his state will “always be a refuge for those whose rights are denied elsewhere.”
Illinois will always be a refuge for those whose rights are denied elsewhere — those seeking reproductive health care, immigrants working hard for a better life, LGBTQ+ Americans looking for protection, and people with disabilities whose civil and human rights are under attack.
— Governor JB Pritzker (@GovPritzker) November 8, 2024
Pritzker’s statement come as various marginalized communities including BIPOC and LGBTQ+ groups as well as advocacy organizations, worry about Donald Trump’s incoming rightwing administration and the president-elect’s repeated pledges to deny their rights.
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