Congress Narrowly Averts Authorities Shutdown — And Rejects Trump’s Debt Ceiling Instructions
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Donald Trump is signalling his incoming administration’s readiness to develop U.S. territory, with current out-of-nowhere snipes at Panama and Greenland.
After seemingly joking about Canada changing into the “51st” state, the incoming president fired off ominous messages alleging the Panama Canal and Greenland pose critical financial and nationwide safety threats to the US.
He claimed the Panama Canal is a “rip-off” that the nation “will immediately stop,” and that the “ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity” — rattling diplomatic relationships lower than a month earlier than he returns to the White Home.
In the meantime, allies of Home Speaker Mike Johnson are urging the president-elect to reaffirm his assist for the Republican chief after Democrats and a few Republicans blocked the Trump- and Elon Musk-led marketing campaign to derail the stop-gap funding invoice earlier than Christmas, averting a authorities shutdown.
The Home of Representatives can also be reeling after an ethics committee report into former congressman Matt Gaetz “determined there is substantial evidence” that he paid tens of hundreds of {dollars} for {sex} and used illicit medication whereas he was a member of Congress.
Congressman who pushed for Gaetz report back to be public: ‘Victory for the American people’
A Democratic congressman who tried to force the House Ethics Committee to publish its report into Matt Gaetz said the release marks a “victory for the American people.”
Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee, who introduced failed legislation that would force the committee to publicly release a report, said in a statement that the “public had a right to know what was uncovered in this thorough and long-lasting investigation.”
“Matt Gaetz called it a ‘witch hunt’ — and he knew that was a lie,” he added. “He claimed it was about drinking and partying, but [the] report proves it was far worse: it wasn’t just alcohol and marijuana, it was cocaine, ecstasy, and more disturbingly it was about paying women for sex, including a 17-year-old girl.”
The allegations go “far beyond ‘partying’ — it exposes a pattern of unethical, illegal, and deeply troubling behavior,” he mentioned.
Alex Woodward24 December 2024 17:00
Ex-ethics committee chair on bombshell report: ‘Matt Gaetz has a real problem here’
“Matt Gaetz has a real problem here,” former Rep. Charlie Dent informed ABC Information.
“There’s clearly issues here of sex, money, and drugs. And really, these are big issues, big problems,” he added. “Boy, this is really powerful stuff.”
If Gaetz was nonetheless in Congress, there seemingly “could have been an expulsion recommendation.”
“I can’t see any members of the Republican Party in Washington, D.C., in Congress coming to his defense in this matter,” he mentioned. “He’s made his own bed, they’re going to let him lie in it.”
(REUTERS)
Alex Woodward24 December 2024 16:30
John Bolton: Worldwide disaster ‘more likely’ beneath Trump
Trump’s longest-serving nationwide safety adviser John Bolton is warning that a world disaster is “much more likely” beneath Trump’s incoherence round resolution making relating to overseas coverage.
“The only real crisis we had was Covid, which is a long term crisis and not against a particular foreign power but against a pandemic,” he added. “But the risk of an international crisis of the 19th century variety is much more likely in a second Trump term. Given Trump’s inability to focus on coherent decision making, I’m very worried about about how that might look.”
The hawkish former diplomat is amongst distinguished conservative critics of the president-elect, whom he declared “unfit” workplace. Throughout debate over whether or not Trump could be thought-about a fascist, Bolton prompt that Trump is incapable of getting a guiding set of principes.
“To be a fascist, you have to have a philosophy,” he informed CNN earlier this yr. “Trump’s not capable of that.”
(Getty Pictures)
Alex Woodward24 December 2024 16:02
Trump guarantees to ‘vigorously pursue the death penalty’ on Christmas Eve
“As soon as I am inaugurated, I will direct the Justice Department to vigorously pursue the death penalty to protect American families and children from violent rapists, murderers, and monsters,” he wrote on Fact Social on Christmas Eve.
“We will be a Nation of Law and Order again! to protect American families and children from violent rapists, murderers, and monsters. We will be a Nation of Law and Order again!” he mentioned.
In his first time period, Trump — who touts himself as America’s “most -pro-life president” — carried out 13 federal executions, greater than beneath any president in fashionable historical past.
He has promised to make extra folks eligible for capital punishment, together with little one rapists, immigrants who kill residents, and other people convicted of drug trafficking.
Alex Woodward24 December 2024 15:45
Canal threats, money-laundering claims and a resort battle: Trump’s lengthy, bizarre historical past with Panama
Trump rattled North American diplomatic relations over the weekend with a menace to retake the Panama Canal, two-and-a-half many years after the U.S. transfered management of the important world commerce path to Panama.
Josh Marcus dives into Trump’s lengthy unusual journey with the Central American nation:
Alex Woodward24 December 2024 15:20
Biden vetoes laws that will have allowed Trump so as to add extra judges to the federal judiciary
President Joe Biden has vetoed laws that will have added dozens of judges to the federal judiciary, dealing a blow to Trump’s incoming administration and his plans to construct on his first time period’s radical reshaping of the courts with extra right-leaning judges.
The bipartisan invoice would have awarded roughly 66 new federal judicial slots over the subsequent three presidential phrases. Trump would have been in a position to appoint a primary batch of 25.
The invoice handed the Senate unanimously in August however lingered within the Republican-controlled Home for months, till after Trump’s victory within the 2024 election. It cleared the Home on a largely party-line in December.
The JUDGES Act would have elevated the variety of trial court docket judges in 25 federal district courts in 13 states, together with California, Florida and Texas, in six waves each two years by means of 2035.
The invoice “seeks to hastily add judgeships with just a few weeks left” within the present Congress, Biden wrote in a letter to lawmakers Monday evening.
“The House of Representatives’ hurried action fails to resolve key questions in the legislation, especially regarding how the new judgeships are allocated, and neither the House of Representatives nor the Senate explored fully how the work of senior status judges and magistrate judges affects the need for new judgeships,” he added.
“The efficient and effective administration of justice requires that these questions about need and allocation be further studied and answered before we create permanent judgeships for life-tenured judges,” the letter continued.
The invoice “would create new judgeships in states where senators have sought to hold open existing judicial vacancies,” efforts that recommend “concerns about judicial economy and caseload are not the true motivating force behind passage of this bill now,” in line with Biden.
Alex Woodward24 December 2024 15:17
Trump blasts Biden for commuting dying row prisoners
Trump, who touts himself as America’s “most pro-life” president, continues to assault Presidnt Joe Biden after he introduced the biggest single-day commutation of federal dying row inmates in fashionable historical past.
“Joe Biden just commuted the Death Sentence on 37 of the worst killers in our Country,” Trump wrote on Fact Social on Christmas Eve. “When you hear the acts of each, you won’t believe that he did this. Makes no sense. Relatives and friends are further devastated. They can’t believe this is happening!”
The White Home introduced early Monday morning that the president would commute the sentences of 37 inmates awaiting execution within the federal jail system, which Trump has pushed to expedite as soon as in workplace.
Biden explicitly mentioned in his announcement that he couldn’t let Trump do this.
“In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted,” he wrote.
Listed here are the tales of the three federal dying row inmates Biden selected to not save:
Alex Woodward24 December 2024 15:00
Matt Gaetz ‘got a great note’ from Trump… on a month-old story
Matt Gaetz shared {a photograph} of a printed-out article in The Federalist in regards to the former congressman’s ethics probe.
“I got a great note from President Trump!” Gaetz shared Monday evening, hours after the Home Ethics Committee shared “substantial evidence” he paid tens of hundreds of {dollars} for {sex}, together with with a highschool scholar, and ceaselessly used cocaine and ecstasy whereas in workplace.
“Matt very unfair!” reads the word, drawn in Trump’s traditional thick Sharpie print.
The article, nevertheless, is from November,
Alex Woodward24 December 2024 14:45
All of the allegations towards Matt Gaetz revealed in explosive report
As a sitting member of Congress, Matt Gaetz paid for {sex} with a 17-year-old highschool scholar, used cocaine and ecstasy, and spent hundreds of {dollars} on sex- and drug-fueled partying, in line with a bombshell report from the Home Ethics Committee.
Monday’s report discovered “substantial evidence” the now-former Republican congressman “regularly” paid for {sex} and met ladies by means of a “sugar dating” web site by means of a former affiliate who has since pleaded responsible to {sex} trafficking.
We combed by means of the report.
Alex Woodward24 December 2024 14:15
Gaetz report states some ladies mentioned drug use at events ‘impaired’ their means to ‘fully consent’
The Home Ethics Committee report into Matt Gaetz states that “all of the women interviewed by the committee said their sexual relationship with Gaetz was consensual, but at least one woman said the use of drugs at the parties they attended with him may have ‘impair[ed their] ability to really know what was going on or fully consent.’”
“Indeed, nearly every woman that the Committee spoke with could not remember the details of at least one or more of the events they attended with Representative Gaetz and attributed that to drug or alcohol consumption,” in line with the report.
Gaetz has rejected the allegations.
The ladies additionally mentioned situations the place Consultant Gaetz would attempt to persuade them to have {sex} with him or Mr. Greenberg: “[H]e would make me feel bad about not having sex with him or [] Joel Greenberg” and that he would say, “Why don’t you want to have sex with me” or “[Mr. Greenberg] looks very sad over there … Make him happy.”
One other woman mentioned that their relationship sooner or later was a “loving friendship,” however over time got here to really feel like a “task.”
A 3rd woman mentioned, “[W]hen I look back on certain moments, I feel violated.”
One woman mentioned, “I think about it all the time . . . . I still see him when I turn on the tv and there’s nothing anyone can do. It’s frustrating to know I lived a reality that he denies.”
Home Ethics Committee report
Gustaf Kilander24 December 2024 14:00
