Donald Trump announces Pam Bondi as new attorney general choice after Matt Gaetz steps aside – live

Trump has announced his choice to replace Matt Gaetz as attorney general – former Florida attorney general and one of Trump’s defence lawyers.

In a statement on truth social he said:

I am proud to announce former Attorney General of the Great State of Florida, Pam Bondi, as our next Attorney General of the United States. Pam was a prosecutor for nearly 20 years, where she was very tough on Violent Criminals, and made the streets safe for Florida Families. Then, as Florida’s first female Attorney General, she worked to stop the trafficking of deadly drugs, and reduce the tragedy of Fentanyl Overdose Deaths, which have destroyed many families across our Country. She did such an incredible job, that I asked her to serve on our Opioid and Drug Abuse Commission during my first Term — We saved many lives!

For too long, the partisan Department of Justice has been weaponized against me and other Republicans – Not anymore. Pam will refocus the DOJ to its intended purpose of fighting Crime, and Making America Safe Again. I have known Pam for many years — She is smart and tough, and is an AMERICA FIRST Fighter, who will do a terrific job as Attorney General!

The Democratic senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania has called Dave McCormick to concede a closely fought race in Pennsylvania. The race was decided by less than a quarter of a point.

In a post on X, Casey said: “During my time in office, I have been guided by an inscription on the Finance Building in Harrisburg: ‘All public service is a trust, given in faith and accepted in honor’.”

In case you missed this yesterday, Texas is offering a parcel of rural ranchland along the US-Mexico border to use as a staging area for potential mass deportations under the president-elect Donald Trump.

The property, which Texas originally bought last month, is located in rural Starr county in the Rio Grande valley. Republican Dawn Buckingham, the Texas land commissioner, sent a letter 14 November to Trump extending the offer.

“We do hear through back channels that they are taking a look at it and considering it. But we just want them to know we’re a good partner. We’re here. We want to be helpful,” Buckingham told the Associated Press in an interview on Wednesday.

The property has no paved roads and sits in a county with one public hospital and limited local resources. But Buckingham stressed its location.

“We feel like this is actually very well-located. The land is very flat there. It’s adjacent to major airports. It’s also adjacent to a bridge over the river,” Buckingham said. “So if it’s helpful, then I would love to partner up with the federal government. And if it’s not, then we’ll continue to look to ways to be helpful to them.”

The land offer is the latest illustration of a sharp divide between states and local governments on whether to support or resist Trump’s plans for mass deportations of immigrants living in the US illegally. On Tuesday, the Los Angeles city council voted to become a “sanctuary” jurisdiction, limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities to carry out deportations.

Texas leaders have long backed aggressive measures on the border to curb crossings, including installing razor-wire barriers and passing a law last year that would allow law enforcement to arrest people who cross the border illegally.

Matt Gaetz, the former Florida representative, withdrew from consideration as attorney general amid allegations including sexual misconduct with a 17-year-old girl, drug use and misappropriating campaign funds. His rapid fall came following likely opposition from Republican senators who had squirmed at the notion of approving his nomination, all as the House ethics committee mulled releasing its investigation into his alleged misconduct. Meanwhile, CNN reported that the woman who said she had sex with Gaetz when she was a minor had had a second sexual encounter with him, involving an adult woman.

• Rainn, the US’s largest anti-sexual violence organization, wrote that Gaetz’s decision “was in response to survivors and advocates using their voices to demand accountability”. Other women’s rights and empowerment groups, including UltraViolet, acknowledged that it was right for Gaetz to withdraw, while also pointing out that Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees include several others accused of sexual abuse and misconduct.

• A handful of Republican senators reacted to Gaetz’s withdrawal, issuing a variety of responses. The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, called the decision “appropriate” according to the Washington Post. Meanwhile, the senator Cynthia Lummis told CNN that it was good that Gaetz recognized he was a distraction, and that this will allow Trump to appoint someone “equally tenacious” to lead the justice department.

• The scrutiny around Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, grew as police unveiled an investigative report into the former Fox News host that further detailed the sexual assault allegations surrounding him. According to the report, Hegseth assaulted a woman after he took her phone, blocked the door to a hotel room and prevented her from leaving.

• Meanwhile, the woman who publicly accused Robert F Kennedy Jr of sexual assault when she worked for him as a babysitter said she was motivated to do so when he released a campaign ad based on a famous advertisement for his uncle, President John F Kennedy. “I literally was just watching the Super Bowl and saw the ad and thought: ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me,’” Eliza Cooney told USA Today.

Revealed: trans rights case at US supreme court features doctors previously discredited by judges

Sam Levin

The doctors have been dismissed by judges across the US as “conspiratorial”, “deeply biased”, “far off” and deserving “very little weight”.

But their testimonies were nonetheless submitted by the state of Tennessee in defense of an anti-trans law the US supreme court will consider in December, in one of the most important cases of the court’s session and among the most consequential LGBTQ+ rights cases in its history.

In US v Skrmetti, the court will weigh whether transgender youth have a constitutional right to access healthcare treatments endorsed by every major medical association in the country, who say the care improves patients’ mental health and reduces the suicide risks of vulnerable teens. The case originated with three trans youth and their parents who sued Tennessee last year over its ban on gender-affirming healthcare for minors, arguing the care was medically necessary and “life-saving”. The outcome could have profound implications for trans rights, bodily autonomy and the government’s authority over people’s private healthcare decisions.

If the court’s conservative supermajority upholds Tennessee’s ban, it would, in effect, be siding with doctors who, LGBTQ+ advocates and trans healthcare experts say, have repeatedly peddled misinformation and, in some cases, espoused religious doctrine in the name of science. Six doctors who filed expert declarations for Tennessee have a history of advocating against trans healthcare, and five of them have previously been rebuked or discounted by judges due to their backgrounds.

Four of those doctors cited by the Tennessee attorney general, Jonathan Skrmetti, to defend the ban have been linked to a rightwing Christian legal group and have profited from their continued testimony on gender-affirming care, and three of them have never provided trans youth healthcare, according to research from Accountable.US, a progressive watchdog organization, which shared its findings with the Guardian.

Could Matt Gaetz return to his seat in Congress after resigning?

In short, no.

At length … Gaetz’s inclusion in the 119th Congress could come down to Florida governor Ron DeSantis, and its secretary of state Cord Byrd.

Politico reports:

A congressional aide indicated that Gaetz’s membership status for the 119th Congress is effectively up to his home state, telling Politico: “The official roll for the 119th Congress will be prepared with the Certificates of Election received from the States.”

The names provided by Florida of candidates who were “regularly elected” to the House under the state and federal laws will be eligible to take their seats in January, the aide continued.

Gaetz has not yet said publicly what he wants to do. And he did not respond to questions from Politico about what his future might hold.

But if he wants to come back to the Hill, he may argue his assertion that he won’t serve in the new Congress may be conditional: He specified that he wouldn’t take the oath “to pursue the position of Attorney General in the Trump Administration,” which is now off the table.

The Republican-controlled US House on Thursday passed a bill that would give the government broad powers to punish non-profit organizations it deems support “terrorism”.

This was the second time members voted on the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, or HR 9495. Last week, after suspending House rules to fast-track the bill, the lower chamber failed to garner the two-thirds majority required to pass. This time, after passing the House committee on rules, the bill – requiring only a simple majority to pass – survived by a vote of 219-184. Fifteen Democrats joined Republicans in supporting the measure.

The bill, which gives the treasury the power to strip non-profits it claims support “terrorism” of their tax-exempt status, does not require the treasury to adhere to any evidentiary standard in releasing its findings. Although groups targeted could appeal to the IRS or the courts for review, simply being identified as a supporter of terrorism could have a chilling effect on advocacy groups, critics warn.

In the days since the first vote last week, non-profit organizations that have historically worked closely with Democrats have pushed against the passage of the bill, arguing that it would give Donald Trump sweeping powers to crack down arbitrarily on his political opponents in civil society. Thirty-seven fewer Democrats supported it during the Thursday vote than last week.

The bill merges the non-profit measure with another, uncontroversial measure that would grant tax relief to Americans unjustly imprisoned abroad.

“A sixth-grader would know this is unconstitutional,” said the Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin, a Democrat, during debate over the bill on Monday. “They want us to vote to give the president Orwellian powers and the not-for-profit sector Kafkaesque nightmares.”

Martin Pengelly

Nikki Haley, the former UN ambassador and Republican presidential hopeful, criticized two of Donald Trump’s cabinet picks, calling his choice for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, “a Russian, Iranian, Syrian, Chinese sympathizer” and Robert F Kennedy Jr, tapped for health secretary, a “liberal Democrat” with no background in relevant policy.

“So now she’s defended Russia, she’s defended Syria, she’s defended Iran, and she’s defended China,” Haley said of Gabbard on her SiriusXM radio show on Wednesday. “No, she has not denounced any of these views. None of them. She hasn’t taken one of them back.

“This is not a place for a Russian, Iranian, Syrian, Chinese sympathizer,” Haley continued, adding that the director of national intelligence “has to analyze real threats” to US security.

Gabbard, 43, is a former progressive congresswoman who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 but who has since become a Republican.

Kennedy, 70 and a scion of a famous political family turned vaccine conspiracy theorist, ran for the Democratic nomination this year before switching to run as an independent and then dropping out to back Trump.

Haley said: “He’s a liberal Democrat, environmental attorney, trial lawyer who will now be overseeing 25% of our federal budget and has no background in healthcare. Some of you may think RFK is cool, some of you may like that he questions what’s in our food and what’s in our vaccines, but we don’t know, when he is given reins to an agency, what decisions he’s going to make behind the scenes.”

Haley was governor of South Carolina before becoming UN ambassador in Trump’s first administration, resigning in 2018. This year, she ran second to Trump in the Republican presidential primary – a race in which she called her opponent “unhinged”, “diminished”, “confused” and not “mentally fit”, and said voting him into office would be “like suicide for our country”.

Still, after Trump won the Republican nomination, Haley endorsed him. No job offer has been forthcoming.

Here’s a look at where things stand:

• Matt Gaetz has withdrawn his name from consideration as Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general. In a full statement on Thursday, Gaetz, who has been swept in a series of sexual allegation controversies, said: “While the momentum was strong, it is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition.”

• Donald Trump has released a statement on Matt Gaetz’s attorney general nomination withdrawal, saying on Truth Social. “I greatly appreciate the recent efforts of Matt Gaetz in seeking approval to be attorney general. He was doing very well but, at the same time, did not want to be a distraction for the administration, for which he has much respect,” he said.

• According to CNN, the woman who says she had sex when she was 17 years old with then-Representative Matt Gaetz told the House ethics committee that she had two sexual encounters with him at one party in 2017. The CNN report cites unnamed sources, who claim that the second sexual encounter, not previously been reported, included another adult woman.

• Rainn, the US’s largest anti-sexual violence organization, has issued a response to Matt Gaetz’s attorney general nomination withdrawal, saying, “This decision was in response to survivors and advocates using their voices to demand accountability.” “We could not reconcile the justice department – the department responsible for providing survivors with avenues for justice – being led by an alleged abuser of women,” it said.

• Incoming Senate majority leader John Thune says that he respects Gaetz’s decision to withdraw. “I think everybody has to make a decision that’s good for them and for their family,” Thune said, according to CNN.

• A handful of Republican senators reacted to Matt Gaetz’s withdrawal, issuing a variety of responses. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell called the decision “appropriate” according to the Washington Post. Meanwhile, senator Cynthia Lummis told CNN that it was good that Gaetz recognised he was a distraction, and that this will allow Trump to appoint someone “equally tenacious” to lead the justice department.

Rainn, the US’s largest anti-sexual violence organization, has issued a response to Matt Gaetz’s attorney general nomination withdrawal, saying, “This decision was in response to survivors and advocates using their voices to demand accountability.”

“We could not reconcile the justice department – the department responsible for providing survivors with avenues for justice –— being led by an alleged abuser of women. RAINN heard you, Matt Gaetz heard you, and survivors will not be silenced.

“For the other nominees facing allegations of sexual assault: We ask the relevant Senate committees to gather and consider all the facts before voting on any such nomination …

Sexual assault happens to someone in the US every 68 seconds. It occurs in our places of business, our schools, our doctors’ offices; urban or rural, in private and in public. Every single political appointee will have to confront their role in sexual assault response, prevention and recovery. And it starts now.”