Politics Election category, Page 75
What to know about Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick to serve as defense secretary
In picking Fox News Channel host Pete Hegseth to lead the Department of Defense, President-elect Donald Trump has selected a military veteran and popular conservative media personality with a large following of his own. Hegseth, 44, has developed a close rapport with Trump, who also reportedly considered him for a...
Can DeSantis appoint himself to U.S. Senate if Rubio joins the Trump administration?
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has an opportunity. With president-elect Donald Trump expected to name Marco Rubio as his secretary of state, DeSantis will soon have the power to temporarily appoint someone to fill Rubio’s seat in the U.S. Senate. That’s because Florida is one of 34 states in the country...
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio seen as Trump’s pick for secretary of State
WASHINGTON — Marco Rubio, the combative and hawkish Republican senator from Florida, is expected to be President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of State, multiple media outlets reported Tuesday. Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, was once a challenger to and critic of Trump, but has become a staunch defender...
Speaker Johnson begins fight for the House gavel, winning nod from Trump
WASHINGTON — Speaker Mike Johnson is beginning the hard fight for his gavel, a weeks-long campaign that starts Wednesday during internal House Republican leadership elections and will establish the new power centers in Congress for a Washington dominated by President-elect Donald Trump. While Johnson has no serious challenger, he faces...
What happens to Donald Trump’s criminal conviction? Here are a few ways it could go
NEW YORK — Donald Trump’s election victory created a conundrum for the judge overseeing his criminal case in New York. Can he go ahead and sentence the president-elect, or would doing so potentially get in the way of Trump’s constitutional responsibility to lead the nation? Court documents made public Tuesday...
Trump makes a victor’s return to Washington and pledges a smooth transition of powerVideo
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump made a victor’s return to Washington on Wednesday, visiting the White House for a nearly two-hour meeting with President Joe Biden and committing to a straightforward transition of power as the president-elect moves quickly to build out his new administration. Sitting in front of a crackling...
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz says he’ll ask for a vote of confidence in December
BERLIN — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has announced that he will ask for a vote of confidence on Dec. 16, paving the way forward for an early parliamentary election in February. Scholz declared his plans for a vote of confidence during a speech in parliament on Wednesday, one week after...
Trump’s defense choice stuns the Pentagon and raises questions about the Fox News host’s experience
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump stunned the Pentagon and the broader defense world by nominating Fox News host Pete Hegseth to serve as his defense secretary, tapping someone largely inexperienced and untested on the global stage to take over the world’s largest and most powerful military. The news was met...
Trump says Musk, Ramaswamy will form outside group to advise White House on government efficiency
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday said Elon Musk and former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy will lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” — which is not, despite the name, a government agency. The acronym “DOGE” is a nod to Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency, dogecoin. Trump said in a...
Trump builds out national security team with picks of Pete Hegseth for Pentagon, Kristi Noem for DHS
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — President-elect Donald Trump moved to build out his national security team Tuesday, announcing he is nominating Fox News host and Army veteran Pete Hegseth to serve as his defense secretary and former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to lead the Central Intelligence Agency. In...
GOP asks Pa. Supreme Court to reject mail-in ballots with handwritten date errors
The Republican Party is calling on the state Supreme Court to discount mail-in ballots that arrive on time but lack written dates. On Tuesday, the Republican National Committee and Republican Party of Pennsylvania filed a petition asking the court to reverse a decision last month by the state’s Commonwealth Court....
Pennsylvania lawmaker among those being considered for Trump Cabinet post
A Pennsylvania member of Congress may be in line for a Cabinet post in the new Trump administration. House Agriculture Chair Glenn Thompson is among the candidates under consideration as Trump’s agriculture secretary, according to a report in E&E News/Politico. Thompson has served in the House since 2009, most recently...
Trump picks former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to be ambassador to Israel
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — President-elect Donald Trump will nominate former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel, Trump announced Tuesday. Huckabee is a staunch defender of Israel and his intended nomination comes as Trump has promised to align U.S. foreign policy more closely with Israel’s interests as it...
Trump spends 1st week as president-elect behind closed doors at Mar-a-Lago
WASHINGTON — For a man who loves the spotlight, Donald Trump has been conspicuously out of view since his triumph in last week’s presidential election. There have been no rallies, no press conferences, no speeches. Instead, Trump has spent most of his first week as president-elect behind closed doors at...
Trump has promised to ‘save TikTok’; what happens next is less clear
After a tumultuous year filled with anxiety and a legal battle about its future in the U.S., TikTok may have just been thrown a lifeline by the man who was once its biggest foe: Donald Trump. President-elect Trump, who tried to ban the social media platform the last time he...
Speaker Mike Johnson says Republicans are ‘ready to deliver’ on Trump’s agenda
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday that Republicans are “ready to deliver” President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda after his election victory, insisting the GOP won’t make the mistakes of last time and will be much better prepared for a second-term Trump White House. Standing on the steps of the...
Federal judge blocks Louisiana law that requires classrooms to display Ten Commandments
BATON ROUGE, LA. — A new Louisiana requirement that the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public classroom by Jan. 1 was temporarily blocked Tuesday by a federal judge who said the law is “unconstitutional on its face.” U.S. District Judge John W. deGravelles in Baton Rouge said the law...
Judge delays ruling on whether to scrap Trump’s conviction in hush money case
NEW YORK — A judge has postponed a decision on whether to undo President-elect Donald Trump’s hush money conviction as prosecutors consider how to proceed in light of last week’s election and his lawyers argue for dismissal so he can run the country. The postponement announced Tuesday comes at a...
Biden funded new factories and infrastructure projects, but Trump might get to cut the ribbons
WASHINGTON — All that’s left is for President-elect Donald Trump to put his name on it — if he wants. Trump won the White House in large part because of voters’ frustration with high prices and a sense that the United States needs major changes. But when he enters office...
A pair of Trump officials have defended family separation and ramped-up deportations
SAN DIEGO — Donald Trump’s first picks for immigration policy jobs spent the last four years angling for this moment. Stephen Miller and Thomas Homan had critical roles in the first Trump administration and are unapologetic defenders of its policies, which included separating thousands of parents from their children at...
Congress returns to unfinished business and a new Trump era
WASHINGTON — Congress returns to a changed Washington as President-elect Donald Trump’s hard-right agenda is quickly taking shape, buoyed by eager Republican allies eyeing a full sweep of power on Capitol Hill while Democrats are sorting out what went wrong. Even as final election results are still being tallied, the...
Trump planning to choose Marco Rubio to lead State Department in historic first
President-elect Donald Trump plans to tap U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio as his secretary of state, making him the first Latino to helm the State Department, according to a source familiar with the plans. Trump’s selection of Rubio, born in Miami to Cuban parents, is expected to assuage fears among GOP...
McCormick to go to Washington for Senate orientation over Schumer objections
Republican Dave McCormick said Monday he is off to Washington, D.C. for freshman orientation at the U.S. Senate, even as the chamber’s Democratic leaders are withholding an invitation while waiting for the remaining votes to be counted in Pennsylvania. The Associated Press Friday declared McCormick the winner in an upset...
How did Pa. Dems keep the state House during a red wave? Meet Frank Burns
Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit newsroom producing investigative and public-service journalism that holds power to account and drives positive change in Pennsylvania. Sign up for our free newsletters. HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania House Democrats have clung to their one-vote majority despite a statewide wave of GOP wins that...
Biden and Harris are appearing together for the first time since she lost the election to Trump
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday made their first joint appearance since her election loss when they observed Veterans Day together by laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery. Biden honored the service and sacrifice of America’s...
