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Trump’s ‘reckless’ attorney general choice sends shockwaves through Washington – US politics live

Republicans baffled after Trump picks ‘reckless’ Gaetz for attorney general

Donald Trump’s decision to nominate the far-right Republican congressman Matt Gaetz as attorney general has sent shockwaves through Washington, including the president-elect’s own party.

Trump on Wednesday announced Gaetz as his pick to be the nation’s chief law enforcement officer in the justice department, a role that directs the government’s legal positions on critical issues, including abortion, civil rights, and first amendment cases.

Republicans were puzzled over this nomination, expressing this move was not on their “bingo card”.

Donald Trump has nominated congressman Matt Gaetz to serve as attorney general, the country’s chief law officer.

“I don’t think it’s a serious nomination for the attorney general,” Republican senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, told NBC News. She added:

We need to have a serious attorney general. And I’m looking forward to the opportunity to consider somebody that is serious. This one was not on my bingo card.”

A rightwing firebrand, Gaetz was a thorn in the side of his fellow Republican and former House speaker Kevin McCarthy, eventually leading the successful charge to oust McCarthy from his role.

He was investigated by the justice department in a sex-trafficking case, though the department ultimately declined to bring charges. And was under investigation by the House ethics committee amid allegations of sexual misconduct, illicit drug use and other alleged ethical breaches.

Gaetz has fiercely denied wrongdoing.

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In other developments:

Republicans have secured a majority in the US House of Representatives, extending their hold on the lower chamber and delivering a governing trifecta in Washington that could give Trump sweeping power to enact his legislative agenda.
Trump also announced his nominee for director of national intelligence would be Tulsi Gabbard, who is a critic of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and has questioned atrocities attributed to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. Gabbard has previously clashed with Marco Rubio, who Trump on Wednesday confirmed would be nominated as secretary of state. The new appointments followed Trump’s announcement of Peter Hegseth for defense in a move that stunned military officials, some of whom questioned whether Hegseth had the experience to manage a government department with a budget of more than $800bn.
Republican senators chose South Dakota’s John Thune as their new leader, rejecting a challenge from Florida senator Rick Scott, who had the backing of key Maga figures Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson. Thune’s elevation comes after long-serving Mitch McConnell stood aside.
Joe Biden met Trump at the White House, extending a courtesy to the president-elect that Biden was not offered in 2020 when Trump refused to acknowledge Biden’s election victory. Trump thanked Biden for welcoming him back to the Oval Office and said: “Politics is tough, and it’s [in] many cases not a very nice world, but it is a nice world today.”
The president-elect met with House Republicans before going to the White House, and joked about seeking a third term, which would be constitutionally prohibited after his second term.
Wednesday’s appointments leave a handful of roles to fill in Trump’s cabinet. Reuters reported billionaire banker and co-chair of Trump’s transition team Howard Lutnick had emerged as a serious contender against investor Scott Bessent for the role of Treasury secretary, the highest profile job without a name yet attached.
The Democratic minority leader in the House, Hakeem Jeffries, said his colleagues had “over-performed the national political environment”, pre-empting the news that Republicans had retained the chamber. Elizabeth Warren argued Democrats should show they stand ready to “unrig this economy” as billionaires join the Trump administration. Warren was appearing at an event alongside fellow senator Bernie Sanders.
Two Democratic state governors have launched an initiative aimed at “pushing back against increasing threats of autocracy and fortifying the institutions of democracy”. The Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, and the Colorado governor, Jared Polis, hope to form a non-partisan coalition with their new organisation, Governors Safeguarding Democracy.
Dan Scavino, who on Tuesday suggested Australia’s ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, was running out of time, has been named as assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff. Scavino’s provocative post on X has continued to fuel Australian anxieties over its relationship with the incoming president, whom Rudd in 2021 described as “a village idiot” and “not a leading intellectual force”.

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London mayor says Trump attacks due to his ethnicity and religion

The London mayor, Sadiq Khan, has accused Donald Trump of repeatedly criticising him because of his ethnicity and Muslim faith, in comments likely to renew his long-running feud with the US president-elect, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The pair became embroiled in an extraordinary war of words during Trump’s first presidency, initially sparked by Khan speaking out against a US travel ban on people from certain Muslim countries.

Trump then accused Khan – the first Muslim mayor of a western capital when he was first elected in 2016 – of doing a “very bad job on terrorism” and called him a “stone cold loser” and “very dumb”. The mayor in turn allowed an unflattering blimp of Trump dressed as a baby in a nappy to fly above protests in Parliament Square during his 2018 visit to Britain.

The London mayor, Sadiq Khan, has accused Donald Trump of repeatedly criticising him because of his ethnicity and Muslim faith.

Speaking on a podcast recorded before Trump’s re-election on 5 November and released earlier this week, Khan, a son of Pakistani immigrants to the UK, said he viewed the past targeting of him as “incredibly personal”, reports AFP.

“If I wasn’t this colour skin, if I wasn’t a practising Muslim, he wouldn’t have come for me,” he told the High Performance podcast, which interviews prominent people in different sectors. He added:

He’s come for me because of, let’s be frank, my ethnicity and my religion.”

According to AFP, Khan added that during this period he was “speaking out against somebody whose policies were sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist” and that he has “a responsibility to speak out”.

His latest comments on Trump are in stark contrast to those of his colleagues in the UK’s Labour party, which swept to power in July.

Prime minister, Keir Starmer, has appeared at pains to forge a positive relationship with the president-elect, promptly congratulating him on his “historic election victory”.

Starmer said their phone call was “very positive, very constructive” and the so-called special relationship between the UK and the US would “prosper” in Trump’s second term.

Bluesky adds 1m new members as users flee X after the US election

Luca Ittimani

Social media platform Bluesky has picked up more than 1 million new users since the US election, as users seek to escape misinformation and offensive posts on X.

The influx, largely from North America and the UK, has helped Bluesky reach nearly 15 million users worldwide, up from 9 million in September, the company said.

Social media researcher Axel Bruns said the platform offered an alternative to X, formerly Twitter, including a more effective system for blocking or suspending problematic accounts and policing harmful behaviour.

“It’s become a refuge for people who want to have the kind of social media experience that Twitter used to provide, but without all the far-right activism, the misinformation, the hate speech, the bots and everything else,” he said.

“The more liberal kind of Twitter community has really now escaped from there and seems to have moved en masse to Bluesky.”

Bluesky began as a project inside Twitter but became an independent company in 2022, and is now primarily owned by chief executive Jay Graber.

The platform has previously benefited from dissatisfaction with X and its billionaire owner, Elon Musk, who is closely tied to US president-elect Donald Trump’s successful election campaign. Twitter shed millions of users after rebranding to X and usage in the US slumped by more than a fifth in the subsequent seven months.

Bluesky reported picking up 3 million new users in the week after X was suspended in Brazil in September and a further 1.2 million in the two days after X announced it would allow users to view posts from people who had blocked them.

“We’re excited to welcome all of these new people, ranging from Swifties to wrestlers to city planners,” Bluesky spokesperson Emily Liu said.

The Republican party has secured a Washington trifecta by taking control of both houses of Congress as well as the White House.

Here are the results in full for every seat in every state:

Julian Borger

The Pentagon has been stunned by Donald Trump’s pick for defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, a national guard veteran and Fox News presenter who has called for a purge of generals for pursuing “woke” diversity policies.

Hegseth has questioned whether the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Charles Brown, was given the top job because he is black and accused him of “pursuing the radical positions of leftwing politicians”.

Hegseth was a major in the Minnesota national guard who served as a prison guard at Guantánamo Bay detention camp and served in Iraq and Afghanistan before becoming an outspoken rightwing critic of the military.

He has argued for faster provision of more US weapons to Ukraine for its defence against Russia, but also called US Nato membership into question. His nomination is also a boost for the far right in Israel, as he has shown support for territorial expansion and suggested that Jews could build a new temple on the sacred compound around al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.

Hegseth told an audience in Jerusalem in 2018: “There’s no reason why the miracle of the re-establishment of the temple on the Temple Mount is not possible.”

The Israeli settler movement is also celebrating Trump’s nomination of Mike Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, as the US ambassador to Israel.

In a visit to the region in 2017, Huckabee, an evangelical Baptist minister, said: “There is no such thing as a West Bank – it’s Judea and Samaria.”

He said: “There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities. They’re neighbourhoods. They’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation” – a position dramatically at odds with current US policy and international law on occupied Palestinian territory.

Trump’s nomination of Hegseth, 44, a chatshow commentator with minimal managerial experience, to run the US military establishment with 1.3 million active-duty service members and the nearly 1 million civilian staff has taken Congress and the Pentagon by surprise.

Republicans secure House majority in yet another blow to Democrats

Joan E Greve

Republicans have secured a majority in the US House of Representatives, extending their hold on the lower chamber and delivering a governing trifecta in Washington that could give Donald Trump sweeping power to enact his legislative agenda.

The Associated Press determined on Wednesday evening that Republicans had won at least 218 seats in the 435-member House after a victory in Arizona, a call that came more than a week after polls closed across the US and as Trump made cabinet announcements that sent shockwaves through Washington.

The call ensures Republicans will continue to have a large say in key matters such as government funding, debt ceiling negotiations and foreign aid, and it spells an end to Democrats’ hopes that the lower chamber could serve as a blockade against Trump’s agenda.

Republicans had already won the White House and regained a majority in the Senate, so their victory in the House provides them with the last component of their governing trifecta. Although they will have a slim majority, Republicans have indicated they will use their trifecta to maximum effect when the new Congress is seated in January.

“We have to deliver for the people, and we will,” the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, told Fox News last week. “President Trump wants to be aggressive. He wants to go big and we’re excited about that. We’re going to get to play offense.”

Trump’s selection of at least three House Republicans to join his administration further complicates the math for Johnson. Trump had already tapped the New York representative Elise Stefanik to serve as ambassador to the United Nations and Mike Waltz, the Florida representative, to fill the role of national security adviser. On Wednesday, Trump announced he would also nominate Matt Gaetz, the Republican congressman of Florida, as his attorney general.