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President-elect Donald Trump names his victorious 2024 campaign manager as first-ever female White House chief of staff as he works on transition to Oval Office
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President-elect Donald Trump has begun preparing for the Oval Office by naming Susie Wiles as his new White House chief of staff.
This comes as the Democratic blame game begins, with ex-speaker Nancy Pelosi appearing to regret that Democrats didn’t have an open primary to select its nominee after President Joe Biden dropped out.
“Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” the former speaker told The New York Times. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary.”
The Republicans are expected to retain control of the House, likely handing the GOP a trifecta as they’re set to take back the Senate, possibly handing Trump full control of the levers of power in Washington.
Trump and President Joe Biden both had a trifecta for their first two years in office.
Wiles spearheaded Trump’s successful 2024 campaign and is the first of many appointees who will help to push his agenda, which includes the mass deportation of illegal immigrants, more trade tariffs and extended tax cuts.
Keir Starmer has been warned that he must prioritise attempts to reset Britain’s relationship with the EU and unpick the trade barriers created by leaving if he wants to offset the impact of the tariffs Donald Trump has threatened to impose.
With Mr Trump re-elected to the White House and intending to impose protectionist tariffs to protect sectors of the US economy, there are fears that not only will the policy wipeout the UK’s hopes for economic growth but could see the economy shrinking.
Foreign secretary David Lammy, who has attempted to dismiss any ill feeling he may have created between the Labour government and Trump White House with his historic tweets calling the president-elect a “neo Nazi”, has also warned against US trade tariffs.
Exclusive: Warning from a leading trade expert comes as new projections show tariffs imposed by Trump could shrnk the UK economy over the next three years and wipeout growth ahead of the next general election
San Francisco mayor London Breed struck a civic tone when conceding the race to winner Daniel Lurie, writing on X, “I know we are both committed to improving this City we love.” A few days earlier, however, she made a considerably different point, accusing Lurie, an heir to the Levi Strauss denim fortune, of buying the election.
“It has been really one of the most sad and horrible things I’ve seen in politics in San Francisco, that someone would take their wealth and just basically buy this office,” Breed reportedly told supporters on election night. “It’s really unfortunate and pretty disgusting.”
Lurie, who ran as a relatively pro-business moderate calling for increased police staffing, more affordable housing, and expanded homeless shelter capacity, comes from substantial wealth.
Daniel Lurie unseated incumbent mayor London Breed running on promises to revitalize city after challenges of pandemic era
ACLU Louisiana Executive Director Alanah Odoms has said in a statement that the organization received a racist letter in the mail after Election Day.
This comes amid a litany of reports of racist texts messages being sent to people across the country.
We have been made aware of several Black Louisianans who have received racist and frightening text messages in the time after Election Day.
In the strongest of terms, we condemn these messages and the emboldening of white supremacists in the wake of electing a president who has spread racist lies.
We ourselves received a letter after Election Day filled with racist slurs and threats of death and sexual violence. These messages are meant to intimidate us.
Instead, they prove the importance of our continued fight for racial justice. We will not back down in our fight to end white supremacy.
We will not back down against laws meant to keep us disenfranchised and discouraged. We carry a legacy bigger and bolder than any white nationalist can ever dream of.
Most of all, we are united in this fight. We will not back down.
Hours before Vice President Kamala Harris delivered her concession speech, two Christian protestors caused disruption on a Texas university campus with signs that branded women “property” and used homophobic slurs.
The incident at Texas State University at San Marcos united students on both sides of the political aisle in anger as the men paraded around for an hour before being escorted off the property.
Eva De Arment, a 19-year-old sophomore, was in the university’s English building waiting for class to start when she saw Snapchat images of the signs, including one that listed “women” and “slaves” alongside cars as “property.”
Protestors are members of Official Street Preachers, an organization that ‘covers global and local events from a Christian perspective’
When Donald Trump first came to the White House, he did so under rocky circumstances. Yes, he had beaten Democrats in the Blue Wall of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. But he also lost the popular vote — and Democrats had picked up Senate seats in Illinois and New Hampshire, as well as flipping a few seats in the House.
Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House at the time, would regularly say, “I haven’t seen the tweet,” when asked about Trump’s worst Twitter rants. Mitch McConnell would blow off anything Trump said as he turned the Senate into a judicial confirmation factory. John McCain famously voted down Trump’s planned repeal of Obamacare. Senate Republicans balked at his desire to get rid of the filibuster. After the January 6 riot, ten House Republicans voted to impeach Trump and seven Republican senators voted to convict him.
What we learned from the balance of Congress after 2020 and 2022 showed that when it comes to the House, the consequences aren’t always what you might expect
It hasn’t even been a week since Donald Trump won the election, but politicos are already dreaming about who should run in 2028, and former First Lady Michelle Obama’s name keeps cropping up.
When the Obamas issued their statement on the election results, social media users deluged them with comments calling for the former first lady to run.
Oddsmakers already have her as the number two choice next cycle, behind Vice President-elect JD Vance. Even Joe Rogan, the Trump-supporting apostle of male opinion this election, said this week Obama would win “in a landslide“ if she ran.
Former First Lady remains extremely popular and campaigned for Kamala Harris during failed 2024 run
Ron DeSantis once hailed Susie Wiles as “the best in the business.”
Donald Trump’s incoming White House Chief of Staff is credited with saving DeSantis’s floundering 2018 campaign for governor in Florida.
“Smartest thing you’ve ever done,” Trump told DeSantis, Politico reported in 2019, referring to his hiring of Wiles, according to a source who witnessed the exchange.
Susie Wiles is credited with saving DeSantis’s floundering 2018 campaign for governor in Florida
Nearly four years ago as Donald Trump was refusing to acknowledge his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was asked if his department was preparing to engage with the incoming Biden team.
In what appeared to be a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of the tensions around the then-president’s lack of commitment to the peaceful transfer of power, he replied: “There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.”
On Wednesday, just hours after media outlets had declared Trump the winner in his bid to be the first president in over a century to serve non-consecutive terms, Pompeo took to X (formerly Twitter) to resurface the clip with an accompanying quip.
Supporters and administration hopefuls have been flocking to Mar-a-Lago in the days since Trump’s win, Andrew Feinberg reports. And so far, it looks like plans for the handover are highly unorthodox
Donald Trump used to call Xi Jinping “my friend”. But the Chinese leader doesn’t do “friends”. His formal congratulations to America’s president-elect were notably lacking in warmth.
Xi’s brutal realism when Covid-19 broke out told its own story. Then he sat and watched as wars tested American resolve. Now these two men in their seventies are fated to run the most important relationship in the world.
Both are the sons of privilege. Trump was born into wealth, Xi into power. But if Trump was spoiled by life, Xi was hardened by it. While a young Trump was hitting the party scene in Manhattan, Xi toiled in the mountains and lived in a cave for years after his father was purged from the Communist Party. As a teenager, he was beaten, imprisoned and threatened with death.
The president-elect and his Chinese counterpart have made a fist of playing buddies. But Trump has vowed to raise tariffs on Chinese imports. Michael Sheridan asks if this could put a roadblock in the way of cordial East-West politics?
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