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Gaetz stands accused of buying and using illegal drugs and paying for sex with a high schooler
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Donald Trump is signalling his incoming administration’s readiness to expand U.S. territory, with recent out-of-nowhere snipes at Panama and Greenland.
After seemingly joking about Canada becoming the “51st” state, the incoming president fired off ominous messages alleging the Panama Canal and Greenland pose serious economic and national security threats to the United States.
He claimed the Panama Canal is a “rip-off” that the country “will immediately stop,” and that the “ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity” — rattling diplomatic relationships less than a month before he returns to the White House.
Meanwhile, allies of House Speaker Mike Johnson are urging the president-elect to reaffirm his support for the Republican leader after Democrats and some Republicans blocked the Trump- and Elon Musk-led campaign to derail the stop-gap funding bill before Christmas, averting a government shutdown.
The House of Representatives is also reeling after an ethics committee report into former congressman Matt Gaetz “determined there is substantial evidence” that he paid tens of thousands of dollars for sex and used illicit drugs while he was a member of Congress.
The wife of far-right activist Stephen Miller — the architect of Trump’s anti-immigration agenda in his first administration — is joining the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency.
She will join billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to recommend slashing hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal budget.
DOGE panel aims to cut at least $500m a year from federal government
A former attorney in northwest Florida, Matt Gaetz styled himself as a fighter for a “more open and transparent government.” In 2010, he was elected to serve in the Florida House of Representatives to represent portions of Okaloosa and Santa Rosa county.
Fourteen years later, days before Christmas, he was trying to stop a damning report about allegations of sexual misonduct and drug use during his time in Congress from becoming public.
The Florida Republican is accused of ‘regularly’ paying for sex — including with a high school student — while he was a member of Congress
Former president Bill Clinton has been discharged from hospital one day after he was admitted with a fever, according to a spokesperson.
He was treated for the flu.
“He and his family are deeply grateful for the exceptional care provided by the team at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital and are touched by the kind messages and well wishes he received,” Clinton’s deputy chief of staff Angel Ureña said Tuesday.
“He sends his warmest wishes for a happy and healthy holiday season to all,” he added.
The former president, 78, was admitted to Georgetown University Medical Center on Monday after developing a fever
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 said.
Inside the report:
A bombshell ethics investigation alleges Matt Gaetz paid for sex with a high schooler, used cocaine and ecstasy, and abused the power of his office. He denies wrongdoing. Alex Woodward reports
A former Republican chair on the House Ethics Committee said he can’t see any GOP lawmakers in Washington, D.C., coming to Matt Gaetz’s defense in the wake of a damning report about the former congressman.
“Matt Gaetz has a real problem here,” former Rep. Charlie Dent told ABC News.
“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 still in Congress, there likely “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 said. “He’s made his own bed, they’re going to let him lie in it.”
Trump’s longest-serving national security adviser John Bolton is warning that an international crisis is “much more likely” under Trump’s incoherence around decision making when it comes to foreign policy.
“The world is more dangerous than when he was president before,” he told The Guardian.
“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 among prominent conservative critics of the president-elect, whom he declared “unfit” office. During debate over whether Trump can be considered a fascist, Bolton suggested that Trump is incapable of having a guiding set of principes.
“To be a fascist, you have to have a philosophy,” he told CNN earlier this year. “Trump’s not capable of that.”
After railing against President Biden for commuting the sentences of federal death row prisoners, Trump has promised to direct the Department of Justice to “vigorously pursue the death penalty” as soon as he enters office.
“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 Truth 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 said.
In his first term, Trump — who touts himself as America’s “most -pro-life president” — carried out 13 federal executions, more than under any president in modern history.
He has promised to make more people eligible for capital punishment, including child rapists, immigrants who kill citizens, and people convicted of drug trafficking.
Trump rattled North American diplomatic relations over the weekend with a threat to retake the Panama Canal, two-and-a-half decades after the U.S. transfered control of the vital global trade route to Panama.
Josh Marcus dives into Trump’s long strange trip with the Central American country:
Landmark Trump project in Panama City saw lawsuits, shoving matches, and money laundering allegations before Trump lost it in hostile takeover
President Joe Biden has vetoed legislation that would have added dozens of judges to the federal judiciary, dealing a blow to Trump’s incoming administration and his plans to build on his first term’s radical reshaping of the courts with more right-leaning judges.
The bipartisan bill would have awarded roughly 66 new federal judicial slots over the next three presidential terms. Trump would have been able to appoint a first batch of 25.
The bill passed the Senate unanimously in August but lingered in the Republican-controlled House for months, until after Trump’s victory in the 2024 election. It cleared the House on a largely party-line in December.
The JUDGES Act would have increased the number of trial court judges in 25 federal district courts in 13 states, including California, Florida and Texas, in six waves every two years through 2035.
The bill “seeks to hastily add judgeships with just a few weeks left” in the current Congress, Biden wrote in a letter to lawmakers Monday night.
“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 bill “would create new judgeships in states where senators have sought to hold open existing judicial vacancies,” efforts that suggest “concerns about judicial economy and caseload are not the true motivating force behind passage of this bill now,” according to Biden.
Trump, who touts himself as America’s “most pro-life” president, continues to attack Presidnt Joe Biden after he announced the largest single-day commutation of federal death row inmates in modern history.
“Joe Biden just commuted the Death Sentence on 37 of the worst killers in our Country,” Trump wrote on Truth 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 House announced early Monday morning that the president would commute the sentences of 37 inmates awaiting execution in the federal prison system, which Trump has pushed to expedite once in office.
Biden explicitly said in his announcement that he could not let Trump do that.
“In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted,” he wrote.
Here are the stories of the three federal death row inmates Biden chose not to save:
Outgoing president decided to spare 37 condemned prisoners from the death chamber – but not three others
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