Vance arrives on Capitol Hill to secure support for Trump cabinet picks; House committee to vote on Gaetz report – live | Trump administration

Vice president-elect JD Vance, who is at Capitol Hill today to shore up support for Matt Gaetz, has been tasked as the main liaison between the Trump-Vance transition team and Republican senators who could make or break Gaetz’s nomination as attorney general.

Vance is doing a lot of” the outreach “on the Senate side,” the Hill quoted one GOP senator as saying.

“I think he’s worked through the whole Judiciary Committee. He’s calling folks, trying to get a sense of where things are.”

South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, the outgoing top Republican on the House judiciary committee, was the first to meet with vice president-elect JD Vance and Trump’s pick for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, at the Capitol this morning.

Graham said he had a “good meeting” with Vance and Gaetz and described the confirmation process for Gaetz as becoming a “lynch mob”.

The former Florida congressman “will be held to account in the confirmation process. He deserves his chance to make his argument why (he) should be attorney general,” Graham told reporters after the meeting.

“I’m not going to be part of a process that leaks information that shouldn’t be leaked. I’m not going to legitimize the process to destroy the man, because people don’t like his politics,” he added.

American Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group, filed a motion on Tuesday night in federal court to compel the Justice Department to release all records related to its investigation off the former congressman Matt Gaetz, who Donald Trump has nominated to serve as his attorney general.

The group has been trying to get the documents since last year, when the Justice Department ended its inquiry into accusations that Gaetz engaged in a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl.

The department closed its investigation without filing charges, and Gaetz has consistently denied the allegations.

In its motion, American Oversight said that releasing the documents is “essential for transparency, accountability, and public trust”, arguing that the “American people deserve to know the facts before the Senate votes on his nomination.”

“Sex trafficking, obstruction of justice, and abuse of power are not the kind of questions that should hang over the head of someone being considered for US attorney general,” the watchdog’s executive director, Chioma Chukwu, said.

Vice president-elect JD Vance has arrived at the Capitol this morning where he will spend the week arranging meetings between Donald Trump’s cabinet picks, Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth, and key Republican senators involved in their confirmation process.

Vance will be on Capitol Hill today to usher Gaetz, Trump’s pick for attorney general, around Senate offices as the House ethics committee meets to vote on releasing a report examining allegations of sexual misconduct against the former congressman, the Washington Post reports.

Vance is expected to sit in on some of the meetings, with CNN reporting that Louisiana senator John Kennedy, a member of the Senate judiciary committee, plans to meet with Gaetz and Vance today.

New York representative Elise Stefanik, Trump’s pick to serve as the ambassador to the UN, and Doug Collins, Trump’s pick for secretary of veterans affairs, will also meet with senators this week, according to CNN.

The Biden administration’s move to allow Ukraine to use American supplied anti-personnel landmines comes despite the weapons being banned by scores of countries, including the UK.

Lloyd Austin, the US defense secretary, told reporters: “The landmines that we would look to provide them would be landmines that are not persistent, you know, we can control when they would self-activate, self-detonate and that makes it far more safer eventually than the things that they are creating on their own.”

A US official said it was a step that could help slow Russian advances in the east of the country, especially when used with other munitions from the US.

The US expects Ukraine to use the mines in its own territory, though it has committed not to use them in areas populated with its own civilians, the official said.

The US has provided Ukraine with anti-tank mines throughout its war with Russia, but the addition of anti-personnel mines aims to blunt the advance of Russian ground troops, the official added, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The US defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, has confirmed the Biden administration will allow Ukraine to use US-supplied antipersonnel landmines to help fight off Russian forces, a further step after Washington granted Kyiv permission to use long-range missiles inside Russia.

Austin, speaking to reporters in Laos on Wednesday, said the shift in Washington’s policy on antipersonnel landmines for Ukraine follows changing tactics by the Russians, according to the AP.

Russian ground troops are leading the movement on the battlefield, Austin said, so Ukraine has “a need for things that can help slow down that effort on the part of the Russians”.

As we reported earlier, the Kremlin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov accused the US of prolonging the war in Ukraine and of “doing everything they can to do so”.

The US has temporarily closed its embassy in Kyiv after receiving warning of a “potential significant air attack”, advising American citizens to be prepared to move immediately to a shelter in the event of an air raid warning.

Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary, said women in the US military “make us stronger” as he prepares to shortly exit the top military post after four years.

“I have spent 41 years in uniform, three long tours in Iraq, one in Afghanistan, and everywhere I went on a battlefield, there were women in our formation,” Austin said in an interview with NBC News published this morning.

“I would tell you that, you know, our women are the finest troops in the world. Quite frankly, some of the finest in the world.”

His comments came after Donald Trump’s announcement that he had picked Pete Hegseth, a national guard veteran and Fox News presenter, to succeed Austin as secretary of defense.

Hegseth has made it clear, in his own book and in interviews, that he believes men and women should not serve together in combat units. During a podcast released this month, he said the military “should not have women in combat roles” and that “men in those positions are more capable”.

Austin, during his interview, argued that women “do impact readiness. They make us better. They make us stronger.”

However he did not weigh in on what he thinks about Trump’s choice of Hegseth, only saying that the president-elect “has the opportunity to nominate anyone that he chooses for any position, and certainly, you know, we respect that”.

Donald Trump was attending the launch of SpaceX’s Starship rocket launch in Texas yesterday when he was asked whether he was reconsidering his controversial nomination of Matt Gaetz as attorney general.

“No,” the president-elect told reporters. He did not respond when asked how far he was willing to go to get Gaetz confirmed.

As we reported earlier, the House ethics committee is expected to meet today to vote on releasing a report examining allegations of sexual misconduct against the former Republican congressman.

Former WWE executive Linda McMahon, who has been named as Donald Trump’s pick for education secretary, donated $814,600 to Trump’s 2024 campaign as of July.

She served in Trump’s cabinet in his first term as the administrator of the Small Business Administration from 2017 to 2019.

McMahon chaired America First Action, a Super PAC that backed Trump’s re-election campaign, raising $83m in 2020. She provided $6m to help Trump’s candidacy after he secured the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, according to the Associated Press.

In October, McMahon and her husband, Vince, were named in a new lawsuit involving WWE. The suit alleges that she and other leaders of the company allowed the sexual abuse of young boys at the hands of a ringside announcer, former WWE ring crew chief Melvin Phillips Jr.

The complaint specifically alleges that the McMahons knew about the abuse and failed to stop it.

An attorney for the McMahons told USA Today Sports that the allegations are “false claims” stemming from reporting that the couple deems “absurd, defamatory and utterly meritless”.

US envoy Amos Hochstein said he will travel to Israel on Wednesday to try to secure a ceasefire ending the war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah group after declaring additional progress in talks in Beirut.

Hochstein, who arrived a day earlier in Beirut, said he saw a “real opportunity” to end the conflict after the Lebanese government and Hezbollah agreed to a US ceasefire proposal, although with some comments.

Reuters reports that the diplomacy aims to end a conflict that has inflicted massive devastation in Lebanon since Israel went on the offensive against Hezbollah in September.

Although diplomacy to end the Gaza war has largely stalled, the Biden administration aims to seal a ceasefire in the parallel conflict in Lebanon before Donald Trump takes office in January.

“We are going to work with the incoming administration. We’re already going to be discussing this with them. They will be fully aware of what we’re doing,” Hochstein said.

As he did in his first term, US president-elect Donald Trump is likely in January to invoke the “global gag rule”, officially called the Mexico City policy, which bans US federal funding for NGOs in foreign countries that provide abortion services or abortion advocacy.

The gag rule has a 40-year history of being applied by Republican presidents and rescinded by Democratic presidents. Every GOP president since the mid-1980s has invoked the rule, reports the Associated Press.

As one of his first acts as president in 2017, Trump expanded the rule to the extent that foreign NGOs were cut off from about $600m in US family planning funds and more than $11bn in US global health aid between 2017 and 2018 alone, according to the US Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, reports the AP.

The money – much of it intended for Africa – covered efforts such as preventing malaria and tuberculosis, providing water and sanitation, and distributing health information and contraception, which might also have repercussions for HIV prevention.

The policy stipulates that foreign NGOs that receive US government funding must agree to stop abortion-related activities, including discussing it as a family planning option — even when they are using non-US government funds for such activities.

The gag-rule policy “leads to more unintended, unwanted, unsupportable pregnancies and therefore an increase in abortion,” said Catriona Macleod, a professor of psychology at South Africa’s Rhodes University.

“This legislation does not protect life … it’s been called America’s deadly export,” said Macleod, who heads the university’s studies in sexuality and reproduction.

Trump’s transition team did not respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.

Donald Trump’s re-election as US president has prompted fears that he will cut off American support for Ukraine, forcing it into peace talks with Russia that would culminate in a settlement on terms favourable to Vladimir Putin.

However, as my colleague Andrew Sparrow reports, the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, has argued that Trump would not go that far.

Lammy and the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, had dinner with Trump in the autumn. Lammy discusses that too in an interview in the UK’s New Statesmen with George Eaton. Here are the key lines.

• Lammy argued that Trump would not accept a deal over Ukraine that would look like a victory for Putin. Asked about Trump’s stance on Ukraine, Lammy said:

I’ve been a politician for 25 years and I understand the different philosophies at play. There’s a deep philosophical underpinning to friends in the Republican party that I’ve known for many years, thinking back to people like [former US secretary of state] Condoleezza Rice. Donald Trump has some continuity with this position, which is ‘peace through strength’.

What I do know about Donald Trump is that he doesn’t like losers and he doesn’t want to lose; he wants to get the right deal for the American people. And he knows that the right deal for the American people is peace in Europe and that means a sustainable peace – not Russia achieving its aims and coming back for more in the years ahead.

• Lammy said he found Trump “very funny, very engaging and very charismatic” when he and Starmer met Trump for dinner at his home in New York. He also said Trump was “a consummate politician” and very interested in learning how Labour won the election in the UK.

Following Trump’s victory earlier this month, Lammy described his previous remarks about the US president-elect as being “deluded, dishonest, xenophobic, narcissistic” and a “neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath” as old news.

You can read Andrew’s full post on Lammy here.

Trump loyalist Kash Patel in contention to be named FBI director

Hugo Lowell

Donald Trump is keeping his controversial adviser Kash Patel in the running to be the next FBI director, according to two people familiar with the matter, as the transition team conducted interviews for the role on Monday night at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago club.

The existence of the interviews, made public in a since-deleted post by the vice president-elect JD Vance, underscored the intent to fire the current FBI director, Christopher Wray, years before his current term is up.

Vance revealed that he and Trump had been interviewing finalists for FBI director in a post responding to criticism he received for missing a Senate vote last night that confirmed one of Joe Biden’s nominees for the US court of appeals for the 11th circuit.

“When this 11th circuit vote happened, I was meeting President Trump to interview multiple positions for our government, including for FBI director,” Vance wrote.

Trump has a special interest in the FBI, having fired James Comey as director in 2017 over his refusal to close the investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, and then complaining about perceived disloyalty from Wray.

Patel’s continued position as a top candidate for the role makes clear Trump’s determination to install loyalists in key national security and law enforcement positions, as well as the support Patel has built up among key Trump allies.

The push for Patel – who has frequently railed against the “deep state” – has come from some of the longest-serving Trump advisers, notably those close to former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, a faction that got Trump’s personal lawyers picked for top justice department roles.

That faction has also suggested to Trump in recent days that if Patel gets passed over for the director role, he should be given the deputy FBI director position, one of the people said – a powerful job that helps run the bureau day to day and is crucially not subject to Senate confirmation.