Closing summary
Donald Trump’s inauguration is mere days away, but leading Democrats say they have no interest in going along with the incoming president’s plans to expand the United States. House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said his lawmakers were not elected to help seize the Panama Canal by force, while Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer challenged Trump to come up with a plan to lower costs for Americans if he wants his party’s support for changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico. On a visit to France, the outgoing secretary of state, Antony Blinken, called Trump’s idea of taking control of Greenland a bad idea that is “not going to happen”. Elsewhere, legal wrangling over special counsel Jack Smith’s report documenting his fruitless prosecutions of Trump continues. The justice department told a court considering a challenge to their release that it planned to make public only Smith’s findings around Trump’s alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election, and reserve the evidence in the classified documents case for a select group of lawmakers in Congress.
Here’s more about what happened today:
Dignitaries paid tribute to ex-president Jimmy Carter, who is lying in state at the US Capitol ahead of his funeral Thursday.
Joe Biden told USA Today in what may be his last interview with a print publication as president that he thinks he would have won re-election, but was not sure he could have served the whole term.
Trump appealed to the supreme court to pause his sentencing hearing scheduled for Friday in the case against him on hush money charges.
Denmark’s foreign minister said his country would be open to discussing with the US security concerns involving Greenland, which it controls, but downplayed talk of it becoming the 51st state.
Robert F Kennedy Jr, Trump’s nominee to lead the department of health and human services, made the rounds on Capitol hill, where one Republican senator appeared uneasy with his anti-vaccine views.
What do the people of Greenland think of Donald Trump’s desire to take control of the island?
Reuters asked around in Nuuk, the capital of the Danish-controlled, autonomously government island, which Donald Trump Jr visited yesterday.
Here’s what residents said:
Mikael Ludvidsen, a resident of capital Nuuk, was skeptical about the president-elect’s intentions, telling Reuters: “I think he’s talking too loudly. I don’t think you can take him seriously when he says he’s going to take us over by force.”
“I think it’s too much,” said local Niels Nielsen. Greenland “can’t be bought,” he added.
But others said aligning with a superpower might be helpful for Greenland, which has a population of just 57,000 people.
Resident Jens Ostermann, carrying a small child bundled up against the winter cold, said: “We should partner with a great power because Greenland is a rich country, we have everything here.”
Greenland Prime Minister Mute Egede has urged residents to remain calm and united. But he has also emphasized his desire for Greenland to become fully independent from Denmark, its former colonial ruler.
Some locals sported Make America Great Again caps to greet Trump Jr., with Greenlandic daily Sermitsiaq headlining its report: “Warm but reserved welcome for Donald Trump Jr.”
Opinions among Greenlanders about the future of their country are divided, according to Aki-Matilda Hoegh-Dam, a member of Greenland’s social-democratic Siumut party in the Danish parliament.
“Trump’s reaction is a statement of how important Greenland is in the geopolitical area at this moment,” she said.
After Donald Trump proposed renaming the Gulf of Mexico the ‘Gulf of America’, Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum unveiled her own proposal to rename a major geographic feature. Here’s more:
Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s president, has responded to Donald Trump’s proposal to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America with a counter-proposal to rename North America.
Standing before a global map in her daily press briefing, Sheinbaum proposed dryly that the continent should be known as “América Mexicana”, or “Mexican America”, because an 1814 founding document that preceded Mexico’s constitution referred to it that way.
“That sounds nice, no?” she added with a sarcastic tone. She also noted that the ocean basin bounded by the US Gulf coast, Mexico’s eastern states and the island of Cuba has been known as the Gulf of Mexico since 1607.
Trump, who will be sworn in for a second term on 20 January, said on Tuesday he planned to rename the Gulf “the Gulf of America, which has a beautiful ring”.
Updated
Robert F Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the department of health and human services, is meeting with more Republican senators on Capitol Hill today, and signs have emerged that at least one lawmaker has questions about his anti-vaccine views.
On X, Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana senator and medical doctor whose official biography notes his participation in a vaccine drive, said he had a “frank conversation” with Kennedy – but makes no mention of if he will support him:
Had a frank conversation with HHS nominee @RobertKennedyJr. We spoke about vaccines at length. Looking forward to the hearings in HELP and Finance.
CNN reports that they tried to suss out Cassidy’s views, but he refused to say much more:
After an hour-long meeting between RFK Jr and Senate HELP Chairman Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican wouldn’t say if he’d support Kennedy’s nomination to HHS. First, Cassidy darted on an elevator. Then, we caught up with him at the Capitol and he responded by saying they had a “frank conversation.” He also said they spoke about “every permutation of vaccines.”
Fox News is investigating claims that an insider leaked questions to Donald Trump’s team just minutes before a town hall last year.
The Guardian’s Joseph Gedeon reports:
Fox News has launched an investigation into claims that an insider leaked questions to Donald Trump’s team minutes before a pivotal Iowa town hall last January.
According to a new book by the Politico reporter Alex Isenstadt, Trump’s aides received text messages containing the exact wording of questions and planned follow-ups minutes before the broadcast began. The town hall was moderated by the network anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum.
The leak, if confirmed, covered sensitive topics including Trump’s business entanglements, his multiple indictments and potential plans for political payback.
In a statement, the network said it had “no evidence” of the leak but would investigate any potential breach.
For the full story, click here:
Updated
In a new interview with CNN’s Christiane Ampanour, homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas responded to Donald Trump’s vows of mass deportations on the first day of his presidency, saying:
“I don’t quite yet know what mass deportation means in reality. I understand the rhetoric very well and what it is causing domestically but I do not…really know how it will materialize. We will need to see what it actually means in real life and whether it does transgress legal authority.”
Mayorkas went on to say:
“It most certainly will be challenged in the courts. I must say, every action in the realm of immigration is challenged in the courts. It is an incredibly divisive issue.”
Updated
Donald Trump, as part of his many sweeping pledges as the US’s incoming president, has talked in recent days about annexing Greenland.
Exactly why is Trump obsessed with Denmark’s autonomous territory? The Guardian’s Miranda Bryant reports:
Trump has said the US needs control of Greenland – and the Panama canal – for “economic security” and has described ownership and control of the territory as an “absolute necessity”. Greenland has long been on Trump’s radar as a target for purchase and in 2019 he confirmed reports that he had been urging aides to find out how the US could buy the vast Arctic island, describing a sale as “essentially a large real estate deal”.
As well as oil and gas, Greenland’s supply of multiple in-demand raw materials for green technology is attracting interest from around the world – including from China, which dominates global rare earth production and has threatened to restrict the export of critical minerals. By acquiring Greenland, the US could keep China out.
Strategically positioned between the US and Russia, Greenland is viewed as increasingly important for defence and is emerging as a geopolitical battleground as the climate crises worsens.
The rapid melting of the island’s huge ice sheets and glaciers could open up oil drilling (although Greenland in 2021 stopped granting exploration licences) and mining for essential minerals including copper, lithium, cobalt and nickel.
For the full explainer, click here:
Updated
Dignitaries pay respects to Jimmy Carter as ex-president lies in state at US Capitol
Jimmy Carter is lying in state at the US Capitol, ahead of the former president’s funeral scheduled for Thursday.
His casket has attracted mourners from across the political spectrum, including the former Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell:
And supreme court Justice Sonia Sotomayor:
Updated
The day so far
Donald Trump’s inauguration is mere days away, but leading Democrats say they have no interest in going along with the incoming president’s plans to expand the United States. House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said his lawmakers were not elected to help seize the Panama Canal by force, while Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer challenged Trump to come up with a plan to lower costs for Americans if he wants his party’s support for changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico. On a visit to France, the outgoing secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said Trump’s idea of taking control of Greenland is a bad idea that is “not going to happen”. Elsewhere, legal wrangling over special counsel Jack Smith’s report documenting his fruitless prosecutions of Trump continues. The justice department told a court considering a challenge to their release that it planned to make public only Smith’s findings around Trump’s alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election, and reserve the evidence in the classified documents case for a select group in Congress.
Here’s more about what happened today:
Joe Biden told USA Today in what may be his last interview with a print publication as president that he thinks he could have won re-election, but was not sure he could have served the whole term.
Trump appealed to the supreme court to pause his sentencing hearing scheduled for Friday in the case against him on hush money charges.
Denmark’s foreign minister said his country would be open to discussing with the US security concerns involving Greenland, which it controls, but downplayed talk of it becoming the 51st state.
Updated
Biden heading to Los Angeles-area fire station as wildfires threaten city
Joe Biden is in Los Angeles as wildfires threaten several of its neighborhoods and suburbs, and will be heading to a fire station in Santa Monica this afternoon, the White House said.
The president will receive a briefing from California state firefighting officials during his visit, and has also spoken to the state’s governor Gavin Newsom about the blazes.
We have a live blog covering the disaster, which has destroyed 1,000 structures so far. Follow along here:
Leader of Senate Democrats says Trump's comments on Gulf of Mexico amount to 'strange, and rather random, ideas'
Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate minority leader, said Donald Trump should focus on finding a plan to lower costs for Americans, rather than on issues like renaming the Gulf of Mexico.
Yesterday, the president-elect said the body of water that stretches along the US and Mexican coasts should be renamed to the “Gulf of America”.
“Donald Trump throws out a lot of strange, and rather random, ideas on a regular basis. He did it yesterday, when suggesting we rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America,” Schumer said today, in remarks on the Senate floor.
“Well, let me say this: I’d agree to working with Donald Trump on renaming the Gulf of Mexico, only if he first agrees to work with us on an actual plan to lower costs for Americans. That is what the American people want us to focus on first, not on renaming bodies of water. Our Democratic priorities are so much more closely aligned with the concerns of the American people than Donald Trump’s seem to be.”
Updated
Democrats may be headed for at least two years in the minority in the US House and Senate, but yesterday managed to preserved their control of Virginia’s state legislature in a special election. Here’s more, from the Guardian’s Michael Sainato:
Democrats in Virginia preserved their majority in the state legislature late on Tuesday in the first statewide elections since Donald Trump’s presidential victory in November.
In special elections for open seats, Kannan Srinivasan, a Democratic state representative, defeated Republican Tumay Harding in a race for an open state senate seat in Loudon county, Virginia, just outside of Washington DC.
Democrat JJ Singh won an open state house seat in the same county, over Republican Ram Venkatachalam. Republicans held on to a state senate seat vacated by John McGuire, who won a first term in the US House of Representatives in November 2024.
The state Democrats have a slim 21-to-19 seat majority in the state senate and a 51-to-49 lead in the state house, making things difficult for the state’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, in the final year of his first term in office. He flipped the governorship to Republican in the November 2021 election.
Top House Democrat says party has no interest in cooperating with Trump's calls to expand the US
Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries took a swipe at Donald Trump’s calls for the United States to take control of Greenland and the Panama Canal and merge with Canada, saying his party’s lawmakers were not elected to pursue such policies.
“House Democrats believe that they are not sent Washington to invade Greenland, rename the Gulf of Mexico or seize the Panama Canal by force. We were sent to Washington to lower the high cost of living in the United States of America,” Jeffries said at a press conference.
Asked if he would get behind Trump’s call yesterday to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America”, Jeffries reiterated his earlier comments about lowering costs. “Housing costs are too high, grocery costs are too high, insurance costs are too high, utility costs are too high and childcare costs are too high. We have to build an affordable economy for hard working American taxpayers.”
Jeffries said he did not expect to meet with Trump later today, when the president-elect has a meeting scheduled with Senate Republicans, but expects to talk with him in the future.
Greenland is an autonomous part of Denmark, and the Danish foreign minister said they would be open to discussing security concerns over the island with Donald Trump’s administration, but downplayed the possibility of it becoming part of the United States. Here’s more, from the Guardian’s Patrick Wintour, Kim Willsher and Miranda Bryant:
Denmark has said it is open to dialogue with Donald Trump about his legitimate security concerns after the incoming US president said he was prepared to use economic tariffs or military force to seize control of Danish-administered Greenland.
Lars Løkke Rasmussen, the experienced Danish foreign minister, insisted he did not see a political crisis, but said it was in everyone’s interests to lower the temperature in the discussions.
“We are open to a dialogue with the Americans on how we can possibly cooperate even more closely than we do to ensure that the American ambitions are fulfilled.”
He added: “I have my own issues with Donald Trump and I also know that you shouldn’t say everything you think out loud.”
But he played down the possibility that Greenland would ever become part of the US: “We fully recognise that Greenland has its own ambitions. If they materialise, Greenland will become independent, though hardly with an ambition to become a federal state in the United States.”
At the same time he praised the French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, who told France Inter radio: “There is no question of the EU letting other nations in the world, whoever they may be, attack its sovereign borders.”
Barrot added that, while he did not believe the US “would invade” Greenland, “we have entered an era that is seeing the return of the law of the strongest”.
Blinken says Trump's call for US to take over Greenland 'not going to happen'
Antony Blinken, the outgoing secretary of state, said that Donald Trump’s idea of the United States taking over Greenland – perhaps by military force – is “not a good one” and will not happen.
“I think one of the basic propositions we brought to our work over the last four years is that we’re stronger, we’re more effective, We get better results when we’re working closely with our allies, not saying or doing things that may alienate them,” Blinken said at a press conference in Paris held alongside French foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot.
“Having said that, the idea expressed about Greenland is obviously not a good one, but maybe more important, it’s obviously one that’s not going to happen. So we probably shouldn’t waste a lot of time talking about it.”
Blinken will step down once Joe Biden leaves office on 20 January. Trump has nominated Marco Rubio, the Republican Florida senator, to succeed him.
Updated
The justice department did not say when it would release the portion of special counsel Jack Smith’s report detailing his investigation of Donald Trump’s alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election, the Associated Press reports.
Yesterday, a federal judge in Florida temporarily blocked the department from releasing the entire report, and the justice department has asked an appeals court to overturn that decision.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s spokesman Steven Cheung has released a statement detailing his appeal to the supreme court to block his sentencing on business fraud charges scheduled for Friday.
“President Trump’s legal team filed an emergency petition with the United States supreme court, asking the court to correct the unjust actions by New York courts and stop the unlawful sentencing in the Manhattan DA’s Witch Hunt,” Cheung said.
“The supreme court’s historic decision on immunity, the constitution, and established legal precedent mandate that this meritless hoax be immediately dismissed. The American People elected President Trump with an overwhelming mandate that demands an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and all of the remaining witch-hunts. We look forward to uniting our country in the new administration as President Trump makes America great again.”
Updated
The justice department intends to make special counsel Jack Smith’s report detailing his investigation into Donald Trump’s possession of classified documents available only to the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate judiciary committees, the Associated Press reports.
“This limited disclosure will further the public interest in keeping congressional leadership apprised of a significant matter within the Department while safeguarding defendants’ interests,” the department wrote in a filing to an appeals court that is weighing a request from Trump’s lawyers to block release of the report.
While Smith has dropped the charges against Trump, he is continuing the prosecutions of two of his co-defendants indicted alongside him in the classified documents case.
Justice department intends to release parts of report on Trump's attempt to overturn 2020 election, withhold documents investigation
The justice department plans to make public part of special counsel Jack Smith’s report detailing his investigation into Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, but not the portion that looks into the classified documents he is accused of hiding at his properties, the Associated Press reports.
The department made its intent known in a court filing responding to a decision yesterday by a Florida judge that temporarily halted release of Smith’s report, which is expected to detail the evidence behind the two indictments he brought against the former president.
Smith dismissed the charges in November, after Trump won re-election.
Updated
He thinks he could have won, and says Trump complimented him: more takeaways from Biden's interview
Elsewhere in his interview with USA Today, Joe Biden said he might have beaten Donald Trump in the November election, though is not sure he would have been able to serve the entirety of a term that would have concluded when he was at the age of 86.
He also says that the president-elect complimented his economic policies when they met following Trump’s re-election, even though the Republican had anchored his campaign on sharp criticisms of Biden’s administration.
Here’s more, from USA Today:
“Who knows what I’m going to be when I’m 86 years old?”, Biden said regarding whether he would have been able to handle another four years in the job. At 82, he is the oldest president ever to serve.
Could he have won? “It’s presumptuous to say that, but I think yes,” Biden said in the interview.
The president made his meeting with Trump sound fairly cordial. “He was very complimentary about some of the economic things I had done. And he talked about − he thought I was leaving with a good record,” Biden said.
USA Today’s interview is the last one Biden has scheduled with a print journalist before he departs the White House. The president did far fewer interviews and press conference in his term than many of his recent predecessors, according to the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Preemptive pardons by American presidents are rare, but not unheard of. Should Joe Biden opt to protect prospective targets of retaliation by Donald Trump, like Anthony Fauci or Liz Cheney, from prosecution, here’s an idea of how that would work, as told by the Guardian’s Sam Levine:
Joe Biden is reportedly considering issuing a number of preemptive pardons for top critics of Donald Trump.
Many top Democrats have urged the US president to consider blanket pardons due to fears that the president-elect will follow through on threats of legal retribution against his critics when he re-takes office in January. Among those speculated to receive clemency are California senator Adam Schiff, California congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, and former Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney – all of whom have been publicly threatened by Trump.
The presidential pardon power has been deployed by presidents beginning with George Washington, who pardoned those involved in the Whiskey Rebellion, to Trump, who pardoned his political allies.
Earlier this month, Biden pardoned 39 Americans and commuted the sentences of almost 1,500 people. Those pardons, touted by the White House as the largest act of presidential clemency on a single day, followed Biden’s move to issue a sweeping pardon to his son, Hunter, for any federal crimes committed over a 10-year period beginning in 2014.
Biden’s pardons have brought renewed focus on the expansive power the US constitution gives the president.
Trump asks US supreme court to stop Friday sentencing in hush money case
Attorneys for Donald Trump this morning appealed to the US supreme court to pause proceedings in the president-elect’s prosecution on business fraud charges in New York, ahead of his sentencing scheduled for Friday, Reuters reports.
Two previous appeals to stop the sentencing have failed, and now the president-elect’s attorneys are petitioning the nation’s highest court, where conservative justices, three of whom Trump appointed, hold a six-seat supermajority. Trump’s attorneys want the case put on pause while a separate appeal they have filed, which cites the court’s decision last year in a separate Trump-related case that grants presidents immunity for official acts, plays out.
Juan Merchan, the New York judge presiding over the case, has signaled that he will not sentence Trump to jail after being convicted of 34 felony charges related to concealing a payment to an adult film actor made ahead of his 2016 election victory. Here’s more:
Biden says he may preemptively pardon Liz Cheney, Anthony Fauci, after Trump's threats of revenge
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Joe Biden is in his final days in office, and still has a few pieces of unfinished business to deal with before he hands power to Donald Trump on 20 January. One of them is deciding whether to issue preemptive pardons to political enemies of the incoming president, such as former congresswoman Liz Cheney or Anthony Fauci, who spearheaded the fight against Covid-19 in Trump’s first term. In an interview with USA Today published today – a rare, final sit-down interview by a president who spent much of his term avoiding the press – Biden confirmed he may still opt to protect Trump’s enemies from prosecution, and signaled he would decide based on who the president-elect appoints to top roles in his administration.
Meanwhile, Trump is scrambling to halt the sentencing in his criminal business fraud case that is scheduled to take place in a Manhattan court on Friday. Reuters reports that his attorneys have asked the US supreme court to intervene to pause the proceedings, though the New York judge presiding over the case has signaled he is unlikely to sentence the president-elect to jail time. We will let you if the nation’s highest court responds.
Here’s what else is happening today:
Trump will this evening trek to Capitol Hill for a strategy meeting with the Republican senators tasked with enacting his administration’s priorities, ranging from mass deportations to extending tax cuts enacted during his first term.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, the rightwing Georgia congresswoman, says she will introduce legislation to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America”, as Trump proposed at a rambling press conference yesterday.
Los Angeles continues to be battered by three separate wildfires fueled by high winds. Follow our live blog as more than 1,400 firefighters attempts to contain the flames.
