Trump’s defense secretary nominee involved in 2017 sexual assault investigation, report says; Pence opposes RFK Jr nomination – live | Donald Trump

Mike Pence, who served as vice-president during Donald Trump’s first term, announced his opposition to appointing Robert F Kennedy Jr as secretary of health and human services, citing his views on abortion.

“The Trump-Pence administration was unapologetically pro-life for our four years in office. There are hundreds of decisions made at HHS every day that either lead our nation toward a respect for life or away from it, and HHS under our administration always stood for life,” Pence said in a statement released by his conservative nonprofit, Advancing American Freedom.

“I believe the nomination of RFK Jr. to serve as Secretary of HHS is an abrupt departure from the pro-life record of our administration and should be deeply concerning to millions of Pro-Life Americans who have supported the Republican Party and our nominees for decades.”

During his presidential campaign, which he ended in August and announced his support for Trump, Kennedy said he is in favor of abortion being legal up to a certain point.

Pence fell out with Trump after refusing to go along with his attempts to stop Joe Biden from taking office after the 2020 election. Nonetheless, his words may hold some sway with conservative senators opposed to abortion. Here’s the rest of his statement:

For the majority of his career, RFK Jr. has defended abortion on demand during all nine months of pregnancy, supports overturning the Dobbs decision and has called for legislation to codify Roe v Wade. If confirmed, RFK, Jr. would be the most pro-abortion Republican appointed secretary of HHS in modern history.

The pro-life movement has always looked to the Republican party to stand for life, to affirm an unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed.

On behalf of tens of millions of pro-life Americans, I respectfully urge Senate Republicans to reject this nomination and give the American people a leader who will respect the sanctity of life as secretary of Health and Human Services.

Betting markets had a great election. With billions of dollars wagered on who would take the White House, their projections proved closer to the actual result than many opinion polls. Now the operators behind them want the US to wager on almost everything else.

Forget Trump or Harris. Is Billie Eilish going to win album of the year at the Grammys? How many federal government employees are about to lose their jobs? Will mpox be declared a pandemic this year?

All these markets, and hundreds more, were available this week on Kalshi – the platform which, just five weeks before polling day, won approval in a federal appeals court to legally host election betting in the US for the first time.

The result was “astronomical”, according to its CEO, Tarek Mansour, with more than $1bn worth of trades in a single month. But by the next presidential election, in November 2028, he wants hundreds of billions of dollars worth of trades in a single month.

Andrew Gumbel

Members of Congress and other US public officials targeted for “retribution” by Donald Trump say they are taking extraordinary security precautions for themselves and their families and are now bracing for scenarios as extreme as the possibility of being rounded up and arrested, after Trump returns to the White House.

Two Democratic House members who have been vocal in their criticisms of Trump and his policy agenda told the Guardian they and their colleagues are preparing for “some pretty surreal and dystopic scenarios”. They range from bogus investigations or tax audits of present and former members of the federal government to out-and-out violence inspired by Trump’s rhetoric of revenge.

“I hope none of my Democratic colleagues become American corollaries to Alexander Navalny,” said congressman Jared Huffman of California, referring to the Russian opposition leader and outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin who survived being poisoned before dying in an Arctic prison.

“[My colleagues in the House] are thinking about legal defenses against a weaponized Department of Justice,” Huffman added. “They may have to be ready to be arrested and rounded up. They have to have family plans protecting themselves in ways I don’t even like to talk about publicly …

“I have so many colleagues living under constant violent threats toward them and their families and their staff … These are dark times. We all have our eyes wide open.”

When Donald Trump was elected to a second term last week, women who say he sexually assaulted them, and other victims of sexual abuse, voiced disappointment that a man repeatedly accused of sexual misconduct could once again become president, with one of them describing this win as a “gut punch”.

More than two dozen women have made such claims against Trump, including E Jean Carroll, who was awarded nearly $90m total in two civil trials after jurors found that Trump sexually abused and defamed her. She said on X: “I tried to tell you.”

Several survivors of sexual assault interviewed by the Guardian, as well as advocates for persons who have suffered abuse, said they were not surprised by Trump’s win. They felt it was another example of how sexual abuse is not taken seriously, or pointed to the fact that powerful people who perpetrate abuse seem to be able to avoid repercussions.

Stacey Williams, who said she met Trump through Jeffrey Epstein about three decades ago, and told the Guardian that the now president-elect groped her at Trump Tower in 1993 in what seemed to be a “twisted game” with the late sex predator, is among the many processing election results.

“I think what we were all hoping was that [the] truth would come through and the stories would affect people’s vote once they had [them] in front of them.”

But, “disinformation won this election at the end of the day, and if we don’t figure out an answer for that, I don’t have a lot of hope for this country.”

Emails to Trump’s camp did not receive an immediate response. Trump has previously denied all allegations of misconduct.

President-elect Donald Trump said on Thursday that North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, a wealthy former software company executive, will be his pick for interior secretary.

“He’s going to head the Department of Interior, and it’s going to be fantastic,” a tuxedo-wearing Trump said at a gala at his Mar-a-Lago Florida retreat, adding that he would make an official announcement on Friday.

Burgum, 68, has portrayed himself as a traditional, business-minded conservative. He ran against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination before quitting and becoming a loyal Trump supporter, appearing at fundraisers and advocating for Trump on television, Reuters reported.

At the gala, which featured tech billionaire Elon Musk, actor Sylvester Stallone and members of his incoming administration, Trump praised his latest cabinet picks and made some of his longest remarks since his presidential election victory speech.

“Nobody knew we were going to win it the way we won it,” Trump said.

He teased Musk about his ongoing post-election stay at Mar-a-Lago. Musk is involved in some of Trump’s meetings at the oceanfront property.

“I can’t get him out of here. He just loves this place. And I like having him here,” said Trump.

At the end of the event, Musk mounted the stage.

“The public has given us a mandate that could not be more clear. The people have spoken, the people want change,” he said.

Robert Tait

Fears that Donald Trump’s second presidency will be more extreme than his first have intensified amid a flurry of senior nominations that opponents have criticised as going from bad to worse.

Dismay over some of the president-elect’s early picks escalated to outrage after the far-right Florida congressman Matt Gaetz was unveiled as his selection to be attorney general – a position Trump has previously said he views as the most important in his administration.

The choice provoked disbelief, even among Republicans, and has fueled concerns that Trump is intent on carrying out mass firings at the Department of Justice in retribution for criminal investigations it instigated against him.

Trump reportedly chose Gaetz, 42, after the congressman – who himself was subject to a two-year justice department investigation into suspected sex-trafficking that ended without charges – told Trump: “Yeah, I’ll go over there and start cuttin’ fuckin’ heads.”

Others considered for the post were dismissed as too concerned with legal concepts or constitutional niceties.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are asking Americans who are “high-IQ small-government revolutionaries” and willing to work over 80 hours a week to join their new Department of Government Efficiency – at zero pay.

In a new X post on Thursday that doubled as a job announcement and another one of Musk’s trolling attempts, the account for the newly formed Doge wrote: “We don’t need more part-time idea generators. We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.”

The name of the department, which is not part of the federal government, harkens back to a meme of an expressive shiba inu dog.

“If that’s you, DM this account with your CV. Elon & Vivek will review the top 1% of applicants,” the statement added.

In a separate post, Musk chimed in on the callout, saying: “Indeed, this will be tedious work, make lots of enemies & compensation is zero.”

“What a great deal!” Musk, the richest man in the world, wrote with a laughing emoji. He has promised to reduce federal bureaucracy by a third and cut $2tn from US government spending, an endeavor he said “necessarily involves some temporary hardship”.

Earlier this week, Donald Trump announced the appointment of Musk and Ramaswamy to Doge, saying: “Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies – essential to the ‘Save America’ movement.”

Trump went on to describe the newly formed department as the “‘Manhattan Project’ of our time,” referring to the US-led research program during the second world war that sought to create the nuclear bomb, which killed an estimated 214,000 people in Japan in 1945.

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you all the latest news from Washington over the next few hours.

We start with the news that Donald Trump’s nomination of Robert F Kennedy Jr as US secretary of health and human services has prompted widespread criticisms towards Kennedy, an anti-vaccine activist who has embraced a slew of other debunked health-related conspiracy theories.

In a Truth Social post on Thursday, Trump claimed that Americans have been “crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies” and that Kennedy “will restore these Agencies to the traditions of Gold Standard Scientific Research, and beacons of Transparency, to end the Chronic Disease epidemic, and to Make America Great and Healthy Again!”

In response to Kennedy’s nomination, Public Citizen, a progressive nonprofit organization focusing on consumer advocacy, said: “Robert F Kennedy Jr is a clear and present danger to the nation’s health. He shouldn’t be allowed in the building at the department of health and human services (HHS), let alone be placed in charge of the nation’s public health agency.”

“Donald Trump’s bungling of public health policy during the Covid pandemic cost hundreds of thousands of lives. By appointing Kennedy as his secretary of HHS, Trump is courting another, policy-driven public health catastrophe,” the organization added.

For more on that, see our full report here:

In other news:

• The FBI should investigate both Gaetz and Tulsi Gabbard before they are confirmed for their cabinet posts, Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton has said. Gabbard, who Trump nominated as director of national intelligence, is known for her tolerant view of Russian president Vladimir Putin and Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

• Elon Musk reportedly met Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations on Monday, and discussed how to defuse tensions between Iran and the US, two Iranian officials told the New York Times. As Trump prepares to address conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, Musk, the world’s richest man, has been assisting in discussions with foreign officials, establishing himself as the country’s most influential civilian come January.

• Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are seeking Americans who are “high-IQ small-government revolutionaries” and willing to work over 80 hours a week to join their new department, at zero pay. Trump named Musk to co-lead the newly created government efficiency department that sits outside the federal government.

• Advocates have urged state governments to find new ways to defend immigrants and block Trump’s mass deportation plan. California shielded many non-citizen residents from removal in Trump’s first term but immigrants rights groups warn an aggressive, multi-pronged response will be needed.

• A Democratic lawmaker will file a motion specifically mentioning Trump can only serve two terms, after the president-elect joked he would be willing to serve an unconstitutional third term as president while meeting with House Republicans on Wednesday.

• Trump announced his former Georgia congressman Doug Collins as secretary of veterans affairs. Collins ran for Senate in 2020, finishing third in the primary. He also “provided counsel to Trump in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election as Trump sought to challenge Georgia’s election results”.