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Trump picks former rival Marco Rubio for secretary of state

washington — U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced on Wednesday he is nominating Republican Senator Marco Rubio, a senior member of both the foreign relations and intelligence committees and former political rival, to be secretary of state. 

“He will be a strong Advocate for our Nation, a true friend to our Allies, and a fearless Warrior who will never back down to our adversaries,” Trump said in a statement. 

Rubio, 53, is known as a China hawk, an outspoken critic of Cuba’s Communist government and a strong backer of Israel. In the past, he has advocated for a more assertive U.S. foreign policy with respect to America’s geopolitical foes, although recently his views have aligned more closely with those of Trump’s “America First” approach to foreign policy. 

In April, Rubio was one of 15 Republican senators to vote against a big military aid package to help Ukraine resist Russia and support other U.S. partners, including Israel. Trump has been critical of Democratic President Joe Biden’s continuing military assistance for Ukraine as it fights Russia’s invasion. 

Rubio has said in recent interviews that Kyiv needs to seek a negotiated settlement with Russia rather than focus on regaining all of the territory that Moscow has taken in the last decade. 

On the Gaza war, Rubio — like Trump — has been staunchly behind Israel, calling Hamas a terrorist organization that must be eliminated and saying America’s role is to resupply Israel with the military materials needed to finish the job. 

Rubio is a top Senate China hawk, and Beijing imposed sanctions on him in 2020 over his stance on Hong Kong’s democracy protests. This could create difficulties for any attempts to maintain the Biden administration’s effort to keep up diplomatic engagement with Beijing to avoid an unintended conflict. 

Among other things, Rubio shepherded an act through Congress that gave Washington a new tool to bar Chinese imports over China’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims and has also pushed a bill that would decertify Hong Kong’s U.S. economic and trade offices. 

Rubio had also become a strong Trump backer, after harshly criticizing him when he ran against the former real estate developer for president in 2016. 

The three-term Republican senator should easily win confirmation in the Senate, where Trump’s Republicans will hold at least a 52-48 majority starting in January. 

Democratic Senator Mark Warner, chairman of the intelligence committee, quickly issued a statement praising the choice of Rubio, the panel’s vice chairman. 

“I have worked with Marco Rubio for more than a decade on the Intelligence Committee, particularly closely in the last couple of years in his role as Vice Chairman, and while we don’t always agree, he is smart, talented, and will be a strong voice for American interests around the globe,” Warner said in a statement. 

Rubio, the son of immigrants from Cuba, will be the first Latino to serve as America’s top diplomat. 
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Republicans win 218 US House seats, giving Trump’s party control of government

WASHINGTON — Republicans have won enough seats to control the U.S. House, completing the party’s sweep into power and securing their hold on U.S. government alongside President-elect Donald Trump.

A House Republican victory in Arizona, alongside a win in slow-counting California earlier Wednesday, gave the GOP the 218 House victories that make up the majority. Republicans earlier gained control of the Senate from Democrats.

With hard-fought yet thin majorities, Republican leaders are envisioning a mandate to upend the federal government and swiftly implement Trump’s vision for the country.

The incoming president has promised to carry out the country’s largest-ever deportation operation, extend tax breaks, punish his political enemies, seize control of the federal government’s most powerful tools and reshape the U.S. economy. The GOP election victories ensure that Congress will be onboard for that agenda, and Democrats will be almost powerless to check it.

When Trump was elected president in 2016, Republicans also swept Congress, but he still encountered Republican leaders resistant to his policy ideas, as well as a Supreme Court with a liberal majority. Not this time.

When he returns to the White House, Trump will be working with a Republican Party that has been completely transformed by his “Make America Great Again” movement and a Supreme Court dominated by conservative justices, including three that he appointed.

Trump rallied House Republicans at a Capitol Hill hotel Wednesday morning, marking his first return to Washington since the election.

“I suspect I won’t be running again unless you say, ‘He’s good, we got to figure something else,'” Trump said to the room full of lawmakers who laughed in response.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, who with Trump’s endorsement won the Republican Conference’s nomination to stay on as speaker next year, has talked of taking a “blowtorch” to the federal government and its programs, eyeing ways to overhaul even popular programs championed by Democrats in recent years. The Louisiana Republican, an ardent conservative, has pulled the House Republican Conference closer to Trump during the campaign season as they prepare an “ambitious” 100-day agenda.

“Republicans in the House and Senate have a mandate,” Johnson said earlier this week. “The American people want us to implement and deliver that ‘America First’ agenda.”

Trump’s allies in the House are already signaling they will seek retribution for the legal troubles Trump faced while out of office. The incoming president on Wednesday said he would nominate Rep. Matt Gaetz, a fierce loyalist, for attorney general.

Meanwhile, Rep. Jim Jordan, the chair of the powerful House Judiciary Committee, has said Republican lawmakers are “not taking anything off the table” in their plans to investigate special counsel Jack Smith, even as Smith is winding down two federal investigations into Trump for plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

Still, with a few races still uncalled the Republicans may hold the majority by just a few seats as the new Congress begins. Trump’s decision to pull from the House for posts in his administration — Reps. Gaetz, Mike Waltz and Elise Stefanik so far — could complicate Johnson’s ability to maintain a majority in the early days of the new Congress.

Gaetz submitted his resignation Wednesday, effective immediately. Johnson said he hoped the seat could be filled by the time the new Congress convenes January 3. Replacements for members of the House require special elections, and the congressional districts held by the three departing members have been held by Republicans for years.

With the thin majority, a highly functioning House is also far from guaranteed. The past two years of Republican House control were defined by infighting as hardline conservative factions sought to gain influence and power by openly defying their party leadership. While Johnson — at times with Trump’s help — largely tamed open rebellions against his leadership, the right wing of the party is ascendant and ambitious on the heels of Trump’s election victory.

The Republican majority also depends on a small group of lawmakers who won tough elections by running as moderates. It remains to be seen whether they will stay onboard for some of the most extreme proposals championed by Trump and his allies.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, meanwhile, is trying to keep Democrats relevant to any legislation that passes Congress, an effort that will depend on Democratic leaders unifying over 200 members, even as the party undergoes a postmortem of its election losses.

In the Senate, GOP leaders, fresh off winning a convincing majority, are already working with Trump to confirm his Cabinet picks. Sen. John Thune of South Dakota won an internal election Wednesday to replace Sen. Mitch McConnell, the longest serving party leader in Senate history.

Thune in the past has been critical of Trump but praised the incoming president during his leadership election bid.

“This Republican team is united. We are on one team,” Thune said. “We are excited to reclaim the majority and to get to work with our colleagues in the House to enact President Trump’s agenda.”

The GOP’s Senate majority of 53 seats also ensures that Republicans will have breathing room when it comes to confirming Cabinet posts, or Supreme Court justices if there is a vacancy. Not all those confirmations are guaranteed. Republicans were incredulous Wednesday when the news hit Capitol Hill that Trump would nominate Gaetz as his attorney general. Even close Trump allies in the Senate distanced themselves from supporting Gaetz, who had been facing a House Ethics Committee investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use.

Still, Trump on Sunday demanded that any Republican leader must allow him to make administration appointments without a vote while the Senate is in recess. Such a move would be a notable shift in power away from the Senate, yet all the leadership contenders quickly agreed to the idea. Democrats could potentially fight such a maneuver.

Meanwhile, Trump’s social media supporters, including Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, clamored against picking a traditional Republican to lead the Senate chamber. Thune worked as a top lieutenant to McConnell, who once called the former president a “despicable human being” in his private notes.

However, McConnell made it clear that on Capitol Hill the days of Republican resistance to Trump are over. 
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Trump taps Senator Marco Rubio, his former rival, for top US diplomat

washington — There are expressions of relief among Democrats and Republicans after President-elect Donald Trump announced on Wednesday he intended to nominate an experienced U.S. senator for secretary of state.

Trump’s choice, Marco Rubio, is a Florida Republican who has been in the Senate since 2011. In a statement, Trump called him a highly respected leader and a very powerful voice for freedom who “will be a strong advocate for our nation, a true friend to our allies, and a fearless warrior who will never back down to our adversaries.”

Rubio, vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and a senior member of the Committee on Foreign Relations, is regarded as intelligent, ambitious and well-liked by Senate colleagues of both parties.

Some leading Democrats in Congress, who will be the opposition party in January, are making positive comments about the Republican.

“I’ve got a good relationship with Marco, and I think Marco is very capable,” Democratic Senator Mark Kelly, who has served on the Intelligence Committee with Rubio, told VOA after Rubio’s name was circulated in media reports.

On social media, Democratic Senator John Fetterman called Rubio “a strong choice,” adding that he looks forward to voting for his confirmation.

“Compared to some of the other names that were floating around, people who really don’t have any experience in foreign policy, I think this is a pretty good one,” former Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger said on CNN before Trump’s official announcement.

Among the other names that had been floated was that of Ric Grenell, former acting director of national intelligence and ambassador to Germany in the first Trump administration.

Despite having a close relationship with some Trump family members and being a loyal ally of the president-elect’s agenda, Grenell is regarded as a caustic figure and controversial because of his private dealings with foreign leaders. That would have meant a bumpy road for any appointment requiring Senate confirmation.

In choosing members for his Cabinet and senior White House staff, Trump is generally emphasizing loyalty rather than experience. Rubio campaigned for Trump during this year’s presidential election.

The two had been rivals in the Republican presidential primary eight years ago. Trump had repeatedly belittled the senator, while Rubio questioned the New York real estate investor’s qualification for the presidency, calling Trump “a con man,” deemed him dangerous and someone who could not be trusted with the launch codes for nuclear weapons.

After Trump won the party’s nomination and the presidency, the relationship warmed. But Rubio did not side with Trump when he refused to accept defeat at the hands of Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden four years ago. After Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, Rubio condemned the violence, calling the attackers “unpatriotic” and “un-American” lowlifes.

Earlier this year, Trump considered Rubio, a behind-the-scenes campaign foreign policy adviser, as his running mate before selecting Republican Senator JD Vance.

If Rubio, who is 53 and the son of Cuban immigrants, is confirmed by his Senate colleagues, he would become the first Latino secretary of state. In that role, he would be tasked with helping to implement Trump’s “America First” foreign policy.

After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Rubio was a vocal supporter of Kyiv. More recently, he has called for negotiations to end the conflict and voted in April against a $95 billion military aid package for the Ukrainians.

Rubio is a strong supporter of Israel, in line with Trump’s stance. He has exhibited a tough stance toward authoritarian regimes in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, as well as toward the communist leadership in Beijing.

In response, China has banned the senator from entering the country — something that likely will change if Rubio is confirmed as secretary of state.

Should Rubio take the job, he would have to vacate his Senate seat. A successor would then be selected by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Among the candidates being promoted by influential Republicans for the Senate seat is Lara Trump, co-chair of the Republican National Committee and Trump’s daughter-in-law.

VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb contributed to this report.
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Biden assures Trump of smooth transfer of power at Oval Office meeting

President-elect Donald Trump returned to the seat of American power Wednesday, visiting both Congress and the White House and laying out his vision as he readies for his second term. President Joe Biden hosted Trump in the Oval Office, where he promised a smooth transfer of power. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from the White House. Kim Lewis contributed.
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US Senate Republicans choose Senator John Thune as majority leader

U.S. Senate Republicans on Wednesday chose Senator John Thune to serve as majority leader when they retake control of the chamber next year.  

In a secret ballot, the South Dakota senator beat Senators John Cornyn and Rick Scott to assume the mantle of Republican leadership that Mitch McConnell has held for the past 18 years.

Thune told reporters the November 5 election was a mandate from the American people “to work with this president on an agenda that unwinds a lot of the damage of the Biden Harris Schumer agenda and puts in place new policies that will move our country forward in a different direction.”  

The 63-year-old Thune was elected to the Senate in 2004 and currently holds the Number 2 spot in Republican leadership, serving as minority whip. He is perceived as a more mainstream choice than Scott, a hard-line conservative and close ally of President-elect Donald Trump.

McConnell said in a statement that Thune’s “election is a clear endorsement of a consummate leader. The confidence our colleagues have placed in John’s legislative experience and political skill is well deserved.”

Thune received 23 votes to Cornyn’s 15 and Scott’s 13. He will serve as Senate majority leader for at least the next two years.

Republicans will hold at least 52 seats in the 100-person U.S. Senate. Votes in the Pennsylvania Senate race are still being counted.

“I look forward to working with him,” current Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement.  “We’ve done many bipartisan things here in the Senate together and I hope that continues. As you know, I strongly believe that bipartisanship is the best and often the only way to get things done in the Senate.”

Trump has floated the idea of bypassing the normal hearing process for Cabinet appointees, a significant departure from the Constitutional role of the U.S. Senate.

“The Senate has an advise and consent role in the Constitution, so we will do everything we can to process his nominations quickly and get them installed in their position so they can begin to implement his agenda,” Thune told reporters after his election.

Trump endorsed Speaker of the House Mike Johnson on Wednesday, saying he should serve as leader in the 119th Congress. With vote counting still underway in some states, Republicans hold a slim majority over Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Trump also had a unified government, with Republican control of both the Senate and the House, during the first two years of his first term as president. 
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Trump’s unexpected pick for Pentagon chief is decorated veteran, Fox News host

Pentagon — President-elect Donald Trump has made a largely unexpected pick to run the world’s largest military, nominating Fox News host and decorated veteran Pete Hegseth to be defense secretary. 

Trump has picked someone who has no previous experience in government or in running a large business. But the Army National Guard officer and “Fox and Friends” weekend host has raised his profile through hinting at several changes to the Defense Department.

Hegseth has said he opposes diversity, equity and inclusion programs, or DEI, which he has called “woke.” He has questioned the role of women in combat positions, all of which were opened to women by Secretary of Defense Ash Carter in January 2016. Since then, women have earned positions as Green Berets, Army Rangers and Navy combat-craft crewman after completing the same grueling tests as men.

Hegseth, a graduate of Princeton and Harvard, authored the book “The War on Warriors,” which blames the military’s DEI programs for its recruiting crisis.

“There just aren’t enough lesbians from San Francisco who want to join the 82nd Airborne. Not only do the lesbians not join, but those very same ads turn off the young, patriotic, Christian men who have traditionally filled our ranks,” he wrote.

The nominee has also hinted he could target military leaders, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. C.Q. Brown, to push out those who have supported DEI programs.

“First of all, you’ve got to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs” and “any general that was involved, any general, admiral, whatever,” he told podcast host Shawn Ryan earlier this year.  

Hegseth served tours of duty in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay as an infantry officer and has pushed to make the U.S. military more lethal. Trump has praised his pick as “tough, smart and a true believer in America First.”

Hegseth’s nomination will need to be confirmed by a Senate majority. Republicans currently hold the majority by at least three seats.

One former Pentagon official, who spoke to VOA on condition of anonymity to discuss a nomination before a Senate vote, praised Hegseth’s dedication to American troops and veterans.

“He will fight for them because he really cares,” the former official said.

Other national security officials, who also spoke to VOA on condition of anonymity, said they were surprised by the pick. 

After Congressman Mike Waltz of Florida was chosen to be Trump’s national security adviser, many had expected the secretary of defense position to be filled by one of the established national security heavy-hitters in the Republican party, such as U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, who chairs the House Armed Services committee, or a Senate Armed Services committee member such as Joni Ernst of Iowa or Tom Cotton of Arkansas. Both are veterans.

The Defense Department oversees more than 2.5 million active-duty and National Guard troops and has a budget that is expected to exceed $800 billion this year. 

Trump had a rocky relationship with defense secretaries in his first administration. His first secretary of defense, retired Gen. Jim Mattis, resigned in protest of Trump’s treatment of allies and his decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria. His other Senate-confirmed secretary of defense, Mark Esper, has called the president-elect “unfit for office.” 

Ahead of the election, Trump told podcaster Joe Rogan that his “biggest mistake” in his first term was appointing “bad people,” including “neocons.”

Hegseth was the executive director for Concerned Veterans for America, a group funded by the Koch brothers that advocated greater privatization of the Department of Veterans Affairs. 

He was reportedly under consideration to run the Department of Veterans Affairs in the first Trump administration.
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Trump meets with Biden at White House

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump returned triumphantly to Washington on Wednesday and walked into the White House for the first time in four years to meet with outgoing President Joe Biden. 

Biden invited Trump for the traditional visit — a show of the coming Jan. 20 peaceful transfer of power in the American democracy between the current U.S. leader and the incoming chief executive.  

But the Biden-Trump get-together is rife with political tension. 

Biden, a Democrat running for reelection, had sought to defeat Trump, the Republican, for a second time before ending his campaign in July after he faltered badly in a debate against him. Biden quickly endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, to succeed him, but Trump swept through seven political battleground states in the election and easily defeated her. 

When Biden defeated Trump in 2020, Trump offered no White House invitation to meet him ahead of the inauguration and then left Washington two hours before Biden’s swearing-in on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.  

Trump, who to this day claims falsely that he was cheated out of winning the 2020 election by vote fraud, was the first president to not witness his successor’s inauguration since Andrew Johnson skipped the swearing-in of Ulysses S. Grant in 1869. 

Trump also met with Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives. Republicans hold a narrow majority in the chamber in the current Congress and are nearing a slight majority control in the Congress set to be sworn in Jan. 3, but the outcome of more than a dozen seats remains uncertain.  

Trump has moved quickly to fill his nascent administration with Republican officials who have been the most politically loyal to him in the four years he was out of office. He has sought to fill several key defense and national security positions, including Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host and veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to be his next defense secretary. 

The choice of Hegseth was outside the norm of those usually named as the Pentagon leader. But he was a vocal supporter of Trump during his first term, embracing his “America First” agenda of trying to withdraw U.S. troops from abroad and often taking up the cause of combat veterans accused of war crimes. 

Trump has also announced South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem as his choice for Homeland Security chief, picked John Ratcliffe as the director of the CIA and, according to news accounts, settled on Florida Senator Marco Rubio as secretary of state, the country’s top diplomat.   

Both Rubio and Noem were on Trump’s short list of possible vice-presidential running mates several months ago. While Trump later picked first-term Ohio Senator JD Vance, now the vice president-elect, to join him on the Republican national ticket, both Rubio and Noem remained Trump stalwarts as he won the election.  

Ratcliffe was the nation’s sixth director of national intelligence, serving for the last eight months of the Trump administration after a rocky confirmation process. 

Trump also announced that billionaire businessman Elon Musk and entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy will lead what he called the Department of Government Efficiency. The announcement said they would provide advice and guidance to “drive large-scale structural reform” of the federal government.  

The acronym for the new agency, DOGE, is a nod to Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency, dogecoin. 

Other notable picks by Trump include William McGinley as White House Counsel, Florida Congressman Michael Walz as national security adviser and Thomas Homan, former acting immigration chief, to be “border czar” to head efforts to deport undocumented migrants living in the United States. 

Just ahead of the election, Trump, who only rarely publicly admits making any mistakes, told podcaster Joe Rogan that his biggest error during his term from 2017 to 2021 was hiring “bad people or disloyal people.”   

“I picked some people that I shouldn’t have picked,” he said.  

Some of the top officials Trump chose then, including former chief of staff John Kelly and national security adviser John Bolton, became sharp public Trump critics after he ousted them. Kelly said during this year’s campaign that Trump met the definition of a fascist ruler. Trump attacked both former officials, calling Kelly “a bully but a weak person” and disparaging Bolton as “an idiot.”   

Rubio sparred sharply with Trump during their 2016 run for the Republican presidential nomination, which Trump captured enroute to his first term as president. Rubio mocked Trump as having small hands and sporting an orange spray tan, while Trump derided Rubio as “little Marco.”   

But Rubio, like numerous other one-time Trump critics, was a staunch Trump supporter in this year’s campaign. In recent years, Rubio has proved to be an outspoken foreign policy hawk, taking hard lines on U.S. relations with China, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba. 
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Economists wonder whether Trump will follow through on campaign vows

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has left little question about the sort of economic policies he will pursue when he is sworn in for a second term as president in January.

The once-and-future president has promised to extend existing tax cuts and implement new ones; to pursue a deregulation agenda, particularly when it comes to energy production; to reinstate a strong protectionist trade policy, including substantial tariffs on imports; and to undertake a “mass deportation” program that would remove a large number of the millions of undocumented immigrants currently residing in the United States.

While there may be little doubt about the kind of policies Trump will implement, the degree to which he will pursue them is an open question.

“The problem that all economists are dealing with is they don’t know how much of what Trump said on the campaign trail to take seriously,” Steven B. Kamin, a senior fellow at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, told VOA. “They don’t know if he’s going to do a lot of these things, or if he is, how far he’ll take it.”

When it comes to tariffs, Trump has promised across-the-board 10%-20% levies on all imports, and charges of up to 60% on goods coming from China, which experts warn would be economically ruinous.

His rhetoric about fossil fuel extraction suggests he will drive up oil and gas production, even though the U.S. is currently producing more energy than it ever has.

On immigration, he and his advisers have vacillated between suggesting that all undocumented people will be forcibly removed and describing a much more targeted operation.

Tax policy

One thing that appears certain is that Trump will work with Congress — which seems likely to be fully controlled by the Republican Party — to extend the tax cuts that became law as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which he signed into law in 2017.

Those tax cuts reduced the income taxes paid by many American workers and reduced taxable income by increasing the standard deduction. They also sharply cut the top business income tax bracket from 39% to 21%. Those provisions are all scheduled to expire over the next several years, some as soon as 2025, and Trump has proposed making them permanent.

Trump has also floated the idea of other tax cuts, including further reducing the business income tax to a maximum of 15%, and making income from overtime wages, tips and Social Security payments nontaxable, all of which would reduce government revenues.

Kamin said the stimulative impact of Trump’s proposed additional tax changes would likely not be great, but the impact on the country’s debt might be, because they will virtually guarantee additional government borrowing to finance deficit spending.

“The real concern for folks that are concerned about the fiscal balance — and I’m one of them — is that by cementing in place large fiscal deficits as far as the eye can see, even in environments of strong economic activity when we should be running surpluses, that leads to increases in the debt,” he said.

“That, eventually, should lead to crowding out of private investment, rising interest rates, and more worries about the government’s sustainability position,” Kamin added. “But when the debt will reach a level that will be worrisome in that respect, nobody knows.”

Cost-cutting

In theory, some of the deficit spending made necessary by large tax cuts could be offset by a reduction in government spending, something Trump has also floated on the campaign trail.

In particular, the president-elect has proposed creating a Department of Government Efficiency, to be headed by Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of the electric car company Tesla and the rocket builder SpaceX, and the owner of X, the social network formerly known as Twitter.

For his part, Musk has mused that it should be possible to slash federal spending by as much as $2 trillion per year, or about 30%.

Reductions of that magnitude would require deep cuts to a vast array of programs, including elements of the social safety net such as Social Security and federal health programs like Medicaid. However, it is unclear how Trump would persuade even a Republican Congress to enact such a wide-ranging reduction in government services.

Immigration policy

If Trump follows through on a policy of mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, it is virtually certain to have a negative impact on economic sectors where they are present as laborers in significant concentrations, especially agriculture and construction, said Marcus Noland, executive vice president and director of studies at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

“If you take lots of people out of the labor force, you reduce the amount of output, because there’s less labor available, and you raise prices,” Noland told VOA.

“These people are not distributed evenly across the United States economy,” he said. “They’re concentrated in agriculture and construction, so you would disrupt those sectors the most, especially if you combine it with tariffs.”

Trade policy

Trump’s tariff proposals, especially if he follows through with his maximalist proposals from the campaign trail, could be significantly damaging. While theoretically meant to stimulate American manufacturing, Noland warned that they could have the opposite effect.

“Some modeling that I worked on suggest that those tariff policies, instead of reviving the industrial sector, will actually reduce industrial activity in the United States,” he warned.

Blanket tariffs on imports, and especially high levies on Chinese goods, would create severe challenges for U.S. manufacturers.

“The reason is that you would increase the price of industrial inputs, and so, the United States would become a high-cost place to produce,” he said. “Investment would fall — and investment is intensive in industrial materials — so, ironically, it has the opposite effect of what its proponents say.”
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Trump picks key political loyalists for top jobs

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is moving quickly to fill his nascent administration with Republican officials who have been the most politically loyal to him in the four years he was out of office.

Trump, according to various U.S. news accounts, has decided to name Florida Senator Marco Rubio as secretary of state, the country’s top diplomat, and South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem as the Homeland Security chief.

Both Rubio and Noem were on Trump’s short list of possible vice-presidential running mates several months ago. While Trump later picked first-term Ohio Senator JD Vance, now the vice president-elect, to join him on the Republican national ticket, both Rubio and Noem remained Trump stalwarts as he easily won the election last week over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump has settled on Michael Waltz, a Florida congressman, as his national security adviser. Waltz earlier this year supported a long-shot Republican legislative effort to rename Washington’s international airport for Trump.

Trump on Monday also named Thomas Homan, his former acting immigration chief, to be his “border czar” to head efforts to deport undocumented migrants living in the U.S., possibly millions, back to their home countries. News accounts reported that Stephen Miller, another vocal anti-migrant adviser who served in Trump’s first term, would be named as Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy.

The president-elect picked another ardent supporter, Elise Stefanik, a New York congresswoman, as the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. He nominated former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee to be ambassador to Israel.

Just ahead of the election, Trump, who only rarely publicly admits making any mistakes, told podcaster Joe Rogan that his biggest error during his term from 2017 to 2021 was hiring “bad people, or disloyal people.”

“I picked some people that I shouldn’t have picked,” he said.

Some of the top officials Trump chose then, including former chief of staff John Kelly and national security adviser John Bolton, became sharp public Trump critics after he ousted them. Kelly said during this year’s campaign that Trump met the definition of a fascist ruler. Trump attacked both former officials, calling Kelly “a bully but a weak person” and disparaging Bolton as “an idiot.”

Ahead of the election, Bolton said, “What Trump will look for in senior nominees in a second term is fealty. He wants ‘yes men’ and ‘yes women.'”

Rubio sparred sharply with Trump during their 2016 run for the Republican presidential nomination, which Trump captured enroute to his first term as president. Rubio mocked Trump as having small hands and sporting an orange spray tan, while Trump derided Rubio as “little Marco.”

But Rubio, like numerous other one-time Trump critics, was a staunch Trump supporter in this year’s campaign. In recent years, Rubio has proved to be an outspoken foreign policy hawk, taking hard lines on U.S. relations with China, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba.

He has at times been at odds with Republicans who were skeptical about U.S. involvement in overseas conflicts, such as helping to fund Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s 2022 invasion. But more recently, he voted against sending more U.S. military aid to Ukraine, while Trump has also voiced skepticism about the extent of U.S. assistance to Kyiv.

Rubio told NBC News in September, “I think the Ukrainians have been, such incredibly brave and strong in standing up to Russia. But at the end of the day, what we are funding here is a stalemate war, and it needs to be brought to a conclusion, or that country is going to be set back 100 years.”

“I’m not on Russia’s side — but unfortunately, the reality of it is that the way the war in Ukraine is going to end is with a negotiated settlement,” Rubio said.

Noem rose to national prominence and won conservative plaudits after refusing to impose a statewide mask mandate during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021.

Trump was reportedly considering her as his vice-presidential running mate. But she faced widespread criticism and fell in the stakes to be Trump’s No. 2 in April when she wrote in a memoir that she shot to death an “untrainable” dog that she “hated” on her family farm.

Waltz is a former Army Green Beret who shares Trump’s views on illegal immigration and skepticism of America’s continued support for Ukraine.

Waltz, who also has served in the National Guard as a colonel, has criticized Chinese activity in the Asia-Pacific and said the United States needs to be ready for a potential conflict in the region.

Just as notable as Trump’s initial selections are two former officials he has rejected for top jobs in his new administration: Nikki Haley, his former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Haley ran against Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination and Pompeo considered opposing Trump before backing off.

Trump is heading to Washington on Wednesday to meet with President Joe Biden, who defeated Trump in the 2020 election, about the transfer of power when Trump is inaugurated on January 20. Trump is also planning to meet with Republicans in the House of Representatives.
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Trump sets sights on Gaza, Ukraine as early foreign policy goals

Beyond promising a return to the America First doctrine, President-elect Donald Trump has not provided details on what U.S. foreign policy will look like under his incoming administration. But his early conversations with leaders following his election victory indicate he aims to fulfill his promises to quickly end the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara reports.
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Transition period for US president-elect takes weeks

Although Donald Trump has won the presidential election, nearly 11 weeks will pass before he can assume office, giving him 76 days to prepare a new government.
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Voters in Oakland oust Mayor Sheng Thao just 2 years into her term

OAKLAND, Calif. — Voters in Oakland, California, have ousted Mayor Sheng Thao just two years after she narrowly won office to lead the liberal San Francisco Bay Area city.

The Associated Press called the race Monday.

“Thank you for choosing me to serve as your Mayor. As the first Hmong American woman to become the mayor of a major American City, it has been the honor of my lifetime,” she said in a statement last week.

She committed to ensuring a smooth transition.

Thao must vacate the office as soon as election results are certified Dec. 5 and the Oakland City Council declares a vacancy at its next meeting, which would be Dec. 17, Nikki Fortunato Bas, City Council president, said in a statement.

A special election for a new mayor will be held within 120 days, or roughly four months.

Until then, Bas — as president of the City Council — would serve as interim mayor unless she wins a seat on the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. As of Monday, Bas was trailing in that race.

Thao was elected mayor in November 2022 and became the first Hmong American to lead a major city. She faced criticism almost immediately after taking office for firing popular Oakland Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong. Frustrated voters, including the local NAACP, blamed Thao for a long list of city woes related to public safety, homelessness and the city’s budget.

In her statement, Thao said she was proud of her administration’s accomplishments.

Thao was not the only official booted from office in Tuesday’s election. Pamela Price, district attorney for Alameda County, which includes Oakland, also was ousted by voters in a recall election. Critics of both Thao and Price disagreed with the officials’ progressive politics.

Thao went into Tuesday’s election weakened by an FBI raid in June of her home — along with properties owned by a politically influential family that controls the city’s recycling contract. Thao has maintained her innocence and authorities have not said what they are investigating.

Oakland uses a ranked choice voting system that allows voters to list multiple choices in order of preference. Thao narrowly beat Loren Taylor in 2022 despite getting fewer first-place votes than Taylor.

Oakland has about 400,000 residents and is, at times, more politically liberal than San Francisco. It is Vice President Kamala Harris’ hometown.

In recent years, Oakland has lost three professional sports franchises, including Major League Baseball’s Oakland Athletics. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has sent state highway patrol officers, state prosecutors, and surveillance cameras to help Oakland battle crime.
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Trump breaks Republican losing streak in nation’s largest majority-Arab city

DEARBORN, Michigan — Faced with two choices she didn’t like, Suehaila Amen chose neither. 

Instead, the longtime Democrat from the Arab American stronghold of Dearborn, Michigan, backed a third-party candidate for president, adding her voice to a remarkable turnaround that helped Donald Trump reclaim Michigan and the presidency. 

In Dearborn, where nearly half of the 110,000 residents are of Arab descent, Vice President Kamala Harris received over 2,500 fewer votes than Trump, who became the first Republican presidential candidate since former President George W. Bush in 2000 to win the city. Harris also lost neighboring Dearborn Heights to Trump, who in his previous term as president banned travel from several mostly-Muslim countries. 

Harris lost the presidential vote in two Detroit-area cities with large Arab American populations after months of warnings from local Democrats about the Biden-Harris administration’s unwavering support for Israel in the war in Gaza. Some said they backed Trump after he visited a few days before the election, mingling with customers and staff at a Lebanese-owned restaurant and reassuring people that he would find a way to end the violence in the Middle East. 

Others, including Amen, were unable to persuade themselves to back the former president. She said many Arab Americans felt Harris got what she deserved but aren’t “jubilant about Trump.” 

“Whether it’s Trump himself or the people who are around him, it does pose a great deal of concern for me,” Amen said. “But at the end of the day when you have two evils running, what are you left with?” 

As it became clear late Tuesday into early Wednesday that Trump would not only win the presidency but likely prevail in Dearborn, the mood in metro Detroit’s Arab American communities was described by Dearborn City Council member Mustapha Hammoud as “somber.” And yet, he said, the result was “not surprising at all.” 

The shift in Dearborn — where Trump received nearly 18,000 votes compared with Harris’ 15,000 — marks a startling change from just four years ago when Joe Biden won in the city by a nearly 3-to-1 margin. 

No one should be surprised 

The results didn’t come out of nowhere. For months, in phone calls and meetings with top Democratic officials, local leaders warned, in blunt terms, that Arab American voters would turn against them if the administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war didn’t change. 

The Biden-Harris administration has remained a staunch ally of Israel since the brutal Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, which killed 1,200 Israelis and took over 200 hostages. The war between Israel and Hamas has killed more than 43,000 people in Gaza, Palestinian health officials say. They do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. 

While Harris softened her rhetoric on the war, she didn’t propose concrete policies toward Israel or the war in Gaza that varied from the administration’s position. And even if she had, that might not have made much of a difference in places like Dearborn. 

“All she had to do was stop the war in Lebanon and Gaza and she would receive everyone’s votes here,” said Hammoud. 

More voters thought Trump would be better able to handle the situation in the Middle East than Harris, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide. About half of voters named Trump as better suited, compared with about a third who said Harris. 

Among those who opposed more aid for Israel, 58% backed Harris in the presidential election; 39% supported Trump. 

Even some Harris voters had their doubts. About three-quarters of Harris voters in Michigan said she was the better candidate to handle the situation. Few preferred Trump, but about 2 in 10 Harris voters said they were equivalent or neither would be better. 

In the absence of support for Harris in the Arab American community, Trump and his allies stepped in. 

A key part of Michigan’s electorate — a state Trump won by nearly 11,000 votes in 2016 before he lost it by nearly 154,000 to Biden in 2020 — Arab Americans spent months meeting with Trump allies, who encouraged community leaders to endorse him. 

Things began to move in September, when Amer Ghalib, the Democratic Muslim mayor of the city of Hamtramck, endorsed Trump. Shortly afterwards, Trump visited a campaign office there. 

That was a turning point, said Massad Boulos, who led Trump’s outreach with Arab Americans. Boulos’ son Michael is married to Trump’s daughter Tiffany. 

“They very, very much appreciated the president’s visit and the respect that they felt,” said Massad Boulos. “That was the first big achievement, so to speak. After that, I started getting endorsements from imams and Muslim leaders.” 

An apparent shift toward Trump in final week 

While support for Harris had been declining for months — especially after her campaign did not allow a pro-Palestinian speaker to take the stage at August’s Democratic National Convention — some voters say the last week of the campaign was pivotal. 

At an October 30 rally in Michigan, former President Bill Clinton said Hamas uses civilians as shields and will “force you to kill civilians if you want to defend yourself.” 

“Hamas did not care about a homeland for the Palestinians, they wanted to kill Israelis and make Israel uninhabitable,” he said. “Well, I got news for them, they were there first, before their faith existed, they were there.” 

The Harris campaign wanted Clinton to visit Dearborn to speak in the days following the rally, according to two people with direct knowledge of the discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about them. The potential visit never materialized after backlash over Clinton’s comments. 

“That comment was the talk of the town. It hurt many like me, who loved him,” said Amin Hashmi, who was born in Pakistan and lives in suburban Detroit. A self-proclaimed “die-hard Dem,” Hashmi said casting a ballot for Trump “was a seismic move” that came after he stood in the voting booth for 25 minutes. 

On the Friday before the election, Trump visited The Great Commoner in Dearborn, a Lebanese-owned restaurant. That stood in sharp contrast with Harris, who met with Dearborn’s Democratic mayor, Abdullah Hammoud — who didn’t endorse in the race — but never came to Dearborn herself. 

“He came up to Dearborn. He spoke with residents. Whether some people say it wasn’t genuine, he still made the effort. He did reach out and try to work with them, at least listen to them,” said Samia Hamid, a Dearborn resident. 
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Young Black, Latino men say they chose Trump because of economy, jobs

WASHINGTON — Brian Leija, a 31-year-old small-business owner from Belton, Texas, was not surprised that a growing number of Latino men of his generation voted for Donald Trump for president this year. Leija had voted for the Republican in 2016 and 2020. 

Leija’s rationale was simple: He said he has benefited from Trump’s economic policies, especially tax cuts. 

“I am a blue-collar worker,” Leija said. “So, tax breaks for small businesses are ideal for what I do.” 

For DaSean Gallishaw, a consultant in Fairfax, Virginia, a vote for Trump was rooted in what he saw as Democrats’ rhetoric not matching their actions.  

“It’s been a very long time since the Democrats ever really kept their promises to what they’re going to do for the minority communities,” he said. 

Gallishaw, 25, who is Black, also voted for Trump twice before. This year, he said, he thought the former president’s “minority community outreach really showed up.” 

Trump gained a larger share of Black and Latino voters than he did in 2020, when he lost to Democrat Joe Biden, and most notably among men under age 45, according to AP VoteCast, a nationwide survey of more than 120,000 voters. 

Even as Democrat Kamala Harris won majorities of Black and Latino voters, it wasn’t enough to give the vice president the White House, because of the gains Trump made. 

Economy, jobs made men under 45 open to Trump 

Voters overall cited the economy and jobs as the most important issue the country faced. That was true for Black and Hispanic voters as well. 

About 3 in 10 Black men under age 45 went for Trump, roughly double the share he got in 2020. Young Latinos, particularly young Latino men, also were more open to Trump than in 2020. Roughly half of young Latino men voted for Harris, compared with about 6 in 10 who went for Biden. 

Juan Proano, CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens, the nation’s largest and oldest civil rights organization for Hispanic Americans, said the election results make it clear that Trump’s messaging on the economy resonated with Latinos. 

“I think it’s important to say that Latinos have a significant impact in deciding who the next president was going to be and reelected Donald Trump,” Proano said. “[Latino] men certainly responded to the populist message of the president and focused primarily on economic issues, inflation, wages and even support of immigration reform.” 

The Rev. Derrick Harkins, a minister who has served Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York, has overseen outreach to Black American religious communities for more than a decade. He said that Trump’s hypermasculine appeal worked to win over some younger men of color. 

“I think that Trump with this bogus machismo has been effective amongst the young men, Black, white, Hispanic,” Harkins said. “And I think unfortunately, even if it’s a very small percentage, you know, when you’re talking about an election like we just had, it can be very impactful.” 

Black, Latino voters’ priorities changed from 2020 

While about 4 in 10 young voters under 45 across racial and ethnic groups identified the economy as the top issue facing the country, older white and Latino voters were likely to also cite immigration, with about one-quarter of each saying that was the top issue. 

A clear majority of young Black voters described the economy as “not so good” or “poor,” compared with about half of older Black voters. Majorities of Latino voters, regardless of age, said the economy is in bad shape. 

That belief made it more difficult for Harris to highlight the actual numbers in the economy, which show that inflation has receded dramatically, unemployment remains low and wages have risen. These voters simply did not feel that progress. 

This is the first time Alexis Uscanga, a 20-year-old college student from Brownville, Texas, voted in a presidential election. The economy and immigration are the issues that drove him to vote for Trump, he said. 

“Everything just got a lot more expensive than it once was for me,” Uscanga said. “Gas, grocery shopping, even as a college student, everything has gone up in price, and that is a big concern for me, and other issues like immigration.” 

Having grown up washing cars and selling tamales and used cars, Uscanga knows how hard it can be to make a living. When Trump was president, he said, it did not feel that way, he said. 

“I was not very fond of President Trump because of his rhetoric in 2016, but I look aside from that and how we were living in 2018, 2019.” Uscanga said. “I just felt that we lived a good life no matter what the media was saying, and that’s why I started supporting him after that.” 

Though the shift of votes to Trump from Black and Latino men was impactful, Trump could not have won without the support of a majority of white voters. 

“Men of color are really beginning to emerge as the new swing voters,” said Terrance Woodbury, co-founder of HIT Strategies, a polling and research firm that conducted studies for the Harris campaign. 

“For a long time, we talked about suburban women and soccer moms who can swing the outcome of elections. Now men of color are really beginning to emerge as that, especially younger men of color, who are less ideological, less tied to a single party, and more likely to swing either between parties or in and out of the electorate,” Woodbury said. 

Desire for strong leadership  

A majority of voters nationally said Trump was a strong leader; slightly fewer than half said the same about Harris. Among Hispanic voters, even more saw Trump as strong in this election. Roughly 6 in 10 Hispanic men described Trump as a strong leader, compared with 43% who said that in 2020. About half of Hispanic women said Trump was a strong leader, up from 37%. 

Black men and women were about twice as likely as in 2020 to describe Trump as a strong leader. 

David Means, a purchasing manager in Atlanta who is Black, abstained from voting in the election because he did not feel either Harris or Trump was making the right appeals to Black men. But the results of the election did not disappoint him. 

“I’m satisfied with the result. I don’t feel slighted. I wasn’t let down. I wasn’t pulling for Trump or Kamala, but I did not want a woman in that position,” he said. And if it were to be a woman, Means said, “I’d rather have a really strong and smart woman, for example, like Judge Judy.”
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