Trump reportedly picks Howard Lutnick as commerce secretary; nearly 100 Democrats call for release of Gaetz findings – US politics live

Nearly 100 House Democrats have signed a letter urging the House ethics committee to release its report into Matt Gaetz.

“The United States Senate has a constitutional duty to provide advice and consent on presidential nominees, and it is critical that senators have all the information necessary to consider Mr Gaetz’s nomination” the letter reads.

The letter was addressed to the Representative Michael Guest, the chair of the House ethics committee, as well as Representative Susan Wild, the top Democrat on the committee.

“Withholding the findings of your investigation may jeopardize the Senate’s ability to provide fully informed, constitutionally required advice and consent regarding this nomination. Representative Gaetz’s abrupt resignation from Congress should not circumvent the Senate’s ability to fulfill its constitutional responsibilities,” the letter adds.

Sam Levine

Voter turnout among people who live on tribal lands was 11 percentage points lower than others in the same state who do not live on tribal lands, according to a new study released on Tuesday by the Brennan Center for Justice.

The study, which examined voter turnout from 2012 to 2022 across 21 states, sheds light on the significant barriers that Native American voters face. If the 900,000 voters on tribal lands in the study had turned out at the same rate as those who don’t live on tribal lands in 2020, the study’s authors concluded, 160,000 more votes would have been cast.

Tribal lands with the highest concentrations of Native American adults also had lower turnout.

“Participation rates between tribal lands with the smallest Native populations (less than 20 percent) and those with the largest Native populations (more than 80 percent) differed by 33 percentage points in presidential elections and 25 percentage points in midterm elections,” the study found. “These findings demonstrate that Native Americans living on tribal lands are uniquely disenfranchised and demobilized from participating in federal elections.”

Native American voters on tribal lands often face unique obstacles to voting. Election offices and voting sites can be far away (the study noted that on the Pyramid Lake Reservation in Nevada the election office is more than 100 miles away).

Several tribal lands also do not use standard addresses, making mail delivery more difficult. The post office can also be far away with limited hours. Voters on tribal lands were seven percentage points less likely to vote by mail than those not on tribal lands, the study found.

Donald Trump’s scheduled 26 November sentencing in his Manhattan criminal hush-money case has been adjourned, according to a court calendar entry on Tuesday.

The postponement followed prosecution and defense filings requesting a delay in proceedings after Trump’s victory.

The prosecutors in the case are expected to submit paperwork sometime today indicating how they believe the case should proceed.

Read more about it here.

Punchbowl News is reporting that Donald Trump will name Howard Lutnick, the president-elect’s transition co-chair, as his commerce secretary for his second administration.

Lutnick is the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald and a longtime friend of Trump.

An unidentified hacker has reportedly accessed a file shared among lawyers representing clients who have provided damaging testimony regarding Matt Gaetz, the New York Times is reporting, citing a person with knowledge of the activity.

According to the New York Times, the computer file consisted of 24 exhibits, including testimony by a woman in which she says she had sex with Gaetz in 2017 when she was 17, as well as corroborating testimony by a second woman who said that she witnessed the encounter.

The files were reportedly downloaded by a person using the name Altam Beezley at 1.23pm on Monday. But when a lawyer connected to the case sent an email to the address associated with Beezley, they received an automated reply that the recipient does not exist.