Trump cabinet live updates: House ethics panel fails to agree to release Gaetz report

In a letter, sent to Trump on Tuesday, commissioner Dawn Buckingham offered up a recently acquired plot of land located in Starr County to build facilities that will help law enforcement coordinate, process and detain undocumented immigrants.

President-elect Donald Trump has endorsed a line of guitars, following up on the Bibles, sneakers, watches, photo books and cryptocurrency ventures launched during his third White House campaign.

Trump on Wednesday posted to Truth Social a photo of himself holding what he said was a “Limited Edition ‘45’ Guitar,” an electric model emblazoned with an American flag and eagle on the body, and Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan inlaid into the neck. Both acoustic and electric styles are available, for $1,250 and $1,500, respectively, as well as “Presidential” and “God Bless the USA” models and “Signature Edition” guitars, which — with a $10,000 price tag — also include Trump’s signature.

What’s not clear is the financial relationship between Trump and proceeds from the guitar sales.

Alex Woodward has the details.

Leave it to Matt Gaetz to start a fight in the House of Representatives even after he’s left.

Initially, members of both parties filed out of the committee close-lipped, as is usual in such scenarios. But as Committee Chairman Michael Guest of Mississippi headed out the building surrounded by reporters, he said, “There has been no agreement on the release of the report.”

A day after New York prosecutors said they will fight efforts to dismiss Donald Trump’s hush money conviction, the president-elect’s lawyers urged a judge to ignore them and dispose of the case before he takes office in January.

Echoing their arguments since Trump’s win, his lawyers said in a letter Wednesday to Judge Juan M. Merchan that continuing with the case will interfere with Trump’s preparations for returning to the White House and impede his ability to run the country.

Gustaf Kilander has the story.

A defiant social media post supposedly by incoming trans congresswoman Sarah McBride is actually fake, my colleague Io Dodds reports.

But a spokesperson for McBride told The Independent that the message was not authentic, saying: “We have reached out to Bluesky to remove this.”

McBride’s real statement, posted on X (formerly Twitter), took a different tone, declining to criticise her attackers directly and calling their attempts to ban her from Congressional bathrooms an “effort to distract from the real issues facing this country”.

The Bluesky post appears to have been an excerpt from a real Instagram post by McBride from 2016, when she spoke out against North Carolina’s (later repealed) bathroom bill.

Here’s McBride’s real statement from X that we reported on earlier:

Rudy Giuliani could be held in contempt of court for repeating false claims about two former election workers who won nearly $150 million for his defamatory statements about them.

Attorneys for Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss — who are also pressing a federal judge in New York to force the cash-strapped former New York City mayor to turn over his property — are asking the judge who presided over their initial defamation trial to sanction Giuliani for his ongoing baseless claims.

Here’s Alex Woodward’s latest report on Giuliani being his own worst enemy.

Donald Trump is considering a right-wing media personality, people who have served on his US Secret Service detail, as well as others to run the agency that has been plagued by its failure to preempt two alleged assassination attempts on Trump this summer, sources familiar with the president-elect’s thinking tell CNN.

Podcaster Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent who was highly critical of the agency’s leadership as security failures around the alleged attempts on Trump’s life became clear, as well as Sean Curran, the head of Trump’s current detail, are among those being considered for the job.

Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe, meanwhile, was unsuccessful in trying to set up a meeting with Trump this week.