Trump promises ‘fully expedited approvals and permits’ to billionaire investors in the US – as it happened

• In a speech billed at promoting his economic accomplishments, Joe Biden warned Donald Trump against imposing tariffs and cutting taxes – two of the key planks of his successful re-election campaign. The president also defended America’s dominant role in global affairs, and said implementing Project 2025 would result in “economic disaster”.

• Earlier in the day, Senate Democrats convened a hearing meant to explore the implications of Trump’s vow to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. Senate judiciary committee chair Dick Durbin said such deportations “would damage our economy and separate American families”. Lindsey Graham, the top-ranking Republican on the committee, promised senators would get to work on a “transformational border security bill” as soon as Trump takes office.

Here’s what else happened today:

• Adam Schiff, a Democratic former member of the January 6 committee, said he did not think it was necessary for Biden to issue pre-emptive pardons to the panel’s members, despite Trump’s threats to jail them.

• Mitch McConnell, the 82-year-old outgoing Senate Republican leader, suffered a fall, but has been cleared to get back to work.

• The New York attorney general, Letitia James, reportedly told Trump’s attorneys she will keep pursuing the $454m-plus judgment levied against him for business fraud.

• Matt Gaetz is joining rightwing broadcaster One America News Network as an anchor.

• Trump was up late last night, writing weird stuff about Canada.

Adam Schiff, a Democratic former member of the January 6 committee, said he did not think it was necessary for Joe Biden to issue pre-emptive pardons to those involved in the bipartisan House investigation of the attack on the Capitol.

In an interview over the weekend, Donald Trump alleged that the committee had destroyed its evidence, and the committee members “should go to jail”. The committee’s report and its supporting documents remain publicly available online.

Speaking at the Capitol, Schiff, who was just sworn in as a senator representing California, said:

I don’t think the incoming president should be threatening his political opponents with jail time. That’s not the kind of talk we should hear from the president in a democracy. Nor do I think that a pardon is necessary for the members of the January 6th Committee.

We’re proud of the work we did in that committee. It was fundamental oversight obligation to investigate the first attempt to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power in our history.

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell was injured in a fall today, but has been cleared to get back to work, his office said.

“Leader McConnell tripped following lunch. He sustained a minor cut to the face and sprained his wrist. He has been cleared to resume his schedule,” a spokesperson for the long-serving Senate Republican leader said.

McConnell, 82, is in his final weeks leading the party in the Senate. John Thune will be the GOP leader next year, when the party takes the majority in the chamber.

Last year, reports emerged that McConnell had suffered multiple falls, and he also repeatedly appeared to freeze up in public. He is expected to continue serving as a senator representing Kentucky through 2026, when his current term expires.

Further deepening his unusually close ties with billionaires, Donald Trump has promised “fully expedited approvals and permits” to people who invest $1bn or more in the United States.

Writing on Truth Social, Trump said:

Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals. GET READY TO ROCK!!!

Trump has nominated several billionaires to his cabinet, and put the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, and fellow billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy in charge of the quasi-governmental “Department of Government Efficiency”. Here’s more about that:

In more Trump legal news, the president-elect might lose his months-long fight to reverse his conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records, the Associated Press reports.

Prosecutors are trying to convince Judge Juan M Merchan, acting justice of the New York state supreme court in New York county, to preserve Donald Trump’s hush money criminal conviction before he becomes president. This way, the case would be permanently suspended, allowing Trump’s conviction to stand and bar any attempts to appeal.

Trump’s legal team has urged Merchan to dismiss the case and argue letting it go on would cause unconstitutional “disruptions” to his presidency.

Some background: Trump has been convicted of manipulating documents to conceal a $130,000 payment to pornographic film actor Stormy Daniels in order to quiet her claim that they had sexual relations more than a decade ago. Trump denies any wrongdoing.

Here’s more, from the AP:

Prosecutors are urging a judge not to throw out President-elect Donald Trump’s hush money criminal conviction but suggesting a willingness to end the case in a way that would preserve the verdict while avoiding punishment or a protracted legal fight.

In court papers made public on Tuesday, the Manhattan district attorney’s office proposed an array of options for keeping the historic conviction on the books, including asking Judge Juan M. Merchan to consider treating the case the way he would when a defendant dies.

That would effectively put the case into a permanent state of suspended animation. Trump’s conviction would stand, but everything would freeze, including any appeal action. It is unclear if that option is viable under New York law.

“As applied here, this Court could similarly terminate the criminal proceeding by placing a notation in the record that the jury verdict removed the presumption of innocence; that defendant was never sentenced; and that his conviction was neither affirmed nor reversed on appeal because of presidential immunity,” prosecutors wrote in an 82-page filing.

Among the other options prosecutors proposed was delaying sentencing until after Trump leaves office in 2029. However, they were adamant that the conviction should stand, arguing that Trump’s impending return to the White House should not upend a jury’s finding.

In a speech billed at promoting his economic accomplishments, Joe Biden warned Donald Trump against imposing tariffs and cutting taxes – two of the key planks of his successful re-election campaign. The president also defended America’s dominant role in global affairs, and said implementing Project 2025 would result in “economic disaster”. Earlier in the day, Senate Democrats convened a hearing meant to explore the implications of Trump’s vow to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. Senate judiciary committee chair Dick Durbin said such deportations “would damage our economy and separate American families”. Lindsey Graham, the top-ranking Republican on the committee, promised senators would get to work on a “transformational border security bill” as soon as Trump takes office.

Here’s what else is going on:

• New York attorney general Letitia James reportedly told Trump’s attorneys she will keep pursuing the $454m-plus judgment levied against him for business fraud.

• Matt Gaetz is joining rightwing broadcaster One America News Network as an anchor.

• Trump was up late last night, writing weird stuff about Canada.

As he closed his speech at the Brookings Institution, Joe Biden singled out Project 2025 as being particularly harmful, and said he hoped Donald Trump does not follow the rightwing blueprint’s proposals to remake the US government.

“I pray to God the president-elect throws away Project 2025. I think it’d be an economic disaster for us and the region,” Biden said.

Trump has publicly repudiated Project 2025, but since winning re-election has appointed conservatives involved in drawing up the document to positions in his incoming administration. Here’s more on what they might do:

With Donald Trump mulling pulling the country back from its international alliances and commitments, Joe Biden argued that it was essential that the United States remains dominant in global affairs.

“If we do not lead the world, what nation leads the world?” Biden, his voice raised, said in a speech to the Brookings Institution, a prominent Washington DC thinktank. “Who pulls Europe together, who tries to pull the Middle East together? How do in the Indian Ocean? What do we do in Africa? We, the United States, lead the world.”

Referring to economic policies pursued by his administration and others that Trump has vowed to reverse, Biden said: “My hope and belief is that the decisions and investments that are now so deeply rooted through the nation, it’s going to be politically costly and economically unsound for the next president to disrupt.”

Joe Biden singled out Donald Trump’s proposals to impose steep tariffs on US allies and rivals alike and to extend tax cuts enacted during his first administration as policies that would undermine the economy’s health.

“By all accounts, the incoming administration is determined to return the country … [to] trickle-down economics, and another tax cut for the very wealthy that will not be paid for, or if paid for, is going to have a real cost, once again, causing massive deficits or significant cuts in basic programs of healthcare, education, veterans benefits,” Biden said.

“On top of that, he seems determined to impose steep, universal tariffs on all imported goods brought to this country on the mistaken belief that foreign countries will bear the cost of those tariffs, rather than the American consumer. Who do you think pays for this? I believe this approach is a major mistake. I believe we’ve proven that approach is a mistake over the past four years, but … we will know in time what will happen.”

Joe Biden has generally refrained from criticizing Donald Trump since his presidential election victory, but subtly needled his Republican successor in a speech where the president defended his economic record.

“Next month, my administration will end, and a new administration will begin. Most economists agree the new administration is going to inherit a fairly strong economy, at least at the moment, an economy going through fundamental transformation that’s laid out a stronger foundation and a sustainable, broad-based, highly productive growth,” Biden said. “It is my profound hope that the new administration will preserve and build on this progress.”

Later on, Trump singled out Trump for criticism over his handling of the pandemic. “The previous administration, quite frankly, had no plan, real plan, to get us through one of the toughest periods in our nation’s history,” Biden said.

And though Trump campaigned on tearing up Biden’s legislative accomplishments – and has the votes to do it, thanks to Republican victories that will give them control of Congress – the president predicted that undoing his 2022 effort to overhaul the nation’s infrastructure will be impossible, since it benefits so many red states.

“We had infrastructure week for four years, nothing got built,” Biden said, in yet another dig at Trump.

“Everybody said when I wanted to have an infrastructure bill that mattered, over $1.3tn, we’d never get it done. We got it done. The next president has a gameplan I laid out, and by the way, he’s going to find, since I made a promise I’d invest as much in red states as blue, he’s gonna have trouble not doing it. He’s gonna have a lot of red state senators that are opposed to all of it and voted for it deciding it’s very much in their interest to build the facilities that are on the block.”

A Senate hearing on mass deportations ended on a bitter note, with a series of back-and-forths between Republicans on the committee and a majority witness invited to testify about the cost and economic impact of removing millions of immigrants from the labor force.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, repeatedly testified that he did not support “open borders” despite Republican senators claiming he did.

Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana spent his allotted time questioning Reichlin-Melnick about old tweets while Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, called him a part of the problem. A pre-election report published by the American Immigration Council, which supports comprehensive immigration reform, found that mass deportations on the scale Donald Trump has proposed would cost at least $315bn and would hurt the economy, especially in key industries like agriculture and construction

The exchanges underscored just how polarized Congress is over the issue and how little appetite there is for compromise in an area that was at the heart of Trump’s re-election pitch. In a sign that Democrats are scrambling for a response, several senators stressed their agreement with Republicans and Trump that immigrants with a criminal record should be deported, while also talking about the importance of protecting Dreamers.

Matt Gaetz, who resigned his seat in Congress after Donald Trump nominated him as his attorney general, only to withdraw his nomination after reports emerged of sexual misconduct, has joined the One America News Network (OAN), a rightwing outlet.

Starting in January, Gaetz will host a one-hour prime-time show aptly titled “The Matt Gaetz Show”, and also co-host a video podcast, the network announced.

“OAN is blazing a trail in media, embracing not just traditional news but the platforms where Americans are going – streaming, apps, podcasts, and social media. I couldn’t be more thrilled to join OAN’s forward-thinking team and be part of this revolutionary expansion,” Gaetz said in a statement.

New York attorney general Letitia James has told Donald Trump’s attorneys that she will continue pursuing a $454m civil fraud judgment her office won against the president-elect, despite his looming inauguration, the Hill reports.

Trump’s lawyers had asked her to support vacating the judgment, citing his presidential election victory. In a letter in response, James said: “Mr. Trump’s upcoming inauguration as the next president of the United States has no bearing on the pendency of defendants’ appeal in this action. “

An appeals court heard arguments in September in Trump’s challenge to the civil fraud judgment, which centered on claims that he inflated his wealth to secure better lending conditions. Here’s more: