Donald Trump, pictured during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago in December, says the sentencing should not go ahead. Pic: AP
Donald Trump’s spokesperson called the hush money case “lawless” and a “witch hunt” in a statement released after the sentencing date was announced. “President Trump will continue fighting against these hoaxes until they are all dead,” he added.
A judge has ordered US president-elect Donald Trump to be sentenced next week in his New York hush money case – but has suggested he will not jail him.
In a surprise move, the sentencing has been set for 10 January, just 10 days before the presidential inauguration.
Trump‘s spokesperson called the case “lawless” and a “witch hunt” in a statement released after the date was announced.
Judge Juan Merchan, who presided over the trial, has now confirmed sentencing will go ahead, but signalled in a written decision that he would hand down what is known as a conditional discharge, in which a case gets dismissed if a defendant avoids re-arrest.
The cartoon depicts Jeff Bezos, as well as Mark Zuckerberg and other media and tech moguls, kneeling and holding up bags of money before a massive Donald Trump. Photo / Ann Telnaes
An award-winning political cartoonist for the Washington Post has announced her resignation after a cartoon depicting the newspaper’s billionaire owner grovelling before United States President-elect Donald Trump was rejected.
Ann Telnaes posted on Substack late Friday local time that this was the first time she “had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at”.
The cartoon – which she included in her post – depicts Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, as well as Facebook and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and other media and tech moguls, kneeling and holding up bags of money before a massive Trump.
Also shown is a prostrated Mickey Mouse, the symbol of the Disney Company, which owns ABC News. The television network recently reached a US$15 million ($26m) settlement with Trump after he sued for defamation over reporting on his sexual abuse trial in New York.
Telnaes wrote that while previous sketches of hers had been rejected, this was the first time that had happened because of her “point of view”.
“That’s a game changer … and dangerous for a free press,” she said.
The cartoon depicts Jeff Bezos, as well as Mark Zuckerberg and other media and tech moguls, kneeling and holding up bags of money before a massive Trump. Photo / Ann Telnaes
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Amazon and Meta have both announced US$1m donations to Trump’s inauguration fund, as reportedly has Cook in a personal capacity.
U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), the Republican whip, congratulates House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on his reelection to the leadership role on January 3, 2025, the first day of the 119th Congress, at the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)
“Mike Johnson is committing to slashing Social Security and Medicare to get the speaker’s gavel,” said one progressive group.
As Republicans took full control of Congress this week and U.S. President-elect prepared to take office later this month, Democratic lawmakers renewed warnings about how the GOP agenda will harm working people and pledged to fight against it.
“Today, the 119th Congress officially begins. Our top priority over the next two years must be fighting for working families and standing up to corporate power and greed,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair emeritus of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said on social media Friday.
“While Republicans focus their energy for the next two years on giving tax breaks to the rich and cutting vital public programs, Democrats will continue working to lower costs and raise wages for all,” Jayapal promised. “We’ll always be fighting for YOU.”
In addition to members of Congress being sworn in on Friday, nearly all Republicans in the House of Representatives reelected Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) as speaker and the chamber debated a rules package that Democrats have criticized since it was released by GOP leadership earlier this week.
“Their governance will be marked by consolidated power, scapegoated communities, and campaigns of punishment.”
The package fast-tracks a dozen bills on a range of issues; they include various immigration measures as well as legislation attacking transgender student athletes, sanctioning the International Criminal Court, requiring proof of United States citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, and prohibiting a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for fossil fuels.
“Speaker Johnson has said that the 119th Congress will be consequential. Today, both in Speaker Johnson’s address and in the rules package the Republicans have passed, Republicans have shown us what the consequences of their leadership will be,” Rep. Delia C. Ramirez (D-Ill.) said in a statement. “In their first order of business, Republicans advanced a legislative package that abuses the power of Congress to persecute trans children athletes, take federal funding away from sanctuary cities like Chicago and Illinois, scapegoat immigrants, erode voting rights, and put new criminal penalties on reproductive care providers.”
“For the first time in history, they seek to make the speakership less accountable to the full body of legislators and to limit our ability to consider emergency bills,” Ramirez noted. “Overall, they are using the rules to make Congress less transparent, less accountable, and less responsive to the needs of the American people. Their governance will be marked by consolidated power, scapegoated communities, and campaigns of punishment.”
Speaking out against the package on the House floor, Jayapal said it “makes very clear what the Republican majority will not do in the 119th Congress,” stressing that the 12 bills “do nothing to lower costs or raise wages for the American people.”
These bills also won’t “take on the biggest corporations and wealthiest individuals who profit from the high prices and junk fees and corporate concentration that’s harming Americans across this country,” she said. “Because guess what? These corporations and wealthy individuals are the ones that are controlling the Republican Party for their own benefit.”
Jayapal highlighted the exorbitant wealth of Trump’s Cabinet picks, just a day after the president-elect announced corporate lobbyist and GOP donor Ken Kies as his choice for assistant secretary for tax policy at the Treasury Department—which is set to be led by billionaire hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, as Republicans in Congress try to pass another round of tax cuts for the rich.
GOP lawmakers are also aiming “to make meaningful spending reforms to eliminate trillions in waste, fraud, and abuse, and end the weaponization of government,” Johnson said in a lengthy social media on Friday. “Along with advancing President Trump’s America First agenda, I will lead the House Republicans to reduce the size and scope of the federal government, hold the bureaucracy accountable, and move the United States to a more sustainable fiscal trajectory.”
In other words, responded the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), “Mike Johnson is committing to slashing Social Security and Medicare to get the speaker’s gavel.”
Republicans have a slim House majority and Trump-backed Johnson was initially set to fall short of the necessary support to remain speaker, due to opposition from not only Congressman Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) but also Reps. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and Keith Self (R-Texas). However, after a private conversation, Norman and Self switched their votes.
“Johnson cut a backroom deal with the members that voted against him so they’d flip their votes. So he will get gavel now. I’m sure in time we’ll find out what he sold out just so he’d win,” Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.) said on social media.
“What did Johnson sell out to become speaker? Social Security or Medicare? Or perhaps veterans?” he asked.
Citing a document circulated ahead of the vote by Johnson’s right-wing critics that lists “failures” of the 118th Congress, the PCCC said: “Looks like all of the above. But his holdouts put Social Security in their first bullet of grievances.”
After the vote, Norman and 10 right-wing colleagues released a letter explaining that, despite sincere reservations, they elected Johnson because of their “steadfast support of President Trump and to ensure the timely certification of his electors.”
“To deliver on the historic mandate earned by President Trump for the Republican Party, we must be organized to use reconciliation—and all legislative tools—to deliver on critical border security, spending cuts, pro-growth tax policy, regulatory reform, and the reversal of the damage done by the Biden-Harris administration,” they added.
Politicoreported that “House Republicans are hoping to start work on the budget targets for critical committees on Saturday—the first step in kicking off their ambitious legislative agenda involving energy, border, and tax policy.”
According to the outlet:
“The Ways and Means Committee is just going to be able to draft tax legislation according to what the budget reconciliation instructions are,” said House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.), who will be leading the charge on extensions of… Trump’s tax cuts.
“And so when the conference figures out what they want in those instructions, we’ll be able to deliver according to those parameters,” said Smith, when asked about the primary goal of a GOP conference meeting tentatively scheduled for Saturday at Fort McNair, an Army post in southwest Washington.
That followed Thursday reporting by The Washington Post that Trump advisers and congressional Republicans “have begun floating proposals to boost federal revenue and slash spending so their plans for major tax cuts and new security spending won’t further explode the $36.2 trillion national debt.”
As the newspaper detailed, 10 policies that Republicans have considered are tariffs, repealing clean energy programs, unauthorized spending, repealing the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness, shuttering the Education Department, cutting federal food assistance, imposing Medicaid work requirements, blocking Medicare obesity treatment, ending the child tax credit for noncitizen parents, and cutting Internal Revenue Service funding.
“The GOP promised to make life easier for working families,” Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), the Democratic whip, said on social media in response to the Post‘s article. “Now, they want to slash your school budget, raise your grocery costs, and hike your energy bills—all to pay for billionaire tax cuts.”
“We will not allow Republicans to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and food assistance to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy,” she added Friday. “No way.”
Then prime minister Rishi Sunak (left) and Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX in-conversation in central London, November 2, 2023
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They [the UK Conservative Party or ‘Tories’] disregard the evidence of the inquiry they set up, which noted that child abuse was endemic in England and Wales (a separate inquiry is ongoing for Scotland); was enabled, covered up or ignored in multiple contexts from churches to schools, council-run care homes and when organised by criminal gangs; and is on the increase because of the rise in online pornography, grooming and pimping.
They instead frame the question in racist terms. Shadow home secretary Chris Philps asks for an inquiry to ask why grooming gangs are “overwhelmingly of south Asian background.” Shadow safeguarding minister Alicia Kearns calls on Phillips to release the “ethnicity data.”
They hype up a far-right trope about Asian, and specifically Muslim, grooming gangs that their own government reports disproved. Musk seizes on this too, retweeting claims Phillips is refusing to open an inquiry into “Muslim grooming gangs.”
Musk’s role is novel and dangerous. The richest man on Earth is incendiary, attacking Phillips as a “rape genocide apologist” and demanding that the King dissolve Parliament to protect children from the Labour government.
So far so Musk, but the Conservatives seem happy to take attack lines from the toxic tech tycoon and turn his transient fixations into British political weather.
Musk is soon to be a high-ranking member of the US government, which Keir Starmer is as ready to fawn on as his predecessors. Labour should stand up to this abuse or it will be humiliated, to the benefit — as Musk intends — of the British far right he openly supports.
That means rejecting the racist weaponisation of the issue.
Demonstrators march toward the Trump International Hotel & Tower demanding an end to Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip after the presidential election in Chicago, Illinois, on November 6, 2024. (Photo: Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“This administration will likely be coming very quickly to try to take down the Palestinian rights movement,” said a Jewish Voice for Peace Action leader.
Victims of violence by U.S.-armed Israeli forces and advocates for Palestinian rights across the United States are sounding the alarm over Republican President-elect Donald Trump’s looming return to the White House and GOP control of Congress.
President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and the divided 118th Congress have faced intense criticism for giving Israel diplomatic and weapons support to kill at least 45,581 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip over the past 15 months and attack Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. The outgoing Democratic administration and lawmakers have also faced backlash for their response to anti-war protests, particularly on U.S. university campuses, some of which were met with police brutality.
However, recent reporting in the United States and Israel has highlighted fear about promises from Trump and his Republican Party that, as the Israeli newspaper Haaretz put it last week, a “quick and complete” crackdown “on pro-Palestinian sentiment in America will be a defining factor of his administration’s early days.”
“The Palestinian rights movement is very clear-eyed in understanding that it is very likely that this Trump administration will mean that things get much worse for Palestinians.”
Beth Miller, political director of the advocacy group Jewish Voice for Peace Action, told Politico on Wednesday that “the Palestinian rights movement is very clear-eyed in understanding that it is very likely that this Trump administration will mean that things get much worse for Palestinians.”
“This administration will likely be coming very quickly to try to take down the Palestinian rights movement,” Miller added.
Leaders with the Adalah Justice Project and Arab American Institute also noted concerns about efforts to silence advocates and even dismantle organizations—some of which are already underway. In November, 15 House Democrats joined all but one Republican in voting for the so-called Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act (H.R. 9495).
The legislation would enable the U.S. Treasury Department to revoke the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit it deems a “terrorist-supporting organization” without due process. Advocates for various causes have condemned what they call the “nonprofit killer bill.”
Although H.R. 9495 never made it through the Democrat-held Senate, Republicans are set to take over the chamber on Friday. The GOP will also retain control of the House, which during this session has repeatedly voted to conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism, or discrimination against Jews.
In addition to likely facing a new wave of legislative attacks—potentially spearheaded by GOP leaders like incoming House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Brian Mast (R-Fla.), a U.S. military veteran who has volunteered with the Israel Defense Forces and denied the existence of “innocent Palestinian civilians”—rights advocates in the United States could be targeted by key officials in the next Trump administration.
As Haaretz recently detailed, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, Trump’s second choice to lead the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ); Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), his nominee for secretary of state; and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), his candidate for ambassador to the United Nations, have expressed support for deporting pro-Palestinian protesters who have student visas.
Although former federal prosecutor Kash Patel, Trump’s pick to direct the Federal Bureau of Investigation, “doesn’t have much of a record on campus protests, he is most notorious for his desire to remove any of Trump’s critics and doubters from the national security apparatus,” the newspaper noted. “Further, Patel’s experience as the National Security Council’s senior director of counterterrorism during Trump’s first term positions him to crack down on pro-Palestinian sympathizers.”
Aggressively anti-Palestinian appointees, who tend to describe all campus protesters as Hamas supporters, will soon steer both foreign and domestic policy, creating a Trump administration united in seeking a crackdown on the pro-Palestinian movement. www.haaretz.com/israel-news/…
Haaretz also highlighted comments from Harmeet Dhillon, Trump’s pick to lead the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, and Linda McMahon, his nominee for education secretary, as well as Project Esther: A National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism—an October proposal from the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank that is also behind the sweeping Project 2025 policy agenda.
“The virulently anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and anti-American groups comprising the so-called pro-Palestinian movement inside the United States are exclusively pro-Palestine and—more so—pro-Hamas,” states the Project Esther report. “They are part of a highly organized, global Hamas Support Network (HSN) and therefore effectively a terrorist support network.”
Two co-chairs of the Heritage-backed National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, James Carafano and Ellie Cohanim, wrote earlier this week at the Washington Examiner that “Project Esther is a blueprint to save the U.S. from those utilizing antisemitism to destroy it.”
“The objective is to dismantle the infrastructure by denying it the resources required for its antisemitic activity,” they argued. “Targeting the groups and organizations that receive the funding and deploy it to their grassroots followers who engage in antisemitic activity, the useful idiots we see on college campuses, for example, will divorce the means from the opportunity, thereby rendering these activists incapable of threatening U.S. citizens.”
Posting the piece on X—the social media platform owned by billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk—Carafano declared that “when Donald Trump starts to take on the global intifada he will need partners. We will need to be there.”
