November 11, 2024 - US election news

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President-elect Donald Trump has made several selections as he works to build out his new administration.

By late Monday, he appeared close to rounding out his national security team as two sources told CNN he is likely to pick Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as his secretary of state. He has already chosen Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik as his US ambassador to the United Nations. And a source told CNN that he’s asked Florida Republican Rep. Mike Waltz to be his national security adviser

Trump also picked former New York Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin to serve as his administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

On Sunday night, Trump announced that Tom Homan, who served as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in his last administration, will be in charge of the nation’s borders.

Trump’s first key announcement was last week when he said that campaign manager, Susie Wiles, would be his White House chief of staff.

Here’s what else we know about Trump’s potential new team:

This post has been updated with additional reporting on Trump’s staffing.

GOP Rep. David Schweikert will hold on to his seat in Arizona’s 1st Congressional District, fending off a challenge from Democratic opponent Dr. Amish Shah.

Schweikert, a top target of House Democrats in their bid to win back control of the chamber, will start his eighth term in January.

He represents a district, which includes parts of north Phoenix and Scottsdale, that went for President Joe Biden in 2020.

The National Republican Congressional Committee spent more than $1 million in TV and digital ads to defend the seat.

Schweikert, a businessman and member of the House Ways and Means Committee, had touted his work on authoring and cosponsoring the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

The Republican congressman was the subject of a two-year House Ethics Committee investigation that in 2020 found there was “substantial reason to believe” that he violated House rules and federal laws.

The committee determined that Schweikert’s violations included campaign finance violations and reporting errors by his authorized campaign committees, the misuse of his “members’ representational allowance” for unofficial purposes.

Schweikert admitted to 11 counts of violations, paid a $50,000 fine, and accepted a sanction of reprimand.

Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego will win a closely watched US Senate seat in Arizona, CNN projects, defeating Republican Kari Lake to become the state’s first Hispanic senator.

Gallego will succeed retiring independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a onetime Democrat who still caucuses with her former party.

The crucial Senate race in Arizona pitted Gallego, a fifth-term congressman who rebranded himself as a moderate in the general election, against Lake, an unsuccessful gubernatorial nominee and close Donald Trump ally who pushed false conspiracies about the 2020 election and her own loss two years later.

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Analyst on what Trump likely picking Rubio for secretary of state reveals about his foreign policy

02:18 • Source: CNN

Analyst on what Trump likely picking Rubio for secretary of state reveals about his foreign policy

02:18

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s possible selection to be secretary of state would signal Donald Trump’s willingness to aggravate China right out of the gates.

Rubio — who has spent more than a decade focused on the “China threat” theory — was sanctioned along with five other US lawmakers by the Chinese government in 2020 for “behaving badly on Hong Kong-related issues.” Now, current and former US officials say that China is likely going to have to remove those sanctions in order to deal with him.

“Getting Rubio is worse for China than getting (Mike) Pompeo again,” said a former Trump administration official.

With Trump likely to pick Rubio as his top diplomat and asking Florida Rep. Mike Waltz — another lawmaker who is known to be a China hawk — to serve as his national security adviser, the message to China is becoming clear: the Trump administration is likely to prioritize tough China policies.

China experts are waiting on the key appointment of Treasury secretary before making any final assessment.

There are several names being batted around for the Treasury role, including Scott Bessent, who prepared Trump for his economic club speeches.

The Chinese embassy in Washington, DC, did not immediately respond when asked whether China would lift the sanctions currently in place on Rubio if he becomes Trump’s secretary of state.

President-elect Donald Trump is expected to meet with House Speaker Mike Johnson and the newly elected Senate Majority Leader Wednesday while in Washington, according to a source.

Republicans are set to hold an election for the position on Wednesday.

Trump will also visit the White House that day to meet with President Joe Biden.

George Whitesides is seen at Machinists Hall on Sunday, October 13, in Palmdale, California.

Democrat George Whitesides will win California’s 27th Congressional District, CNN projects, knocking off Republican incumbent Mike Garcia.

Garcia, who was first elected in a 2020 special election, conceded the race Monday night. He had been a Democratic target for several cycles in his blue-leaning seat in the Los Angeles area. President Joe Biden would have carried the seat under the current lines by 12 points four years ago.

Whitesides was chief of staff for NASA in the Obama administration and has also served as CEO of the space tourism venture Virgin Galactic.

Marco Rubio speaks at the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on July 16.

President-elect Donald Trump is likely to pick Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as his secretary of state, two people familiar with his thinking told CNN, as he rounds out his national security team.

Rubio, who was in the running to be vice president, had made it clear that he was interested in potentially joining Trump’s Cabinet if it was for the right role, several sources familiar with the process told CNN.

Given his deep foreign policy experience and how he sits on both the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee, the State Department seemed like a good fit for him. Rubio also hails from Florida and has a close relationship with the incoming chief of staff, Susie Wiles.

A source familiar said that as of this morning, the belief was that Trump was leaning toward Richard Grenell, but over the course of the day he shifted his preference to Rubio after a number of calls and conversations with allies of the Florida senator. Grennell served as Trump’s ambassador to Germany and later as acting Director of National Intelligence during his first administration.

Until an offer is formally made, a second source advised, Trump could change his mind.

The New York Times first reported on Trump’s expected offer.

A Rubio spokesperson declined to comment.

The headline and post have been updated with additional details about the hiring process.

Ron Dermer speaks during the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Leadership Meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Saturday, November 6, 2021.

President-elect Donald Trump met with Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer at Mar-a-Lago on Sunday to discuss Middle East issues, including the Gaza and Lebanon wars and Iran, before heading to Washington for talks with President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, according to a person familiar with the meeting.

The meeting was intended in part to gauge Trump’s initial views of the various regional issues as he prepares to take office, the source told CNN.

Axios first reported Dermer’s meeting with Trump.

Vice President-elect JD Vance was back at Mar-a-Lago on Monday, where he met with President-elect Donald Trump and spoke with the transition team, according to two sources familiar with his plans.

One of the honorary chairs of the Trump transition team, Vance has also been involved in some transition discussions, the sources said.

This weekend Vance spent some down time with his family. As CNN previously reported, Vance was on Capitol Hill on Friday giving a tour to his son’s Cub Scouts troop.

While Vance was tight lipped about transition work on the campaign trail — due to superstition — he said that he was helping with the attorney general pick, which, in his view, would be more important than his role as vice president.

Sep 26, 2024; Washington, DC, USA; Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., speaks during a congressional task force hearing on the assassination attempt of former President Donald J. Trump in Butler, Pa. on July 13, 2024.. Mandatory Credit: Jack Gruber/USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images/Sipa USA

President-elect Donald Trump has asked Florida Republican Rep. Mike Waltz to be his national security adviser, according to a source familiar.

In the role, Waltz would have to navigate a number of geopolitical conflicts that Trump’s administration will assume as part of his second term, including the Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Hamas wars.

The congressman had been seen in Palm Beach, Florida, home to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, in recent days.

This post has been updated with additional details.

Lawmakers will be back on Capitol Hill on Tuesday as Republicans in the Senate prepare to elect a new leader on Wednesday.

The Senate will gavel in Tuesday afternoon with votes later in the day and House members return to vote for the first time since the election.

Here’s what to watch for:

Tuesday:

Wednesday:

Virginia Democratic Rep.-elect Eugene Vindman appears on CNN on Monday, November 11.

Virginia Democratic Rep.-elect Eugene Vindman said that he thinks it is “very unlikely” Donald Trump will be able to make good on his claim that he could settle Russia’s war in Ukraine “in one day.”

He said Russia’s objective in Ukraine is to make sure they “get as much territory” as possible and described the current relationship between Russia, Ukraine and the US as “quite fraught.”

Vindman, a former lawyer with the National Security Council, is the twin brother of retired US Army Col. Alexander Vindman, one of the high-profile witnesses during former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment.

Trump has repeatedly praised Putin — and criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, with whom he has a complicated history. He also previously suggested he will end US support for Ukraine’s war effort. And he told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, “If I’m president, I will have that war settled in one day, 24 hours.”

Putin congratulated Trump on winning the presidency and said that he would be willing to talk with the president-elect, saying that Trump’s “desire to rebuild relations with Russia to facilitate an end to the Ukrainian crisis … deserve attention at the very least.”

CNN also reported that tech tycoon Elon Musk joined a call between Trump and Zelensky the day after the presidential election, according to a source with knowledge of the situation. Vindman said that he is concerned about Musk’s influence because he has his own personal interests.

“He has Starlink that’s operating in Ukraine. He has enormous US government contracts,” Vindman said. “I’m concerned about it.”

Donald Trump is holding a casting call to fill the toughest job in Washington: attorney general.

Trump and his team have cited the attorney general as the most important Cabinet position if he is to make good on campaign promises, which include immigration-related executive orders and investigations of his political enemies.

In his first term, he fired one attorney general and soured on another. He also fired an FBI director, and two US attorneys in Manhattan, who oversaw investigations associated with Trump.

This time, Justice Department employees including special counsel Jack Smith are among those on the list of possible targets for political retribution, as are lawyers and investigators associated with Trump-related and January 6 probes, Trump and some of his supporters have said.

One Justice employee told CNN that people inside the department are “safety planning.” Another told CNN that some are considering whether they should hire lawyers.

A third official told CNN that there is a “general sense of depression” among attorneys who worked on legal cases that some Republican lawmakers have spoken out against, saying those attorneys are concerned their years of work will be “flushed down the drain.”

Other officials note that Trump has always struggled to understand the mechanics of the department; and that appointing special counsels, which Trump has said he wants to pursue a Biden investigation, isn’t routine.

Investigations without evidence are likely to run into trouble with judges and juries, current and former officials say. An easier course would be to use the department to turn over materials for congressional investigations.

Guatemalan immigrants deported from the US arrive in Guatemala City on February 9, 2017, on an ICE deportation flight.

Given his rhetoric demonizing undocumented immigrants and his promise to engage in mass deportations when he returns to the White House in January, it’s kind of shocking that deportations actually dropped in the four years Donald Trump was president.

It’s also surprising that President Joe Biden’s administration has kept pace and deported a similar number of people as Trump’s.

During his first term, Trump also promised mass deportations. And he did deport a large number of people — more than 1.5 million — during his four years in office, according to Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.

But that’s about half the 2.9 million deportations undertaken during Barack Obama’s first term and fewer than the 1.9 million deportations during Obama’s second term. It’s on par with Biden’s 1.49 million deportations, according to updated calculations Bush-Joseph shared with me. Those figures do not include the millions of people turned away at the border under a Covid-era policy enacted by Trump and used during most of Biden’s term.

There’s a lot of context needed to explain those figures. Biden’s deportations focus on the border, according to Bush-Joseph. The Trump and Obama figures included more deportations from the interior of the country.

Obama’s deportations focused on single men from Mexico, she said, whereas undocumented immigrants today are more likely to be traveling to the US from further afield and in family units. This complicates the process of returning them, not only logistically but also because many countries will not accept repatriations. Mexico has begun taking in people from different countries as part of an agreement with the Biden administration.

Read the full analysis about deportations here.

Melania Trump in New York on October 27.

Melania Trump is not expected to attend the traditional White House meeting with first lady Jill Biden, sources familiar with her plans said.

It’s a decision that underscores Trump’s long-held willingness to buck tradition as she prepares to retake the high-profile – but unelected – role of first lady, one with no manual and an automatic global platform.

The sources cited a prior scheduling conflict for the former first lady related to her newly released memoir. One source said the decision had not been finalized.

Jill Biden extended Melania Trump the customary invitation last week as her husband also invited the president-elect to the Oval Office, a symbolic gesture to show the country and the world that there will be a peaceful transition of power – and an implicit rebuke of Donald Trump, who refused Joe Biden the same meeting in 2020 as he contested that election’s results. The two are set to meet Wednesday at 11 a.m., according to the White House.

Read more details here about the invitation

Former New York Rep. Lee Zeldin said Monday that he is excited to get to work as President-elect Trump’s administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, telling Fox News that he will pull back “left-wing” regulations and focus on “unleashing economic prosperity” through the agency.

Zeldin said Trump cares about “conserving the enviornment” and ensuring access to clean air and water — but wants to use the EPA to pursue “energy dominance.”

“One of the biggest issues for so many Americans was the economy, and the President was talking about unleashing economic prosperity through the EPA. We have the ability to pursue energy dominance, to be able to make the United States the artificial intelligence capital of the world, to bring back American jobs to the auto industry, and so much more,” Zeldin said.

Asked about day one priorities from the agency, Zeldin said that in “the first 100 days, we have the opportunity to roll back regulations that are forcing businesses to be able to struggle, they’re forced to cut costs, internally, they are moving overseas all together.”

“There are regulations that the left wing of this country have been advocating through regulatory power that ends up causing businesses to go in the wrong direction,” he said.

Former Rep. Lee Zeldin speaks on stage on the third day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum on July 17 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

President-elect Donald Trump has selected former New York Rep. Lee Zeldin to serve as his administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Zeldin announced that he has accepted the role.

Zeldin, who lost the 2022 New York governor’s race to Kathy Hochul, has remained close to Trump, regularly appearing at Mar-a-Lago throughout his 2024 campaign.

In a statement issued shortly after Zeldin’s post, Trump said that Zeldin, “will ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses, while at the same time maintaining the highest environmental standards, including the cleanest air and water on the planet. He will set new standards on environmental review and maintenance, that will allow the United States to grow in a healthy and well-structured way.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom — a rising star in the Democratic Party and an outspoken critic of Donald Trump — is traveling to Washington, DC, this week to meet with members of President Joe Biden’s administration and the California congressional delegation, the governor’s office confirmed to CNN.

Newsom’s visit comes as his state prepares for the incoming Trump administration, which has promised a broad swathe of new policies seeking to undo much of the Biden administration’s domestic agenda, including mass deportations and wide rollbacks of policies aimed at reducing climate change.

In the meetings, “the Governor will advocate for key priorities to advance the health and well-being of all Californians — including disaster funding, the approval of state healthcare initiatives aimed at improving access to health and mental healthcare for Californians, and crucial climate waivers,” Newsom’s office said in a statement.

Last Thursday, Newsom called state lawmakers into a special session later this year in a bid to protect the state’s progressive policies on issues like abortion rights and climate change from the incoming administration and Republicans who won US Senate control and could also hold the majority in the US House.

“The freedoms we hold dear in California are under attack — and we won’t sit idle,” Newsom said in a statement.

CNN has also reached out to the White House for details on Newsom’s visit, including on whether Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris will meet with the governor.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal walks down the steps of the US Capitol Building on July 25, in Washington, DC.

House Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal said Monday that Democrats failed to sufficiently show how their agenda would improve voters’ economic status which lead to a disappointing 2024 election result.

Democratic Rep. Greg Casar, the caucus whip, pointed to some of the newly elected members, including the first out transgender person and first Iranian American to serve in Congress, and said Democrats need to learn from how these candidates ran their races and talked about key issues.

“They’re not showing up with a policy book to a gun fight,” Casar said of what the national party can learn from the Democratic winners.

Jayapal called on the party to stop relying on polling to make policy decisions.

“At the end of the day, we need to talk to voters,” Jayapal said.

Jayapal also pushed back against the criticism that progressives have moved Democrats too far to the left, a commentary that has emerged in the wake of President-elect Donald Trump’s decisive victory.