January 11, 2025 - Presidential transition news

We’ve wrapped up our live coverage for the day. Read more on President-elect Donald Trump’s transition here.

Candidates vying to be chair of the Democratic National Committee attended the first party-run forum Saturday, focused on how the national party can improve their chances in Southern states.

Eight Democrats participated in the forum, including leading candidates Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Chair Ken Martin, Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley.

Asked what the biggest mistake the DNC made in 2024, Wikler said the party needs to communicate better — across conservative media and through a progressive media environment.

Other candidates’ answers varied. Marianne Williamson — who made an unsuccessful 2024 presidential bid — said the biggest mistake Democrats made was preventing a competitive primary.

Meanwhile, O’Malley said Democrats didn’t focus enough on economic issues. And New York state Sen. James Skoufis said Democrats need to “throw out the old stale DC playbook that should have been thrown out, quite frankly, about a decade or so ago.”

Read more here.

With several of Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks set to have their Senate confirmation hearings next week, the president-elect on Saturday named three additional people to deputy roles in the Interior and Transportation departments and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Here are the picks.

David Fotouhi for deputy EPA administrator: At the tail end of Trump’s first term, Fotouhi was the EPA’s acting general counsel after having worked within the department for all four years. He is currently a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher law firm, according to his LinkedIn page.

Trump has chosen former New York Rep. Lee Zeldin to lead the agency. If he is confirmed, one of his first tasks will likely be starting the process to overturn several of the Biden EPA’s biggest rules on climate.

Katharine MacGregor for deputy interior secretary: MacGregor previously held this role during the last year of Trump’s first term. She worked within the department for all four years of his term, according to her LinkedIn page. MacGregor currently serves as the vice president of environmental services at NextEra Energy, a renewable energy company.

Trump has selected North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum as his pick for secretary of the Department of the Interior. The agency oversees natural resources, public lands and Indian affairs.

Steven Bradbury for deputy transportation secretary: Bradbury was the Transportation Department’s general counsel during Trump’s first administration. During his confirmation hearing for that role, late Sen. John McCain refused to support Bradbury over his support of torture practices during the George W. Bush administration.

Trump has named former congressman and recent Fox Business co-host Sean Duffy as his pick to lead the Department of Transportation. The department oversees infrastructure and the Duffy, if confirmed, will inherit number of safety-related issues regarding aviation and threats of airline labor union strike.

Special Counsel Jack Smith is pictured in Washington, DC, on August 1, 2023.

Special counsel Jack Smith has resigned from the Justice Department effective Friday, according to a court filing.

The filing comes amid a legal fight to stop Attorney General Merrick Garland from releasing the special counsel’s report of his investigations into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and the alleged mishandling of classified documents after Trump left office.

Smith gave his final, two-volume report to the attorney general on Tuesday. Garland has indicated he will not release the part of the report regarding the classified documents investigation.

Smith’s office has been in the wind-down process for weeks, and his resignation before Trump takes office isn’t unexpected. In addition to finalizing its report and sending it to the attorney general, Smith’s team had also handed off an ongoing appeal over the special counsel’s office powers to other attorneys at the Department of Justice and dismissed the two federal criminal cases against Trump because of his return to the presidency.

The attorney general has also told congressional committee leaders he intends to give to them confidential access to Smith’s volume on the classified documents case — making this weekend and next week a crucial window for Garland’s intentions of transparency.

In the meantime, the Justice Department is battling in court with Trump and his former co-defendants over whether Smith’s report can be made public, with the clock ticking down to the the January 20 inauguration. Trump is planning to appoint some members of his defense team, who have argued in court against publication, to high-level positions at the Justice Department.

Read more on Smith’s resignation here.

This post has been updated with additional reporting.

Pope Francis prays as he presides over an Epiphany Mass in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican on January 6.

President Joe Biden spoke Saturday with Pope Francis and awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction, the nation’s highest civilian honor, the White House said.

Biden was scheduled to travel this week to Rome, where the White House said he was expected to meet with Pope Francis, as well as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Italian President Sergio Mattarella. Biden canceled his trip to remain in the United States because of the California wildfires.

This is the first and only time that the president has awarded the Medal of Freedom with Distinction during his presidency, the White House said.

The citation for the award prepared by the White House says that Pope Francis is “the People’s Pope” and a “a light of faith, hope, and love that shines brightly across the world.”

The moment comes in the final days of Biden’s presidency. Last week, he awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 19 people, including former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and designer Ralph Lauren.

Former Vice President Mike Pence and President-elect Donald Trump shake hands as Trump arrives at the funeral for former President Jimmy Carter in Washington, DC, on January 9.

Former Vice President Mike Pence said the funeral of Jimmy Carter on Thursday was the first time he and President-elect Donald Trump had been in the same place since they left office in 2021.

Pence said he congratulated Trump when the two spoke at the funeral.

“He greeted me when he came down the aisle. I stood up, extended my hand. He shook my hand. I said, ‘Congratulations, Mr. President,’ and he said, ‘Thanks, Mike,’” Pence told Christianity Today in an interview Friday.

Pence also addressed the lack of interaction between his wife, Karen, and Trump.

Law enforcement personnel patrol the United States side of the Rio Grande in El Paso, Texas, on January 2.

President-elect Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan has privately told Republican lawmakers to temper their expectations for the incoming administration’s initial deportation operation, citing limited resources, according to multiple sources involved in the conversations.

While Trump’s allies have floated measures to detain and deport people residing in the US illegally, the plans largely depend on the resources and funds available to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which historically has had budget shortfalls.

The discussions are part of a broader level-setting that is occurring among House Republicans, who are now coming to terms with the challenges of turning one of their key campaign promises into a reality.

Trump has vowed to launch the largest deportation operation in history, telling Time Magazine in December he believes there will be “probably 15 and maybe as many as 20 million” undocumented immigrants in the US by the time he takes office.

In recent meetings with House Republicans, Homan, a veteran of immigration enforcement, has outlined a tiered approach to Trump’s mass deportation pledge, according to lawmakers and sources involved in the discussions.

Read more here.

The chair and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee were briefed Friday night on the FBI background check of Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Defense, according to a source familiar.

Per the current practices of the committee, only Chair Roger Wicker, the Republican senator from Mississippi, and Ranking Member Jack Reed, a Democratic Rhode Island senator, will receive the briefing. Senators read the report while an FBI official remains on hand to answer any subsequent questions.

NBC News first reported the briefing.

An American flag waves over a wildfire-burnt structure in Los Angeles on January 8.

As historic wildfires engulfed California this week, President-elect Donald Trump — who will be inaugurated for a second time in days — made inaccurate assertions about the deadly climate calamity.

Trump claimed on social media Wednesday that President Joe Biden is leaving him “NO MONEY IN FEMA.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. Though FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund was depleted last year by a series of major disasters, Biden signed a bill in December that replenished the fund. “The current balance of the Disaster Relief Fund is approximately $27 billion,” FEMA told CNN in an email on Wednesday. That sum may well prove inadequate to meet the needs created by every disaster that ends up happening this year, but it’s not “no money.”

The December bill approved $29 billion in new money for the Disaster Relief Fund – Biden had asked Congress for $40 billion – plus billions more in other new disaster-related funding.

“Thanks to Congress’s recent passage of a disaster supplemental, FEMA has the funding and resources needed to respond to the needs of California,” the agency said in the Wednesday email.

Read CNN’s fact check of Trump’s comments on the wildfires here.

The stage is prepared at the United Center ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on August 15.

The process of choosing a new Democratic National Committee chair will officially kick off Saturday, when eight candidates meet virtually in the first party-run forum of the race. With three weeks to go before the February 1 election, no candidate has locked up support from a majority of the 448 party insiders who’ll choose the next party leader.

The chair race marks the first major decision Democrats will make after facing disastrous losses in last year’s general election. The contest to lead the party, and the various unofficial forums and small group meetings that preceded Saturday’s event, have become a space for Democrats to hash out what went wrong, how to reach the voters who abandoned the party in November and how the millions of dollars spent in lost swing states might have been better used.

The candidates: Despite early reports that some high-profile names were considering joining the race, the current field of eight candidates – led by Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party chair Ken Martin, Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley – is made up of figures who are not well known nationally.

What’s next: Saturday’s forum will be focused on the issues of the South. The DNC will then hold three additional forums: one in Detroit on January 16 focused on the Midwest; one virtually on January 23 focused on the West; and a final in-person event in Washington, DC, on January 30, focused on the East.

Read more here.

President-elect Donald Trump announced via Truth Social on Friday that he is tapping Ed Russo and Bill Briggs to serve as head of the Environmental Advisory Task Force and Deputy Administrator of the Small Business Administration, respectively.

Russo, who served as an environmental consultant to the Trump Organization for 17 years, will helm a new group that, Trump says, “will advise my Administration on initiatives to create great jobs and protect our natural resources, by following my policy of CLEAN AIR and CLEAN WATER.”

“Together, we will achieve American Energy Dominance, rebuild our Economy, and DRILL, BABY, DRILL,” Trump added on Truth Social.

Briggs, meanwhile, will serve under former Georgia Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, Trump’s pick for SBA administrator. He previously worked in the SBA’s Office of Capital Access during Trump’s first term, and – according to Trump – helped oversee the Paycheck Protection Program during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Briggs, along with Loeffler, will “secure the American Dream for Small Businesses, which are the backbone of our economy,” Trump said.

The Republican-controlled Senate will first need to confirm Briggs, with confirmation hearings for some of Trump’s picks set to begin Tuesday. Russo, on the other hand, will not be subject to a confirmation hearing.

Pete Hegseth arrives for a meeting at the Hart Senate Office Building on January 8.

A number of President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks are expected to get confirmation hearings next week before the Senate. Here’s what has been scheduled so far:

Tuesday, January 14:

Wednesday, January 15

Thursday, January 16

Attorney Emil Bove, left, listens as attorney Todd Blanche and President-elect Donald Trump, seen on a television screen, appear virtually for sentencing, at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York on January 10.

President-elect Donald Trump was sentenced Friday after his conviction last year on 34 charges of business fraud related to hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Judge Juan Merchan sentenced Trump to unconditional discharge. The sentencing, which was expected, means Trump will remain a felon but faces no jail time, penalties or probation for his conviction in the hush money case.

The sentencing cements the fact that Trump will be the first convicted felon to become president.

Here’s what happened in court:

Prosecutor’s recommendation: Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass recommended a sentence of unconditional discharge for Trump “under all the circumstances of this case, this unique posture and the defendant’s status as president-elect.” The prosecutor told the court that Trump has been “far from expressing any kind of remorse for his criminal conduct” and “encouraged others to reject the jury verdict.” He acknowledged that any other conditional discharge has the potential to interfere with Trump’s obligations to the office of the presidency.

Plans to appeal verdict: Following Steinglass’ comments in court, Trump attorney Todd Blanche said, “A lot of what the government just said presupposes that this case is legally appropriate,” while noting that Trump’s lawyers intend to appeal the verdict. Blanche, who is Trump’s pick for deputy attorney general, argued for the president-elect, saying he disagrees with prosecutors, while Trump looked forward without reacting to what his attorney was saying to the judge.

Trump’s statement: Trump began his statement at today’s hearing saying that “this has been a very terrible experience” and insisted he is innocent. “It’s been a political witch hunt, it was done to damage my reputation,” Trump said. Trump went after the indictment and the charges of falsifying business records — after he chose not to testify at the trial. He said legal fees were not put down by him, but by his accountants. The president-elect also discussed his 2024 election victory, saying in court that he won the popular vote by “millions and millions of votes.”

Listen to the hearing: The court released audio of the proceedings shortly after the hearing. Listen to Trump and Judge Juan Merchan in the recording here.

How we got here: The president-elect successfully used the courts to delay the hearing, which was originally set for July, and urged the US Supreme Court to pause his sentencing in the case — a highly unusual request that relies in part on the court’s decision last year to grant him broad immunity from criminal prosecution. On Thursday, the high court rejected Trump’s emergency request to delay the sentencing.