Trump accuses Iowa pollster of ‘possible election fraud’ as controversy grows over cupboard picks: Live updates

Speaker Mike Johnson posted photos of the “fun break” he enjoyed as part of Trump’s entourage to Madison Square Garden on Saturday night.

Connie Schultz, the Pulitzer Prize winning columnist who spent much of her career at The Cleveland Plain Dealer shared what it was like on Election Night when her husband, Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, learned that his time representing the Buckeye State was coming to an end.

Brown was one of the few remaining high-profile progressive voices left representing Ohio as the state shifted red in 2016. He took office in 2006 after he defeated now Ohio Governor Mike DeWine. His 2024 opponent, Republican Bernie Moreno, a car dealer, defeated him on Election Day.

Shultz recalled in a post on her Substack the complicated and often awkward early days of her relationship with Brown. As a columnist at a major Ohio newspaper, dating a politician raised ethical questions in the world of journalism and drew a lot of attention.

Graig Graziosi reports.

He told Fox News‘ Maria Bartiromo that he and Musk were planning to make “deep cuts” unlike any in recent history.

“Elon and I aren’t in this for the credit,” Ramaswamy said on Sunday. “But I think we’re gonna build the consensus to make the kind of deep cuts that haven’t been made for most of our history.”

Bartiromo asked specifically about the Department of Education, and if Ramaswamy and Musk were planning on shutting down departments.

In response, he said: “We expect mass reductions. We expect certain agencies to be deleted outright.”

John Bowden reports.

“My client testified to the House Ethics Committee that she witnessed Matt Gaetz having sex with a minor,” Leppard told the outlet.

Gaetz denies any wrongdoing.

Read the full story below.

This week, a report emerged revealing police investigated Hegseth for alleged sexual misconduct in Monterey, California in 2017.

The Post, citing a statement from Hegseth’s attorney Timothy Parlatore, reported that Hegseth was “visibly intoxicated” when he encountered a woman in Monterey seven years ago.

Parlatore said in this statement that the woman contacted the police, and they concluded, “the Complainant had been the aggressor in the encounter.”

However, Monterey police did not confirm this to the Post.

Hegseth later agreed to pay the woman as part of an NDA because he was concerned he’d be fired by Fox News, the Post reports. The NDA and payment came after she threatened to litigate further in 2020, the Post reports, citing Hegseth’s attorney.

Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung told the Post that Hegseth “vigorously denies” all wrongdoing.

Katie Hawkinson has the full story.

A post made by the department’s account said it was looking for the “top 1 percent” of X applicants who have a “super high-IQ” and are “small-government revolutionaries” to work 80-plus hour weeks identifying allegedly wasteful government spending.

Based on one of Musk’s replies, it appears these super smart government gutters won’t actually be paid for their work.

“Indeed, this will be tedious work, make lots of enemies, & compensation is zero,” Musk wrote. “What a great deal!”

Graig Graziosi reports.

In addition to the 15 officials Trump will choose to join his cabinet, there are hundreds of positions, including ambassadors and lower-level roles, that typically require Senate approval.

Nominees face a grilling during the Senate confirmation process as it typically requires them to submit financial disclosures and testify before a committee.

Members from both political parties get a chance to interrogate nominees about their plans for the post and their backgrounds.

The Senate committee votes on the nominee following the hearing and if it passes, it then goes to the full Senate for a vote.

However, Trump has signaled he could bypass the process via recess appointments.

“Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted LEADERSHIP position in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments (in the Senate!), without which we will not be able to get people confirmed in a timely manner,” Trump wrote in a social media post on X last weekend before John Thune was confirmed as the next majority leader, replacing the outgoing Mitch McConnell.

Recess appointments would allow Trump to make administration appointments without a vote in the Senate while the upper chamber is in recess. The process is not unconstitutional, and it has been done before by other administrations.

Ruben Gallego, the senator-elect from Arizona, said on CNN’s State of the Union that Democrats too readily dismissed real economic hardships for lower and middle income Americans in favor of statistics purporting the economy to be getting better overall.

He explained to host Jake Tapper that he’d seen the results of inflation in his neighborhood — people increasingly buying offbrand groceries rather than higher-quality items, and feeling the hurt in their checking accounts regardless. Gallego also pointed to credit card debt, which is at an all-time high across the United States, as evidence that many people are still suffering from residual financial stresses stemming from the Covid pandemic.

“Yes, costs were going down. [But] people were still paying down credit card debt that they used, basically, to survive,” he said.

John Bowden has the details.

Trump has announced Brendan Carr as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

Below is the president-elect’s full statement:

“I am pleased to announce that Commissioner Brendan Carr will be Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Commissioner Carr currently serves as the senior Republican on the FCC. Before that, he was the FCC’s General Counsel. I first nominated Commissioner Carr to the FCC in 2017, and he has been confirmed unanimously by the United States Senate three times.

His current term runs through 2029 and, because of his great work, I will now be designating him as permanent Chairman. Commissioner Carr is a warrior for Free Speech, and has fought against the regulatory Lawfare that has stifled Americans’ Freedoms, and held back our Economy.

He will end the regulatory onslaught that has been crippling America’s Job Creators and Innovators, and ensure that the FCC delivers for rural America. Commissioner Carr has served at the FCC since 2012, including as an Advisor to then FCC Chairman, Ajit Pai. Earlier in his career, Commissioner Carr worked as an attorney specializing in Appellate, Litigation, and Regulatory matters.

Previously, Commissioner Carr clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit for Judge Dennis Shedd. After attending Georgetown University for his undergrad, Commissioner Carr earned his J.D. Magna Cum Laude from the Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law where he served as an Editor of the Catholic University Law Review. Congratulations to Chairman Brendan Carr on a job well done. Lead us into a great future, Brendan!”

Elon Musk, the Twitter/X/Tesla/SpaceX CEO and top Trump booster, has been increasingly hanging around Mar-a-Lago and the president-elect himself in the days since Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election.

Having put a considerable sum behind backing Republicans this cycle, Musk seems eager for a return on his investment — he is now publicly urging the incoming president towards one of the two men seen as finalists for the job of Treasury secretary.

On Saturday — the same day he appeared alongside the president-elect at the UFC championship at Madison Square Garden — Musk made his appeal public.

John Bowden reports.