Trump adviser silent on president-elect’s pardon plans; Biden geese Hunter questions throughout Angola journey: Live

The prime minister has been posed a Brexit conundrum amid fears that Mr Trump’s plans to introduce tariffs and instigate a trade war will force Britain to choose between striking a trade deal with the incoming US president and continuing to pursue closer ties with the EU in a planned reset of Britain’s relationship with the bloc.

David Maddox reports from London.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday ducked questions on his decision to break his word and pardon his son Hunter, ignoring calls for him to explain his reversal as he was making his first presidential trip to Angola.

Dismissing shouted questions with a laugh during a meeting with Angolan President João Lourenço at the presidential palace, Biden said to the Angolan delegation “welcome to America.” Biden was not scheduled to take questions from the press during his trip to Africa, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Monday, and he has largely avoided any interaction with reporters since President-elect Donald Trump’s victory last month.

Biden’s decision to offer his son a blanket pardon for actions over the past 11 years has sparked a political uproar in Washington, after the president repeatedly told the public he would not use his extraordinary powers for the benefit of his family members. And Biden claimed that his own Justice Department had presided over a “miscarriage of justice” in prosecuting his son.

The reversal drew criticism from many Democrats, who are working to calibrate their approach to Trump as he prepares to take over the Oval Office in seven weeks, as they fear the pardon — and Biden’s claims that his son was prosecuted for political reasons — will erode their ability to push back on the incoming president’s legal moves. And it threatened to cloud Biden’s legacy as he prepares to leave office on Jan. 20.

Jason Miller, one of Donald Trump’s top advisers, was asked on CNN this morning if the president-elect would pardon himself of federal charges he faced, once he takes office on January 20, 2025.

Trump was indicted twice for federal cases last year for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election, and for taking classified documents with him when he left office and refusing to give them back.

Special counsel Jack Smith has dropped the charges in both cases but kept the possibility that they could be reinstated in the future open.

Theoretically, once he returns to office, Trump could pardon himself — though that would require an admission of wrongdoing.

Said Miller to CNN’s Kasie Hunt: “That would never be something that I would weigh in on. That would be something for the legal team to discuss. And again, President Trump did nothing wrong.”

Later in their discussion, Miller said that Trump would be sticking by his nominee for defense secretary Pete Hegseth, who has been mired in scandal almost since his nomination was announced.

He called the most recent damaging allegations about Hegseth regarding intoxication and financial mismanagement of a non-profit as “innuendo and gossip”.

Jacob Stolworthy reports.

Rachel Schraer writes:

Immediately after Donald Trump clinched a second term in the White House, mail orders of abortion pills spiked across the U.S. Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood, the country’s biggest provider of reproductive health services, saw an eightfold increase in appointments for long-acting contraceptive devices known as IUDs.

The reality of another Trump presidency appears to have stoked fears among many Americans that their access to abortion and contraception could be further restricted. But the issue stretches beyond U.S. borders. Around the world, hundreds of millions of women who had no say in Trump’s election could lose vital health services because of his decisions.

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Gustaf Kilander takes a closer look…

Donald Trump joked that Canada could become the 51st US state if it wants to avoid hefty tariffs he plans to impose on the nation, according to sources.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joined Trump for dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on Friday, for what Trump called a “very productive” three-hour dinner between the two leaders.

The meeting came days after the president-elect threatened a blanket 25 percent tariff on “all products” entering the US from Canada and Mexico – and an additional 10 percent tariff on Chinese goods.

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As Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services director pick, Robert F Kennedy Jr has vowed to ban flouride from drinking water.

But, it has emerged that, the Kennedy dynasty heir actually used to hawk bottles of drinking water with a higher concentration of fluoride than most tap water in the US.

In 2009, RFK Jr co-founded Keeper Springs bottled water in a bid to support his environmental organization the Waterkeeper Alliance, a network of groups dedicated to cleaning up polluted waterways.

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