Trump adviser stays silent on whether incoming president will pardon himself: Live

Leaders in the construction business, including Republicans, are worried that Donald Trump’s plans to carry out a mass deportation of undocumented immigrants will crater their industry, given its reliance on migrant workers.

“We will absolutely have a labor shortage,” developer George Fuller, mayor of McKinney Texas, a Dallas suburb that’s undergone a construction boom in recent years, toldThe Wall Street Journal. “Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, these industries depend on immigrant labor.”

Josh Marcus reports from San Francisco.

The Trump-Vance transition team has entering into a Memorandum of Understanding with the U.S. Department of Justice, and released the following statement:

Today, the Trump-Vance Transition has entered into a Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) with the U.S. Department of Justice. This is the next step in the ongoing preparation of senior administration officials for the purpose of serving in President Trump’s Administration. This allows the transition team to submit names for background checks and security clearances. Ultimately, this will afford the transition process additional insights, and it facilitates our agency landing teams gaining access to the information they need to prepare for leadership of the federal agencies and departments.

“This agreement with the Department of Justice will ensure President Trump and his team are ready on Day 1 to begin enacting the America First Agenda that an overwhelming majority of our nation supported on Election Day.” – Susie Wiles, President-elect Trump’s Chief of Staff

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Whatsapp, and Instagram, has said it “overdid it a bit” when moderating pandemic-related content on its platforms and that chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is now seeking an “active role” in shaping tech policy debates with Donald Trump’s incoming administration.

The company’s president of global affairs, Sir Nick Clegg made the remarks in a briefing with journalists, as reported by The Financial Times.

He said Zuckerberg was keen to play “an active role in the debates that any administration needs to have about maintaining America’s leadership in the technological sphere.”

Clegg added that leadership “is tremendously important given all the geostrategic uncertainties around the world, and particularly the pivotal role that AI will play.”

Zuckerberg recently dined with the president-elect at Mar-a-Lago.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers headed back to the state Capitol Monday to begin steeling themselves for another Donald Trump presidency and to kick off a special session aimed at protecting the state’s progressive policies from his administration.

The Democratic governor, long a Trump foe, is maneuvering to position his huge, powerful state to once again be the center of a resistance effort against Trump’s extremely conservative agenda.

Former New York mayor and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani never ended up filing his response to a motion for contempt in his defamation case that was due yesterday, after he was accused of repeatedly defaming election workers despite a court order that blocks him from doing so.

Now the election workers’ attorneys are reminding the judge that she said his failure to reply will “be treated as conceding that motion.”

The judge should “grant the Motion for Civil Contempt as conceded, should enter an order that Mr. Giuliani is in civil contempt, and the December 12, 2024 hearing should be narrowed to focus on the appropriate civil contempt sanction for Mr. Giuliani’s violation of the consent injunction,” they wrote.

Here’s our latest reporting on the case:

With former Fox News host Pete Hegseth’s appointment as defense secretary suddenly in doubt amid a bevy of startling stories detailing his alleged sexual misconduct, boorish behavior and financial malfeasance, the right-wing network he called home for nearly a decade is doing what it typically does in these instances.

That is, it’s hushing up.

Meanwhile, another conservative cable channel that has long sought to court favor with MAGA by running to the right of Fox News is openly calling on President-elect Donald Trump to ditch Hegseth’s nomination because the ex-Fox star simply “can’t” lead the Pentagon amid the growing scandals.

Jason Miller, one of Donald Trump’s top advisers, continues his media tour today after appearances on CNN and Fox News this morning.

On  the right-wing Newsmax network, Miller spoke about plans for aggressive action in the first 100 days of the new Trump administration.

“President Trump is … moving really fast here. I mean, even by Thanksgiving, he had his entire cabinet picked,” Miller said, noting that work was already underway on executive orders and policies that can be implemented as soon as Trump takes office.

These include “day one priorities” such as energy and securing the border.

“This first 100 days is going to be nonstop. There’s so many things that he’s ready to do. Because, again, we’ve never had a second-term president step in that is ready to go,” said Miller.

“In fact, we’ve never had a first-term president, never had president in history who’s so ready to go on day one, who knows exactly what they want to do. So, if you voted for President Trump, [you] should be pretty enthused that we’re gonna have the country back on track.”

Judicial Watch, owned by conservative activist Tom Fitton, filed an open records request in Georgia for “[a]ll documents and communications sent to, received from, or relating to Special Counsel Jack Smith” and “[a]ll documents and communication sent to or received from the United States House January 6th Committee” by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in relation to the sprawling racketeering case brought against Donald Trump and his co-defendants.

The records custodian said that just… doesn’t exist. So he filed a complaint alleging that Willis was violating open records laws. She appears to have never responded to any of it, and a judge just awarded default judgment in favor of Judicial Watch.

Here’s the judge’s order:

By finding Defendant in default, the Court has in effect declared that she has violated the ORA. The Court also hereby ORDERS Defendant to conduct a diligent search of her records for responsive materials within five business days of the entry of this Order. Within that same five-day period, Defendant is ORDERED to provide Plaintiff with copies of all responsive records that are not legally exempted or excepted from disclosure. If Defendant is required or decides to withhold all or part of a requested record, she should follow the procedures set forth in the ORA … If the records are stored electronically, they may be produced electronically in a commonly used format such as PDF. The Court expects that such production will include the correspondence identified by Plaintiff in its complaint. If it does not, Defendant is further ORDERED to provide an explanation why such correspondence does not exist in Defendant’s records (or why it is being withheld). Beyond that, no other relief, injunctive or otherwise, is necessary at this time (to include striking Defendant’s answer, which is of no effect based on the Court’s finding of default).

This raises the question that if such communications do not exist, how can you show that?