December 21, 2024 - Presidential transition news

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President-elect Donald Trump announced Saturday that he intends to nominate Houston Rockets owner and businessman Tilman Fertitta as the US ambassador to Italy.

In 2019, after the Rockets’ then-general manager Daryl Morey posted on social media in support of protests in Hong Kong, Fertitta tried to distance the team from politics following backlash from China.

Fertitta at the time posted that Morey “does NOT speak for the @HoustonRockets. Our presence in Tokyo is all about the promotion of the @NBA internationally and we are NOT a political organization.” The Rockets were in Tokyo at the time for a preseason game.

Trump announced on Friday he planned to nominate CatholicVote President Brian Burch as the next US ambassador to Vatican City.

Lara Trump speaks during the second day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on July 16.

Former Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump said Saturday she does not want to be considered for an appointment to the US Senate seat potentially being vacated by Marco Rubio, who is the president-elect’s pick to be secretary of state.

She teased she has “a big announcement that I’m excited to share in January, so, stay tuned. I remain incredibly passionate about public service and look forward to serving our country again sometime in the future.”

Some background: Lara Trump announced earlier this month she was stepping down as co-chair of the RNC, fueling speculation she could be chosen by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to fill Rubio’s potentially vacant seat.

President-elect Trump, however, appeared to punt on an effort to get Lara Trump the seat in the face of quiet but unwavering opposition from DeSantis. In the weeks after Trump tapped Rubio for secretary of state, DeSantis had faced intense public pressure to appoint her as a replacement, with Elon Musk and other MAGA-aligned Republicans publicly lobbying for her.

Multiple sources with knowledge of their recent interactions told CNN the president-elect had made his preference known to DeSantis through private back channels. DeSantis relayed back to Donald Trump a delicate message: He had nothing against Lara Trump, but he felt the optics of appointing her to such a high-profile post were problematic and he was looking elsewhere to fill the seat.

On Monday, the president-elect told reporters he didn’t expect DeSantis to name Lara Trump to the post and distanced himself from the campaign pushing his daughter-in-law all together.

“Ron is doing a good job,” Donald Trump said. “That’s his choice, nothing to do with me.”

Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally November 2 in Gastonia, North Carolina.

Donald Trump has yet to arrive in Washington, but he is already confronting the limitations of his electoral mandate.

Trump’s eleventh-hour attempt to blow up a carefully negotiated bill to keep the government funded into March did not achieve the outcome he had sought: clearing a debt ceiling battle looming early in his next presidency.

It did, however, expose a lingering rift among House Republicans that had been hiding behind the GOP’s post-election euphoria and make clear Trump’s sway over his own party remains far from absolute. In a stunning turn, 38 Republicans defied the president-elect on Thursday. By early Saturday morning — 48 hours after Trump threatened primary challenges for anyone who supported funding the government without eliminating the debt limit — 170 House Republicans and dozens of GOP senators voted for just that.

The chaotic episode one month before Trump returns to the White House foreshadowed the challenges ahead for the president-elect as he navigates a narrow House majority and a Senate full of people who expect to outlast the president-elect’s four years in Washington.

Trump has asserted his decisive November victory should clear any roadblocks standing in the way of his agenda. He has demanded fealty from fellow Republicans while often overstating the breadth of his win. Though he is the first Republican in a generation to win the popular vote, Trump ended up with less than 50% of the country behind him.

“The beauty is that we won by so much,” Trump told Time Magazine in a recent interview. “The mandate was massive.”

But in the last month, Trump has already faced several high-profile defeats at the hands of his own party.

Read more here.

President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday announced three new appointments for his incoming administration.

Trump announced in social media posts that he would select Chad Mizelle to serve as chief of staff at the Department of Justice and Aaron Reitz to serve as head of the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, which issues internal opinions that guide the executive branch on some of the thorniest legal questions.

Mizelle previous served as the top attorney at the Department of Homeland Security during Trump’s first term. His wife is also a Trump-appointed federal judge in Florida.

Reitz is Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s chief of staff and previously worked in Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office, which Trump highlighted in his post, saying Reitz “led dozens of successful lawsuits against the lawless and crooked Biden Administration.”

Trump also named David Fink to serve as head of the Federal Railroad Administration, declaring that Fink “will deliver the FRA into a new era of safety and technological innovation.” Railroad safety became a flashpoint during Trump’s campaign when he visited East Palestine, Ohio, in the wake of the train derailment there in February 2023 and criticized his then-opponent, President Joe Biden, for not visiting the site at the time.

Donald Trump, right, talks with television producer Mark Burnett during the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC, in 2017.

President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday named reality TV producer and former MGM Television chairman Mark Burnett as special envoy to the United Kingdom.

Burnett produced Trump’s reality TV show, “The Apprentice,” which made Trump a household name.

Trump previously announced that investment banker Warren Stephens was his pick to serve as ambassador to the UK.

When Spotify CEO Daniel Ek spoke by phone with Donald Trump, he came prepared.

Ek shared statistics with the president-elect about how well his preelection podcast interview with Joe Rogan performed on the streaming platform, a source familiar with the discussion told CNN — a subtle way to stroke Trump’s ego during their introductory call.

Ek is one of at least 10 CEOs who’ve spoken with Trump or trekked down to Mar-a-Lago to meet with him since the election — often bringing along a $1 million check for his inauguration. The C-suite parade is one of the spoils of Trump’s November victory, and it reflects many chief executives’ desires to get a seat at the table with a president-elect who has power to push policies that can significantly affect their bottom lines.

The strongest example of that power — and the influence business leaders can have to shape it — was on display this week when Elon Musk led the charge to tank a government funding deal, plunging Congress into a last-minute scramble that only narrowly averted a shutdown.

The CEOs courting Trump don’t necessarily have the same megaphone as Musk, who used his X platform to threaten GOP lawmakers on the spending deal earlier this week, but the president-elect’s meetings equate to a who’s who of blue-chip tech executives, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Alphabet Inc. co-founder Sergey Brin, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Read more about how CEOs are trying to curry favor with Trump here.

RFK Stadium in Washington, DC, is closed to the public on October 5, 2023.

In a surprise move early Saturday morning, Congress passed a bill giving Washington, DC, control of the now defunct RFK Stadium, paving way for the NFL’s Washington Commanders to return to playing at their former home.

Bowser, who has long sought to redevelop the site, has been vocal about her interest in bringing the Washington Commanders back to the city. The team has spent nearly three decades playing in Landover, Maryland.

In perhaps a sign of a potential move, Washington Commanders managing partner Josh Harris issued a statement Saturday thanking lawmakers for coming “together on a bipartisan basis” to provide the opportunity for the team to consider “all potential future locations.”

The measure was initially a part of the massive spending package proposed by lawmakers Tuesday but was ultimately excluded from the spending bill the Senate passed early Saturday to avert a government shutdown.

The change was ignited after Elon Musk reposted a false report claiming the bill included government funding for a new football stadium.

“This should not be funded by your tax dollars!” Musk wrote on X, referencing a post from conservative social media influencer Mario Nawfal, who falsely stated the bill included $3 billion in government funding for a new football stadium. The measure notably doesn’t call for the allocation of government funding for any stadium projects.

President Joe Biden is pictured at the White House in Washington, DC, on December 8.

After signing a stopgap government funding bill into law Saturday, President Joe Biden released a statement describing the final agreement as a “compromise” that funds necessary priorities.

Biden praised the deal, which Congress passed just after a midnight deadline to fund the federal government, as “good news” ahead of the holiday season.

Some context: Republican lawmakers were ultimately not able to deliver on a demand from President-elect Donald Trump to lift or suspend the debt ceiling as part of the spending bill negotiations.

Trump’s planned tax cuts would balloon the federal deficit, so resisting the president-elect’s calls to do away with the debit limit has given Democrats leverage in the coming debate over the cuts.

President Joe Biden signed the stopgap funding bill into law Saturday morning, according to an update from the White House.

The Senate passed the bill not long after midnight — technically after the funding deadline, but nevertheless averting a shutdown that would have had widespread impacts. The House passed the bill Friday evening.

The legislation extends government funding into March and provides disaster relief and farm aid, but does not include a suspension of the debt limit, which President-elect Donald Trump had demanded Republicans address.

The dome of the Capitol building is seen in Washington, DC, on December 20.

The US Senate passed a bipartisan bill early Saturday to increase Social Security benefits for close to 3 million federal, state and local public sector workers, which includes firefighters, police officers and teachers.

If the legislation is signed into law by President Joe Biden, it would apply to all benefits payable after December 2023.

The Social Security Fairness Act — which already passed the House with overwhelming bipartisan support in November — eliminates two policies that have reduced Social Security benefits for public service employees. This will affect workers who are eligible for government pensions from jobs where they didn’t pay into Social Security but who did pay into the program through other jobs, or whose spouses did so.

The first is the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP). “The WEP reduces benefits for retired or disabled workers who have fewer than 30 years of significant earnings from employment covered by Social Security if they also receive pensions on the basis of noncovered employment,” according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The second provision that will be eliminated is the Government Pension Offset (GPO). “The GPO reduces the spousal or surviving spousal benefits of people who receive pensions on the basis of noncovered employment,” CBO noted.

Criticism: Those who are critical of the legislation cite the fact that it is unpaid for and say it will hasten Social Security’s insolvency date.

The CBO estimates the legislation will cost nearly $200 billion over 10 years.

Read more about the Social Security act.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson walks to the House Chamber from his office at the Capitol on Friday.

Throughout the government funding negotiating process, particularly when lawmakers reached an impasse, House Speaker Mike Johnson returned to a similar joke: He welcomed anyone else who could get 218 votes.

It takes 218 votes to establish a majority in the lower chamber — and to hold on to the speakership — when every member casts a ballot.

“He said that a lot. He does crack that joke quite a bit,” GOP Rep. David Valadao, a key House appropriator who was at the negotiating table, told CNN.

Some context: Many lawmakers left for the holidays frustrated at Johnson for leaving them in the dark for much of the negotiating process, or for how he created a lot of angst by pivoting his government funding plan at the last minute, only to revert back to essentially his original position.

But most Republicans are hoping that time away for the holidays will ease the tensions of the real divisions that exist within the narrow House Republican majority. And very few actually are ready to oust Johnson.

For now, Johnson has something in his back pocket that has been his human shield: the support of President-elect Donald Trump.

“President Trump says he’s supporting him, and I’m supporting him,” Republican Rep. Mike Collins said.

Booed in MAGA world: While Johnson may be maintaining Trump’s public support, he’s been facing criticism from the president-elect’s supporters at a conservative gathering in Arizona this week, where a mention of the speaker elicited boos during a Friday speech. Former Trump aide Steve Bannon said at Turning Point USA’s “AmericaFest” conference Thursday that Johnson should be removed from the speakership.

CNN’s Aaron Pellish contributed reporting to this post.

Sen. Mitt Romney speaks during a hearing in Washington, DC, on May 21.

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney said he voted against the stopgap spending bill in “protest” of how the government is run.

“While I support keeping government open, I voted no on the CR—a simple protest of the absurd way this is to run government,” the outgoing senator from Utah posted to X.

Elected to the Senate in 2018, Romney has become known as a distinctive voice in the chamber who was willing to take on his own party. Romney announced last year he wouldn’t run for reelection, calling for a “new generation of leaders.”

The Senate voted to pass the stopgap funding bill early Saturday morning, averting a government shutdown — despite missing the Friday midnight deadline — and sending it to President Joe Biden to be signed into law.

In an early morning surprise, the Senate unanimously passed a bill giving Washington, DC, control over the land around the defunct Robert F. Kennedy Stadium on Saturday.

HR 4984, the DC Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium Campus Revitalization Act, previously passed the House 348-55 in February. If signed into law by President Joe Biden, the measure would transfer the land around the stadium from the federal government to DC — paving the way for the stadium to be redeveloped, and for the NFL’s Washington Commanders to return to the location after spending the last 27 years in Landover, Maryland.

The measure was part of the initial government funding package brought by House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday, but it was not included in the bill passed shortly after midnight.

The Commanders have played at Northwest Stadium, formerly known as FedEx Field, in Maryland since 1997. The franchise previously played at RFK Stadium from 1961 until 1996.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and Commanders majority owner Josh Harris — who bought a controlling stake in the franchise in July of 2023 — were on Capitol Hill earlier this month to round up support for the provision. DC Mayor Muriel Bowser had long pushed for the land around RFK to be transferred to the District.

CNN has reached out to the Commanders for comment.

On Friday night, the Senate unanimously passed the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act 2.0, which reauthorizes a pediatric cancer research initiative through the National Institutes of Health into 2028.

This provision had originally been part of the stopgap funding deal negotiated by congressional leadership, but it was dropped after President-elect Donald Trump insisted on a “clean” short-term spending package, without extra measures included.

Earlier this week, House Republicans pushed back on outrage over the funding being cut from the package, arguing that Senate Democrats were to blame for waiting months to bring up the bill. The House had passed the research funding reauthorization on March 5.

A man inspects damage to his house after Hurricane Helene made landfall in Horseshoe Beach, Florida, on September 28.

The Senate approved a slimmed-down, temporary government spending plan early Saturday morning, averting a shutdown of the federal government.

The legislation now goes to President Joe Biden for his signature, and the brief lapse beyond a midnight funding deadline is not expected to have a significant impact.

The passage of the package came after President-elect Donald Trump torpedoed a bipartisan agreement struck earlier in the week. A House vote on a Trump-endorsed funding bill failed on Thursday evening, but the chamber then approved a revised bill Friday evening.

The legislation funds the government through March 14, setting up another spending showdown in the early days of the Trump administration.

Here’s what else is in the bill:

• More disaster aid funding: The spending bill provides about $100 billion to help Americans trying to recover from multiple natural disasters in 2023 and 2024. The funding is in line with the roughly $100 billion topline request from the Biden administration in November.

• Economic aid for farmers: The bill includes $10 billion in economic aid for farmers, one of the last sticking points in negotiations earlier this week. Lawmakers from agriculture-focused states have argued that the help is desperately needed as the US’ farmers are facing lower commodity prices and higher costs for supplies.

The spending agreement also includes a one-year extension of the farm bill — a sweeping package that governs many agricultural and nutrition assistance programs.

• Maryland bridge funding: Under the the bill, replacing the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Maryland will be fully funded by the federal government. The legislation will also allow the US Treasury Department to recoup money from any settlements related to the bridge’s collapse to help pay for the rebuilding.

And here’s what’s no longer in the funding package:

• Debt ceiling extension: The GOP package that failed Thursday would have suspended the debt ceiling until January 30, 2027, addressing Trump’s key demand from his Wednesday evisceration of the original deal. Instead, Republicans are looking at including an increase of the debt ceiling in a future package next year.

The debt ceiling is currently set to return on January 2. It was suspended as part of the bipartisan Fiscal Responsibility Act, which Congress passed in June 2023. Lawmakers likely would have until mid-2025 to address the debt ceiling, since the Treasury Department could temporarily use cash on hand and other measures to keep paying the nation’s bills and avoid a first-ever default.

Although Republicans will control Capitol Hill and the White House next year, having to deal with the debt ceiling then would add another complicated issue onto the party’s already-full plate, which includes extending the sweeping 2017 Trump tax cuts.

Read more about the bill, including some other priorities that did not make the cut, here.

President-elect Donald Trump speaks at a news conference in Palm Beach, Florida, on December 16.

Just before the House voted Friday night, President-elect Donald Trump lamented to one GOP lawmaker that he was ultimately disappointed the spending deal couldn’t include a hike in the debt ceiling, an issue that he knows now he will have to confront in his presidency.

The source familiar with the call told CNN that Trump seemed frustrated yet resigned as reality began setting in for the president-elect that despite his massive influence over the GOP, there are some issues that some conservatives will not bend on for him.

Those close to Trump warned he could be blamed for funding lapsing in the weeks before his inauguration if the government shut down, but the source said that while the incoming president seemed resigned, he was not enthusiastic about the outcome. Trump ultimately got to that place after conversations with allies and lawmakers, many of whom stressed over the last 12 hours that there was no way to get what he wanted and also avoid a shutdown, sources told CNN.

The Senate floor is seen on December 20.

The Senate passed a stopgap funding bill early Saturday after missing the midnight deadline to avert a government shutdown.

The House passed the legislation earlier this evening after two prior attempts failed this week, including an unsuccessful bid by President-elect Donald Trump to inject the debt ceiling into negotiations.

President Joe Biden has indicated he will sign the bill, sending lawmakers home for the holidays after narrowly avoiding the federal government grinding to a halt.