January 4, 2025 - Presidential transition news

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

President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday evening announced a slate of additional senior staff roles for his incoming White House team.

Nicholas Luna will serve as deputy chief of staff for strategic implementation. He previously served as presidential trip director in the first Trump White House. While serving as a “body man” for the then-president, Luna tested positive for Covid shortly before Trump did in October 2020. Luna was with Trump on January 6, 2021, and testified before the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack.

The president-elect named Stanley Woodward as senior counselor. Woodward represented Walt Nauta, Trump’s co-defendant in the classified documents case, and several witnesses in the case. (Trump was indicted for allegedly taking classified documents from the White House after he left office and for resisting the government’s attempts to retrieve the materials. Special counsel Jack Smith dropped the case after Trump’s election win in November.)

Beau Harrison, Trump’s former assistant for operations, will serve as deputy chief of staff for operations. Harrison was interviewed by federal investigators during the classified documents investigation because he signed a document affirming what was in the boxes being shipped to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort as the president was leaving office in 2021.

Robert Gabriel, who has worked for Trump since 2015, will be assistant to the president for policy. Gabriel previously worked as an associate producer for “The Ingraham Angle” on Fox News.

President Joe Biden presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Hillary Clinton during a ceremony at the White House, in Washington, DC on January 4.

President Joe Biden held the final Medal of Freedom ceremony of his presidency, awarding the nation’s highest civilian honor to a group of 19 politicians, style icons, actors and more on Saturday.

The group included former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, designer Ralph Lauren and U2 frontman Bono.

Biden said in brief remarks that the honorees embody the nation’s creed — E Pluribus Unum, or “out of many, one” — and told them to keep up their important work.

Biden said Clinton, who received a standing ovation, had championed democracy worldwide and broke barriers with her presidential nomination.

Other honorees included philanthropist and liberal megadonor George Soros, and actor Michael J. Fox, who walked to the center of the stage with the assistance of a military aide. When Biden put NBA legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson’s medal on him, the 6-foot-9-inch basketball star crouched down, which drew laughter from the crowd.

Biden presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Earvin "Magic" Johnson on January 4.

Biden also posthumously honored former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and former Michigan Republican Gov. George Romney, the father of former Sen. Mitt Romney. Kerry Kennedy accepted the award on her father’s behalf.

Soccer superstar Lionel Messi was not present at the ceremony due to “scheduling conflicts,” the White House said. CNN has asked whether Messi has received his award already, or if there are plans for him to receive it in the near future.

Republican criticism: Vice President-elect JD Vance seemingly criticized some of Biden’s final selections for the honor after the ceremony Saturday.

“Looking forward to Biden giving the Presidential Medal of Freedom (posthumously) to Pol Pot and Count Dracula,” Vance wrote in a post on X.

Conservatives have in particular highlighted Clinton and Soros, each prominent critics of Republicans, in slamming Biden’s list of recipients. Several other awardees have also criticized President-elect Donald Trump in the past.

This post has been updated with Vance’s comment on the recipients.

CNN’s Betsy Klein, Donald Judd and Andrew Millman contributed reporting to this post.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni visits Beirut, Lebanon, on October 18, 2024.

President-elect Donald Trump will host Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at his Mar-a-Lago Club tonight, two people familiar with the meeting tell CNN.

Meloni is a key world leader to watch as Trump prepares to take office, given her key relationships with figures in his orbit, including Elon Musk.

Meloni, Trump and Musk dined together previously in Paris during the reopening of the Notre Dame cathedral.

Trump’s team declined to confirm the meeting, but spokesperson Steven Cheung said, “We don’t discuss meetings that may or may not have happened, but it’s no surprise world leaders have reached out to President Trump after his historic win to develop better relations with the United States.”

Meloni rode a wave of far-right sentiment to power in 2022 and has pursued a highly conservative social agenda while leading a popular governing coalition in Italy.

Ohio Lt Gov. Jon Husted speaks at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on July 15, 2024.

Ohio Lt. Gov. Jon Husted is now the leading potential candidate to replace Vice President-elect JD Vance in the US Senate, according to two Republican sources familiar with the deliberations.

It’s up to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine to appoint Vance’s replacement once the first-term senator resigns his seat, which he must do before Vance and President-elect Donald Trump are sworn into office on January 20.

The two Republican sources stressed that it’s not clear whether Husted would accept the appointment, having eyed the Ohio governor’s mansion for years. In the 2018 cycle, Husted ran for governor against DeWine before dropping out to become DeWine’s running mate.

Last month, both DeWine and Husted traveled to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump, the sources confirmed. It’s not clear how seriously the appointment was discussed during that visit. The meeting with Trump was first reported by WEWS. A spokesperson for DeWine did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the trip.

Ohio Republicans who have been close to Husted noted the lieutenant governor’s longstanding preference for the governor’s office compared to the prospects of serving in the US Senate. But those same Republicans noted that an appointment to a Senate seat could make the job more appealing to Husted. The Columbus Dispatch and NBC News first reported on Husted’s status as the Senate frontrunner.

Future implications: DeWine’s pick would serve in the Senate until 2026 and need to run in a special election to fill out the final two years of Vance’s term. They would then have to run again in 2028 for a full six-year term. DeWine’s decision with the Senate seat could scramble another election in the Buckeye State: the race to succeed the term-limited governor in 2026, which could draw a crowded field of GOP candidates.

House Speaker Mike Johnson and President-elect Donald Trump.

House Speaker Mike Johnson informed Republicans at a closed-door meeting Saturday that President-elect Donald Trump favors moving his agenda as one sweeping package, according to sources in attendance. It’s a key announcement fraught with risk, but one that sets the stage for advancing his ambitious plans.

The effort to include both tax and border policy in a single bill is a shift from where Senate Republican leader John Thune has been, but also represents an evolution in how Trump’s team has begun to see the legislative landscape over the last several weeks.

A source familiar with this change told CNN it had become clear with the spending bill debacle and a narrow speaker’s race that there will be very little room to maneuver two separate bills.

Key Republicans pushing the strategy in recent months have argued two bills would become too unruly in the House, where the GOP has a historically narrow majority.

How this factored into the speaker’s race: The shift in strategy helped Johnson with some holdouts ahead of the speakership election.

One Republican, Rep. Rich McCormick of Georgia, told CNN on Friday that Johnson and the Trump team’s promise to push a single bill helped get him to support the speaker.

Rep. Keith Self of Texas, a last-minute holdout, also told CNN he looked forward to doing one big bill now that the race for speaker was behind the GOP conference.

Bottom line: A massive bill will take far more time to negotiate and will represent a huge challenge for a party that has such little room for error. A bill of this magnitude will need to go through several committees of jurisdiction and is likely to take far longer than a more constrained border bill would.

Read more on the GOP’s legislative plans here.

As he enters the final days of his presidency, Joe Biden will award the United States’ highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to 19 people Saturday.

He’ll recognize a broad swathe of luminaries across politics, culture and the arts, including former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, designer Ralph Lauren, soccer superstar Lionel Messi, U2 frontman Bono and philanthropist and megadonor George Soros.

Biden himself is a recipient, having been presented with the medal by then-President Barack Obama in the closing days of his administration.

Two prominent American political figures will be posthumously honored: former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and former Michigan Republican Gov. George Romney, the father of former Sen. Mitt Romney.

Celebrity chef, humanitarian and outspoken Trump critic José Andrés will be recognized for his work with the World Central Kitchen, which the White House says “has revolutionized the way food aid reaches communities affected by natural disasters and conflict around the world.”

In entertainment, actors Michael J. Fox and Denzel Washington are slated to be honored, along with Messi and retired NBA player Earvin “Magic” Johnson. Washington was scheduled to be among those honored in 2022, but he had to pull out of the ceremony after testing positive for Covid-19.

In the field of science, Biden will recognize Planetary Society CEO and climate advocate Bill Nye and world-famous conservationist Jane Goodall.

Read more about the honorees.

Judge Juan Merchan sits for a portrait in his chambers in New York on March 14, 2024.

President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday said Judge Juan Merchan “should be disbarred” over the hush money case, in a lengthy Truth Social post addressing a number of his legal cases.

In the post, Trump denied falsifying business records and suggested Merchan “might be the most conflicted judge in New York history,” doubling down on his false claims that the case was brought on by the Biden-Harris administration to attack “their political opponent.”

“The judge should be disbarred,” the president-elect wrote.

What happened yesterday: Trump’s comments come after Merchan upheld Trump’s conviction in his hush money case on Friday and set sentencing for January 10. Trump, however, won’t face any legal penalties for his conviction, but will be considered the first convicted felon to become president. The court hearing, which Trump can attend virtually, is scheduled for 10 days before his January 20 inauguration.

Merchan in his ruling referenced Trump’s plans to appeal and said that imposing no penalty would bring “finality” to the case while allowing Trump to continue pursuing an appeal of the conviction. Such an appeal will lack urgency, since Trump will face no punishment that risks interfering with his duties as president.

Separate ruling: In his messages Saturday, Trump also addressed a federal appeals court decision from Monday that upheld a jury’s verdict finding Trump sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll, who was awarded $5 million for battery and defamation. Trump repeated his claim that the verdict was the result of a “totally out of control, Trump hating judge.”

CNN’s Kara Scannell, Paula Reid and Tierney Sneed contributed reporting to this post.

The U.S. Capitol Building on January 1.

House Republicans will meet this weekend to flesh out their legislative priorities, planning for an ambitious agenda now that the GOP controls both chambers of Congress and the White House.

The new Congress was sworn in Friday, and Speaker Mike Johnson was re-elected despite a very slim majority.

GOP lawmakers will debate how to proceed on budget reconciliation, an expedited process for considering bills that would allow the party to push through their agenda without Democratic support.

The House Republicans are expected to meet at Fort McNair in Washington, DC, on Saturday, and elected leadership is set to meet in Baltimore on Sunday.

In this June 23, 2020, photo, President Donald Trump tours a section of the border wall in San Luis, Arizona.

President-elect Donald Trump is preparing to dust off a series of centuries-old laws and legal theories to drive his first-year agenda — particularly on the border and birthright citizenship — hoping history will be on his side when the inevitable legal challenges make their way to the Supreme Court.

The incoming president has said he intends to use an obscure 1798 law with a sordid backstory to speed deportations, and has hinted at the possibility of invoking a separate law with roots in the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 to deploy the military on American soil.

Immigration isn’t the only policy in play: Some of his allies, including Vice President-elect JD Vance, have advocated for enforcing an 1873 chastity law that could bar sending abortion drugs through the mail.

Trump has framed the laws as harking back to a more muscular time in American politics, suggesting he may use the powers signed into law by Presidents John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and others to confront the “enemy from within” and carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.

But at least some of the authorities Trump is preparing to claim have fraught histories — and their invocation will queue up confrontations with an unpopular 6-3 conservative Supreme Court that is being closely watched for its appetite to act as a guardrail on the new administration.

Read more on how Trump could implement his agenda.

House Speaker Mike Johnson speaks after he won the vote for Speaker of the House during the first day of the 119th Congress.

Mike Johnson will keep his job as House speaker after a dramatic vote on Friday.

He won in the first round — but only after flipping two GOP opponents as the vote was held open to give Republicans more time to secure support for Johnson, who was backed by President-elect Donald Trump.

Now that he is elected, Johnson faces a tough legislating challenge with the narrowest House majority in nearly 100 years.

However, in a key victory for Johnson, the House made it harder to oust a speaker. Included as part of the sweeping package was a procedural change that will require a minimum of nine GOP lawmakers to force a vote to oust a speaker. Previously, it only required one member to force a vote.

If you’re just catching up, here’s what to know as a new Congress sets to work: