By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge who was nominated by Donald Trump says it would be “beyond frustrating and disappointing” if the president-elect hands out mass pardons to rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol after the 2020 election, a rare instance of judicial commentary on a politically divisive subject.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, who was appointed to the bench in June 2019, expressed his criticism during a hearing Tuesday at which he agreed to postpone a Capitol riot defendant’s trial until after Trump returns to the White House in January.

During his campaign for a second term as president, Trump repeatedly referred to Jan. 6 rioters as “hostages” and “patriots” and said he “absolutely” would pardon rioters who assaulted police “if they’re innocent.” Trump has suggested he would consider pardoning former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison after a jury convicted him of orchestrating a violent plot to keep Trump in power after the 2020 election.

“Blanket pardons for all January 6 defendants or anything close would be beyond frustrating and disappointing, but that’s not my call,” Nichols said, according to a transcript. “And the possibility of some pardons, at least, is a very real thing.”

Nichols is one of over 20 judges who have presided over more than 1,500 cases against people charged in a mob’s attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Many Capitol riot defendants have asked for post-election delays in their cases, but judges largely have denied their requests and forged ahead with sentencings, guilty pleas and other hearings.

Steve Baker, a writer for a conservative media outlet, pleaded guilty last Tuesday to Capitol riot-related misdemeanors after U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper refused to pause the case until after Trump takes office. However, Cooper acknowledged that the case may never reach the punishment stage given the possibility of pardons.

Nichols commented on pardons during a hearing for Jacob Lang, a Capitol riot defendant who is jailed while awaiting a trial in Washington. Within hours of Trump’s victory this month, Lang posted on social media that he and other Jan. 6 “political prisoners” were “finally coming home.”

“There will be no bitterness in my heart as I walk out of these doors in 75 days on inauguration day,” wrote Lang, who was charged several days after the riot with repeatedly attacking police officers.

Nichols, who clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas before working for the Justice Department, said he hasn’t delayed any trial solely on the basis of possible pardons. He noted that his decision to delay Lang’s trial was based in part on matters that they privately discussed under seal.

“I agree very much with the government that there are costs to not proceeding here, both to the trial team, to the witnesses and to the victims, as well as to the public, which has an interest in a determination of guilt or innocence in a case that has been pending as long as this one,” Nichols said.

Several days after the election, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras postponed a Jan. 6 trial that had been scheduled to start on Dec. 2. The defendant, William Pope, argued that his trial would be a waste of the court’s time and resources “because there will never be a sentencing, and I will be free.”

Contreras said he didn’t want to bring in dozens of prospective jurors for a two-week trial “just to have it go for naught.”

“Of course, it’s speculative, but there is a real possibility of that happening,” the judge added, according to a transcript.

A prosecutor objected to the delay, saying that “the speculative nature of what Mr. Pope hopes will be a pardon is not a sufficient reason to continue this trial.”

Judges have largely echoed that argument. U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton refused to delay a Nov. 8 sentencing hearing for Anna Lichnowski, a Florida woman who believes she would be a good candidate for a pardon. Walton, who sentenced Lichnowski to 45 days in jail, wrote that the possibility of pardons is “irrelevant to the Court’s obligation to carry out the legal responsibilities of the Judicial Branch.”

By MEG KINNARD

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump has endorsed a line of guitars, following up on the Bibles, sneakers, watches, photo books and cryptocurrency ventures launched during his third White House campaign.

Trump on Wednesday posted to Truth Social a photo of himself holding what he said was a “Limited Edition ‘45’ Guitar,” an electric model emblazoned with an American flag and eagle on the body, and Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan inlaid into the neck. Both acoustic and electric styles are available, for $1,250 and $1,500, respectively, as well as “Presidential” and “God Bless the USA” models and “Signature Edition” guitars, which — with a $10,000 price tag — also include Trump’s signature.

What’s not clear is the financial relationship between Trump and proceeds from the guitar sales.

Following his long tradition of melding his political and business interests, Trump has hawked a series of branded products since he launched his 2024 White House campaign, a slew of items that went up for sale in the wake of a $489 million civil fraud judgment against the former president.

Some of them, like the “Official Trump Watch Collection” — where one model costs $100,000 — were listed as affiliated with CIC Ventures LLC, a company that Trump reported owning in his 2023 financial disclosure.

Websites for items like the watches note that the products are subject to a “paid license agreement,” the same mechanism that allowed Trump, well before he entered politics, to profit for years from sales of everything from water to vodka and steaks.

As of Wednesday, GetTrumpGuitars.com included no such disclaimers, or even the name of the company selling the items. An FAQ page lists information about how many of each model are being made available — and notes that these models are “the ONLY guitars endorsed by President Donald J. Trump!” — but includes none of the disclaimers or licensing language on some of Trump’s other product sites.

The guitar website’s privacy policy does include a suburban Nashville address for a couple, neither of whom immediately returned a message seeking comment Wednesday. Photos on their social media pages showed that they attended Trump’s election-night party in Florida.

Messages left with 16 Creative — a branding agency listed at the bottom of the guitar website — and Trump’s transition team also were not immediately returned.

Leading up to his win in the general election, Trump this year has announced the sale of $100 silver coins bearing his face, urged his supporters to spend $59.99 for a “God Bless the USA Bible,” inspired by country singer Lee Greenwood’s patriotic ballad, and hawked new Trump-branded sneakers at “Sneaker Con,” a gathering that bills itself as the “The Greatest Sneaker Show on Earth.”

He also has dabbled in NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, and last year reported earning between $100,000 and $1 million from a series of digital trading cards that portrayed him in cartoon-like images, including as an astronaut, a cowboy and a superhero.

Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump is nominating the billionaire professional wrestling mogul Linda McMahon to be secretary of the Education Department, tasked with overseeing an agency Trump has promised to dismantle.

McMahon led the Small Business Administration during Trump’s initial term from 2017 to 2019 and twice ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut.

McMahon served on the Connecticut Board of Education for a year starting in 2009 and has spent years on the board of trustees for Sacred Heart University in Connecticut. She’s seen as a relative unknown in education circles, though she has expressed support for charter schools and school choice.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

By JONATHAN J. COOPER

Mehmet Oz, a celebrity heart surgeon turned talk show host and lifestyle guru, is President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the massive federal health care bureaucracy that covers more than a third of Americans.

Here’s a look at a television doctor who became a politician and is now designated to lead an agency that touches nearly all Americans in some way.

Who is Dr. Oz?

Trained as a heart surgeon, Oz rose to prominence on Oprah Winfrey’s leading daytime television show before spinning off his own series, “The Dr. Oz Show,” in 2009.

The program aired for 13 seasons and made Oz a household name.

Oz stopped doing surgeries in 2018 but his physician license remains active in Pennsylvania through the end of this year, according to the state’s online database.

Oz is an author of New York Times bestsellers, an Emmy-winning TV show host, radio talk show host, presidential appointee, founder of a national nonprofit to educate teens about healthy habits, and self-styled ambassador for wellness.

He also guest hosted the “Jeopardy!” game show and helped save a dying man at Newark Liberty International Airport.

Oz was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of a heart surgeon who emigrated from Turkey.

He attended a private high school in Delaware and Harvard University as a college undergraduate, also playing football there, and served in the Turkish army to maintain his dual citizenship.

He made his reputation as a surgeon, but he made a fortune as a salesman

Oz dispensed nutritional and lifestyle advice on his show, portraying himself as a trusted doctor capable of explaining health matters in an engaging and approachable way. But his show also blurred the line between medical advice and advertising, failing to make clear to his audience just how closely he worked with the companies he pitched.

He repeatedly promoted products of questionable medical value and was named in lawsuits that alleged he made misleading claims on the show. Several of the companies he has promoted are structured as multilevel marketing businesses whose practices have repeatedly drawn the attention of federal regulators.

Oz had a net worth between $100 million and $315 million, according to a federal financial disclosure he filed in 2022, which gives dollar values in ranges but does not provide specific figures.

He ran for U.S. Senate

Oz ran for U.S. Senate as a Republican in 2022, one of the highest-profile races of that year’s midterms. Though he was a longtime resident of New Jersey and worked in New York City, Oz ran in Pennsylvania, citing ties to the state through his wife’s parents.

His campaign leaned heavily into his celebrity. Its logo looked just like his TV show logo. His themes — “a dose of reality” or “the doctor is in” — spun off his TV doctor reputation.

He ran in a crowded Republican primary and won Trump’s eagerly sought endorsement.

“Women, in particular, are drawn to Dr. Oz for his advice and counsel. I have seen this many times over the years. They know him, believe in him, and trust him,” Trump said when he endorsed Oz.

Following a court battle that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, Oz narrowly won the primary over McCormick by 951 votes but lost to Democrat John Fetterman in the general election.

Oz and Trump have a long personal history

Oz told The Associated Press in a 2022 interview that he first met Trump in 2004 or 2005 when he asked Trump to use his golf course for an event for Oz’s children’s charity. Trump agreed. After that, they saw each other intermittently at social events before Oz interviewed Trump about his health during the 2016 presidential campaign.

In a 2016 appearance on “The Dr. Oz Show,” Trump said his wife, Melania Trump, was “a big fan” of the show.

Trump appointed Oz to the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition during his first term.

He would oversee a massive agency

If confirmed by the Senate to lead CMS, Oz would oversee Medicare, Medicaid, children’s health insurance and the Affordable Care Act, better known as “Obamacare.” The programs cover more than 160 million people, from newborns to nursing home residents.

CMS also plays a central role in the nation’s $4.5 trillion health care economy, setting Medicare payment rates for hospitals, doctors, labs and other service providers. Government payment levels become the foundation for private insurers. The agency also sets standards that govern how health care providers operate.

The agency has more than 6,000 employees and a $1.1 trillion budget.

By FATIMA HUSSEIN

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Howard Lutnick, head of brokerage and investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald and cryptocurrency enthusiast, as his nominee for commerce secretary.

The nomination would put Lutnick in charge of a sprawling Cabinet agency that is involved in funding new computer chip factories, imposing trade restrictions, releasing economic data and monitoring the weather. It is also a position in which connections to CEOs and the wider business community are crucial.

Lutnick, a co-chair of Trump’s transition team, along with Linda McMahon, the former wrestling executive who previously led Trump’s Small Business Administration, once appeared on Trump’s NBC reality show, “The Apprentice.” He has become a part of the president-elect’s inner circle.

Here are things to know about the billionaire who, if confirmed by the Senate, will lead the Commerce Department.

He was Elon Musk’s pick to lead the Treasury Department

Elon Musk and others in Trump’s orbit called on Trump last week to dump previous front-runner for treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, in favor of Lutnick. Musk said in a post that “Bessent is a business-as-usual choice, whereas @howardlutnick will actually enact change.”

The treasury role has been at the center of an unusual high-profile jockeying within the Trump world. At the same time, the position is closely watched in financial circles, where a disruptive nominee could have immediate negative consequences on the stock market, which Trump watches closely. Trump has yet to decide on one of the top remaining vacancies in his proposed cabinet.

The major remaining nominees for the role are Bessent, former Federal Reserve board governor Kevin Warsh, Apollo Global Management Chief Executive Marc Rowan, and Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty, Trump’s former Japan ambassador.

He is a major supporter of Trump’s tariffs plan

Trump on the campaign trail proposed a 60% tariff on goods from China — and a tariff of up to 20% on everything else the United States imports. On the campaign trail, Trump portrayed the taxes on imports as both a negotiating tool to hammer out better trade terms and as a way to generate revenue to fund tax cuts elsewhere.

An advocate for imposing wide-ranging tariffs, Lutnick gave full-throated support for Trump’s tariffs plan in a CNBC interview in September. “Tariffs are an amazing tool for the president to use — we need to protect the American worker,” he said.

Mainstream economists are generally skeptical of tariffs, considering them a mostly inefficient way for governments to raise money and promote prosperity.

His brother and hundreds of Cantor employees were killed in the September 11th terrorist attacks

Lutnick’s brother, Gary Lutnick, and 658 of 960 Cantor Fitzgerald employees were killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center. The firm lost two-thirds of its employees that day. Lutnick is a member of the Board of Directors of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, the Partnership for New York City.

After Cantor Fitzgerald settled a wrongful death and personal injuries case against American Airlines and insurance carriers in 2013 for $135 million, Lutnick said: “We could never, and will never, consider it ordinary. For us, there is no way to describe this compromise with inapt words like ordinary, fair or reasonable. All we can say is that the legal formality of this matter is over.”

Trump’s Tuesday announcement on the Commerce Department nomination mentioned Lutnick’s loss — stating he was “the embodiment of resilience in the face of unspeakable tragedy.”

He’s a major supporter of cryptocurrency

Lutnick is a proponent of advancing aims of the cryptocurrency industry — namely, the cryptocurrency Tether.

Cryptocurrencies are forms of digital money that can be traded over the internet without relying on the global banking system. Bitcoin is the most popular cryptocurrency.

“Bitcoin is like gold and should be free trade everywhere in the world,” Lutnick said at a bitcoin conference earlier this year. “And as the largest wholesaler in the world we’re going to do everything in our power to make it so. Bitcoin should trade the same as gold everywhere in the world without exception and without limitation.”

Trump has taken on a favorable view of cryptocurrencies — from announcing in May that the campaign would begin accepting donations in cryptocurrency as part of an effort to build what it calls a “crypto army” leading up to Election Day. He has also launched a cryptocurrency platform called World Liberty Financial with members of his family earlier this year.

By FARNOUSH AMIRI

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Mike Johnson signaled support Tuesday for a Republican effort to ban Democrat Sarah McBride — the first transgender person to be elected to Congress — from using women’s restrooms in the Capitol once she’s sworn into office next year.

“We’re not going to have men in women’s bathrooms,” Johnson told The Associated Press. “I’ve been consistent about that with anyone I’ve talked to about this.”

Citing his Christian faith, Johnson earlier in the day emphasized the need to “treat all persons with dignity and respect,” adding, “This is an issue that Congress has never had to address before, and we’re going to do that in deliberate fashion with member consensus on it.”

A resolution proposed Monday by GOP Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina would prohibit any lawmakers and House employees from “using single-sex facilities other than those corresponding to their biological sex.” Mace said the bill is aimed specifically at McBride, who was elected to the House this month from Delaware.

The debate over whether transgender people should be allowed to use the bathrooms that align with their gender identity has been prevalent across the U.S. and was a focal point of President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign. At least 11 states have adopted laws barring transgender girls and women from girls and women’s bathrooms at public schools, and in some cases other government facilities.

“I’m absolutely, 100% gonna stand in the way of any man who wants to be in a women’s restroom, in our locker rooms, in our changing rooms,” Mace said told reporters Tuesday. The second-term congresswoman added that Johnson assured her the bathroom provision would be included in any changes to House rules for the next Congress.

“If it’s not,” she said. “I’ll be ready to pick up the mantle.”

Democrats, including McBride, denounced the GOP effort as “bullying” and a “distraction.”

“This is a blatant attempt from far right-wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing,” McBride said. “We should be focused on bringing down the cost of housing, health care, and child care, not manufacturing culture wars.”

Rep. Katherine Clark, the No. 2 Democrat in the House, quipped that House Republicans are already “off to a great start.”

“What are they talking about there, on day one, is where one member out of 435 is going, where she is going to use the bathroom?” the Massachusetts lawmaker said during a press conference Tuesday. “That is their focus?”

McBride was elected to the House this month after building a national profile as an LGBTQ activist and raising more than $3 million in campaign contributions from around the country. She became the first openly transgender person to address a major party convention in the United States in 2016, when she spoke at the Democratic National Convention.

After her election win earlier this month, McBride said that her victory was “a testament to Delawareans that we have shown time and time again that in this state of neighbors, we judge candidates based on their ideas and not their identities.”

Associated Press writers Kevin Freking and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

By MARY CLARE JALONICK and STEPHEN GROVES

WASHINGTON (AP) — As President-elect Donald Trump digs in on his pick of former Rep. Matt Gaetz for attorney general, Republican senators are divided over how much information they will demand to move his confirmation — and how much to push back on Trump as he demands that they quickly rubber stamp his Cabinet once he takes office in January.

Gaetz, who is expected to start meeting with senators as soon as this week, is an unconventional pick for the nation’s top law enforcement official, creating a confirmation climb in the Senate, where many Republicans are deeply uncomfortable with his selection.

The Florida Republican spent his congressional career agitating against the Justice Department and has faced a House Ethics investigation into whether he engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct. Gaetz denies the allegations.

Publicly, Republican senators say they will give Gaetz the same due process that they give any other nominee. Most are loath to criticize him directly. But they are split on whether to demand access to the ethics report, which the House ethics committee could choose to release after Gaetz resigned from the House last week.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, who has positioned himself as Trump’s top ally in Congress, said last week that he will “strongly request” that the Ethics committee not release the results of its investigation.

Republican Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, who will become Senate majority leader in January, deferred to Johnson, saying Monday that the ethics report is “a House issue.” But several in his conference argued that the Senate should see the report, whether it is released publicly or not.

“There’s nothing about that that would smell right, to say, ‘Hey, there’s a report but none of us want to see it,’” said Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla.

Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin, who served in the House with Gaetz, said the ethics report is important for the Senate’s “advice and consent” role laid out in the Constitution. “I think the report from the House plays a pivotal role in that,” he said.

Others said the information would come out one way or another, even if it isn’t released. “I’m going to honor Speaker Johnson’s position,” said North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis. “I think it’s a reasonable position.”

The simmering clash between the Senate, House and Trump could be just the first of many to come. Trump has made clear he expects next year’s unified Republican Congress to give him broad leeway on his nominees.

Cabinet nominees have traditionally provided a flood of paperwork to Senate committees ahead of their confirmation hearings, participating in background checks by the FBI and filling out lengthy questionnaires that probe every aspect of their lives and careers. But Trump’s transition has already signaled that it might not request the background checks and has so far declined to sign agreements with the White House and the Department of Justice to allow that process to begin.

The documentation, including the criminal background checks and financial vetting, could be key for senators in both parties who have questions about Gaetz and some of Trump’s other more controversial nominees, including Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, Pete Hegseth for secretary of Defense and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of Health and Human Services.

In the absence of the traditional process, whether to proceed without an FBI background check would be up to individual committee chairs, who will be under tremendous pressure from Trump and his allies to move his nominees quickly. On Tuesday, Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the incoming No. 2 Republican under Thune, said the Senate will begin hearings once Republicans take the majority on Jan. 3 and start holding confirmation votes once Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20.

Republican senators say they will demand that documentation, but it’s unclear how that might work if Trump’s transition doesn’t consent to it.

“I think that if they want a speedy consideration of this nomination we’ve got to have as much transparency as we can have,” said Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who will serve as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman next year. “Because you’ve heard my colleagues, especially on the Republican side, say that they have some questions.”

Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, the incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he wants a traditional process involving the full FBI background check for Hegseth and the committee’s other nominees. “We should do it by the numbers,” Wicker said.

Democrats are wary, though, that the process could get muddled, or curtailed, as Trump puts the full force of his pressure on Senate Republicans.

“If there’s a cursory background check, like we call 20 people — that’s not going to be appropriate,” said Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, the current chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee who will be the panel’s top Democrat next year.

Meanwhile. Gaetz has already paid a visit to at least one group of potential allies, the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, where he outlined for the group “some of the things that that need to be done at the Department of Justice to end the weaponization,” said Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., the chairman of the Freedom Caucus.

Among the ideas Gaetz discussed was “eliminating a lot of the senior staff,” Harris said.

As for the allegations of sexual misconduct against Gaetz, Harris dismissed them saying, “last time I looked, in America, you’re innocent until proven guilty.” He said he did not believe the House Ethics files on Gaetz should be released.

“We think that the president deserves to get his selections approved for the cabinet, and Mr. Gaetz knows what to do to end the weaponization of the department,” Harris said.

Speaker Johnson also made clear his position Tuesday, telling reporters that the Senate should do its job and “sure, take a look, do a deep dive” and then move them along for confirmation so “the president has the team in place to do what the American people have elected him to do.”

“I think President Trump is looking for persons who will shake up the status quo,” Johnson said. “And we got a mandate in this election cycle to do that.”

By CHRISTINA A. CASSIDY, JOHN HANNA and AMY BETH HANSON, Associated Press

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Terry Thompson had an election to run for voters in Cascade County, Montana. Why then, she thought, was her office in Great Falls being sent mailed ballots completed by voters in places such as Wasilla, Alaska, Vancouver, Washington, and Tampa, Florida?

It was only about a dozen ballots total from voters in other states. But she said it still raised concerns about the ability of the U.S. Postal Service to deliver election mail and whether the errant ballots would ever be counted.

“I mean, I would have had to been doing FedEx overnight envelopes to all these states to try to get them where they needed to go,” said Thompson, the county’s election administrator.

She received about a half dozen others that should have gone to county election offices in other parts of Montana. For those, she said she “just had to hope and pray” they made it back on time.

While a stray ballot ending up in the wrong place can happen during election season, the number of ballots destined for other states and counties that ended up at Thompson’s office is unusual. The Associated Press found it wasn’t an anomaly. Election offices in California, Louisiana, New Mexico and elsewhere also reported receiving completed ballots in the mail that should have gone to other states.

To some election officials, it confirms concerns they raised before the Nov. 5 presidential election about the U.S. Postal Service’s performance and ability to handle a crush of mail ballots, as early voting has become increasingly popular with voters.

State election officials warned in September that problems with the nation’s mail delivery system threatened to disenfranchise voters in the upcoming presidential election. In a letter to U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, the election officials noted problems during the primaries that included mailed ballots postmarked on time but received too late be counted and instances of properly addressed election mail returned as undeliverable.

In Louisiana, state election officials said some 40 to 50 ballots destined for 10 other states ended up being delivered to local election offices, mostly in Orleans Parish. Deputy Secretary of State Joel Watson Jr. said the Secretary of State’s Office had “extraordinary frustration” for the Postal Service’s continued “inconsistencies” and “lack of accountability.”

Dozens of mail ballots from inside the state also were delivered to the wrong local election office, Watson said.

“There were many instances where our staff had to physically take these ballots and drive them to another parish to get them there on time to make sure those votes count,” Watson said. “We had to use time and resources in the hours and days immediately preceding the biggest election we hold to make sure these ballots were delivered to the right places.”

Louisiana law does not permit ballot drop boxes, and Watson indicated his office does not support moving in that direction and would continue to encourage voters to cast their ballots in person. He cited security concerns such as the arson attacks on drop boxes in Washington and Oregon ahead of the Nov. 5 election in which ballots were damaged.

The U.S. Postal Service said in a statement that it had been working closely with local election officials to resolve concerns, but did not address specific questions regarding the misdirected ballots.

“The United States Postal Service is fully committed to fulfilling our role in the electoral process when policy makers choose to utilize us as a part of their election system, and to delivering election mail in a timely manner,” Rod Spurgeon, a USPS spokesman, said in an email.

Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union, said ballot monitors identified some problems inside facilities during the election season but said they were resolved.

“While we are waiting on the final statistics from the Postal Service, all indications show that vote-by-mail was a success in the 2024 general election,” he said in an emailed statement Tuesday.

Still, state and local election officials reported numerous cases of ballots ending up in the wrong place.

In New Mexico’s Santa Fe County, County Clerk Katharine Clark said seven ballots bound for her office were instead delivered to Los Angeles County in Southern California. Those ballots were redirected, Clark said, but did not arrive at her office before the state’s deadline to be counted, which is 7 p.m. on Election Day.

“It does mean that person got denied the right to vote, because the ballots from Los Angeles County — even though they were sent (to Santa Fe) with a four- or five-day lead time — they didn’t get to us in time to count,” she said.

In addition, Clark said her office received two ballots destined for Los Angeles County and one for Maricopa County in Arizona that she sent back to the U.S. Postal Service. Nine ballots should have been delivered to other counties within New Mexico.

In addition to the Santa Fe County ballots, Los Angeles County election officials said they also received two ballots that should have been mailed to Torrance County, New Mexico. That county’s clerk, Linda Jaramillo, said she did not recall receiving the ballots from Los Angeles County but expressed faith in the nation’s mail service.

“There’s going to be a few,” Jaramillo said. “You can’t have perfection.”

The California Secretary of State’s office said about 150 mail ballots from Oregon voters were misdirected to California before being sent back. Officials at the state election office in Springfield, Illinois, somehow ended up with a ballot intended for Massachusetts.

“Yeah, I have no idea how that happens,” said Matt Dietrich, spokesperson for the Illinois State Board of Elections.

Amy Cohen, executive director of the National Association of State Election Directors, called the incidents “disappointing and heartbreaking.”

“Election officials don’t ever want to see misdelivered ballots, but it does happen for variety of reasons, not all of which are USPS’s fault,” Cohen said, noting that voters can sometimes forget to use the outer envelope that contains important address information.

But Cohen said the examples from this past presidential election seem to reflect the issues that election officials had been worried about since 2023 and were highlighted in their September letter to U.S. Postal Service leadership.

“We hope they will get to the bottom of what went wrong to prevent it from happening again in the future and that they will be responsive to the issues escalated by the election community,” Cohen said.

In Kansas, Secretary of State Scott Schwab, a Republican, was so frustrated after the August primary with hundreds of mail ballots arriving after the deadline for counting them that he posted on social media, “The Pony Express is more efficient at this point.” Schwab, unlike other Republicans, has touted the use of drop boxes.

There were no reports of ballots misdirected from or to other states, but Schwab said in a statement this week: “I still encourage voters to not use the USPS to mail their ballot unless there is no other option.”

Cassidy reported from Atlanta and Hanna from Topeka, Kansas. Associated Press writers Sophie Austin in Sacramento, California; Jack Brook in New Orleans; Morgan Lee in Santa Fe, New Mexico; and others contributed to this report.

By ERIC TUCKER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump is interviewing candidates for the role of FBI director, incoming Vice President JD Vance said Tuesday in the clearest indication yet that the new administration is looking to replace current director Christopher Wray.

In a social media post that was later deleted, Vance defended his absence from a Senate vote at which a judicial nominee of President Joe Biden was confirmed by saying that at the time of the vote, “I was meeting with President Trump to interview multiple positions for our government, including for FBI Director.”

“I tend to think it’s more important to get an FBI director who will dismantle the deep state than it is for Republicans to lose a vote 49-46 rather than 49-45,” he added on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Vance was referring to the Senate vote Monday to confirm Embry J. Kidd, a Biden nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, a vote that he and several other Republican senators missed.

An FBI spokesperson declined to comment, and the Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The FBI director’s position carries a 10-year term but Wray’s replacement would not be unexpected given Trump’s long-running criticism of the director he appointed when he was president seven years ago. This past summer, for instance, Trump took to social media to call for Wray to resign after Wray appeared to vouch for Biden’s mental acuity.

Some allies of Trump, including conservative strategist Steve Bannon, have been pushing Trump loyalist Kash Patel for the position but other potential contenders for the job are thought to include Mike Rogers, a former FBI agent and House intelligence committee chairman who recently lost his bid for the U.S. Senate as a Michigan Republican.

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Leader Hakeem Jeffries won reelection Tuesday as the Democratic leader, receiving support from his colleagues despite the party’s inability to win back majority control of the chamber in the November election.

Jeffries of New York was chosen during an internal party vote of the House Democrats underway at the Capitol. Most of the Democratic leadership team is expected to be reelected for the new Congress.

In line to become the House speaker, Jeffries remains the highest ranking Black elected official in Congress, and the first to hold the job of party leader.

He fell short of being in place to win the gavel after Republicans swept to power alongside President-elect Donald Trump, winning control of the White House, the Senate and the House.

While the Democratic leader will be the party’s nominee for House speaker, the gavel is expected to go to Speaker Mike Johnson as Republicans continue to hold the majority in the new year.

Jeffries and the House Democratic leadership works as a team — a trio of younger generation leaders that took over when Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi stepped aside from leadership two years ago. Democratic Whip Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar of California also won their reelections on Tuesday.

House Democrats picked up a few seats in hard-fought regions, including Jeffries’ home state of New York and in California. But they also lost seats elsewhere and failed to topple some GOP incumbents, and overall there was little change in the House.

Republicans under Johnson are left holding the majority by a so-slim margin — their numbers diminishing in the new year as Trump has tapped three GOP lawmakersElise Stefanik, Mike Waltz and Matt Gaetz to serve in his administration. Some need to be confirmed by the Senate.

By ZEKE MILLER, MICHELLE L. PRICE and DARLENE SUPERVILLE

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump said Monday he is naming former Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy as his nominee to be transportation secretary, as he continues to roll out picks for his Cabinet.

Duffy is a former reality TV star who was one of Trump’s most visible defenders on cable news — a prime concern for the media-focused president-elect. Duffy served in the House for nearly nine years, was a member of the Financial Services Committee and was chairman of the subcommittee on insurance and housing. He left Congress in 2019, and is now co-host of a show on Fox Business, the “Bottom Line.”

In his announcement Monday, Trump noted that Duffy is married to a Fox News host, calling him “the husband of a wonderful woman, Rachel Campos-Duffy, a STAR on Fox News.”

Duffy is so far the second Fox-affiliated television host to be named to a cabinet position in Trump’s new White House. Trump last week announced he was choosing Fox News host Pete Hegseth to serve as his defense secretary.

Trump said Duffy would use his experience and relationships built over the years in Congress “to maintain and rebuild our Nation’s Infrastructure, and fulfill our Mission of ushering in The Golden Age of Travel, focusing on Safety, Efficiency, and Innovation. Importantly, he will greatly elevate the Travel Experience for all Americans!”

Duffy in 2022 ruled out a run for Wisconsin governor, despite pleas from Trump to make a bid, saying he needed time to care for the needs of his family of nine children, posting on social media that his youngest child had a heart condition.

He is a former lumberjack athlete and frequent contributor to Fox News. He was featured on MTV’s “The Real World: Boston” in 1997. He met his future wife on the set of MTV’s “Road Rules: All Stars” in 1998.

He was a special prosecutor and Ashland County district attorney who won election to Congress as part of a tea party wave in 2010. He served until resigning in 2019.

Trump, in his statement, said Duffy would “prioritize Excellence, Competence, Competitiveness and Beauty when rebuilding America’s highways, tunnels, bridges and airports.” Trump, as he campaigned for the White House, would sometimes complain about the state of air travel in particular, lamenting that the nation’s “once-revered airports” are a “dirty, crowded mess.”

Duffy, Trump said Monday, “will make our skies safe again by eliminating DEI for pilots and air traffic controllers.” DEI refers to “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs.

The Transportation Department oversees the nation’s complex transportation system, including pipelines, railroads, cars, trucks and transit systems as well as federal funding for highways.

The department includes the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which regulates automakers, including Elon Musk’s Tesla. The department sets fuel economy standards for cars and trucks and regulates the airline industry through the Federal Aviation Administration, one of its agencies.

Trump has criticized electric vehicles as expensive and unreliable and called President Joe Biden’s policy to promote EVs “lunacy.

He also has said EV manufacturing will destroy auto industry jobs and has falsely claimed that battery-powered cars don’t work in cold weather and aren’t able to travel long distances.

Trump has softened his rhetoric in recent months after Musk endorsed him and campaigned heavily for his election.

Even so, industry officials expect Trump to try to slow a shift to electric cars, and a tax credit for EV purchases is reportedly among those the Trump administration may seek to eliminate next year.

Price reported from New York and Superville reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Matthew Daly in Washington contributed to this report.

By MARC LEVY

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania’s state Supreme Court on Monday weighed in on a flashpoint amid ongoing vote counting in the U.S. Senate election between Democratic Sen. Bob Casey and Republican David McCormick, ordering counties not to count mail-in ballots that lack a correct handwritten date on the return envelope.

The order is a win for McCormick and a loss for Casey as the campaigns prepare for a statewide recount and press counties for favorable ballot-counting decisions. The Democratic-majority high court’s order reiterates the position it took previously that the ballots shouldn’t be counted in the election, a decision that three Democratic-controlled counties nevertheless have challenged.

The Associated Press called the race for McCormick last week, concluding that not enough ballots remained to be counted in areas Casey was winning for him to take the lead.

As of Monday, McCormick led by about 17,000 votes out of almost 7 million ballots counted — inside the 0.5% margin threshold to trigger an automatic statewide recount under Pennsylvania law.

Republicans last week had asked the court to bar counties from counting the ballots, saying those decisions violate both the court’s recent orders and its precedent in upholding the requirement in state law that a voter write the date on their mail-in ballot’s return envelope.

Democratic-majority election boards in Montgomery County, Philadelphia and Bucks County voted to count the ballots that lacked a correct date, echoing election officials around the state who say the date tells them nothing about a voter’s eligibility or a ballot’s legitimacy.

Republicans maintain that the date is a critical element of ballot security.

At first, the GOP also asked the court to block the count in Centre County, but later said the county had only counted three ballots that GOP officials found to be reasonable.

Statewide, the number of mail-in ballots with wrong or missing dates on the return envelope could be in the thousands. However, most counties — including several heavily populated counties controlled by Democrats — didn’t count them.

Democrats cast more mail-in ballots than Republicans, and Democrats in the past have supported counting ballots that trip over what they view as meaningless clerical requirements in state law.

Various courts have ruled against the dating requirement in at least a half-dozen cases — including once by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — but higher courts have always reinstated it.

Meanwhile, the state Supreme Court has put off ruling on a pending case that calls into question whether the law violates the constitutional right to vote.

McCormick took a position aligned with Democrats in his failed eleventh-hour bid to close the gap in votes with celebrity heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania’s Republican primary contest for U.S. Senate.

In that case, McCormick’s lawyer told a state judge that the object of Pennsylvania’s election law is to let people vote, “not to play games of ‘gotcha’ with them.”

Follow Marc Levy at twitter.com/timelywriter

By ZEKE MILLER

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump appears to be planning to attend a SpaceX “Starship” rocket launch on Tuesday, in the latest indication of founder Elon Musk ‘s influence in the Republican’s orbit.

The Federal Aviation Administration has issued temporary flight restrictions over Brownsville and Boca Chica, Texas area for a VIP visit that coincides with the SpaceX launch window for a test of its massive Starship rocket from its launch facility on the Gulf of Mexico. The flight restrictions put in place over Trump’s home in Palm Beach, Florida when he is there will be lifted briefly while the Texas security measures are in place.

Trump’s visit comes as billionaire Musk has been a near-constant presence at Trump’s side as he builds out his administration, attending meetings at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, accompanying him to meetings with Capitol Hill Republicans in Washington last week and to a UFC fight in New York on Saturday.

Trump frequently regaled audiences on the campaign trail with a dramatic account of the last Starship test, that included the capture of the booster at its launchpad by a pair of mechanical arms.

Tuesday’s 30-minute launch window opens at 4 p.m. central time, according to the company, with the company again looking to test the landing capture system of the booster in Texas, while the upper stage continues to a splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

Musk pumped an estimated $200 million through his political action committee to help elect Trump and has been named, along with former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, to lead an advisory committee tasked by Trump to dramatically cut governmental costs and reshape how Washington operates, which has sparked ethics concerns over Musk’s many interests before the federal government.

The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the president-elect’s plans.

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Dakota Rudesill, The Ohio State University

(THE CONVERSATION) Former President Donald Trump is the president-elect. He is also a convicted felon, thanks to a jury verdict after a trial in New York state court for a hush money conspiracy before he became president the first time.

Normally, a president-elect gets access to highly classified information, including a version of the President’s Daily Brief on intelligence. And the sitting president has more access and authority over the nation’s secrets than anyone else.

A criminal conviction, however, is a long-standing disqualifier for holding a security clearance – a license to access national security secrets, including documents marked Top Secret. Just being charged criminally can mean denial or loss of clearance too.

Trump also was criminally charged in Georgia state court and the Washington, D.C., federal court in relation to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and he was criminally charged in federal court in Florida for obstruction of justice and wrongful retention of a trove of highly sensitive documents after his first term ended.

This dilemma is one that I, as a law professor who teaches and writes about secrecy and who earlier in my career handled classified information while working for the U.S. intelligence community and a U.S. Senate committee, would never have expected.

The good news is that the law has clear answers.

Access because of his elected position

Those answers start with this legal certainty: Presidents get access to classified information because of the office they hold, not because they meet criteria in executive orders and administrative rules. The president technically does not even have a clearance. Practically and legally speaking, the president also sits at the apex of the executive branch’s massive secrecy apparatus.

Therefore, because Trump was elected to a second term, he will again have expansive access to classified information and control over it as of noon on Jan. 20, 2025, when his term begins. He will also have control over secrets and clearances available to others. The American electorate made that decision.

Before Trump again takes office, his access to classified information is in the hands of the current and outgoing president, Joe Biden. Typically, a sitting president authorizes the major party nominees, including their opponent if the incumbent is running, to have access to classified briefings during the campaign. Although U.S. intelligence officials had planned to do the usual briefings this year despite Trump’s criminal record, Trump refused them. He said he worried that the briefers would leak them and blame him.

Now that the election has been decided, reports indicate that Trump will begin receiving intelligence briefings.

It is not yet completely clear, but Trump’s election does appear to be pushing aside his numerous criminal cases. In New York state court, the judge is considering whether to dismiss the case in which he has already been convicted. And the Georgia state case may face years of delay. Because of the Justice Department’s long-standing policy against prosecuting a sitting president, special prosecutor Jack Smith is moving to abandon both federal cases and resign in advance of Trump’s threat to fire him.

The US secrecy system

Most U.S. government employees and contractors do not have or need a security clearance. But those whose jobs involve handling sensitive information must apply for clearance. If their record suggests trustworthiness, they can receive permission to access one or more of the several levels of classified information, including Confidential, Secret and Top Secret.

Federal investigators carefully screen applicants for national security positions and security clearances. To assess a candidate’s trustworthiness, investigators interview the candidate, review their application and search databases. Some investigations involve a polygraph of the candidate and interviews of people they know. Once a clearance is granted, investigators continue to monitor clearance holders.

Key factors the investigators consider include loyalty to the United States, respect for rules and the rule of law, psychological stability, good judgment and good character in terms of trustworthiness and integrity. Substance abuse, marital infidelity or financial problems can suggest poor judgment and vulnerability to blackmail or other kinds of coercion.

The president’s broad power

The president oversees the country’s entire national security secrecy system. The president has the authority to read all classified documents, to classify and declassify almost any piece of information and to oversee the security clearance system. There is no other government official who decides whether the president should have access to the nation’s secrets.

The Supreme Court has held that authority over classification and clearances flows in part from the power the Constitution gives the president. In a dangerous international security environment, the president needs to be able to know secret information about foreign threats, communicate confidentially with foreign colleagues and subordinates, and act with what Alexander Hamilton called in the Federalist Papers “secrecy, and dispatch.”

Like the president, members of Congress get access to classified information by virtue of election, not by going through the regular security clearance process.

Normally, Trump wouldn’t get clearance

The dilemma is obvious: Trump will lead a national security enterprise that surely would have denied him a security clearance if he had to follow the rules that apply to his former and future subordinates.

If someone has a criminal indictment or conviction, or a civil judgment involving fraud, they generally cannot get clearance. Such a court record suggests disrespect for the law, dishonesty and problems following rules, which are integral to protecting classified information.

No reasonable background investigator would ignore the staggering evidence against Trump if he were to apply in the normal way.

Under the commonly used SMICE rubric, for example, Trump is all red flags. SMICE stands for categories of temptations to put personal interests over one’s obligations to the nation and to protect classified information: sex, money, ideology, crime and contraband, and ego.

First, sex: There is extensive evidence that Trump committed sexual misconduct. Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts resulted from prosecutors at trial convincing the jury of what Trump continues to deny: his participation in a conspiracy to falsify business records to facilitate hush money payments to a porn star with whom Trump had sex in 2008 while he was married and his wife was pregnant.

Even marital infidelity on its own can endanger a clearance, because it suggests disloyalty and deception. It creates a dirty secret, creating a risk of blackmail. The public record contains considerable evidence of Trump’s misconduct and infidelity. In recent civil cases, the writer E. Jean Carroll won judgments against Trump for sexually assaulting her in the 1980s and making knowing harmful false statements about it. There are other credible allegations, as well. In 2005, Trump bragged on tape about his sexual assaults, saying that he will “just start kissing” women without consent, and that “when you are famous they let you do anything.”

Second, one of the most common reasons for clearance denial or suspension is credit card debt or other financial problems. They create a motive for taking bribes or doing business deals in exchange for leaking secrets or other disloyalty.

Trump’s businesses have recorded six bankruptcies. A US$450 million fraud judgment from February 2024 has put Trump’s finances in jeopardy. There is credible evidence that his business finances have been linked with foreign governments, particularly Russia.

Third, there is abundant evidence that Trump is a political extremist. Trump told a violent militia before the 2020 election to “stand back and stand by.” The U.S. House Jan. 6 committee found in 2022 that Trump was part of a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election, an effort that included the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol spearheaded by that same militia, the Proud Boys. Even Trump’s own White House chief of staff, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and secretary of defense have warned that Trump fits the definition of a fascist, meaning he is a violent authoritarian and a threat to democracy.

On contraband, the Justice Department presented overwhelming evidence that Trump knowingly retained thousands of pages of classified documents after the end of his term in office – at which point his authority to have them expired – and opposed lawful government efforts to retrieve them. That case was later dismissed for other reasons.

Finally, ego: The public record is awash with testimonials from people who have worked closely with Trump that he is a narcissist. Although that kind of mental health assessment can be problematic for nonprofessionals to make without a formal assessment, the common claim here is that Trump has a grandiose sense of self-importance. Critics, including former colleagues, say he expects special treatment, avoids accountability and is so self-absorbed that he cannot act responsibly or with appropriate empathy.

For all of these reasons, there is no question: If he were treated like anyone else, Trump would never get clearance.

But the voters have decided to restore Trump to the White House and in the process again invest him with the central role in the government’s massive secrecy apparatus. That was their choice. It was an unusually informed one, too, thanks to the various court cases and other evidence in the public record. Appropriately, the Biden administration has respected the electorate’s judgment by moving to provide classified briefings during this presidential transition period.

This is a revised and updated version of an article originally published July 9, 2024.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/trumps-criminal-conviction-wont-stop-him-from-getting-security-clearance-as-president-243104.

By MATTHEW DALY

WASHINGTON (AP) — Fossil fuel executive Chris Wright, Donald Trump’s choice for Energy secretary, is a strong supporter of oil and gas development, including fracking, a key pillar of the president-elect’s quest for U.S. “energy dominance” in the global market.

Wright has been one of the industry’s loudest voices against efforts to fight climate change, and he could give fossil fuels a boost, including quick action to end a year-long pause on natural gas export approvals by the Biden administration.

CEO of Denver-based Liberty Energy, he describes himself as “a tech nerd turned entrepreneur” and promotes the idea that more fossil fuel production can lift people out of poverty around the globe.

Here are some things to know about Wright.

He has no experience in government

Wright has been chairman and CEO of Liberty Energy since 2011 and has no experience in government.

Liberty is a major energy industry service provider, with a focus on technology. Wright, who grew up in Colorado, earned an undergraduate degree at MIT and did graduate work in electrical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley and MIT. In 1992, he founded Pinnacle Technologies, which helped launch commercial shale gas production through hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

He later served as chairman of Stroud Energy, an early shale gas producer, before founding Liberty Resources in 2010.

Wright says on LinkedIn that he is “all-in on energy,″ from starting his career in nuclear, solar and geothermal energy to his current efforts in oil and gas and “next-generation” geothermal. “I don’t care where energy comes (from), as long as it is secure, reliable, affordable and betters human lives,″ he wrote.

Wright will serve on Trump’s new National Energy Council

If confirmed, Wright will join North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Trump’s choice to be interior secretary, as a key player on energy policy in a second Trump term. Wright will be a member of a new National Energy Council that Burgum will chair. The new panel will seek to establish U.S. “energy dominance” around the world, Trump said.

The energy council will include all executive branch agencies involved in energy permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation and transportation, with a focus on “cutting red tape” and boosting domestic energy production, Trump said. The council’s mission represents a near-complete reversal from actions pursued by Democratic President Joe Biden, who has made fighting climate change a top priority.

Trump has pledged to rescind unspent funds in Biden’s 2022 climate law and is widely expected to curb or reverse Biden’s push for more electric vehicles and stricter regulation of carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants.

Wright has won support from conservatives and oil industry leaders

Wright has won support from influential conservatives, including oil and gas tycoon Harold Hamm.

Hamm, executive chairman of Oklahoma-based Continental Resources, a major shale oil company, is a longtime Trump supporter and adviser who played a key role on energy issues in Trump’s first term. Hamm helped organize an event at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in April where Trump reportedly asked industry leaders and lobbyists to donate $1 billion to Trump’s campaign, with the expectation that Trump would curtail environmental regulations if reelected.

Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, a conservative group that supports fossil fuels, called Wright “an excellent choice” for energy secretary. Pyle led Trump’s energy transition team in 2016.

Mike Sommers, president of the American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industry’s top lobbying group, also praised Wright, saying the group looks forward to working with him “to bolster American geopolitical strength” by lifting Biden’s pause on LNG export permits and ensuring “open access” for American energy around the world.

Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, called Wright an energy innovator who played a key role in America’s fracking boom.

Wright has disparaged climate activists, who have denounced his selection

Wright has frequently criticized what he calls a “top-down” approach to climate change by liberal and left-wing groups. He argues that the climate movement around the world is “collapsing under its own weight.”

Jackie Wong, senior vice president for climate and energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, called Wright “a champion of dirty fossil fuels” and said his nomination was “a disastrous mistake.”

“The Energy Department should be doing all it can to develop and expand the energy sources of the 21st century, not trying to promote the dirty fuels of the last century,” Wong said. “Given the devastating impacts of climate-fueled disasters, DOE’s core mission of researching and promoting cleaner energy solutions is more important now than ever.”

Lena Moffitt, executive director of Evergreen Action, another environmental group, said Wright has “shown that his loyalty lies with fossil fuel interests. Yet he would be tasked with overseeing billions in clean energy investments that are critical to lowering costs and creating jobs nationwide. This nomination is a clear indication that Trump is more interested in helping his political allies than tackling the real challenges facing everyday Americans.”

By NICHOLAS RICCARDI

The 2024 presidential election featured sky-high turnout, approaching the historic levels of the 2020 contest and contradicting long-held conventional political wisdom that Republicans struggle to win races in which many people vote.

According to Associated Press elections data, more than 153 million ballots were cast in this year’s race between Republican Donald Trump, now the president-elect, and Democrat Kamala Harris, the vice president, with hundreds of thousands of more still being tallied in slower-counting states such as California. When those ballots are fully tabulated, the number of votes will come even closer to the 158 million in the 2020 presidential contest, which was the highest turnout election since women were given the right to vote more than a century ago.

“Trump is great for voter turnout in both parties,” said Eitan Hersh, a political scientist at Tufts University.

The former president’s victory in both the Electoral College and popular vote — Trump currently leads Harris by nearly 2.5 million votes nationwide — also contradicts the belief in politics that Democrats, not Republicans, benefit from high-turnout elections.

Trump himself voiced it in 2020 when he warned that a Democratic bill to expand mail balloting would lead to “levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” That warning came as Trump began to sow conspiracy theories about using mail voting during the coronavirus pandemic, which he then used to falsely claim his 2020 loss was due to fraud.

That claim led to a wave of new laws adding regulations and rolling back forms of voting in GOP-controlled states and an expansion of mail voting in Democratic-led ones, as the battle over turnout became a central part of political debate. Such laws usually have a miniscule impact on voting but inspired allegations of voter suppression from Democrats and cheating from Republicans.

“It’s such an embarrassing story for proponents on both sides, because it’s so obviously wrong,” Hersh said.

Though both sides are likely to continue to battle over how elections are run, Trump’s high-turnout victory may take some of the urgency out of that confrontation.

“Now I think, you just won the popular vote, I think it’ll quiet down,” said Patrick Ruffini, a Republican data analyst and pollster who has long argued his party can succeed in a high-turnout election with a diverse electorate.

Experts note that turnout in the seven swing states at the heart of the election was even higher than in the rest of the country.

“This was a campaign in seven states much more so than previous elections have felt like,” Ruffini said.

While the rest the country shifted significantly from 2020, when Democrat Joe Biden won the popular vote by 7 million, or 4.5 percentage points, the outcome in the swing states was closer. The turnout story also was different. Turnout dropped from 2020 in noncompetitive states such as Illinois, which recorded more than 500,000 fewer votes than in the last presidential election, and Ohio, which reported more than 300,000 less.

Meanwhile, the number of votes cast topped those in 2020 in the battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all of which Trump won. Arizona’s turnout was nearly even with four years ago, as the state continued to count ballots.

Harris even met or topped Biden’s vote totals in Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin, and turnout has far eclipsed that of the 2016 presidential election, when 135.6 million voters cast ballots in a race won by Trump over Democrat Hillary Clinton. The problem for Democrats is that Trump did better in the battlegrounds than four years ago.

“The Harris campaign did a pretty good job getting voters out who wouldn’t have come out,” said Tom Bonier, a Democratic data analyst. “She did get her voters out. Trump got more.”

Those Trump turnout victories included first-time voter Jasmine Perez, 26, who voted for Trump at the Las Vegas Raiders stadium.

“I’m a Christian and he really aligns with a lot of my values as a Christian in America, and I like that he openly promotes Christianity in America,” Perez said.

Voting alongside her was Diego Zubek, 27, who voted for Trump in 2016 but didn’t vote in 2020 because he figured Trump would win easily. He voted for Trump this year.

“I wasn’t going to let that happen again,” Zubek said.

A key part of the GOP strategy was reaching out to voters such as Perez and Zubek, encouraging early and mail voting after Republicans had largely abandoned them in the past two elections due to Trump’s lies about vote fraud. Conservatives mounted extensive voter registration and get-out-the-vote operations targeting infrequent voters, a demographic that many operatives have long believed would not vote for the GOP.

More than half the votes were cast before Election Day this year, according to AP tracking of the advanced vote.

During the campaign, Andrew Kolvet, a spokesman for Turning Point Action, a conservative group that ran a get-out-the-vote campaign with more than 1,000 workers in multiple battleground states, cited Stacey Abrams, a onetime Democratic candidate for Georgia governor, as an inspiration in his group’s effort. Abrams’ success mobilizing Black voters and other groups in her home state that were less likely to vote helped pave the way for Biden’s 2020 win there.

“We saw that Trump has this amazing reservoir of low-propensity conservatives who needed a little coaxing,” Kolvet said in an interview Friday. “They didn’t think their vote mattered, and their No. 1 pushback was they didn’t understand, really, how to vote.”

Kolvet acknowledged that conservatives long believed large turnout didn’t help them but contended that’s changed in the Trump era: “Our ideas are more popular,” he said.

Whether it continues is up to what happens next in Washington.

“It’s going to be up to conservatives to make good on those campaign promises,” Kolvet said.

By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press

PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Donald Trump Jr. said Sunday that any pushback from the Washington establishment around his father’s unconventional choices for Cabinet proves they are just the kind of disruptors that voters are demanding.

The younger Trump insisted the team now around the president-elect knows how to build out an administration, unlike when his father first took office.

“The reality this time is, we actually know what we’re doing. We actually know who the good guys and the bad guys are,” he told Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures. “And it’s about surrounding my father with people who are both competent and loyal. They will deliver on his promises. They will deliver on his message. They are not people who think they know better, as unelected bureaucrats.”

After Donald Trump was elected in 2016, he stocked his early administration with choices from traditional Republican and business circles, tapping figures such as former Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, who was his first as secretary of state.

Today, Trump is valuing personal allegiance above political experience.

That has translated into selections such as former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who faced a House ethics investigation, as attorney general, anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of the Department of Health and Human Services and Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic lawmaker who has in the past publicly expressed sympathy to Russian causes, as director of U.S. intelligence services.

On Sunday, Trump continued to round out his team, naming Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, as the new chairman.

Carr said recently the commission’s priorities should be “reining in Big Tech,” and drafted the FCC chapter of Project 2025, an agenda that the conservative Heritage Foundation sketched out for a second Trump term. Trump has claimed he doesn’t know anything about the effort, but some of its themes have aligned with his statements.

The five-person commission has a 3-2 Democratic majority until next year, when Trump gets to appoint a new member.

Some of his picks might face difficulties getting confirmed by the Senate, even with Republicans holding a majority in January.

Donald Trump Jr. suggested that was precisely the idea.

“A lot of them are going to face pushback” but ”they are going to be actual disrupters,” he said. “That’s what the American people want.”

He said there are “backup plans” if Senate confirmation is problematic in some cases, but “we’re obviously going with the strongest candidates first.”

Trump Jr. also looked back to eight years ago, when his businessman father was new to Washington and its ways. “A big part of that process is just something that we didn’t understand in 2016, where he came to Washington, D.C., he had no experience,” he said.

Now, his son said, Trump knows what to expect.

Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., said the president-elect has “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to deliver that change, to take on permanent Washington, return the power back to the people.”

“You have to have people you trust to go into these agencies and have a real reform agenda,” Schmitt told “Sunday Morning Futures.” He said he sees “real momentum to get these nominations confirmed to actually deliver what President Trump promised on the campaign trail.”

On the same show, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., said, “We don’t need any Democrats to help us. We have got the numbers.” But, he added, Trump needs “a team around him that’s going to help him. He can’t do it by himself.”

Vivek Ramaswamy, the former Republican presidential candidate tapped by Trump along with businessman Elon Musk to lead a new effort on government efficiency, also predicted pushback from traditional Washington to promised steep federal cuts that he said showed the need to “score quick wins through executive action.”

By FARNOUSH AMIRI

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Mike Johnson said Friday that he will “strongly request” that the House Ethics Committee not release the results of its investigation into ex-Rep. Matt Gaetz, rebuffing senators who are demanding access now that Gaetz is President-elect Donald Trump ‘s nominee for attorney general.

Johnson’s intervention is highly unusual, as the Ethics panel has traditionally operated independently. His move seems certain to add the growing furor on Capitol Hill over Gaetz’s nomination to become the nation’s top law enforcement officer.

“I’m going to strongly request that the Ethics Committee not issue the report, because that is not the way we do things in the House,” Johnson told reporters at the U.S. Capitol. “And I think that would be a terrible precedent to set.”

Ethics reports have previously been released after a member’s resignation, though it is extremely rare.

Johnson’s comments were a reversal from Wednesday, when he suggested a hands-off approach to the Gaetz report. The “Speaker of the House is not involved in that and can’t be involved in that,” he previously said of the Ethics committee.

The bipartisan Ethics panel is under enormous pressure as it weighs what to do about its years-long probe into sexual misconduct and other allegations against Gaetz, who resigned from Congress on Wednesday after Trump announced him as his nominee for attorney general.

It is standard practice for the Ethics Committee to end investigations when members of Congress depart on the grounds that they lack jurisdiction to continue. But the circumstances with Gaetz are hardly standard, given his potential role in Trump’s Cabinet. Senators saying the panel’s material must see the light of day so that they can fully vet his nomination.

“The sequence and timing of Mr. Gaetz’s resignation from the House raises serious questions about the contents of the House Ethics Committee report,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Thursday. “We cannot allow this valuable information from a bipartisan investigation to be hidden from the American people.”

Gaetz has vehemently denied any wrongdoing and said last year that the Justice Department’s separate investigation against him into sex trafficking allegations involving underage girls ended with no federal charges.

“The rules of the House have always been that a former member is beyond the jurisdiction of the Ethics committee,” Johnson added. “And so I don’t think that’s relevant.”

But Republican and Democratic senators alike on the Judiciary Committee that would review Gaetz’s attorney general nomination have called for the report to be made available to them.

“I think it’s going to be material in the proceedings,” said Sen. Thomas Tillis, a North Carolina Republican.

Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said, “I think there should not be any limitation on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation, including whatever the House Ethics Committee has generated.”

However, the chairman of the Ethics panel, Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss., says he doesn’t know if the committee could provide the report to the Senate: “That is something that staff is looking into and trying to provide some guidance to members.”

When asked if he would at least discuss the report with members of the upper chamber, Guest said “that is a decision for the committee as a whole to take up at some point.”

Trump’s attorney general is expected to oversee radical changes to the Justice Department, which has been the target of Trump’s ire over two criminal cases it brought accusing him of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election and hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Trump, who cast himself as the victim of politically motivated prosecutions, vowed repeatedly on the campaign trail to carry out retribution against his political enemies if returned to the White House.

In a statement Wednesday announcing his pick, Trump said Gaetz would root out “systemic corruption” at the Justice Department and return the department “to its true mission of fighting crime and upholding our democracy and constitution.”

The federal sex trafficking investigation into Gaetz began under Attorney General Bill Barr during Trump’s first term and focused on allegations that Gaetz and onetime political ally Joel Greenberg paid underage girls and escorts or offered them gifts in exchange for sex.

Greenberg, a fellow Republican who served as the tax collector in Florida’s Seminole County, admitted as part of a plea deal with prosecutors in 2021 that he paid women and an underage girl to have sex with him and other men. The men were not identified in court documents when he pleaded guilty. Greenberg was sentenced in late 2022 to 11 years in prison.

Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Lisa Mascaro and Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this report.

By MATTHEW DALY and CHRIS MEGERIAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump announced Friday that North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Trump’s choice to head the Interior Department, will also lead a newly created National Energy Council that will seek to establish U.S. “energy dominance” around the world.

Burgum, in his new role, will oversee a panel that crosses all executive branch agencies involved in energy permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation and transportation, Trump said in a statement. As chairman of the National Energy Council, Burgum will have a seat on the National Security Council, Trump said.

“This Council will oversee the path to U.S. ENERGY DOMINANCE by cutting red tape, enhancing private sector investments across all sectors of the Economy, and by focusing on INNOVATION over longstanding, but totally unnecessary, regulation,” Trump wrote. His new policies will help drive down inflation, win an “arms race” with China over artificial intelligence and even expand U.S. diplomatic influence around the globe, Trump claimed without explanation.

He accused the “radical left” of engaging in a war on American energy, in the name of fighting climate change. His policy of energy dominance, which he also espoused during his first term, will allow the U.S. to sell oil, gas and other forms of energy to European allies, making the world safer, Trump said.

Trump has called oil and natural gas, along with minerals such as lithium and copper, “liquid gold” that should be exploited to the maximum extent possible.

We will “DRILL BABY DRILL,” expand ALL forms of Energy production to grow our Economy, and create good-paying jobs,” Trump said.

Burgum, 67, was elected North Dakota governor in 2016, his first campaign for elected office. A former software executive, he led Great Plains Software, which Microsoft acquired for $1.1 billion in 2001. Burgum has also led other companies in real estate development and venture capital.

Burgum has taken a pro-business style as governor of a state where agriculture and oil are the main industries. He’s pushed income tax cuts, reduced regulations, and changes to animal agriculture laws and higher education governance. Burgum also emphasized a “data-driven” approach to governing, advocated for a Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in the state and prioritized engagement with tribal nations.

He ran for president in 2023, but dropped out after his bid failed to resonate. He later endorsed Trump.

Earlier Friday, Trump announced that Steven Cheung will serve as his White House communications director and Sergio Gor will run the personnel office. Both have been advisers to the president-elect since his 2016 campaign.

Cheung led communications for Trump’s latest campaign, where he gained a reputation for combative and insulting attacks on the Republican’s opponents. A native of Sacramento, California, he worked in Republican politics and for the Ultimate Fighting Championship before joining Trump’s team in 2016.

Gor ran Winning Team Publishing, which he started with Donald Trump Jr. The company has published books by Trump and his allies. Gor also led the super PAC Right for America.

The Presidential Personnel Office will likely be a focal point of Trump’s efforts to shape his administration’s staff with loyalists. Trump in a statement described Cheung and Gor as trusted advisers, adding that he was “thrilled to have them join my White House.”