Trump says Hegseth has done a ‘fantastic job’ a day after impeachment effort against defense secretary withers
As Trump thanked Pete Hegseth in his remarks, there was applause from the crowd in attendance.
“I had a feeling that was going to happen,” the president said, a day after House Republicans effectively killed an effort to impeach the defense secretary. “He’s done a fantastic job,” Trump said of his defense secretary. “He loves you, and he protects you – he’s all about you.”
Key events
In response to the White House general counsel’s letter to oversight Democrats – threatening them with criminal investigations if their probes in the next Congress are used to purely “deployed to harass and aggrandize” members of the Trump administration – the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, said that the White House has been used to Republicans that act as “nothing more than a reckless rubber stamp for Donald Trump’s extreme agenda”.
The Democratic congressman, poised to become the House speaker when his party takes control in January, said that the new majority is going to be a “check and balance on an out-of-control executive branch in the face of unprecedented corruption that they’ve unleashed on the American people”.
He added: “If they don’t like it, consult the constitution.”
With Republicans still reeling from the party’s midterms shellacking and searching for a path out of the political wilderness, a growing faction in Congress are pushing for the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, to be the party’s 2028 presidential nominee, Politico reports today.
Citing interviews with about two dozen GOP lawmakers, the outlet reports that a growing number in the party view Rubio as “a better fit”, given what they feel voters see as JD Vance’s proximity to Donald Trump and the president’s unpopularity.
“I hope he runs. I think he’s the best person to communicate, to unify,” representative Marlin Stutzman told Politico of Rubio. Asked about why he supported Rubio over the vice-president, he said:
I think he’s the most talented Republican by far. We’re going to have to continue to re-message, put some new faces up.
Indeed, the election wipeout “certainly makes it harder for Vance”, said one GOP senator. One House Republican added:
I think Rubio is our best hope to lead Republicans out of this wilderness, and I hope he makes his break from Trump and JD early next year.
A person close to Rubio told Politico that he’s the only person who knows what he will do regarding a presidential bid. As of right now, he’s “fully focused on doing his many jobs and isn’t thinking about 2028”.
The problem for Vance is one he appears very much aware of. A reminder that the day after the midterms, he posted a lengthy social media statement attributing the party’s historic losses to the war on Iran, in a clear bid to distance himself from the unpopular conflict ahead of a potential 2028 presidential run. Vance was reportedly sceptical of the war, but he also served as the face of ceasefire efforts for a time.
Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Alexander Darchiev, has died “suddenly” at the age of 66 after just one and a half years in the job, Moscow’s foreign ministry announced on Wednesday.
The ministry called Darchiev an “outstanding diplomat, an experienced leader and a kind colleague”. Moscow did not give more details on the death.
Darchiev previously served as Russia’s ambassador to Canada between 2021 and 2024. He was appointed to the US role in March last year, shortly after Donald Trump returned to power, and several years into Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Darchiev was a specialist in Russia-US relations and was the director of the foreign ministry’s North America department between 2014 and 2020.
In 2022, when Russia attacked Ukraine, Darchiev called the move a “necessary measure”.
As Trump’s $10bn BBC battle goes ahead, what’s at stake for press freedom? – podcast
Donald Trump’s $10bn defamation lawsuit against the BBC has been granted permission to proceed, after the corporation’s attempt to get it dismissed was thrown out by a Trump-appointed Florida judge.
The case focuses on an edit in a 2024 Panorama documentary that spliced two comments together that were made by the president during a rally before the January 6 Capitol riots, for which the BBC has apologised. With the lawsuit now set to continue, what’s at stake for press freedom?
In this episode of The Latest podcast, Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian’s global editor Devika Bhat. (You can also watch on YouTube.)
Richard Luscombe
Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, has emerged as a superfan of the University of Florida’s football team, spending more than $1.2m of taxpayers’ money on frequent personal trips to watch them play, a report published on Wednesday claims.
Ethics watchdogs have questioned the necessity of the country’s top diplomat shuttling so often between Washington DC and Gainesville, where his son Anthony has a walk-on role as a running back for the team known as the Gators.
An investigation by the Washington Post found that Rubio has attended at least 10 games in the last two seasons, including five this fall, and that of 23 total trips made to Gainesville on military aircraft, 15 were “personal” in nature.
The outlet said that while Rubio is prohibited from flying commercially, because of security protocols that also cover the secretary of defense and the FBI and CIA directors, his use of government transport “appears to significantly outpace that of his predecessors”.
Using published defense department rates listing the cost per hour of different kinds of military aircraft, the Post calculated that the flights alone have cost more than $1.2m.
Most recently, on 7 November, Rubio arrived in Gainesville onboard an air force C-37, a plane used frequently for the VIP transport of high-ranking government officials, and was seen on the sidelines as the Gators lost 23-7 to Oklahoma. Anthony Rubio played no part in the game.
Trump: ‘America did not start a war with Iran’
As the postmortem following the Republican rout in the midterm elections continues – and several party members blame the ongoing Iran war for the crushing defeat – Donald Trump was resolute that the conflict remains necessary during his remarks at the Arlington national cemetery.
“America did not start a war with Iran. Iran has been waging war in America since 1979,” Trump claimed, referring to the 66 US hostages held captive in 1979, but glossing over the fact he reignited hostilities with Tehran with strikes at the end of February this year and launched a large-scale conflict in the region.
“This is really an amazing time in our country’s history,” Trump added. “We’re doing things that nobody ever thought possible. And yes, we have some minor setbacks. We’ll handle them very nicely.”
Trump says Hegseth has done a ‘fantastic job’ a day after impeachment effort against defense secretary withers
As Trump thanked Pete Hegseth in his remarks, there was applause from the crowd in attendance.
“I had a feeling that was going to happen,” the president said, a day after House Republicans effectively killed an effort to impeach the defense secretary. “He’s done a fantastic job,” Trump said of his defense secretary. “He loves you, and he protects you – he’s all about you.”
Donald Trump is now delivering remarks at the Arlington national cemetery at a commemoration for Veterans Day.
We’ll bring you the latest.
Abdul El-Sayed says absent Democrats during key vote should ‘show up and do your job’
Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic senator-elect from Michigan, said that the 11 lawmakers from his own party who missed the procedural vote that would have moved the impeachment articles against Pete Hegseth to the House floor should “show up and do your job” in an interview with CNN.
As I noted earlier, some House Democrats blamed a traffic jam in Washington DC for missing the vote.
El-Sayed went on to blast Hegseth, addressing him directly on air. “Why are you still doing this job? You are really bad at this. You are failing your responsibility. You have mishandled this war, and nobody really actually understands what it is you’re about,” El-Sayed said. “Just resign. Make it easy for everybody instead of, in the end, getting taken out because that is clearly what’s happening.”
Trump attends Veterans Day service at Arlington
Donald Trump is at the Arlington national cemetery for a Veterans Day service. Here are some pictures of him alongside JD Vance and Pete Hegseth.
It comes just a day after House Republicans were able to quash an effort to impeach Hegseth, after outgoing GOP congressman Thomas Massie filed a resolution earlier this week in a bid to oust the embattled Pentagon chief.
White House threatens House Democrats with criminal investigations ahead of oversight sweep
The White House’s top lawyer, Will Scharf, has sent a letter to Democratic congressman Robert Garcia, the incoming chair of the House oversight committee, threatening Democrats with criminal investigations if they launch oversight inquiries purely “deployed to harass and aggrandize” members of the Trump administration that could verge into “blatant criminality”.
This comes as Democrats have vowed to investigate cabinet members and issue subpoenas to allies in the president’s orbit. Scharf, however, said that the White House is monitoring “abusive and capricious threats that are now proliferating from Democrat legislators who seek to abuse the legislative process to intimidate and to interfere with the lawful functioning of government”.
Punchbowl News was first to report the news of the letter.
The House oversight committee, the lower chamber’s main investigative body, is able to investigate government offices or individuals; however, its inquiries must serve a valid legislative purpose. The committee cannot act as a formal law enforcement or criminal trial agency.
In his letter, Scharf accused Garcia and other colleagues of displaying “malicious and improper features” in their promises to conduct investigations in the new Congress. The White House counsel listed several statements from incumbent and incoming Democrats which, he claims, are personal grievances as opposed to furthering a “legitimate legislative task”.
“Issuing unlawful subpoenas with the intention of depriving citizens oftheir constitutional rights and privileges may warrant further investigation,” Scharf added.
Garcia, however, remained undeterred in response.
“It appears Donald Trump has something to hide. Let’s be clear,” the top Democrat said in a statement. “Congress has wide latitude to conduct investigations and oversight, an authority inherent in the power to legislate.”
He added that the administration “continues to weaponize the government” with threats of “unconstitutional attacks” on lawmakers.
“We are a co-equal branch of government and will not be deterred by baseless threats from a weaponized [justice department] or from the president’s lawyers,” Garcia said.
Jessica Glenza
The United States could lose its measles elimination status this week, an event likely to cement health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s legacy of meddling in vaccine policies amid the worst outbreak of the virus in the US in 35 years.
If the US loses its measles-free status, it would join Canada and several European and Asian nations that had eliminated the disease only for it to return.
“That is a tremendous step backwards,” said Dr Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center, an attending physician in the division of infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and a prominent critic of Kennedy.
A panel of eight independent experts will consider the epidemiological evidence in Washington DC, part of a group called the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), a regional branch of the World Health Organization (WHO). The PAHO director will make the final call.
“Independent of what PAHO says, measles is now endemic in the US. Measles has a foothold in the US,” said Offit. “We’re going to see it this year, we’re going to see it next year,” because the US “critically decreased the percentage” of people vaccinated.
The US is in the midst of its worst measles outbreak since 1991 with more than 5,400 cases nationally, according to the Johns Hopkins University International Vaccine Access Center tracker. Just this year, six people have died in Pennsylvania, a child died in New York on election day and an infant died in Wisconsin days later. Nearly every US state has an active outbreak.
Democrat Colom still leads in nail-biting US Senate race in Mississippi
Democrat Scott Colom is still leading the extemely close US Senate race in Mississippi against Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith.
Colom is up by more than 3,000 votes, with 98% counted. A reminder that Tuesday 10 November was the ballot deadline in the state, which means that we can expect consequential drops today.
If Colom wins, it will be a remarkable upset in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat as senator since 1982, and in a state that Donald Trump carried by 22 points in 2024.
