Trump and Musk send DC in tailspin with spending bill attacks as government shutdown nears: Live updates – UK Times

A ruling from Georgia’s Court of Appeals removes Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from prosecuting a sprawling election interference case against Donald Trump and more than a dozen of his allies, upending the ongoing criminal case against the president-elect weeks before he returns to the White House.

Rahm Emanuel, the outgoing U.S. ambassador to Japan, criticized the party for being “blind to the rising sea of disillusionment” that has been simmering for years in America, he wrote in a column for the Washington Post titled “The road back to power for Democrats.”

Emanuel, who was Obama’s White House chief of staff from 2009–2010, said the disillusionment began in 2003 with the Iraq War and rumbled on into 2008, where “unchecked greed led to the collapse of the global financial system.”

Rhian Lubin has the story.

Speaker Mike Johnson faces several major hurdles today.

He has to come up with a spending deal while appeasing calls from Trump to either raise or eliminate the debt ceiling — and he has 24 hours to work out how to do that while making sure he can keep his job on January 3.

Some Republicans will never raise the debt ceiling without spending cuts and reforms…

And there are plenty of members of the House in both parties who want specific things from the continuing resolution and who won’t back down unless they get them…

“The situation is fluid,” says GOP Whip Tom Emmer.

Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner seemed incredibly impressed on Wednesday over the new hairstyle Donald Trump unveiled this week at Mar-a-Lago, quipping that it’s the “winds of winning” and that it showed he was “leaning into the victory” of his election.

Donald Trump doesn’t want to just lift the debt ceiling — he’s keen to get rid of it, telling Garrett Haake of NBC News: “The Democrats have said they want to get rid of it. If they want to get rid of it, I would lead the charge.”

Asked if he still has confidence in Speaker Mike Johnson, he says: “We’ll see. What they had yesterday was unacceptable,” he told me, referring to the Speaker’s continuing resolution. “In many ways it was unacceptable. It’s a Democrat trap.”

The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits fell markedly last week following a big increase the week before.

Jobless claim applications declined by 22,000 to 220,000 for the week of Dec. 14, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s fewer than the 229,000 analysts were forecasting.

South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace calls for a government shutdown until Donald Trump is sworn as president on January 20, “if there’s no plan” to move forward on a continuing resolution ahead of Friday’s midnight deadline.

Here’s what she wrote on X this morning:

At this point if there is no plan, let the September CR lapse and let’s reset Jan. 20th.

It’s not the scary shutdown the lying media tells you it is. The President has the authority to prioritize spending.

Statutorily if the government shuts down, social security, veterans benefits, Medicare, and Medicaid all still get paid, because they are considered mandatory spending not subject to appropriations.

In the event of a shutdown, OMB or the Office of Management and Budget, develops a contingency plan to decide what stays open and who has to report to work.

I also have a bill called the Government Shutdown Prevention Act of 2023. It would appropriate funding for 90 days at 99% of what our current budget is, and lowering an additional 1% per day after 90 days passed.

We should cut spending the easy way (my bill) or the slightly harder one (a partial government shutdown).

Perhaps we could start with paying only those government employees who show up to work.

Might be a good proof point to determine what’s essential and what’s not. We got a lot of junk in the federal government.

Former Florida Representative Matt Gaetz has hinted he may expose lawmakers who he claims made “me too” payoffs to with public funds amid the imminent release of the House Ethics Committee report into his conduct with women.

The flailing Republican admitted Wednesday he “probably partied, womanized, drank and smoked” more than he should have in his 30s after reports of the pending release of the long-running ethics investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct with at least one underage girl and drug use while he was in office.

Rhian Lubin and Alex Woodward report.