JANUARY 2025 - POLITICAL NEWS

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Unlike many of President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees, Rubio is a shoo-in for Senate confirmation, having already nabbed some Democratic support. U.S. diplomats and foreign officials, too, view the GOP senator from Florida as a knowledgeable, not-insane, well-behaved person with whom they can engage. Rubio’s committee hearing is set for Wednesday and he’s expected to be one of the first Trump nominees to take up his post.

Gov. Kathy Hochul wants to cut state income taxes by $1 billion over the next two years — part of an agenda aimed at combating voters’ economic concerns that helped deliver President-elect Donald Trump’s victory. The Democratic governor is also trying to improve her own political standing ahead of her 2026 reelection.

Speaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday backed away from a plan to address the approaching federal debt cliff in a party-line reconciliation package, acknowledging several major challenges that may force Republicans to deal with the borrowing limit in bipartisan talks with Democrats. 

President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday said he will create a new agency called the External Revenue Service to collect tariffs and other forms of revenue that come from foreign sources, echoing a suggestion made by former adviser Steve Bannon at an event hosted by POLITICO Tuesday morning.

Former First Lady Michelle Obama won’t be attending Monday’s inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, according to a statement.

“This is obviously not the outcome we had hoped for, given our profound disagreements with the Republican ticket on a whole host of issues,” former President Barack Obama said in a statement announcing Michelle's decision not to attend. "In a country as big and diverse as ours, we won’t always see eye-to-eye on everything. But progress requires us to extend good faith and grace – even to people with whom we deeply disagree."

The former chair of the Jan. 6 select committee said he has discussed pardons with the White House as President-elect Donald Trump threatens retribution against the panel's Democrats.“We had a discussion about pardons. It wasn't a particular pardon,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said. “For me, as a member of the committee, if one is offered, I would accept it.”

Republican Sen. John Curtis of Utah called on Tuesday for Congress to set guardrails on artificial intelligence.“The only thing that’s holding things back is not money, it’s the guardrails. When we don’t put guardrails out, everybody’s scared.” Curtis said at the POLITICO Playbook: The First 100 Days event in Washington. “My guess is if we did our job, put the guardrails out there, free market would go crazy.”

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) will chair the House Rules Committee, Speaker Mike Johnson announced Tuesday, one of several changes to the powerful panel.Foxx will be the first Republican woman to chair the panel and the second woman ever, following the late Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.). A former chair of the Education and Workforce Committee, she will be the only House Republican woman to hold a full committee gavel this Congress.

Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) said on Tuesday that there will “absolutely” be amendments to the Senate GOP’s first immigration bill — indication that Republicans will agree to Democratic demands for a more expansive legislative debate.“We are absolutely open to amendments,” Britt said at a summit hosted by POLITICO Playbook. “There [are] absolutely going to be amendments and hopefully a lot of debate.”

President-elect Donald Trump said his conversation Wednesday with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum was “wonderful” and “very productive.” She, in turn, described their phone call as “excellent. ”Their upbeat readouts on the call marked a contrast from earlier in the week, when Trump warned he would impose a 25 percent tariff on all goods from Mexico if it doesn’t stop the flow of migrants and drugs across their shared border – and Sheinbaum fired back by warning that her country could retaliate with tariffs of its own.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is cruising to reelection — and he has Donald Trump to thank for his good fortune.The president-elect’s criminal case has loomed over Bragg since his first day on the job. That ended Friday with Trump’s sentencing in his hush money case. Trump received a slap on the wrist and gets to declare victory. But so does Bragg.

Donald Trump has not been exonerated for his “unprecedented criminal effort” to subvert the 2020 election and cling to power after he lost to Joe Biden. That’s the message special counsel Jack Smith delivered in his final report, which laid out evidence Smith said would have resulted in Trump’s conviction at trial. Trump is only off the hook, the special counsel wrote, because he won back the White House in 2024, forcing the Justice Department to shut down the historic prosecution.