Nancy Pelosi swats backs challenger to be reelected House minority leader

Breitbart News senior editor-at-large Joel Pollak, left, and Chief Executive Larry Solov at the Breitbart offices in Los Angeles.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

The Breitbart News Network is seeing some of its advertisers head for the exit doors and is responding in typical Breitbart fashion: by going on the counteroffensive, labeling one of them as “un-American” and calling it a war on conservatism.

Since Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election, Los Angeles-based Breitbart has experienced a backlash from some advertisers who say that the online site conflicts with their corporate values.

Breitbart took a pro-Trump stance during the campaign, supporting the Republican candidate’s views on immigration and national security. The company’s executive chairman, Steve Bannon, who is on a leave of absence, was Trump’s campaign manager and has been named chief White House strategist.

Although Bannon was quoted in Mother Jones as saying Breitbart is a platform for the alt-right — the ultraconservative movement associated with white nationalism — the news site has denied accusations that it engages in racist rhetoric. The company has stated that it isn’t affiliated with the alt-right and that the brand of nationalism it espouses is political, not racial.

Breitbart is fighting back at one of the advertisers — breakfast cereal maker Kellogg Co. — by launching a Twitter campaign, #DumpKelloggs, that encourages its readers to sign a petition and boycott the maker of such favorites as Froot Loops and Apple Jacks.

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The Supreme Court building in Washington.

(Saul Loeb / AFP-Getty Images)

Facing the likelihood of dramatically stepped-up deportations under a President Donald Trump, the Supreme Court justices sounded closely split Wednesday over whether the government can indefinitely jail immigrants with criminal convictions while they fight legal efforts to remove them from the country.

Trump, who made illegal immigration one of the platforms of his presidential campaign, has promised to deport as many as 3 million immigrants once he takes office, and the Supreme Court case involving a Los Angeles immigrant could give his administration greater leverage.

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A Carrier Corp. plant in Indianapolis.

(Darron Cummings / Associated Press)

President-elect Donald Trump’s newly announced agreement to save more than 1,000 jobs in Indiana gave him the kind of trophy he covets: a tangible victory that matches his campaign promise to serve as deal maker in chief.

But its long-term value will depend on what Trump gave up to keep those factory jobs from going to Mexico and whether he is able to craft a successful fiscal policy that has a broader impact on the economy.

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House and Senate negotiators announced a compromise Tuesday that would permit the Pentagon to forgive debts owed by thousands of California National Guard soldiers who received improper bonuses during the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The agreement was included in a defense bill due to be voted on by the House on Friday and the Senate next week.

It seeks to strike a balance between the Pentagon’s concerns about fraud in the bonus system and lawmakers’ attempts to resolve a scandal that has hurt thousands of military veterans and sparked a public furor.

The compromise calls on the Pentagon to forgive the enlistment bonuses and student loans benefits unless the soldier who received the money “knew or reasonably should have known” that he or she was ineligible for it.

The provision stops short of requiring the Pentagon to forgive debts allegedly owed by all California Guard soldiers as long as they fulfilled the terms of their enlistment contracts and did not commit fraud — a far more sweeping waiver that members of the California delegation had proposed.

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Smoke rises near the Syrian village of Hisha, about 25 miles from Islamic State’s de facto capital of Raqqah, after an airstrike by the American-led coalition on Nov. 9, 2016.

(Delil Souleiman /AFP/Getty Images)

A U.S. military investigation has found that “unintentional human errors” led to a coalition airstrike that mistakenly killed dozens of Syrian-backed troops this fall, but it did not recommend disciplining anyone for the deadly attack.

The Sept. 17 air raid on a garrison in the eastern Syrian town of Dair Alzour is one of the worst coalition errors to emerge since the Obama administration began an air war against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria in mid-2014.

The attack, which was in an area also frequented by Russian forces, led to sharp criticism from Moscow after it emerged that Russian attempts to use a communications hotline to stop the attack were not answered for nearly half an hour.

Russia’s Defense Ministry has said the attack killed 62 Syrian troops, wounded 100 more and opened the way for an Islamic State offensive in the area. It also helped destroy an already fragile U.S.-Russian cease-fire.

A four-page redacted summary of the investigation that was released Tuesday concluded that the botched bombing did not violate international laws of armed conflict.

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Participants stand behind a military band in Pyongyang, North Korea, on Sept. 13 during a celebration rally after the country’s successful test of a nuclear warhead.

(Kim Won-Jin / AFP/Getty Images)

The United Nations has slapped additional sanctions on North Korea in an effort to cut its exports of raw materials as punishment for conducting another nuclear test.

The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday unanimously approved a U.S.-drafted resolution aimed at cutting North Korea’s exports of coal, copper, silver and other raw materials, which are its biggest legitimate sources of foreign revenue.

The latest sanctions were issued in response to Pyongyang’s fifth and largest nuclear test, which was conducted in September in violation of U.N. resolutions.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power estimated the new sanctions will cost North Korea about $800 million a year in lost export income.

North Korea “is determined to refine its nuclear and ballistic missile technology to pose an even more potent threat ... to international peace and security,” Power said.

“But this resolution imposes unprecedented costs on the [Kim Jong Un] regime for defying this council’s demands,” she said.

Previous international sanctions have had little apparent effect on decisions in Pyongyang, and it’s difficult to know whether the latest round will make a difference.

In March, a set of sanctions described as the most severe in two decades was imposed. But North Korea has gotten around some of the restrictions thanks to complicity from China, its neighbor and longtime benefactor.

Wednesday’s measures included a 60% cut on North Korea’s export of coal, its biggest income source, and bans on the export of copper, nickel, silver and zinc.

The sanctions also banned North Korea’s export of statues, a business that caters mostly to Africa, and blacklisted 11 people and 10 entities.

Under the resolution, North Korea is also threatened with suspension of some U.N. privileges if it fails to comply.

In an unusual public warning, the head of the CIA said Wednesday it would be the “height of folly” and “disastrous” for President-elect Donald Trump to scrap the Iran nuclear deal.

CIA Director John Brennan said in a TV interview that ripping up the historic accord could allow Iran to resume its nuclear program and set off an arms race in the Middle East by encouraging other countries to acquire their own nuclear weapons.

“I think it would be disastrous” for the incoming Trump administration to renege on the deal with Iran, Brennan said in an unusually blunt interview with BBC.

“It could lead to a weapons program inside Iran that could lead other states in the region to embark on their own programs, so I think it would be height of folly if the next administration were to tear up that agreement,” Brennan said.

It is extremely rare for the CIA director to issue a public warning to an incoming administration, and it suggests deep concern inside the intelligence community about Trump’s intentions.

During the campaign, Trump variously promised to dismantle or to revise President Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement, an international deal that cut off Iran’s ability to build or acquire nuclear weapons in exchange for easing of sanctions on its finances and oil industry.

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.), Trump’s pick to replace Brennan as CIA director, also has been a vocal critic of the deal.

“I look forward to rolling back this disastrous deal with the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism,” Pompeo wrote Nov. 17 on Twitter.

After meeting Trump at the White House after the election, Obama said they had discussed the Iran deal and that he hoped it would survive intact, noting that the United States would be acting alone if it sought to impose new sanctions.

The five members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany negotiated the deal in 2015, and the U.N. later voted to enforce it. Implementation began in January, and no evidence has emerged to indicate Iran is violating its side of the agreement.

Obama administration officials want to brief Trump and his top advisors on classified details and assessments of the Iran deal, including monitoring systems put in place to verify Iranian compliance.

So far, Trump’s transition team has delayed receiving more than a handful of in-depth intelligence briefings.

“There are a lot of people out there who read the papers and listened to news broadcasts where the facts may be a bit — you know – off,” Brennan told the BBC.

“I want to make sure the new team understands what the reality is. It ultimately will be up to them to decide how to carry out their responsibilities,” Brennan said.

Robert M. Gates, a former CIA chief and secretary of Defense, also called for preserving the nuclear deal.

“It would be a mistake to tear up the agreement at this point,” Gates said in an interview on “CBS This Morning.” “I think we would be the ones isolated, not the Iranians, because none of our partners who helped to negotiate that would walk away from it. But I think what the new president can do is push back against the Iranians.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi

(Andrew Harnik/Associated Press)

House Democrats elected Rep. Nancy Pelosi for another term as minority leader after she fended off a rival who said the November election showed the party needs change at the top.

The San Francisco Democrat has beaten back challengers before, but this year’s campaign from Ohio Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan focused attention on President-elect Donald Trump’s success in attracting white, working class voters in Rust Belt states that had traditionally been part of the Democratic base.

Pelosi responded by expanding her leadership team to include more seats at the table for younger members and those from states Trump won.

The only woman to serve as House speaker, Pelosi has faced calls for her ouster ever since Democrats lost the House majority in 2010.

First elected to leadership in 2002, the mother of five -- and grandmother -- has also endured questions about how much longer she will stay at the helm. The 76-year-old typically swats back such inquiries by noting the comparable ages of male colleagues in leadership roles elsewhere in the Capitol.

Pelosi remains a fundraising powerhouse and despite interest by other Democrats in taking a turn at leadership, few have been able to make the case to their peers that they could match her drive.

But this year, Pelosi appeared to take her challenge seriously. She repeatedly worked to shore up support from liberals and minorities who make up the bulk of the Democratic caucus. She also pointed to the gains Democrats have made under her watch -- they picked up six seats in November -- and warned that losses could have been worse.

Democratic Rep. Adam B. Schiff of Burbank, in nominating Pelosi during a closed-door meeting Wednesday, said, “We need the very best to lead us.... No one is a better tactician than Nancy Pelosi.”

Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for Health and Human Services secretary.

(Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press))

President-elect Donald Trump reassured voters during his insurgent political campaign that he would protect Medicare, Social Security and other popular federal assistance programs.

But in tapping Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) to be his Health and Human Services secretary, he has elevated one of the most aggressive proponents of dramatically overhauling the government safety net for seniors and low-income Americans, a long-held conservative goal.

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(Mandel Ngan / AFP/Getty Images)

President-elect Donald Trump tweeted Wednesday morning that he would “leave” his business operations “in total to fully focus on running the country.”

Trump’s vast interests in real estate and other ventures have raised unprecedented concerns about the potential for conflict of interest, both at home and internationally.

In one of a series of tweets, Trump said he would be “leaving my great business in total.”

“Legal documents are being crafted which take me completely out of business operations. The Presidency is a far more important task!” he said.

However, Trump made no mention that would be giving up ownership of the Trump Organization, which includes hotels, golf resorts and other properties and many licensing deals that span the globe.

Neither did he specify whether his separation from his businesses would be permanent.

To avoid conflicts or the perception that his presidency would benefit his financial empire, government ethics lawyers and watchdog groups have urged him to sell off his businesses and put the assets in a blind trust to be managed by an independent third party.

Trump said last week that he has been turning over operations of his businesses to three of his children, who already have senior positions at the Trump Organization.

But some critics have said turning over control to his children may not be enough to alleviate such concerns, since several of his adult children remain active in planning his transition.

“What he does not seem to realize, or does not want to admit, is that the conflicts arise from his ownership of the Trump Organization,” said Noah Bookbinder, executive director of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, in reacting to Trump’s announcement Wednesday. “He will continue to know what his business interests are and to benefit from them whether or not he is involved in the day-to-day management, so the conflicts remain unchanged.”

Federal conflict-of-interest rules for government employees and members of Congress don’t apply to the president.

Trump said in an interview with the New York Times last week that “the president can’t have a conflict of interest … In theory, I can be president of the United States and run my business 100%.”

He said then that it would be very hard to sell off his businesses because they are mostly real estate, but also noted that he would like “to try and formalize something” in terms of an arrangement that would distance his businesses from his work as president.

On Wednesday, he tweeted that “While I am not mandated to do this under the law, I feel it is visually important, as President, to in no way have a conflict of interest with my various businesses.”

Trump said he would detail the changes at a New York news conference with his children on Dec. 15.

President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence greet investor Wilbur Ross, left, in New Jersey on Sunday.

( (Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press))

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen billionaire financier Wilbur Ross, known as the king of bankruptcy for his investments in distressed properties, to serve as Commerce secretary, according to a person familiar with the decision.

If confirmed, Ross would become the Trump administration’s chief liaison with the business community and a leading advocate for U.S. trade abroad.

Ross, 80, who was a senior policy advisor to Trump’s campaign, is worth $2.9 billion, according to Forbes magazine.

Like Trump, Ross has been critical of U.S. trade deals. He sharply criticized trade negotiators and called for the U.S. to withdraw from the yet-to-be-ratified Trans-Pacific Partnership and to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. Trump has pledged to do both upon taking office.

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Steven Mnuchin at Trump Tower in New York this month.

(Eduardo Munoz Alvarez / AFP/Getty Images)

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Steven Mnuchin, a wealthy Wall Street executive and Hollywood movie producer who served as his campaign finance chairman, to be the next Treasury secretary, according to a person familiar with the decision.

Mnuchin’s deep roots on Wall Street fit the mold of past Treasury secretaries but contrast with the populist stance that Trump took during his campaign.

Mnuchin’s net worth is unclear, but he could be the second billionaire member of Trump’s Cabinet, after Betsy DeVos, who is Trump’s pick for Education secretary. The third is expected to be financier Wilbur Ross, who has been selected as Commerce secretary.

Mnuchin’s selection — which was first reported Tuesday by the New York Times — drew ire from Democratic and liberal groups, which have accused him of profiting from the financial crisis after buying the failed IndyMac Bank in 2009.

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President-elect Donald Trump.

(Evan Vucci / Associated Press)

Nearly 400 MIT faculty members, including professor emeritus Noam Chomsky, writer Junot Diaz and four Nobel Prize winners, signed an open letter criticizing President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks.

“The President-elect has appointed individuals to positions of power who have endorsed racism, misogyny and religious bigotry, and denied the widespread scientific consensus on climate change. Regardless of our political views, these endorsements violate principles at the core of MIT’s mission. At this time, it is important to reaffirm the values we hold in common.”

The letter also denounces the controversial rhetoric often associated with Trump’s campaign and impending presidency.

“For any member of our community who may feel fear or oppression, our doors are open and we are ready to help,” it states. MIT boasts a student body represented by 120 foreign countries, all 50 U.S. states and three U.S. territories.

While campaigning, Trump lauded his late uncle, John, who was a professor at MIT for nearly 50 years. Shortly after Trump announced his candidacy, he spoke about him to CNN.

“I had an uncle who went to MIT who is a top professor. Dr. John Trump. A genius. It’s in my blood. I’m smart. Great marks. Like really smart,” Trump said.

A handful of faculty members who signed the statement overlapped in time with John Trump. At least one, physics professor Robert Jaffe, said that he did not know the uncle, but hopes that his nephew’s administration will maintain a dedication to science.

Pop star Katy Perry was one of Hillary Clinton’s biggest celebrity boosters on the campaign trail, and on Tuesday night the former Democratic presidential nominee introduced the singer at a charity gala in New York.

Perry has served as UNICEF’s goodwill ambassador.

President-elect Donald Trump and Mitt Romney dine at Jean-Georges restaurant in New York.

(Drew Angerer / Getty Images)

Before Donald Trump secured the Republican presidential nomination, Mitt Romney called him a phony and a fraud who made worthless promises.

But since Trump won the election, the two men have been exploring the possibility of Romney joining his Cabinet as secretary of State. On Tuesday night, they dined at Jean-Georges, a high-priced French restaurant in Trump’s hotel adjacent to Central Park in Manhattan.

Reince Priebus, the Republican Party chairman who will join Trump’s White House as his chief of staff, was also there. The three men ate garlic soup, frog legs, scallops, prime sirloin and lamb chops, before ending the meal with chocolate cake.

When Romney exited the restaurant, he spoke much more positively about Trump than he had during the primary, calling it a “wonderful evening.”

“These discussions I’ve had with him have been enlightening and interesting and engaging,” he told reporters.

Romney said Trump had made good choices for his administration.

“I’ve been impressed by what I’ve seen in the transition effort,” he said. “The people he’s selected as members of his Cabinet are solid, effective, capable people.”

Trump has chosen Stephen K. Bannon, a campaign advisor praised by white nationalists and criticized by civil rights activists, as his chief White House strategist, and he’s continued to spread falsehoods about voter fraud. But Romney said Trump had a “message of inclusion and bringing people together.”

Although choosing Romney could placate some establishment Republicans hoping for a more conventional choice for the nation’s top diplomat, he’s also controversial within Trump’s circles.

A top Trump advisor has publicly warned that some supporters may feel betrayed if Romney is chosen.

The recount is officially on.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission said Tuesday that Green Party nominee Jill Stein has paid the nearly $3.5 million estimated cost to set into motion a statewide retabulation of the presidential vote.

Stein had asked for the recount after claiming that evidence of foreign interference existed. She is also seeking recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania; together, the three states carry enough electoral votes to flip the election from President-elect Donald Trump to Democrat Hillary Clinton, but such an outcome is all but impossible.

The Wisconsin recount, which starts Thursday, is likely to cost Stein slightly more, the commission said, blaming an earlier error in adding up cost estimates from the 72 county clerks who will oversee the ballot review. Stein will be charged whatever additional costs are incurred after the recount is concluded.

Officials on Monday said that most counties will complete their recount in a week but that more populous counties will face a challenge in meeting the deadline to certify results. The state aims to finish by Dec. 12, as state law gives the recount petitioner five days after the new tally is finished for further legal challenges.

Presidential electors in 50 states and the District of Columbia will meet Dec. 19 to formally cast the votes that will elect Trump as the next president.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) cast doubt on whether the Republican-led Congress would be ready to repeal Obamacare by inauguration day, as some in President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team have suggested could happen in a special session.

But McCarthy said Republicans would try to start as soon as possible on what he acknowledged would be a complicated two-step process to repeal and replace Obamacare that will consume much of 2017 and beyond.

Their plan involves retroactively passing a fiscal 2017 budget in the early weeks of Trump’s term. Such a maneuver would give Republicans the ability to unwind President Obama’s signature domestic program with a simple majority vote, without facing a Democratic filibuster. Replacing the Affordable Care Act would come later, and likely extend into fiscal 2018.

“Once it’s repealed you will have hopefully fewer people playing politics and everybody coming to the table to find the best policy,” McCarthy told reporters. “I just want to make sure we get it right.”

McCarthy on Tuesday welcomed reports that Trump intends to nominate House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.) to lead the Health and Human Services Department as Congress focuses on getting rid of Obamacare.

Democrats, though, suggested that Price, a medical doctor who has championed House Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s plans to overhaul Medicare, will face so much opposition in the Senate that he may not be confirmed.

“Try it,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York, the incoming Democratic minority leader. “Privatization of Medicare goes way beyond where most Americans are.”

For years, Republicans have promised to end Obamacare, and with Trump in the White House they will have their best opportunity to do so.

But McCarthy cautioned that repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act will be more complicated than simply sending a bill to the White House for the president’s signature.

Instead, Congress will need to insert special repeal instructions as part of the wonky budget reconciliation process. And that will take time, he said.

McCarthy said that replacing Obamacare will be even tougher than repealing it. Even though Republicans have promised their own healthcare law, they have never been able to produce an agreed-upon alternative.

To gather ideas, McCarthy said he would solicit advice from governors and state insurance commissioners. He’ll be sending a letter to the states later this week.

Since Congress did not pass a 2017 budget for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, they hope to retroactively approve one in the weeks ahead so they can include the first part of the special instructions needed to repeal the program. But he doubted that would be completed by the time Trump takes office.

“I don’t think you can do it before [Jan.] 20th,” he said. “There’s only so many legislative days.”

The finish the job, lawmakers will use the reconciliation process for the fiscal 2018 budget, which is due by spring. McCarthy predicted Congress would still need to pass additional legislation, which cannot be completed through the reconciliation process, in order to ensure a smooth transition.

The Cuban flag hangs at half-staff in front of a picture of Fidel Castro on the facade of the Cuban national library in Havana.

(Ronaldo Schemidt / AFP/Getty Images)

President Obama is not going to the memorial service for former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro on Tuesday but instead is sending a pair of key representatives to pay their respects, an informal appearance that reflects the delicate diplomacy between the White House and the leadership in Havana.

Obama is sending Jeffrey DeLaurentis, the top U.S. diplomat in Cuba, along with deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, but the two men are not being dispatched as part of a formal delegation, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Tuesday.

DeLaurentis and Rhodes played key roles in reopening U.S. ties to the communist island nation in late 2014, ending five decades of a Cold War-era freeze in relations.

The policy has been celebrated for opening the possibility of expanded trade with and travel to Cuba, while critics attacked Obama for engaging with President Raul Castro without extracting concessions on human rights. His brother Fidel held power through firing squads, false imprisonment and harsh treatment of dissidents.

President-elect Donald Trump was one of those critics, saying after Fidel Castro’s death that if Cuba isn’t willing to “make a better deal for the Cuban people … and the U.S. as a whole, I will terminate the deal.”

After Castro died Friday, the White House released an oblique statement noting that his death filled Cubans “with powerful emotions, recalling the countless ways in which Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families, and of the Cuban nation. History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him.”

President-elect Donald Trump plans to name Elaine Chao – a former Labor secretary married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) – as his Transportation secretary, according to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield).

Chao’s establishment ties conflict with Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp” in Washington and promote outsiders to lead his government. But Chao’s connections could be an asset in Trump’s plan to promote a major infrastructure proposal that could face resistance from within his party.

Trump has decried the state of the nation’s airports, bridges and roads and promised to make their revitalization a major part of his jobs program aimed at helping working-class Americans whose votes helped propel him to victory. Chao, who served as Labor secretary through the entire George W. Bush administration, could play a central role in negotiating an infrastructure spending bill while her husband leads the Senate.

Trump’s spokesman Jason Miller did not confirm the pick on a conference call with reporters but said that Trump had “taken people who’ve been successful in all different walks of life” – including business, government, and military – to fill a Cabinet that Miller called a “true dream team.”

The Taiwan-born Chao also exemplifies the type of immigrant success story that became the subject of debate during Trump’s campaign, which promised to crack down on illegal immigration and labeled many of those entering the country illegally from Mexico as criminals, drug dealers and rapists.

Chao is one of four sisters who attended Harvard Business School. Her family donated $40 million to the institution in 2012.

The U.S. economy grew faster in the third quarter than initially estimated, expanding at its strongest pace in two years in a rebound from a weak first half of 2016.

Total economic output, also known as gross domestic product, expanded at a 3.2% annual pace from July through September, the Commerce Department said Tuesday.

The figure was up from an initial estimate of 2.9% and the best performance since the economy expanded at a 5% annual rate in the third quarter of 2014.

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“This is certainly not Bush vs. Gore,” a Wisconsin elections official said Monday.

Well, what is it?

The state is initiating the first significant candidate-driven recount in a presidential election since the 2000 ordeal in Florida between then-Vice President Al Gore and eventual President George W. Bush.

This time, though, Donald Trump is certain to remain president-elect after Wisconsin’s nearly 3 million ballots are re-tabulated. But the fight here and potentially in other states has given third-party candidates new rationale for seeking public attention for their causes, and it has given Trump fresh ammunition to trash his opponents — as well as, bafflingly, the political process in which he just secured the presidency.

Here is a look at the issues involved in the Badger State and elsewhere as the seemingly unending 2016 presidential election seeps into overtime.

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(Evan Vucci / Associated Press)

Rather than celebrating his victory, Donald Trump is amplifying far-right conspiracies to undermine the credibility of an election he won. At the same time, he is finding some common cause in the quixotic effort by the fringe left to prevent him from reaching the White House.

The chances of changing the election result with selective ballot recounts, as some on the left hope, or finding widespread voter fraud as alleged by Trump are next to nil. Yet a combination of self-interest and a desire for misdirection have propelled factions of both parties to debate the results of an election already decisively settled.

Trump’s motives are often hard to pinpoint. But by pushing the myth that millions of ballots were cast illegally for his opponent, as he has done on Twitter in recent days, he may be building the case to claim a larger mandate for his victory despite the fact that Hillary Clinton is leading the popular vote by more than 2 million votes.

The issue also distracts attention from mounting questions about the financial conflicts of interest he is likely to have in the White House, given that he plans to allow his children to run his international real estate and branding business while he serves as president. Finally, Trump’s rhetoric may also sow the seeds of future efforts to propose more restrictive voting rules championed by some of his top advisors.

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Republicans became known as the “party of no” during the Obama years because of their frequent efforts to block the president’s initiatives.

As congressional Democrats prepare to deal with a Republican White House, they appear ready to take the opposite approach, effectively challenging President-elect Donald Trump by finding opportunities to say yes.

The goal is to strategically engage with the White House on common objectives and at the same time try to drive a political wedge between Trump and those Republicans anxious about his costlier ideas, such as rebuilding infrastructure, aiding blue-collar workers and expanding paid family leave, a pet project of daughter Ivanka Trump.

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(Evan Vucci / Associated Press)

In a series of tweets on Monday, Donald Trump attacked a CNN reporter for failing to uncover evidence of a nonexistent problem.

Trump has falsely claimed without evidence that “millions” of ballots were cast illegally, including some in California. Election officials here and in other states have rejected those allegations as baseless.

Although Trump won the election, he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, a result he’s tried to minimize. At one point Trump said he would have won the popular vote in addition to the electoral college had he campaigned differently. Given that an election based on the popular vote would have required a different campaign, that is also an unprovable claim.

The CNN reporter, veteran journalist Jeff Zeleny, responded by asking Trump for evidence of his assertions.

The Twitter tirade is more evidence that Trump isn’t changing his tactics even though the campaign is over.

Wisconsin is gearing up to perform a recount requested by Green Party nominee Jill Stein. There’s little to no chance that the process will affect the results of the election in that state, where Trump won by about 22,000 votes.

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(Drew Angerer / Getty Images)

President-elect Donald Trump plans to select House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.) to be his Health and Human Services secretary, according to a person familiar with the decision.

In picking Price, Trump is tapping an arch-conservative lawmaker and leading critic of the Affordable Care Act to lead his push to roll back President Obama’s signature health law.

Price, a six-term congressman from suburban Atlanta, has never held an executive position comparable to leading the federal Department of Health and Human Services, a behemoth that includes the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the agency overseeing Medicare and Medicaid.

Three of the four previous Health and Human Services secretaries were former governors. Price, an orthopedic surgeon, would be the first physician to serve as the department’s secretary since Dr. Louis Sullivan, who held the post from 1989 to 1993 under President George H.W. Bush.

He would also be among the most politically conservative Health and Human Services secretaries in history. And as a member of House leadership, he would bring to the Trump administration a revolutionary governing agenda closely aligned with Republicans on Capitol Hill.

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President-elect Donald Trump’s tweet that he would have won the popular vote this month but for “millions” of illegal voters was not based on fact. There is no proof backing up his statement, and voting researchers uniformly dismissed it as false.

Also problematic was his second claim in the same tweet, that his victory was one of the rare landslides in American political history.

A study of electoral vote results by John J. Pitney, an author and professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, shows that Trump resides on the lower end of the electoral vote scale.

He won 56.97% of the electoral votes up for grabs by virtue of his state wins. That places him 46th out of the 58 elections since George Washington’s era, Pitney found.

In 38 elections, the winner exceeded 60% of the vote, a lopsided verdict by voters.

Clear landslides were won most recently by Ronald Reagan in both of his elections: In 1984, he won 97.58% of electoral votes, and in 1980 he won 90.89%.

President Obama won nearly 68% of the vote in 2008 and just under 62% in 2012.

Faring worse than Trump among modern presidents was George W. Bush, who eked past Al Gore in 2000 with 50.37% of the vote, after a protracted squabble over the Florida results that ended in a U.S. Supreme Court verdict favoring Bush.

In his latest comment on Cuba since the death of revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, President-elect Donald Trump said Monday he would end Washington’s diplomatic thaw with the island unless Cuba makes “a better deal.”

“If Cuba is unwilling to make a better deal for the Cuban people, the Cuban/American people and the U.S. as a whole, I will terminate deal,” Trump tweeted.

President Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro renewed diplomatic ties in 2014 after a half-century of Cold War hostility. Since then, through a series of executive orders, Obama has eased restrictions on Americans traveling to Cuba and U.S. firms doing business there.

Castro, at the same time, has made it easier for Cubans to travel and to engage in limited private enterprise.

However, Castro has not enacted significant political reforms, and the death Friday of his brother, former president and leader of the revolution Fidel, at age 90, is not likely to usher in quick change.

It was not clear what Trump meant by a “better deal.” An email seeking clarification from his transition team was not answered.

Previously, however, Trump has spoken of the release of political prisoners and more open space for free expression of opinions and dissent. These are the same elements the Obama administration has been demanding, while choosing not to delay economic progress while awaiting political change.

From a legal standpoint, Trump could easily reverse Obama’s executive orders with little more than a signature. Politically, however, renewed estrangement would be more complicated and would isolate the U.S. as the only country in the world that does not recognize the Communist-led government in Havana.

Trump and his top aides have sent conflicting signals over his likely Cuba policy.

On Saturday, his staff put out a statement saying a Trump administration would “do all it can” to help Cubans achieve prosperity and liberty. But it did not mention reversing Obama’s actions expanding ties.

“While Cuba remains a totalitarian island,” Trump said, “it is my hope that today marks a move away from the horrors endured for too long, and toward a future in which the wonderful Cuban people finally live in the freedom they so richly deserve.”

Kellyanne Conway, a top advisor, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that “nothing is definite” when it comes to Cuba. But Trump’s soon-to-be White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, said that Trump would be looking for “some movement in the right direction” to keep the Cuba opening on course.

Conservative Republicans, like Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, oppose detente with Cuba as long as any Castro continues to rule. But a growing number of Cuban Americans, as well as most Democrats and a substantial segment of the business community, want better ties and opportunities for economic exchange.

Since President-elect Donald Trump’s surprising election victory this month, financial markets have sent a forceful message that the era of super-low interest rates is coming to a close.

Mortgage rates have shot up. Bond yields have jumped to their highest levels in a year. And the dollar has surged against other major currencies to values unseen in more than a decade.

Those developments have been fueled by expectations of stronger economic growth and higher inflation from Trump’s promises to cut business taxes, reduce regulations and increase defense and infrastructure spending.

His plans triggered a post-election stock market rally and, combined with recent solid economic data, increased expectations that the Federal Reserve would nudge up its benchmark short-term rate again next month — with more hikes to follow next year.

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Coal trucks leave a power plant operated by PacifiCorp outside Huntington, Utah.

( (George Frey / Getty Images))

Donald Trump is branded with all manner of unflattering labels, but one that hasn’t seemed to much bother him is “climate pariah.”

The president-elect is unabashed in his disdain for America’s global warming policy. He has placed a staunch climate-change doubter and antagonist of mainstream science in charge of reshaping — or as Trump has suggested, dismantling — the Environmental Protection Agency. He has talked frequently about reneging on the historic Paris global climate treaty the U.S. took a lead in drafting. And he has said he wants every federal green-energy program eliminated.

Environmentalists take little comfort in Trump’s recent comments that he accepts “there is some connectivity” between human activity and climate change and that he has an open mind about it, as what he’s said elsewhere and done so far suggests otherwise.

And even those comments gave scientists cause for alarm. “You can make a lot of cases for different views,” Trump told the New York Times, casting doubt on the finding by more than 90% of climate scientists that emissions are accelerating global warming. “I’m not sure anybody is ever going to really know.”

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The election results were rolling in, and so were the phone calls for Donald Trump. But no matter who was on the other end of the line, the person handing the phone to the next president of the United States was the same.

“Jared was screening the calls,” said Armstrong Williams, a political ally who described the scene in Trump’s Manhattan skyscraper on election night.

That would be Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and his election-night role provides a glimpse of the enormous influence he wields as Trump prepares to take office in January. As the husband of Ivanka Trump, the president-elect’s elder daughter, Kushner holds an unassailable position inside Trump’s unruly ecosystem of advisors.

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Nearly three weeks into his presidential transition, Donald Trump has hewn closely to the habits that won him the presidency.

He continues to brush aside fine points of policy and freely contradict earlier positions, with some of the shifts seemingly based simply on the latest advice he’s received or the most recent audience he’s spoken to.

He has been drawn to those with whom he shares a personal affinity, preparing a Cabinet that from early indications leans in the direction of tough-talkers and billionaire political outsiders like himself.

And he has turned a deaf ear to concerns about his ethics and temperament: mixing business ambitions with his pending government power in unprecedented fashion and unleashing decidedly nonpresidential commentary via his favorite social media platform, Twitter.

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Donald Trump at the California Republican Convention in April.

(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla minced no words in a swift response to President-elect Donald Trump’s Twitter accusations that “millions” had voted illegally in the Golden State and elsewhere.

“It appears that Mr. Trump is troubled by the fact that a growing majority of Americans did not vote for him,” Padilla said in a statement Sunday night. “His unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud in California and elsewhere are absurd. His reckless tweets are inappropriate and unbecoming of a President-elect.”

Others on Sunday night cast more doubt on Trump’s allegations, which are not in line with any reporting or investigations into intentional acts in California designed to influence the outcome of the vote.

Still, the concern for voting integrity was echoed by one top state Republican who suggested California’s lenient laws are not in line with fair elections.

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Donald and Melania Trump cast their ballots on Nov. 8.

(Evan Vucci / Associated Press)

Donald Trump falsely claimed Sunday that he won the popular vote, alleging in a tweet — without evidence — that “millions” of people had illegally voted for his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

“In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” Trump wrote, hours after he tweeted his opposition to a recount in Midwestern states initiated by the Green Party.

Election experts, who say election fraud is rare, immediately denounced Trump’s claim.

“There’s been no evidence produced of millions – or thousands – or even hundreds – of noncitizens voting for president in 2016,” tweeted Rick Hasen, a professor of law and politics who writes for the Election Law Blog.

The source of Trump’s claim appears to be a widely shared Nov. 14 article on the conspiracy site Infowars, which is famous for claiming the Sandy Hook mass shooting was a hoax.

Politifact investigated the illegal votes claim and rated it “false.”

A senior advisor to President-elect Donald Trump stepped up an extraordinary public effort Sunday to discredit Mitt Romney and thwart the chances that he would be picked as secretary of State.

Kellyanne Conway warned on Sunday TV talk shows that Trump’s supporters would feel “betrayed” if he picked the former governor of Massachusetts, a sharp critic of Trump during the campaign, for a senior Cabinet position.

Conway, who was Trump’s campaign manager and now is a top advisor to the incoming president, said she felt compelled to speak out on the matter because of “the backlash from the grass roots.”

“People feel betrayed to think that Gov. Romney, who went out of his way to question the character and the intellect and the integrity of Donald Trump, now our president-elect, would be given the most significant Cabinet post of all,” Conway said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“They feel a bit betrayed that you can get a Romney back in there after everything he did,” she added. “We don’t even know if he voted for Donald Trump.”

Conway dodged questions about whether Trump supported the concerns she has been raising publicly about Romney, which began with a tweet she posted on Thanksgiving morning: “Receiving deluge of social media & private comms re: Romney. Some Trump loyalists warn against Romney as sec of state.”

Conway made clear that she did not approve of Romney, who was the GOP presidential nominee in 2012, and didn’t see him as especially qualified to act as America’s top diplomat.

“In the last four years, has he even been around the globe doing something on behalf of the United States of which we’re unaware?” she asked on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“Did he go and intervene in Syria where they are having a massive humanitarian crisis? Meaning when I say intervene, like offered help. Has he been helpful to Mr. [Benjamin] Netanyahu?” she said of the Israeli prime minister.

“I’m all for party unity, but I’m not sure that we have to pay for that with the secretary of State position,” Conway said, although she quickly added that she would respect what Trump decides.

During the campaign, Romney called Trump a “phony” and a “fraud” and said his policies would lead to economic ruin. In response, Trump mocked Romney as a “failed” candidate who had “choked” in the 2012 race.

But a little more than a week ago, Trump met with Romney for about 90 minutes at a golf course in New Jersey to discuss the State Department post.

Afterward, Trump said the meeting “went great” and Romney described the discussion as “very thorough and in-depth.”

Trump is also considering Rudolph W. Giuliani, who was a fierce Trump loyalist during the campaign, for the job.

The former mayor of New York has touted his experience traveling, consulting and speaking overseas since leaving office in 2001. But his extensive business deals abroad have raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest if he gets the post instead of Romney.

In criticizing Romney, Conway exposed what appears to be deep divisions in the Trump camp as it tries to assemble a team. It is highly unusual for a senior representative of an incoming president to be lobbying publicly against a candidate under consideration.

Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman and Trump’s choice to be chief of staff, on Sunday sought to downplay reports of internecine struggles in the transition. However, he acknowledged that picking Romney would represent “a team of rivals concept.”

Trump wants to “put the best possible people together for all Americans,” Priebus told “Fox News Sunday.”

“The fact that he’s actually even flirting with the idea of choosing a rival should tell the American people where he’s at – which is the best place for everyone in this country,” he said.

Conway also said Trump, who spent the Thanksgiving holiday weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., talked with President Obama by phone on Saturday for “about 40 or 45 minutes.” She wouldn’t say what they talked about.

“I can tell you from President-elect Trump’s side that he very much enjoys speaking with President Obama, talking about the serious issues that face this country and the world,” Conway said on NBC.

“They get along nicely. They disagree on many things. That’s not going to change.”

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign will participate in a ballot recount led by Green Party candidate Jill Stein in Wisconsin and perhaps two other battleground states that were crucial to Donald Trump’s victory, a Clinton campaign lawyer said Saturday.

In response, Trump called the recount request “ridiculous” and a “scam” designed to raise money for Stein’s political party.

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Don McGahn is named by President-elect Donald Trump as his White House counsel.

(Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

President-elect Donald Trump added to his West Wing roster Friday, naming KT McFarland as deputy national security adviser and Donald McGahn as his White House counsel.

McFarland served in three separate Republican administrations, most notably as a spokeswoman for Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger under Ronald Reagan. In 2006, she sought to challenge Hillary Clinton for her U.S. Senate seat from New York but lost in the Republican primary. Most recently, she has been a regular contributor to Fox News on national security issues.

She joins retired Gen. Michael Flynn, previously named as Trump’s national security adviser.

McGahn, who was general counsel for Trump’s campaign and a former chair of the Federal Election Commission, is a partner at the powerhouse Washington law firm Jones Day. President Obama revealed at a recent news conference that he had advised Trump to hire a strong White House counsel to guide him and his team, who could “provide clear guideposts and rules” to help avoid ethical and conflict of interest concerns.

Trump campaign officials said Friday that the president-elect, who is spending the holiday weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, would make no additional high-level announcements until next week when he returns to New York.

On Monday, he will meet with several more potential Cabinet and sub-Cabinet choices, including Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, Pennsylvania Rep. Lou Barletta and Oklahoma Atty. Gen. Scott Pruitt.

Former Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson speaks in Lakewood, Colo. on Oct. 29.

(David Zalubowski / Associated Press)

Ben Carson said Wednesday that an announcement is imminent about his role in improving the nation’s inner cities – a broad hint that President-elect Donald Trump will name him secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

“After serious discussions with the Trump transition team, I feel that I can make a significant contribution, particularly to making our inner cities great for everyone,” Carson said on Facebook. “An announcement is forthcoming about my role in helping to make America great again.”

Carson, himself once a candidate for president, would be the first African American named to Trump’s Cabinet. He was a mild critic of Trump during the campaign, but after dropping out of the race, he backed Trump and now serves on the president-elect’s transition team.

Though Carson’s professional background is as a neurosurgeon, he has spoken often of his experiences growing up in inner-city Detroit, with a mother who sometimes relied on food stamps and other assistance. Carson has said they moved into a “tenement” at one point but has never said whether he lived in public housing.

Days ago, a senior advisor said Carson thought he lacked the background needed to manage a federal agency, and that he didn’t think it was the best way for him to serve. Carson didn’t want to take a position that could “cripple the presidency,” advisor Armstrong Williams told the Hill newspaper.

HUD is responsible for administering low-income housing assistance, fair housing laws, housing development and aid to neighborhoods in distress.

Carson indicated a change of heart Wednesday.

“We have much work to do in strengthening every aspect of our nation and ensuring that both our physical infrastructure and our spiritual infrastructure is solid,” he wrote.

In an interview with the New York Times on Tuesday, Trump suggested he isn’t applying the usual standard of qualifications to his Cabinet picks.

“We’re trying very hard to get the best people — not necessarily people that will be the most politically correct people, because that hasn’t been working,” Trump said. “So we have, really, experts in the field. Some are known and some are not known, but they’re known within their field as being the best. That’s very important to me.”

President-elect Donald Trump chose a Michigan charter school advocate and prominent Republican donor to serve as his secretary of Education, he said Wednesday, a decision that may hearten supporters of school choice but worry teacher unions — and even some of Trump’s core supporters.

Trump’s pick, Betsy DeVos, is a champion of charter schools and school vouchers that give families tax funds they can spend on private school if they’re not happy with their local public schools.

DeVos, 58, served as chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party, a credential that ties her to the party establishment reviled by many Trump supporters.

She and her family are among the country’s largest donors to Republican and conservative Christian causes, including opposition to same-sex marriage.

She has also backed the Common Core initiative to standardize educational requirements across the nation. Trump repeatedly called for its demise.

In a tweet after her selection was announced, DeVos disavowed past support for Common Core, acknowledging that the topic was an issue among conservative activists.

In his statement announcing her as his choice, Trump called DeVos a “brilliant and passionate” education advocate.

“Under her leadership, we will reform the U.S. education system and break the bureaucracy that is holding our children back so that we can deliver world-class education and school choice to all families,” Trump said in the statement.

1:46 a.m.: This post was updated with DeVos’ statement about the Common Core.

(John Minchillo / Associated Press)

President-elect Donald Trump may decide another Cabinet-level position Wednesday, aides said, after he announced South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley as his ambassador to the United Nations.

Aides did not say which job Trump was considering making an announcement about. As he and his family settle in for Thanksgiving at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Trump is still “spending significant time” on one prominent position, secretary of State, a sign that a pick for it may not come before the holiday, one staffer on the presidential transition team said.

In his search for a secretary of State, Trump has met with close advisor and former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and with Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee for president.

Aides said Trump chose Haley for the U.N. post because she improved South Carolina’s economy and took part in overseas trade and recruitment trips.

The two have a “natural chemistry,” one staffer said, and their views jibe on how the U.S. should be represented on the world stage.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley speaks at the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention in Washington on Nov. 18.

(Cliff Owen / Associated Press)

President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday picked South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a rising star in the GOP, as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, an announcement that brings a measure of diversity to a transition that has been dominated by white, male figures.

Haley, 44, and the daughter of Indian immigrants, is the first woman and first person of color to be picked for the new administration.

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(Ganbat Namjilsangarav / Associated Press)

The Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, said he has “no worries” about Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president and expects the businessman will align his policies with global realities.

Commenting at the conclusion of a four-day visit to Mongolia, the leader of Tibetan Buddhism said he looks forward to meeting Trump at some point after the Jan. 20 inauguration.

The 81-year-old monk says he has always regarded the U.S. as the leading nation of the free world and wasn’t concerned about remarks made by Trump during the election campaign. Some of those comments have been cited as offensive to Muslims, Latinos and other U.S. minority groups.

China accuses the Dalai Lama of seeking to split Tibet from China and had demanded Mongolia scrap his visit.

Donald Trump asked Ben Carson to consider serving as secretary of Housing and Urban Development, an advisor to the former Republican presidential candidate said Tuesday.

They discussed the potential job at a meeting in the morning and Carson is “seriously considering” it, said the advisor, Armstrong Williams.

“It’s a role that plays to Dr. Carson’s passions,” he said.

Asked what qualifications the retired neurosurgeon has for overseeing housing policy, Williams said: “Dr. Carson has experience with everything. You’d be shocked at the depth of his experience.”

Williams had previously suggested that Carson didn’t feel he had the experience to serve in Trump’s Cabinet, but he said Tuesday that those comments were taken out of context.

Housing secretary was one of a few options discussed Tuesday, Williams said.

Carson always felt that he’d be willing to serve in the administration if Trump “felt that no one else could fill the position,” he added.

Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez.

(Andrew Harnik / Associated Press)

A Texas judge blocked President Obama’s bid to expand overtime pay protections to millions of Americans on Tuesday, thwarting a key presidential priority just days before it was set to take effect.

The Labor Department rule would have doubled the salary level at which hourly workers must be paid extra for overtime pay, from $23,660 to $47,476. Siding with business groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Texas District Judge Amos L. Mazzant III halted it.

The rule, finalized in May, represented the first such change in more than a decade and was hailed at the time as the most consequential action the Obama administration could take for middle-class workers without congressional involvement.

Plaintiffs had argued the Labor Department acted beyond its authority under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The administration said more than 4 million salaried workers stood to benefit from the change when it took effect Dec. 1.

The rule was already in jeopardy after the election of Donald Trump. Just as the Obama administration made the change through its rule-making prerogatives, a Republican administration could undo it.

Neither the White House nor the Labor Department had an immediate comment.

Republican lawmakers and their allies in the business community, which were behind the legal challenge, celebrated the decision.

“The decision brings us a step closer to curbing regulations that have resulted in $80 billion in compliance costs and more than 25 million hours of paperwork,” said Linda Kelly, senior vice president for the National Assn. of Manufacturers. “The fights are not yet over — and our work is just beginning.”

Some liberals who really, really, really don’t want Donald Trump to be president are pinning their hopes on a long-shot effort to prevent him from officially winning the election.

Understanding how their plan would work requires some background on the electoral college, which was established in the Constitution at a time when the founding fathers were wary of direct democracy.

As widely known, presidents are not chosen based on the national popular vote — if they were, Hillary Clinton would be the next commander in chief, given she is ahead by roughly 1.7 million votes.

Each state is assigned a certain number of electoral votes based on population. Those votes are awarded to candidates based on the state’s popular vote. Trump won the presidential race with 290 electoral votes. (That total will reach 306 if Michigan is called for him, as expected.)

The process doesn’t end on election day. Each electoral vote is represented by an elector, an actual person who has to cast an official ballot for the president on Dec. 19. The electors are chosen through different processes state by state, and usually are selected by state political parties.

With unrest over the result, there are efforts to persuade electors to be “faithless,” meaning they wouldn’t back Trump even if he won their states. A Change.org petition calling the president-elect a “danger to the Republic” has almost 4.6 million supporters.

What are the chances of this actually happening? Very slim, says George C. Edwards III, a Texas A&M political science professor who has written a book about the electoral college.

“From time to time, there are faithless electors,” he said. “They’re few and far between.”

There were some electors who refused to vote for winning candidates in the 1800s, such as six who declined to support James Madison, but never enough to sway the outcome of the race. In the last century there have only been a handful of cases.

There were some attempts to persuade electors to back Al Gore over George W. Bush during the disputed 2000 election, but they were unsuccessful.

Judge William H. Pryor Jr. of the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals moderates a panel discussion during the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention in Washington last week.

( (Cliff Owen / Associated Press))

President-elect Donald Trump will soon have the chance to make good on one of his most consequential campaign promises: fill the Supreme Court vacancy with a judge in the mold of conservative icon Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February.

Any Trump nominee is almost guaranteed to be a conservative jurist who is antiabortion and supports a strict interpretation of the 2nd Amendment’s right to bear arms.

But what kind of conservative he selects will determine whether his nominee will be quickly confirmed or instead trigger a fierce fight in the closely divided Senate, potentially overshadowing the early months of Trump’s presidency.

If Trump opts for a Scalia-like justice, as he repeatedly said he would during the campaign, conservatives lawyers say the betting favorite is Judge William H. Pryor Jr. from the 11th Circuit Court in Atlanta, a former Alabama attorney general who called the Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortion the “worst abomination in the history of constitutional law.”

The 54-year-old Pryor believes in Scalia’s approach of interpreting the Constitution by its “original meaning” — one that has little room for gay rights, even women’s rights. His nomination would electrify Trump’s conservative base, but it would also set off a confirmation battle for which the outcome is not assured.

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After meeting with president-elect Donald Trump Saturday, former Washington, D.C., schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee weighed in on people who have told her to avoid him.

She also indicated that she’s not likely to be named as Trump’s secretary of Education.

President-elect Donald Trump strayed far from the talking points of his campaign during his wide-ranging interview Tuesday with New York Times journalists. Trump suggested he does not necessarily need to sever ties to his businesses while president. He said he has an open mind to acting on climate change. And he even offered some praise for the Clinton Foundation.

On the business ties, Trump was vague about when he will wind them down and how. He suggested he intends to transfer ownership to his kids, but then he also noted that the president is immune from federal conflict-of-interest laws.

Trump, who once declared global warming a “hoax” perpetrated by the Chinese, backed off his skepticism of climate change. He said he believed there is a connection to human activity and warming — but he is still undecided about how much of one. And he said he has an open mind to keeping in place the international climate agreement President Obama took a lead in negotiating, which Trump has been vowing for months to withdraw from.

Trump also addressed the public re-emergence of the white supremacist movement, and how his campaign has energized those groups. He said he disavows and condemns such groups, including the neo-Nazis who gathered in Washington over the weekend. But he defended his pick of chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, the Breitbart News executive who boasted that his outlet is the “platform” for the alt-right.

When the conversation turned to Hillary Clinton, Trump said he will not press law enforcement agencies to prosecute her. And he even said people could argue the Clinton Foundation has done “good work.”

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It was only a week ago that Ben Carson had put out word that he wasn’t qualified to run a federal agency, and thus had no place in Donald Trump’s Cabinet.

Now Trump says Carson would be the perfect person to run a federal agency.

Trump tweeted on Tuesday that he is seriously considering Carson to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Carson’s qualifications? “He’s a greatly talented person who loves people!”

Perhaps Carson was playing hard to get last week, when one of his top advisors, Armstrong Williams, told multiple news outlets that Carson wasn’t a good fit for any of the Cabinet posts.

“Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience; he’s never run a federal agency,” Williams told the Hill.

Trump’s tweet that Carson was at the top of his list for the HUD job was unusual for another reason. Such trial balloons are typically floated anonymously, to gauge public reaction. If it’s hostile, the president-elect can scrap the plan and deny it was ever something he seriously contemplated. After Trump’s advisors put the media on notice Tuesday morning that they would offer no details of what Trump will discuss at his meeting with Carson, Trump went ahead and shared them with millions of people himself.

So much for burying the hatchet. Even victory has not diminished Donald Trump’s resentment of the news media.

His relations with the news outlets have gotten no better now that he has transitioned from confrontational candidate to confrontational president-elect. Trump’s angry rant about the New York Times on Tuesday morning – in which he briefly canceled a meeting with the outlet – followed what was by several reports a stormy session the day before with major news networks.

Television executives and journalists traveled to Trump Tower for the closed-door meeting anticipating a discussion about media access to the White House and perhaps a recalibration of the increasingly hostile relationship.

Trump had something else in mind. He delivered an angry scold about the way he has been covered, complaining of unfairness even in the selection of the photos of him used during broadcasts, which, he griped, emphasized his double chin. He called the coverage “outrageous” and “dishonest,” according to a report in the New Yorker.

It’s unclear what Trump’s intentions were. But if his goal was to chasten the media, he did not succeed. Some at the meeting described being offended and accused Trump of failing to understand the press’ 1st Amendment protection from government suppression.

A top official of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign on Tuesday reaffirmed signals sent by the president-elect that he’s not interested in pursuing criminal charges against Hillary Clinton, despite his repeated campaign promises to prosecute the Democratic nominee over her handling of classified materials and involvement in the Clinton Foundation.

Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s former campaign manager, also told MSNBC that congressional Republicans should follow Trump’s lead, suggesting they drop their own probes into Clinton.

“I think when the president-elect, who’s also the head of your party, tells you before he’s even inaugurated that he doesn’t wish to pursue these charges, it sends a very strong message, tone, and content to the members,” Conway said.

Trump had promised his supporters that he would re-investigate whether Clinton broke laws while using a private email server as the nation’s secretary of State, even after the FBI concluded she had not. During a presidential debate, he even pledged to assign a special prosecutor to look into the matter.

Despite his supporters strongly favored such an investigation -- they often erupted into chants of “Lock her up!” at his rallies -- Trump hinted after the election that he had changed his mind, telling “60 Minutes” earlier this month that the Clintons were “good people” and he didn’t “want to hurt them.”

Conway said the former Democratic presidential candidate “still has to face the fact that a majority of Americans don’t find her to be honest or trustworthy,” but she added, “If Donald Trump can help her heal, then perhaps that’s a good thing to do.”

FBI Director James B. Comey has said that Clinton was “extremely careless” in how she and her aides handled classified information on her private server while she served as secretary of State. But agents, he said, turned up no evidence they had intended to violate espionage laws. The Justice Department agreed with Comey and closed the inquiry.

It’s highly unusual for a president to tell an attorney general whether or not to investigate a potential criminal matter, especially one involving his political rival.

Trump’s apparent desire to drop the matter raises questions about the FBI’s inquiry into the Clinton Foundation, which unlike the email probe has not been concluded.

“The attorney general would have some discretion whether to prosecute,” said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond. “Politically, however, it’s not feasible if the president really doesn’t want it to happen.”

The FBI has not commented on the status of any investigations into the Clinton Foundation. FBI agents in New York were reportedly looking into the nonprofit and wanted permission to use more aggressive law enforcement tools to dig deeper into the organization. But they were blocked by prosecutors and top FBI officials who did not believe the investigators had developed evidence to justify such actions, according to law enforcement officials.

Dr. James Jackson performs a physical on Matthew Shorter, 51, a Medicaid patient enrolled in the Healthy Indiana Plan, at the Heart City Health Center in Elkhart, Ind.

(Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune)

Donald Trump has consistently vowed to repeal and replace Obamacare. But he has yet to explain what he intends to replace it with.

His meeting schedule today might offer a clue of what he is pondering. On the agenda is a chat with Seema Verma, an architect of Indiana’s unusual healthcare program for the poor.

Indiana is among a handful of red states that took federal aid through the Affordable Care Act to expand Medicaid eligibility to poor, childless adults. But unlike most traditional Medicaid expansions, Indiana set up a system that requires many low-income residents on the program to pay small monthly contributions for their health coverage.

Conservatives, including the state’s governor, Vice President-elect Mike Pence, have argued that this makes poor patients take greater responsibility for their health. And healthcare advocates in Indiana generally supported the program, in large part because it was seen as the only way to expand health protections in the deeply conservative state.

But cost-sharing requirements for low-income patients remains controversial, and a number of states that have experimented with it in the past stopped after concluding it was too expensive and difficult to administer.

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Donald Trump, right, welcomes pro-Brexit British politician Nigel Farage to speak at a campaign rally in Jackson, Miss., in August.

(Gerald Herbert / Associated Press)

Donald Trump and Nigel Farage were always something of a love match. But cold political realities may have intervened.

The U.S. president-elect tweeted late Monday that Farage, leader of a far-right British political party, would make a “great” British ambassador to Washington.

Apparently, the British response early Tuesday could be summarized as: Er, no.

“There is no vacancy,” the Guardian newspaper quoted a spokesman at 10 Downing St., the prime minister’s official residence in London, as saying. “We already have an excellent ambassador to the U.S.”

Farage was a wholehearted proponent of “Brexit,” the June referendum in which the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, with still unknown long-term results.

The British politician traveled to the United States during the campaign to offer his support for Trump, making rally appearances to sometimes bemused crowds to promote their purported common cause.

In the course of his push for the presidency, Trump declared himself “Mr. Brexit,” and at one point dubbed his insurgent campaign “Brextit-plus-plus” — an allusion to his support for a referendum across the Atlantic that was strongly colored by anti-immigrant sentiment.

Farage was among the early visitors to Trump Tower following the GOP candidate’s unexpected victory. The two posed, grinning, in front of a bank of gold-plated elevators in the president-elect’s Manhattan residence.

But hopes of a more formalized relationship appear to have been dashed. The Guardian quoted members of Parliament as saying Farage’s “inflammatory” views made him “a poor candidate for a diplomatic post.”

The Reuters news agency said it would be “highly unusual” for an incoming foreign administration to so publicly air its pick for a diplomatic post. Trump’s suggestion, it noted, “provoked anger, support and even hilarity” in Britain.

The news agency quoted a Conservative lawmaker, Simon Burns, as joking that Britain should name its own choice for U.S. envoy to the United Kingdom: Hillary Clinton.

Trump had canceled the meeting a few hours earlier.

Donald and Melania Trump greet a guest at a grand-opening ceremony last month at Trump’s new hotel in Washington.

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

The Trump Organization spent months trying to drive off the culinary union from its Las Vegas hotel, losing one legal battle after another before a federal labor board.

Soon Donald Trump’s company, which has refused to bargain with the union after housekeepers and other employees voted to join last December, could gain some leverage.

As president, Trump will be able to appoint two new members to the National Labor Relations Board, giving the agency a 3-2 Republican majority that could be more sympathetic to Trump.

“We hope that Mr. Trump doesn’t use his power to interfere, considering he has a financial interest in the outcome,” said Bethany Khan, spokeswoman for Culinary Workers Union Local 226.

Khan’s concern is but one of many examples of potential conflicts of interest that could arise for Trump the president vs. Trump the businessman. His vast holdings include hotels, office buildings and golf courses, and he has licensing deals across the globe.

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Donald Trump briefly canceled a meeting Tuesday with New York Times journalists, claiming that its terms were suddenly changed.

The charge was made in the obfuscatory style that has come to mark Trump’s tweets. He said only that the terms of the meeting were changed, not who changed them; the paper said Trump, not anyone on its side, had requested new terms after the meeting was set.

The meeting was supposed to have included both a private discussion, similar to one Trump had Monday with television news network executives, and a segment where reporters were free to quote Trump by name. The Times said Trump later asked for the meeting to be fully private, a request the newspaper refused.

After the cancelation gained widespread attention, spokeswomen for both Trump and the newspaper said it was back on as scheduled.

Trump has done a handful of interviews since being elected, none with the Times, and has not held a news conference, as is customary for most presidents within a few days of their election.

He also said the paper’s coverage of him had a “nasty tone,” without citing specifics. Its front page Wednesday included stories questioning the constitutionality of his foreign business deals and one citing concerns that the military might have too much influence over foreign policy in a Trump administration.

7:25 a.m.: This story was updated with the scheduled meeting being reinstated.

A newly released video shows a room full of people doing the Hitler salute and yelling “Hail Trump!” after listening to a speech about white nationalism that invokes Nazi terminology.

The video was taken over the weekend by a reporter for The Atlantic while working on a documentary about Richard Spencer. Spencer is the person speaking in the video. He runs the National Policy Institute, a self-described “alt-right” think tank that openly supports white nationalist and neo-Nazi policies. In the past, he has called for a “peaceful ethnic cleansing” of the United States.

In the video, Spencer calls the media “leftists” and “cucks,” invoking popular “alt-right” insults for people they disagree with. He calls the media the “Lügenpresse,” which is what the original Nazi Party called the media in Germany – the “lying press.”

“We don’t exploit other groups,” he says, the “we” referring explicitly to white people. “We don’t gain anything from their presence.”

“The press has clearly decided to double-down and wage war against the legitimacy of Trump and the continued existence of white America,” he continues. “But they are really opening up the door for us.... America was, until this past generation, a white country, designed for ourselves and our posterity. It is our creation, it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us.”

Members of the crowd give the Nazi salute throughout the speech.

Last week, the Twitter accounts for Spencer and his think tank were suspended, along with a number of other “alt-right” accounts.

Trump’s campaign issued a statement in response to the video: “President-elect Trump has continued to denounce racism of any kind and he was elected because he will be a leader for every American. To think otherwise is a complete misrepresentation of the movement that united Americans from all backgrounds.”

White supremacists have credited Trump’s win with sparking a new interest in their movement.

President-elect Donald Trump spent more than a year campaigning to build a border wall, repeal Obamacare and rescind President Obama’s moves to protect from deportation some immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally.

But in his first extensive public comments since winning the election this month, Trump mentioned none of those issues. Nor did he talk about withdrawing from the North American Free Trade Agreement, banning Muslims from entering the country, or ending the Syrian refugee program.

Trump instead made five more modest promises for his first day in office during a nearly three-minute video released Monday that presented him as a more moderate figure and appeared to be an effort to soften Trump’s message while he establishes an inner circle of advisors and Cabinet picks of hard-liners.

In the video, Trump promises to withdraw from the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, “a potential disaster for our country,” and instead pursue bilateral agreements with some of the Pacific countries involved. He promised to lift restrictions on energy production, including shale and coal, implement a rule that any new government regulation must be accompanied by removing two regulations on the books and to instruct his Joint Chiefs of Staff to develop a new cybersecurity plan.

His only discussion of immigration involved the legal immigration system — a crackdown on visa fraud.

Trump also said his previously announced ethics rules — barring employees in his administration from lobbying for five years after they leave the government and from lobbying for foreign governments for life — would take effect as soon as he is inaugurated.

Trump vowed in the video to release more plans in the days to come.

“These are some of our Day 1 executive actions,” spokesman Jason Miller said in an email. “By no means is it everything he’ll work on day one or after that — many additional good things to come.”

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Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state who’s been tapped to join Donald Trump’s immigration policy transition team, probably didn’t intend for the world to see details of his plan to bar terrorists and Syrian refugees when he brought it to a meeting Monday.

But that’s what happened when he posed for a photo with President-elect Donald Trump outside of Trump International Golf Club in New Jersey. The document was in full unobstructed view, as Kobach apparently wasn’t thinking about the power of a zoom lens. The clearest part reads:

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY KOBACH STRATEGIC PLAN FOR FIRST 365 DAYS

Bar entry of Potential Terrorists

1. Update and reintroduce the NSEERs screening and tracking system (National Entry-Exit Registration System) that was in place from 2002-2005. All aliens from high-risk areas are tracked.
2. Add extreme vetting questions for high-risk aliens; question them regarding support for Sharia law, jihad, equality of men and women, the United States Constitution.
3. Reduce intake of Syrian refugees to zero, using authority under the 1980 Refugee Act.

Record Number of Criminal Aliens in the First Year

Those details aren’t exactly new. Trump has made it clear that he intends to deport 2 million to 3 million immigrants in the country illegally who fall under his definition of “criminal.” And Kobach, who is behind several controversial immigration laws and was the architect behind the NSEERs system, has said previously that he will help Trump reverse President Obama’s immigration policies.

The Obama administration has set a second-term priority to deport migrants with criminal convictions. Since taking office, Obama has expelled more people than any other president in American history.

Less legible on Kobach’s document, but still visible, are mentions of its definition of “criminal alien” (“any alien arrested for any crime, and any gang member”); the phrase “386 miles of existing actual wall”; the Patriot Act; and “Draft Amendment to National Voter ....” It’s possible this line refers to the National Voter Registration Act.

Kansas Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley criticized Kobach.

“That’s the height of irony if he’s wanting a job in Homeland Security and you’re able to see in a photograph what should be confidential information,” Hensley said.

In the summer of 2013, as state and federal officials readied new insurance marketplaces created through the Affordable Care Act, millions of Americans started getting disquieting notices from their insurers.

Health plans were being canceled because they didn’t comply with the law, often called Obamacare.

Some 4 million people were ultimately told they would lose their plans. The ensuing outrage sparked a political firestorm, seriously eroded public confidence in Obamacare and forced an embarrassed President Obama to change federal regulations so people could keep their coverage.

Yet that tumultuous episode could be dwarfed by what President-elect Donald Trump’s administration and its congressional allies unleash beginning next year. They plan to not only repeal the law but are contemplating changes that are significantly more far-reaching and could disrupt insurance coverage for many more Americans than did the original law.

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Inmates at San Quentin State Prison in August.

(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

As the recovery from the Great Recession continues, job growth is solid and the labor force is growing at close to its fastest pace since 2000 because more unemployed workers are coming off the sidelines.

Still, the percentage of working-age Americans in the labor force remains stuck near its lowest level since the late 1970s. Although retiring baby boomers are the main reason, there’s another troubling factor that experts predict won’t be solved by stronger economic growth.

Too many men in their prime don’t have a job and aren’t even looking for one. Experts trying to figure out the reasons are probing the roles of criminal background checks, painkillers and even video games.

In all, about 7 million men ages 25 to 54 are neither employed nor “available for work,” putting them outside the labor force. Their growing numbers worry and puzzle economists.

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House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)

President Obama all but endorsed Nancy Pelosi to continue to lead House Democrats on Sunday, defending her as she faces a challenge to her position from restive members of the Democratic caucus.

Although he is reticent to “meddle” in party votes while he is on the way out the door, Obama said at a news conference that he “cannot speak highly enough” of the first female House speaker, who has been a key ally on some of his most important work as president.

“She combines strong progressive values with just extraordinary political skill, and she does stuff that’s tough, not just stuff that’s easy,” Obama said when asked whether the California Democrat should be reelected to her position.

Obama made his remarks during a news conference in Lima, Peru, where he was wrapping up a summit meeting with Asian and Pacific leaders.

Some of Pelosi’s decisions have been unpopular, even with voters in her San Francisco district, he said, but she has done them anyway “because it’s the right thing to do for the American people.”

Pelosi faces a challenge from Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio, a seven-term member of the House.

Perhaps the most notable example of her support for Obama’s agenda was Pelosi’s steadfast support for the Affordable Care Act, which likely cost some Democrats their seats in Congress in the midterm election when Republicans took over the chamber.

In offering advice to fellow Democrats, though, Obama urged them not to follow the example of Republicans like Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who reportedly agreed with colleagues early in Obama’s presidency to oppose everything he did.

Democrats shouldn’t approach President-elect Donald Trump and the Republicans that way, Obama said Sunday.

“You give ’em a hearing,” he said. “I certainly don’t want them to do what Mitch McConnell did when I was elected.”

“That’s not why the American people send us to Washington,” Obama said. “That’s not my advice to Democrats.”

Donald Trump is still unhappy with Alec Baldwin’s portrayal of him on “Saturday Night Live.”

After the “30 Rock” star reprised his role as the president-elect on Saturday night’s show, Trump had some thoughts.

“It is a totally one-sided, biased show — nothing funny at all,” Trump tweeted at 5:26 a.m. “Equal time for us?”

A New York Times report from just before the election said aides had wrested control of Trump’s Twitter account from him. His tweets since winning the election suggest he has regained access to it; for one thing, they’ve been made from an Android device, a sign that Trump is the one writing and sending the messages. A data scientist found earlier this year that more hyperbolic tweets tend to come from that device, while the more polished ones, likely sent by a staffer, come from an iPhone.

On Saturday, Trump angrily tweeted about an incident in which Vice President-elect Mike Pence was booed by the crowd and subsequently lectured by the cast at a showing of “Hamilton.” (Uncharacteristically, Trump deleted a tweet that suggested a cast member couldn’t memorize his lines.) He is demanding that the cast apologize.

Trump has also taken aim at the New York Times, which he has repeatedly called “failing” in tweets about their coverage of him.

Baldwin responded to Trump’s “SNL” criticism with some critiques of how Trump is doing his own job. (The tweets were sent from @ABFalecbaldwin, the official account for his charitable foundation, and retweeted from Baldwin’s personal account.)

“Election is over. There is no more equal time,” he tweeted. Then he laid out what he’d be doing with his time if he had been elected president.

“I could go on,” he added. “You want more advice, call me. I’ll be at SNL.”

Reince Priebus, President-elect Trump’s designated chief of staff, defended controversial remarks that top advisers to the new administration have made about Islam, saying Sunday that “clearly there are some aspects of that faith that are problematic.”

Asked about comments made by retired Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s national security adviser, that Islam was a political ideology masked behind a religion, Priebus told ABC’s Martha Raddatz that “phrasing can always be done differently.”

But he praised Flynn as “an unbelievably gifted, smart person” who has Trump’s confidence.

In a separate interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Priebus said that Trump believes that “no faith in and of itself should be judged as a whole. But there are some people in countries abroad that ... need to be prevented from coming into this country.”

Asked about Trump’s suggestion earlier in the campaign year that Muslims might be required to register with government officials, Priebus avoided a clear answer.

“I’m not going to rule out anything. But, but I wouldn’t-- we’re not going to have a registry based on a religion,” he said. “But what I think what we’re trying to do is say that there are some people, certainly not all people ... there are some people that are radicalized, and there are some people that have to be prevented from coming into this country.”

(Don Emmert / AFP/Getty Images)

President-elect Donald Trump will “create the proper separation” between his vast business holdings and his government work, Vice President-elect Mike Pence said Sunday, addressing concerns about the potential for unprecedented conflicts of interest involving the nation’s first billionaire-in-chief.

In an interview with “Fox News Sunday,” Pence said lawyers and experts were working on how to successfully untangle Trump’s holdings from the presidency.

“I’m very confident working with the best legal minds in the country that the president-elect and his family will create the proper separation from his business going forward,” Pence told host Chris Wallace.

Trump has said he will allow his adult children to run his business ventures; government watchdogs have said he should divest his holdings or set up a blind trust. Among the potential problems: Trump’s company has operations in other countries, often in connection with foreign governments, that could steer money toward his family in an effort to influence his decisions.

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Former District of Columbia Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and her husband, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, depart a meeting with President-elect Donald Trump.

(Aude Guerrucci / EPA)

President-elect Donald Trump met Saturday with former Washington schools chancellor Michelle Rhee and Republican donor and activist Betsy DeVos, contenders for one of the Cabinet positions he has discussed the least, secretary of Education.

On the campaign trail, Trump said relatively little about education policy other than suggesting that he’d support school vouchers and home-schooling and possibly scale back or eliminate the U.S. Department of Education.

DeVos is the chairwoman of the American Federation for Children, a group that promotes charter schools and private-school vouchers. She is also the former chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party.

Rhee, a Democrat, served as chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools during a tumultuous period starting in 2007 in which she fired principals and toughened teacher evaluations. She was featured on a Time magazine cover wielding a broomstick as if to sweep bad teachers out of the classroom.

Although some of Rhee’s positions align with Trump’s, she has spoken out in favor of the DREAM Act, which would grant a path to citizenship for some people in the U.S. illegally. She is married to Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, who joined her at the meeting.

After leaving her D.C. schools post, Rhee started StudentsFirst, an advocacy and lobbying group. She drew criticism from many Democrats who supported her stance on school issues when she appeared with conservative Republican governors in Southern states.

Rhee abruptly left the StudentsFirst leadership post in 2014 and joined the board of Scotts Miracle Gro, a fertilizer company. She also chairs the board of St. Hope Public Schools, a charter school chain founded by Johnson. Since then, she has kept a low profile, with former staff members saying they have heard little from their previous boss.

The prospect that a prominent Democratic advocate of school reform might be considered for Trump’s Cabinet has divided erstwhile allies on the issue. Rhee has faced pressure from fellow Democrats to decline the post if offered.

This week, Democrats for Education Reform, a leading group among those in the party who feel comfortable sparring with teachers unions over education policy, released a statement warning Democrats to stay away from the Trump Cabinet.

“DFER encourages no Democrat to accept an appointment to serve as Secretary of Education in this new administration,” the group’s president, Shavar Jeffries, said in the statement. “That individual would become an agent for an agenda that both contradicts progressive values and threatens grave harm to our nation’s most vulnerable kids.”

DeVos and Rhee could not be reached for comment after their meeting with Trump.

Another prominent advocate, Eva Moskowitz, said at a news conference since the election that she would not take the Education Department post if offered, but later said she had met with Trump and was optimistic about his presidency.

Kevin Chavous, a former D.C. city council member and school choice advocate, has also been mentioned as a potential education secretary for Trump. Reached Friday, Chavous declined to comment.

Inside a beige meeting room at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, the buttoned-down millennials, in their dark suits and ties, settled in for the long conference day ahead.

Like countless others who travel to Washington, they had come to position their interests at the forefront of the political agenda. Their sponsor had a wonky and nondescript name, National Policy Institute. They cradled cups of morning coffee.

But on closer look, this group Saturday was different: They were almost entirely young men, many sporting the same haircut of short sides and back with a familiar flop on top.

The agenda topics: “Trump and the New White Voter,” “America and the Jewish Consciousness,” “The Future of the Alt-Right.”

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(Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press)

The U.S.-China relationship is at a “hinge moment” following the election of Donald Trump as president, President Xi Jinping said Saturday.

Seated across from President Obama before their ninth face-to-face meeting since becoming China’s president, Xi made no mention of Trump by name. But he commended Obama for close cooperation on key issues such as North Korea’s nuclear development and climate change, before sounding an uncertain tone about the future ties.

“We meet at a hinge moment in the China-U.S. relationship,” he said. “I hope the two sides will work together to focus on cooperation, manage our differences, and make sure there is a smooth transition in the relationship and that it will continue to grow going forward.”

The Obama administration has worked to carefully cultivate its relationship with China and Xi in particular, with the Paris climate agreement as a key breakthrough in relations that Obama said demonstrated “what’s possible when our two countries work together.”

But President-elect Trump cast China as a foe throughout the campaign, threatening to impose new tariffs and formally declare the country a currency manipulator.

Xi spoke with Trump after his election. Chinese state media reported that Xi told the Republican that cooperation was “the only correct choice for China and the United States.”

Xi and Obama met at an oceanfront hotel in Lima as both leaders attended the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

A top U.S. military official in consideration to be Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence has been recommended to be removed from his command in the Obama administration.

The recommendation to relieve Adm. Michael S. Rogers from his post as head of the National Security Agency was made to the White House last month by Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, according to U.S. officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

Carter and Clapper have been critical of Rogers’ performance at the NSA, particularly after the agency came under fire in October when a contractor was found with a trove of sensitive digital files related to its surveillance programs. The incident took place only three years after Edward Snowden distributed more than 1 million classified documents about the agency’s secret surveillance programs.

Carter has also been privately critical of Rogers, who is also in charge of the U.S. military’s Cyber Command, for not responding faster to the technology-savvy Islamic State and its sprawling propaganda operation, officials said.

Carter and Clapper believe there should no longer be one person in charge of both Cyber Command and NSA, a stance that has complicated the White House process of naming a Rogers successor, officials said.

The White House, Pentagon and Office of Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the matter. The recommendation to remove Rogers from leading the NSA was first disclosed Saturday by the Washington Post.

Rogers met with Trump on Friday at Trump Tower in New York. He is said to be in the running to succeed Clapper in heading the Office of Director of National Intelligence, an umbrella agency that oversees and coordinates among the nation’s 17 spy agencies.

Rogers, 57, is a Navy cryptologist who took over at the NSA as it was reeling from the Snowden leaks, which cost the agency hundreds of millions of dollars and resulted in the scaling back of some of its domestic spying operations.

Then last month, another agency contractor, Harold T. Martin III, was charged with stealing even more classified intelligence documents and digital material concerning highly classified software and computer codes that the NSA uses to spy on computer networks in other countries.

Martin was secretly arrested in August after an FBI search of his vehicle and residence found “hard copy documents and digital information stored on various devices,” including “classified documents obtained from sensitive intelligence” from 2014, according to an unsealed Justice Department complaint.

The case renewed concerns about security at the agency and raised questions about the handling of the nation’s most sensitive cyber secrets.

Like Snowden, Martin worked as a contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton, a Virginia-based business that provides management and technology consulting services to U.S. defense and intelligence agencies.

President Obama, continuing what has become a tour of explanation through Europe and now South America, advised people around the world not to prejudge President-elect Donald Trump.

“I think it will be important for everybody around the world to not make immediate judgments, but give this new president-elect a chance,” Obama said at a town hall-style event with young Latin American leaders here.

The president, in responding to a question about the state of democracy in the region, said that open and transparent governments like America’s “can be frustrating.”

“The outcomes of elections don’t always turn out the way you hope,” he said to laughter.

He said democratic government means more than holding elections, but also respecting free press, the freedom of religion, and protecting the rights of minorities.

On the first two stops of his foreign trip, in Greece and Germany, Obama was primarily addressing the U.S. election result to fellow world leaders. Here, he did so to an audience of hundreds of young leaders from throughout the region.

In response to a question from one attendee, Obama said he did not expect major changes in U.S. policy toward the Americas under a Trump administration. One exception he allowed was a key one to him, though: trade.

As he faces the uncertain future of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the 12-nation trade deal he made a top priority, Obama expressed some hope that the new president might reconsider his campaign pledge to reevaluate trade deals in general.

“Once they look at how it’s working, I think they’ll actually determine that it’s working,” he said.

President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday met with an eclectic mix of potential Cabinet picks, including high-profile Republican foe Mitt Romney, while also launching a Twitter storm boasting about settling his multi-million dollar Trump University lawsuit and criticizing the cast of the hit Broadway musical “Hamilton” for lecturing his vice president-elect about “American values.”

When not taking to Twitter, Trump spent the afternoon ensconced in his posh golf club in Bedminster, N.J., where the high-profile guests who paraded through included Romney, a former GOP presidential candidate Trump is believed to be considering for secretary of State. Also getting face-time with Trump on Saturday were Michelle Rhee, the firebrand California education activist and nemesis of teachers unions, who is a contender for the post of Education secretary. The meetings are scheduled to continue Sunday.

The most anticipated sit-down involved Romney, who during the campaign was sharply critical of the president-elect’s character and policy positions. The former governor shook hands with Trump when he arrived at Trump National Golf Club and told reporters 90 minutes later that the pair spoke about U.S. interests around the globe.

“We discussed those areas, and exchanged our views on those topics – a very thorough and in-depth discussion in the time we had,” Romney told reporters upon leaving the golf club, which is about 50 miles west of Trump Tower in downtown New York City. “And I appreciate the chance to speak with the president-elect and I look forward to the coming administration and the things that it’s going to be doing.”

President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday demanded an apology from the “Hamilton” cast member who gave Mike Pence an onstage earful about equality.

Actor Brandon Victor Dixon told the Republican vice president-elect after the curtain call Friday night that the Broadway hit’s multiracial and multicultural cast is concerned about the incoming Trump administration.

“We, sir, we are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights,” said Dixon, who plays Aaron Burr, the nation’s third vice president. “We truly hope this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and work on behalf of all of us. All of us.”

Pence ducked out before Dixon finished the unprecedented message but heard the full remarks from the hallway outside the auditorium.

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Mike Pence, the vice president-elect, took a break from planning the next administration on Friday night by attending the popular Broadway show “Hamilton.”

Though Pence received a smattering of applause when he arrived, the New York audience mostly greeted the Indiana governor with boos.

The hip-hop musical about one of the country’s founding fathers, with its multicultural cast and tale of immigrant pride, has been a favorite of liberals. One of its songs was first performed at the White House when creator Lin-Manuel Miranda was a guest of President Obama.

And when Friday’s show ended, the cast shared a message to Pence.

“We welcome you and truly thank you for joining us here,” said Brandon Dixon, one of the performers. “We are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us.”

Dixon added, “But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and work on behalf of all of us.”

The French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, famous for its provocative cartoons, has a new target: Donald Trump.

The latest cover of the publication shows a black-suited, grinning Trump holding a woman between her legs and dangling her upside down. “Should we give him the nuclear button?” the caption asks.

Trump won no favors with Charlie Hebdo, which specializes in targeting world political and religious leaders, after he suggested in a series of tweets that France’s strict gun laws enabled the 2015 attack on its offices by two Islamic extremists who killed 12 people. The attack was retaliation for publishing caricatures of the prophet Muhammad.

In August, Robert McLiam Wilson, an Irish writer who contributes to Charlie Hebdo, wrote an article entitled “Thank God for Donald Trump” in which he lambasted the then-candidate. “Imagine how much worse everything would be if he was smart,” he wrote.

He also offered a prediction, writing that the “witless, orange-headed know-nothing is going to lose.”

The Trump cartoon is the second cover in as many weeks focused on U.S. politics. The last one, highlighting the debate over the shootings of black men by law enforcement, showed President Obama fleeing a hail of bullets from police. The caption: “Obama: An ordinary citizen once more.”

(Chris Pizzello / Associated Press)

You thought Kanye West would stay quiet about the election? You thought wrong. (Seriously, if you did take that bet? Lousy odds, kids. Bad move.)

Yeezy cut loose at the San Jose stop of his Saint Pablo Tour on Thursday night, revealing he would have gone against his wife’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton and picked the president-elect -- if he’d voted at all.

“I told you I didn’t vote ... but if I would’ve voted, I would’ve voted on Trump,” he said, earning a chorus of boos and a wee smattering of support. According to the San Jose Mercury News, folks threw things at him -- hats, shoes, T-shirts -- and complained that he talked too much during the show.

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Japanese American community activists have long expressed concern about the treatment of Muslims in America, particularly since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Some see parallels between the fear and anger sometimes directed at Muslims and the way their

Japanese American community activists have long expressed concern about the treatment of Muslims in the U.S., particularly since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Some see parallels between the fear and anger sometimes directed at Muslims and the way their families and ancestors were treated during World War II.

Their anxiety was heightened this week when a supporter of President-elect Donald Trump told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly that creating a national registration list for immigrants from Muslim countries would pass constitutional muster, citing the Japanese internment as a precedent.

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Richard Spencer is the chairman of the National Policy Institute, a prominent alt-right organization.

(Joshua Roberts / For the Los Angeles Times)

As he watched the news of the presidential election in the last week, Kory Duquette became increasingly agitated. Pundits were blaming a “whitelash” for Donald Trump’s win and called it a massive exercise of angry white ballot power.

Civil rights groups said the president-elect’s victory has inspired dozens of attacks on blacks, Latinos and Muslims by people who shared Trump’s suspicions about immigrants. Commentators said that in his quest for a win, Trump pandered to America’s darkest racist impulses.

Duquette, a 37-year-old Trump supporter from Alabama, was ready to fight back.

“#Whiteshaming doesn’t work anymore! you label me? you wonder why Trump won?” Duquette, who is white, posted this week on Twitter. “Tired of being classified with untruths.”

Duquette voted for President Obama eight years ago and would never call himself a racist. Like many Americans, he was sold on Trump’s promises to create jobs and fight terrorism. But there was also something else that attracted him.

Trump has eliminated “that uncomfortable feeling of being afraid to speak your mind as a white man,” said the 37-year-old prison guard. “There is nothing wrong with being white.”

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