Trump delivers first rally-style speech since election win as he threatens to retake Panama Canal: Live

Ahmed Moor thinks about his family in Gaza every day. His uncle has been seeking shelter from the relentless Israeli airstrikes for more than a year, and finding none. He has lost cousins and extended family to sniper fire and bombing.

Now, the Palestinian-American father of three is suing Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and the State Department for their role in the carnage, accusing them of violating U.S. law by providing the weapons and support for Israel’s devastating onslaught.

Moor joined a group of Palestinians and their families in filing the lawsuit against the State Department for failing to adhere to a 1997 law. The Leahy Law prohibits U.S. assistance to foreign security forces that are credibly implicated in gross human rights violations.

Richard Hall has the story.

A Texas congresswoman is living in a care facility for senior citizens after being found wandering and confused in her old neighborhood, despite being a current elected representative, a Dallas-area news outlet has reported.

The Dallas Express reports that Kay Granger, a retiring congresswoman representing Tarrant County in the House of Representatives, now lives full-time at an assisted living facility. A spokesperson denied that Granger was “in memory care” in a statement to NBC News on Sunday, but did not dispute the Express’s reporting indicating that Granger relocated to the facility after she was “found wandering lost and confused in her former Cultural District/West 7th neighborhood” in Fort Worth.

Nor did the spokesperson dispute a claim from the facility’s executive director that Granger lives there. Tradition Senior Living’s Taylor Manziel told the Express: “This is her home.”

Granger, according to Fort Worth Magazine and other outlets, was present in the Capitol as recently as November for the unveiling of her congressional portrait. But she did not participate in votes last week as the single-digit Republican majority in the House of Representatives fought to pass several funding bills aimed at preventing a government shutdown at the end of Friday.

Catch up on the saga here.

Speaking at AmericaFest on Sunday, Trump dismissed a rumor that he might “cede the presidency” to his “best buddy” Elon Musk.

“No, he’s not going to be president, that I can tell you,” Trump said. “And I’m safe. You know why he can’t be? He wasn’t born in this country.”

The president-elect’s reassurance comes after The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board eviscerated Trump and Musk in an op-ed after the spending bill “fiasco,” in which legislation meant to keep the government open was effectively thwarted by the 78-year-old Republican and the tech billionaire this week.

Trump “on the advice of Elon Musk blew up the end-of-session budget bill without a plan for getting another one passed,” the board wrote.

“There are bad omens here for 2025 and the ability of Republicans to govern,” the board said. “The immediate result has been a fiasco by any measure.”

Read more here.

The president-elected named Judge Stephen Alexander Vaden as his deputy secretary of agriculture in a Truth Social Post on Sunday shortly after he gave a rally-style speech in Arizona. “In my First Term, Stephen was the General Counsel of the Department of Agriculture, and a Member of the Board of the Commodity Credit Corporation, where he won two cases before the United States Supreme Court, relocated and reorganized the Agencies that comprise the Department to better serve Rural America, and engaged in substantial regulatory reform,” Trump wrote.

“Stephen joined the USDA on Day One of my First Term, and left in December 2020 after I nominated him, and the U.S. Senate confirmed him, to continue to serve the American People as an Article III Judge on the Court of International Trade,” he said.

The discovery by a local newspaper of “confused” Texas Republican Representative Kay Granger, 81, in an assisted care facility on Saturday after she dropped out of sight last month has retriggered concerns about aging lawmakers clinging to their powerful roles in the face of fears about diminishing competence.

Age became a political issue in 2024 as in no other election cycle in the modern era of American politics, touching on former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Peloisi, the late California Representative Dianne Feinstein, President Joe Biden, President-elect Donald Trump and other aging leaders.

With the presidential election now in the rear-view mirror, a troubling picture is increasingly emerging of Washington.

John Bowden has the full story.

The Biden administration is using its waning days in office to make a final mark ahead of the incoming Trump White House.

It announced Friday it would forgive another $4.28 billion in student debt for 54,900 borrowers who pursued careers in public service, bringing Biden’s total to some $180 billion of forgiveness overall, the largest sum of debt forgiveness from any president in U.S. history.

At the same time, the administration said it would scrap further forgiveness proposals from the U.S. Department of Education, noting “uncertainty around the implementation” given Trump’s impending inauguration.

“The Department at this time intends to commit its limited operational resources to helping at-risk borrowers return to repayment successfully,” Education Secretary Migual Cardona wrote in official notices.

Josh Marcus has the full story.

Lara Trump dropped out of the running for the Senate on Saturday evening, teasing a “big announcement” to come in January.

Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law was floated as a possible replacement for Marco Rubio, the president-elect’s choice for secretary of state.

Two weeks ago Trump announced she was also stepping down from her role as co-chair of the Republican National Committee.

Rhian Lubin has the full story.

Donald Trump will impose “surgical” tariffs when he enters office, his former director of communications has warned, as concern grows over an imminent trade war with the United States.

Anthony Scaramucci said Trump will impose the levies in a targeted way on any “industries that we need to protect”.

The former adviser’s intervention comes just days after Sir Keir Starmer hit out at the “dangers” of tariffs, putting the prime minister on a collision course with the incoming US president.

Read the full story.