Trump formally secures Electoral College win as his nominees push for Senate support: Live updates

A House GOP subcommittee is pushing for ex-Congresswoman Liz Cheney to be investigated by the Justice Department for witness tampering in retaliation for her efforts on the January 6 probe.

In a report from the House Administration’s Subcommittee on Oversight, Republican lawmakers led by Barry Loudermilk of Georgia argued that Cheney’s communications with Cassidy Hutchinson, a former Trump White House official, violated the law because Hutchinson’s lawyer was supposedly unaware they were happening.

“Evidence uncovered by the Subcommittee revealed that former Congresswoman Liz Cheney tampered with at least one witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, by secretly communicating with Hutchinson without Hutchinson’s attorney’s knowledge,” it reads. “This secret communication with a witness is improper and likely violates 18 U.S.C. 1512.”

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Donald Trump says privatizing the United States Postal Service — an idea Republicans have been circling for years in a crusade to kill one of America’s most popular public agencies — is “not the worst idea” he’s ever heard.

It’s the clearest signal yet that his incoming administration is reviving plans to gut the agency, which is empowered by the Constitution and older than the nation itself.

His remarks on Monday followed reporting in The Washington Post that Trump and his billionaire nominee for commerce secretary Howard Lutnick are mulling plans to overhaul the agency, including whether to privatize it entirely.

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Reflecting on an election cycle that was dominated by podcasts and non-traditional media, the deputy campaign manager for the Harris–Walz campaign said there’s “no value” in speaking to mainstream press, notably the New York Times or Washington Post anymore.

Rob Flaherty, a key figure in crafting Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign strategy, admitted to Semafor in an interview that Republicans successfully expanded their alternative media presence with influencers, streamers, podcasters and more.

He maintained that stance in a recent interview with the online news outlet, saying the Harris campaign chose to focus on podcast appearances and interviews with influencers over traditional media to compete with Donald Trump’s campaign.

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Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong is now prohibiting “editorials containing criticism” of Donald Trump “unless they are presented side-by-side with another opinion piece representing the ‘opposing view,’” according to a memo written by the newspaper’s editors.

As Oliver Darcy first reported in his Status newsletter, the staff memo reveals that Soon-Shiong’s “meddling” of the LA Times’ coverage – especially regarding the president-elect – has “grown more pervasive than previously realized.”

The memo, signed by several members of the LA Times’ opinion section, was sent to the newspaper’s executive editor, Terry Tang. It comes after Soon-Shiong killed an op-ed last month critical of Trump’s recent Cabinet picks and the incoming president’s suggestion that he may use recess appointments to circumvent the confirmation process.

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MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle revealed that President-elect Donald Trump told her to ‘go f*** myself” after she tried to set up an interview with him before the election to discuss his Madson Square Garden campaign rally.

While noting that Trump profanely brushed off her invitation for a sitdown, Ruhle also used this anecdote as an example of how much more accessible Trump is to the press than President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris, who she claimed are nearly impossible to contact due to buffers put up by their staffs.

Appearing on Lukas Thimm’s live variety stage show So Many Issues, Ruhle brought up the wild MSG rally in October, which was described as “an orgy of fascism” and sparked outrage after a right-wing comic called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” Ruhle said she “rolled the dice” and decided to call up Trump to see if he’d agree to talk to her about the fallout.

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Three progressive Democratic senators have unveiled a constitutional amendment that aims to abolish the Electoral College, five weeks after Donald Trump stormed to victory in the presidential election by sweeping the battleground states.

Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Dick Durbin of Illinois and Peter Welch of Vermont presented their bill on Monday, saying it was time to “restore democracy” by doing away with the college system altogether and giving primacy to the popular vote, the total number of ballots cast by the American electorate.

“In an election, the person who gets the most votes should win. It’s that simple,” said Schatz.

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Donald Trump reportedly met with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew on Monday to discuss the app’s potential ban by the US government.

The two men reportedly had a meeting at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, according to NBC News.

In the days leading up to the meeting, Trump had expressed some degree of sympathy for the company, saying he had a “warm spot” for the app, and promising that he’d “take a look” at the ban.

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Republicans released a 128-page report Tuesday which suggested that former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney be investigated for her work probing the January 6 Capitol riot.

The report looked at the “failures and politicization” of the now-dissolved January 6 Committee, claiming that President-elect Donald Trump was unfairly blamed for the attack.

“Speaker Pelosi’s multimillion-dollar Select Committee was a political weapon with a singular focus to deceive the public into blaming President Trump for the violence on January 6 and to tarnish the legacy of his first Presidency,” it says.

The conclusion argues that the FBI should investigate Cheney, claiming that her contact with witness Cassidy Hutchinson, a former Trump White House aide, amounted to witness tampering.

“January 6th showed Donald Trump for who is really is – a cruel and vindictive man who allowed violent attacks to continue against our Capitol and law enforcement officers while he watched television and refused for hours to instruct his supporters to stand down and leave,” Cheney said in a statement, according to The Hill.

She went on to note that “Chairman [Barry] Loudermilk’s (R-Ga.) ‘Interim Report’ intentionally disregards the truth and the Select Committee’s tremendous weight of evidence, and instead fabricates lies and defamatory allegations in an attempt to cover up what Donald Trump did. Their allegations do not reflect a review of the actual evidence, and are a malicious and cowardly assault on the truth. No reputable lawyer, legislator or judge would take this seriously.”

After nearly 10 years at the country’s helm, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is facing growing calls from his own party to resign.

Mr Trudeau’s latest crisis has been sparked by the sudden resignation of his finance minister Chrystia Freeland, amid a row over how best to handle US President-elect Donald Trump’s threatened trade tariffs.

Once the poster-boy for liberal politics, his popularity has waned and his approval rating has dipped below 30 per cent several times this year.

So what went wrong?