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

The Texas Senator gave a wide-ranging, energized speech about what he believes the next administration will bring.

“Donald J Trump is truly an extraordinary leader. Has there ever been anyone in American history who gets shot in the head and stands up and says ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’?” Cruz asked the Arizona crowd.

Cruz touched on the incoming administration’s immigration policies: “If you are an illegal alien, if you’re a murderer, if you’re a rapist…pack your bags because you’re out!” He also promised that Americans will see illegal immigration numbers “plummet” in January and February.

We will enforce the law “especially against universities in this country,” the Texas Senator said, referencing pro-Palestine demonstrations that cropped up in colleges in the fall.

Cruz predicted the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East will soon come to an end, saying Putin and Hamas will lose.

Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose two trips — which hadn’t been publicly reported — paid for by a billionaire Republican donor, a new Congressional report reveals.

In the wake of ProPublica’s explosive 2023 report into Thomas’ failures to disclose his ties to wealthy donor Harlan Crow, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee conducted a 20-month investigation into the ethics challenges at the Supreme Court.

The report — spanning 97 pages plus 824 pages of supporting documents — was released Saturday, detailing two additional trips paid for by Crow that Thomas hadn’t previously disclosed. More broadly, the report also captured an array of conflicts of interest and undisclosed gifts by justices, prompting the panel to recommend the nation’s highest court establish an enforceable code of conduct.

Actor Rob Schneider, former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and Sen. Ted Cruz will speak to the crowd before Donald Trump headlines AmericaFest 2024 on Sunday.

Schneider opened with a speech that included addressing Democrats as to why he believed “you lost” the presidential election.

Among wide-ranging comments about Democrats’ policies, the comedian delivered one particularly harsh line: “You lost because flying Haitians into Ohio in the middle of the night just to increase your voting base is kind of a shady thing to do. Now I have no problem with legal immigration. I’m just not sure Haiti is sending us their best cat-eating rapist cannibals.”

The line was met with mixed reactions, prompting Schneider to apologize: “Sorry. That was too much even for me.”

The offensive claim comes months after Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance amplified unsubstantiated allegations that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating pets. Local officials and police swiftly debunked those claims and Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine even wrote an op-ed in the New York Times about the dangers of spreading such harmful rhetoric.

Donald Trump has named the producer behind The Apprentice as his special envoy to the UK.

The president-elect said Mark Burnett would bring “a unique blend of diplomatic acumen and international recognition” to the role.

British producer Mr Burnett helped build Mr Trump’s profile but distanced himself from the tycoon during the 2016 presidential contest.

Announcing the envoy role, Mr Trump said: “It is my great honor to appoint Mark Burnett as the special envoy to the United Kingdom.

Republicans are calling for Elon Musk to be the new speaker of the House amid contentious negotiations over a spending deal to avoid a government shutdown.

“The Speaker of the House need not be a member of Congress . . . Nothing would disrupt the swamp more than electing Elon Musk,” Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky wrote on X on Thursday. “Think about it . . . nothing’s impossible (not to mention the joy at seeing the collective establishment, aka ‘uniparty,’ lose their ever-lovin’ minds).”

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia also piped in on X: “DOGE can only truly be accomplished by reigning in Congress to enact real government efficiency. The establishment needs to be shattered just like it was yesterday. This could be the way.”

Josh Marcus has the full story.

Trump accused Panama of “ripping off” American vessels by charging “exorbitant prices” to use the vital waterway that acts as a shortcut linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Without it, ships would be forced to sail a much farther distance around South America’s rocky Cape Horn.

Trump was referring to the 1977 treaty over the canal’s status, which transferred control of the canal from the U.S. to Panama at the end of the 20th century.

President-elect Donald Trump’s team has snapped back at claims that Elon Musk is running the show after the billionaire played a significant role in tanking a spending bill that would have averted a government shutdown.

“Stop the steal of your tax dollars!” Musk wrote on his social media platform X that he threatened funded primary challenges against anyone who voted for the budget deal, a threat Trump later echoed in a post of his own.

The optics that Musk is pulling the strings have prompted Trump’s incoming White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, to hit back about who is really in charge.

Wielding his influence on the social media platform he owns, X, Musk sent out more than 150 posts urging Republicans to break from the bill backed by the current Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.

After the debacle in Congress this week, all eyes are now on Mike Johnson ahead of a vote in two weeks as to whether he should stay on as Speaker.

Earlier this week we reported he could be challenged for the speaker’s chair in the new year as Republican critics draw up a list of potential replacements.