Trump has invited China’s Xi to inauguration, spokesperson says
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(WASHINGTON) — President-elect Donald Trump has invited China‘s President Xi Jinping to his inauguration in January, his spokesperson said Thursday.
Incoming White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed reports about the invitation on Fox News on Thursday morning.
Asked if she could confirm if Trump has invited Xi to his inauguration, Leavitt said, “That is true, yes and this is an example of President Trump creating an open dialogue with leaders of countries that are not just our allies, but our adversaries and our competitors, too. We saw this in his first term — he got a lot of criticism for it; but it led to peace around this world; he is willing to talk to anyone, and he will always put America’s interests first.”
Leavitt said it is “to be determined” if the Chinese president has RSVP’d, and that other world leaders are being invited as well.
CBS News was first to report that Xi Jinping had been invited.
In October, in an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, Trump called Xi a “brilliant guy.”
“He controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist. I mean, he’s a brilliant guy, whether you like it or not,” he said.
Trump has threatened to impose a 10% tariff on imports from China. He and Xi last met at the G20 summit in Japan in 2019.
Asked about the inauguration invitation Thursday as he made an appearance at the New York Stock Exchange, Trump wouldn’t comment on whether Xi has committed to attend.
“Well, I’ve invited a lot of great people. And they’ve all accepted. Everybody I invited has accepted,” Trump said.
“President Xi, as well?” reporters asked. Trump dodged, saying, “Very good relationship.”
(WASHINGTON, DC) — President Joe Biden and his family discussed whether to pardon Hunter Biden during their time together in Nantucket for Thanksgiving, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to ABC News Monday.
Senior White House staff learned of the possibility of a pardon on Saturday evening. President Biden made his final decision on Sunday, the source said.
Biden did not answer questions on the issue as he left late Sunday for a three-day trip to Africa.
Hunter Biden, the president’s only surviving son, was convicted on federal gun-related charges in June and pleaded guilty to nine tax-related charges in September. Both cases carried the possibility of significant prison time and he was set to be sentenced in both later this month.
President Biden had long said he would not pardon his son, including in an interview with ABC’s David Muir as Hunter Biden’s gun trial was underway this past summer.
In his statement on Sunday evening, Biden contended his son was “unfairly” prosecuted after pressure from his political opponents.
“For my entire career I have followed a simple principle: just tell the American people the truth. They’ll be fair-minded. Here’s the truth: I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice — and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further,” President Biden said.
Hunter Biden, his wife Melissa Cohen Biden and their son Beau, as well as Ashley Biden, spent Thanksgiving in Nantucket with President Biden and first lady Jill Biden.
“I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision,” the president added.
Republicans, including President-elect Donald Trump, pounced on the reversal.
Congressional Republicans spent years investigating the Biden family, including Hunter Biden, over their business dealings. House Republicans released a report in August on their impeachment probe filled with allegations, many targeted toward Hunter Biden, but no recommendation of specific impeachment articles and no evidence of President Biden himself being directly involved in alleged improper activities.
It’s not clear whether Republicans will continue their probes after President Biden leaves office in January.
House Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday criticized the pardon, which extends as far back as 2014.
“President Biden insisted many times he would never pardon his own son for his serious crimes. But last night he suddenly granted a ‘Full and Unconditional Pardon’ for any and all offenses that Hunter committed for more than a decade!” Johnson wrote on X. “Trust in our justice system has been almost irreparably damaged by the Bidens and their use and abuse of it. Real reform cannot begin soon enough!”
(WASHINGTON) — Leading candidates for the Democratic National Committee chairperson election said Tuesday’s claim by front-runner Ken Martin that he has the support of 200 members is inflated and fails to paint an accurate picture of the dynamics of the race.
Chair candidates need a simple majority of DNC members, or 225 votes, to win. If it holds, Martin’s latest endorsement count would bring him close to victory on the first ballot.
The role of the chair, who guides fundraising, recruiting and organizing efforts for Democrats nationally, holds particular importance in years when the party is outside of the White House and lacks a de facto leader.
Whoever wins the election will have the responsibility of balancing messaging against the Trump presidency while looking to define and rebuild a party now marked by decisive losses in the executive branch and across both chambers of Congress.
Typically, presidents appoint their own chairs to lead the parties they represent.
Martin, the Minnesota Democratic Party chairman, announced his 200-member number in a statement Tuesday morning.
“I’m honored to have gained the support of leaders from across the country,” Martin said. “Our campaign is gaining momentum and we’re going to continue to work hard for people’s votes.”
The teams of Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler claimed the dynamics of the race are far from locked.
In a statement to ABC News, Wikler’s spokesperson claimed Martin is inflating his whip count in an attempt to create “false momentum” and “lacks a clear path to victory.”
“Ken Martin is releasing inflated whip counts because his momentum in this race has stalled and he is seeking to create a false sense of momentum,” the spokesperson said. “Our internal count has Ben within 30 votes of Ken, with a surge in support since last week’s union endorsements. Ken has fewer votes than the combined support for Ben and Martin O’Malley and lacks a clear path to the majority.”
O’Malley’s team swiped at Martin, claiming that the 200 figure is inflated and unsubstantiated. Pushing further than Wikler’s team, O’Malley spokesman Chris Taylor told ABC News that “not a single soul” believes Martin, who he asserted is acting “beneath the seriousness of this moment.”
“This race isn’t about inflated and unsubstantiated numbers or tricks and gimmicks,” Taylor said in a statement. “It’s about making the changes we need to win and rebuilding the Democratic Party for the future of our Republic. There is not a single soul running for any DNC office who believes Ken Martin’s count. It’s disrespectful to the 448 voting members of the DNC — many of whom are still making up their minds — and beneath the seriousness of this moment.”
In their statements, O’Malley’s and Wikler’s teams both pointed to their internal numbers, which they said show a much closer race. None of the leading candidates have provided a full list of names of their supporters. O’Malley’s team said it has commitments from 100 members. Wikler’s team declined to offer its internal count.
Even still, public endorsements for Martin seem to outnumber all others.
Over the past few weeks, Martin’s campaign has been rolling out daily endorsements on social media. His bid boasts the support of at least 50 current state party chairs and vice chairs, including party leaders from swing-states Arizona, New Mexico and Pennsylvania, and several members of Congress, including Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith and former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, as well as leaders of the Young Democrats of America.
Wikler has the support from one of the highest-ranking Democrats, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and rubber stamps from both centrist and progressive organizations within the party. Last week, Wikler won the support of four powerful public sector unions, including the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
O’Malley has also been rolling out endorsements from individual members, including current and former members of the Congressional Black Caucus, alongside former mayors.
The DNC has been hosting forums that function as debates between candidates for all officer positions. There are two left, one this week and one next week, a few days before the officer elections on Feb. 1.
(WASHINGTON) — Outgoing Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, who for four years has been a target for Republican criticism, said that national tragedies should not be used for “political disagreements.”
“There are people that lobby vitriol in public, and have relationships in private, that are quite inconsistent with the vitriol,” he told ABC News in an exit interview from his office at DHS headquarters in Washington.
“Times of tragedy should drive unity of effort and unity of care, whether that be the hurricanes and tornadoes of Helene and Milton, or whether that be the wildfires in California, or whether that be the tragic death of 14 individuals on in the early morning hours of January 1, and not be ammunition for political disagreement,” he said. “We’ve got to get back to a place where we can disagree and we can unify when the American people need it.”
He said his hope is that “we can disagree with civility and mutual respect.”
Mayorkas’ time as DHS secretary saw one crisis after another, including big increases in migrants crossing the southern border illegally to an unprecedented threat environment to an evolving cybersecurity landscape.
Through it all, he said remains proud of the department’s work.
“I am on the ground with the people of this department in in times of success, in times of tragedy,” Mayorkas said.
He personally traveled to funerals for Border Patrol agents who died in the line of duty, recalling how at one he was moved by the outpouring of honor and respect.
“… along the highway in Texas,” he said, “one saw police officers, firefighters, citizens standing outside of their cars at bus stops all along the multi-mile stretch of highway, saluting the car and the motorcade. Incredibly powerful message of the impact of our work and the impact of people doing the work on the broader community.”
For Mayorkas, who spent 11 years working at DHS, serving as secretary was the honor of a lifetime.
“I love this job. I love the mission. I love the people who perform it, and it’s going to be very hard to leave,” he said.
Regrets, he said, are “unproductive.”
“If I said no, there’s nothing we could have done better, I would be basically saying that we achieved perfection, and that obviously is not the case,” he said. “In any large, multifaceted organization such as an administration, there are disagreements over policy and practice, and decisions are made, and then we all march as one in executing.”
He maintained he is leaving DHS in better shape than how he found it, and, he insists, that starts with the border.
“We have built and delivered a model where the border is more secure now than it was in 2019 and we have safe, lawful and orderly pathways that have delivered humanitarian relief to people in need and cutting out the smugglers, we have modernized the system of border security and humanitarian relief in unprecedented ways,” he says of the department’s work, noting the border has seen the lowest daily average of migrants in December since July 2020.
Mayorkas said that the incoming Trump administration’s critical rhetoric “misses everything that we have tried to do, and I view it as rhetoric that is a political and not substantive.”
“For example, they speak of focusing on public safety and national security threats when they talk about mass deportations,” he said. “Well, they speak of it as something new, when in fact, that is a continuation of precisely what we’ve done.”
Mayorkas also said that the incoming administration will have access to “tools at their disposal that were not tools that we had at our disposal,” meaning potentially increased funding from Congress.
In June 2024, President Joe Biden signed a series of executive actions on the border, that DHS says curbed illegal immigration by nearly 55%.
When asked by ABC News why the Biden administration didn’t act sooner to take the actions that President Joe Biden ordered in June 2024, during the presidential campaign, he said there was “bipartisan pressure” to not lift the order established by then-President Donald Trump to curb migrants at the border due to a public health emergency, known as Title 42.
“Everyone expected that when we lifted it, calamity would ensue, 18,000 encounters, 20,000 encounters in a day, from on both sides of the aisle and that calamity did not occur,” he said. “And then we turned to Congress for funding, more ICE officers, more Border Patrol agents, more Office of Field Operations personnel, more immigration judges denied. We went to Congress again, again, denied. We entered the bipartisan Senate negotiations, mission accomplished, political torpedo, no legislative reform,” he said, noting how how then-candidate Donald Trump told congressional Republicans to block the measure. “And then the president acted,” he said of President Biden.
Mayorkas also became the first Cabinet-level secretary to be impeached because, after House Republicans claimed his failed to handle the immigration issue.
“It should never have occurred. And I wish that the members of Congress had followed the law, and if they had, it would not have occurred,” he said. “And it’s unfortunate when the law is overridden by politics.”
He also said the country is in a “heightened threat environment,” and to look no further than what happened on January 1st in New Orleans as an example.
Mayorkas said that the department under his watch is helping state and local governments take a public health approach to stopping mass attacks.
“If one takes a look at the assailant in Buffalo, the assailant in Uvalde, Texas, the assailant at the July 4 parade outside, in a suburb outside of Chicago, those three assailants exhibited signs manifested externally, signs of radicalizing to violence for different reasons,” he said, adding if someone notices them, the assailant can get help.
Mayorkas said he also has focused on positioning DHS to take on the challenge posed by artificial intelligence by personally recruiting people to come work on the issue and setting up the AI Safety Board — a collection of private and public partners who help shape the department’s AI policy.
The DHS secretary oversees 22 agencies with more than 260,000 employees – on issues ranging from the border to federal disaster management to the Secret Service.
He said that he wishes he could stay on to see reforms being made to the Secret Service after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in July, which he described as an agency “failure.”
“Let me be clear, I consider the Secret Service to be the best protective service in the world. Success is when nothing occurs, and there are countless examples of that success,” he said.
Mayorkas, who said he plans to stay on the job until Monday at noon, told ABC News he has had “substantive and very productive and very collegial” conversations with Trump’s pick to be the new DHS secretary, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem.
