Trump picks Marco Rubio and Kristi Noem as new cabinet appointments continue: Live

One person who won’t be part of the next Trump administration is the president-elect’s eldest son and namesake.

Don Jr is joining 1789 Capital instead, a venture capital firm that invests in conservative-leaning companies, according to multiple reports.

He has been involved in vetting potential members of his father’s new cabinet and was reportedly an influential voice behind the decision to pick Ohio Senator JD Vance and his running mate.

He was also a regular on the campaign trail and remains a popular presence in conservative media.

“Trump isn’t appointing comic book villains to run the government on his own. He’s been getting a lot of help from the richest man in the world,” the late-night host told his audience on Monday.

“Elon Musk has been in the room when world leaders have called Trump, and tonight we’ve learned he’s also weighing in on staffing decisions, making clear his preference for certain roles.

“He’s picking out outfits for Trump to wear, he’s been applying his bronzing cream to his face. Cute couple.

“Look out, Melania, Trump’s got a new squeeze named Elonia Musk.”

Rhian Lubin has more from Kimmel.

Is there a more spectacular fall from grace than that suffered by “America’s mayor” since throwing in with Trump and backing his false 2020 election fraud narrative?

Giuliani is now claiming such hardship as a result of the court-ordered $150m compensation payout he was forced to make to Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman – the two Georgia election workers he was found guilty of defaming – that he can no longer afford a meal, despite, er, turning up to court in a Mercedes.

Here’s Rhian Lubin with more.

Trump’s new border czar was busy making appearances on Fox News yesterday and struck an uncompromisingly macho note, warning Democratic governors not to interfere with his planned operations and moving to reassure Sean Hannity that American citizens will not get caught up in it all.

As we’ve seen, the president-elect has been moving fast in picking cabinet members, although he has so far largely focused on posts with responsibility for national security.

He has talked about making Elon Musk a commissioner in charge of cutting government inefficiency and has identified the Department of Education (DOE) as a clear target for cutbacks – or even abolition altogether.

Trump considers the DOE, created by Jimmy Carter in 1979, a source of needless interference into American family lives (think all of those “woke” culture war battles being fought in Florida schools about what books are made available and how history is taught) and an example of a poor return on investment for taxpayers.

The Republican complained on the campaign trail that the US spends three times more money on education than any other nation “and yet we are absolutely at the bottom, we’re one of the worst”.

He also bizarrely claimed, without evidence of course, that the DOE is staffed by officials who “in many cases, hate our children” and declared: “We want states to run the education of our children because they’ll do a much better job of it. You can’t do worse.”

The idea for closing the DOE altogether is listed in the Trump campaign’s Agenda47 list of election policies and in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s 900-page opus making recommendations for a future Republican administration that Trump had to work hard to distance himself from during the election cycle.

Less drastic steps are also raised in the Agenda47 proposals like cutting funding for schools that continue to teach critical race theory (a running conservative bugbear) and/or, as they put it, “transgender insanity” or awarding credentials to teachers who “embrace patriotic values and support the American Way of Life”.

We appear to be a long way from any of this happening but it’s certainly in the water.

The president-elect is not the only member of the MAGA-sphere awaiting the scales of justice today.

Trump’s former White House strategist and staunch ally Steve Bannon returns to a New York courtroom, having only been released from federal prison two weeks ago, in advance of his December trial for allegedly defrauding supporters of the 45th president’s attempt to build a wall along the US-Mexico border.

Bannon, the former Breitbart editor who is now primarily a podcaster, pleaded not guilty in 2022 to charges that he defrauded donors to “We Build the Wall”, an online fundraising effort to raise money for Trump’s signature policy.

The right-wing pundit told donors every cent they gave would go toward building the wall but prospectuses allege some of the $15m raised was secretly funnelled to Brian Kolfage, the campaign’s president.

Bannon’s trial is scheduled to begin on December 9 but he is trying to push it into January to give his attorney extra time to prepare.

New York Judge Juan Merchan is due to decide today on whether to undo the president-elect’s conviction in his hush money case because of a US Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity.

Judge Merchan, who presided over Trump’s historic trial this spring, is now tasked with deciding whether to toss out the jury verdict and order a new trial – or even dismiss the charges altogether.

The judge’s ruling also could speak to whether the former and now future commander-in-chief will be sentenced as scheduled on November 26.

The Republican won back the White House a week ago but the legal question concerns his status as a past president, not an impending one.

A jury convicted Trump in May of falsifying business records related to a $130,000 payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels in October 2016.

The payout was to buy her silence about claims that she had sex with Trump.

He says they didn’t, denies any wrongdoing and maintains the prosecution was a political tactic meant to harm his latest campaign.

Just over a month after the verdict, the Supreme Court ruled that ex-presidents can’t be prosecuted for actions they took in the course of running the country and prosecutors can’t cite those actions even to bolster a case centered on purely personal conduct.

Trump’s lawyers cited the ruling to argue that the hush money jury got some evidence it shouldn’t have, such as Trump’s presidential financial disclosure form and testimony from some White House aides.

Prosecutors disagreed and said the evidence in question was only “a sliver” of their case.

Trump’s criminal conviction was a first for any ex-president.

It left the 78-year-old facing the possibility of punishment ranging from a fine or probation to up to four years in prison.

MAGA Republican Kari Lake has lost her race for the Arizona Senate to Democrat Ruben Gallego, who becomes the Grand Canyon State’s first Latino senator.

Gallego’s win helps prevent the GOP further extending its majority in the upper chamber of Congress and continues his party’s successful run in Arizona over the last decade, where voters have repeatedly rejected candidates backed by Donald Trump.

Trump himself beat Kamala Harris there in last week’s presidential race, however, securing his clean sweep of the swing states.

“Gracias, Arizona!” Gallego, 44, wrote on X after his victory was confirmed, thanking the state’s voters for a win that nevertheless means Republicans still hold 53 of the 100 seats in the Senate.

Gallego is a five-term House member and a Marine Corps Reserve veteran of the Iraq War, who will replace Kyrsten Sinema, whose 2018 victory as a Democrat created a formula that the party has successfully replicated ever since.

One last cabinet pick and then we’ll move on.

The president-elect is thought to be going for ex-New York congressman Lee Zeldin, a man who “voted against environmental bills 85 percent of the time”, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.

Another man who looks set to join Trump in Washington DC is Florida Representative Mike Waltz, who will step into shoes previously worn by HR McMaster, John Bolton and Robert O’Brien if he is indeed chosen.