President-elect Donald Trump will join billionaire Elon Musk for a SpaceX launch in Texas later today, as reported by Reuters.

This will be the sixth test flight to space for SpaceX’s Starship rocket. The test launch is planned for 5pm ET.

Billionaire Elon Musk, a close ally of Donald Trump, defended former representative Matt Gaetz this morning.

In a statement posted on X, Musk said that Gaetz has three “critical assets” that he believes are needed for the role of Attorney General.

“A big brain, a spine of steel and an axe to grind” Musk, who has been deeply involved in the Trump administration’s transition plans, wrote.

Gaetz “is the Judge Dredd America needs to clean up a corrupt system and put powerful bad actors in prison” Musk continued. “Gaetz will be our Hammer of Justice.”

In a second post, Musk addressed the allegations against Gaetz

“I consider them worth less than nothing” Musk said. “Under our laws, a man is considered innocent until proven guilty.”

As we have been reporting, Matt Gaetz, Trump’s controversial pick to be the new attorney general, is at the centre of a number of allegations which could prevent him from passing Senate confirmation for the high-profile role.

As my colleague Anna Betts reports in this story, an attorney representing two women who he says testified before the House ethics committee has claimed that Gaetz paid both women for sex and that one of the women alleged she witnessed Gaetz having sex with a minor.

The new allegations were revealed by the attorney Joel Leppard during an interview with ABC News on Monday – less than a week after Gaetz resigned from Congress following his nomination by Donald Trump to serve as attorney general in his second administration.

In the interview, Leppard said his clients were paid by Gaetz using Venmo and said that one of the women testified to the committee that she saw Gaetz at a house party in 2017 having sex with a 17-year-old girl.

“She testified that in July of 2017 at his house party, she was walking out to the pool area, and she looked to her right, and she saw Rep Gaetz having sex with her friend, who was 17,” Leppard said.

Gaetz was investigated by the justice department on suspicion of child sex trafficking, but the department decided not to bring charges. The House ethics committee then launched its own inquiry into allegations that Gaetz engaged in sexual misconduct, illicit drug use and other ethical breaches. Gaetz has repeatedly denied the allegations against him.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has said he believes the report should not be made public, as Gaetz , a former Florida congressman, is no longer a House member.

Lauren Gambino

Lauren Gambino is political correspondent for Guardian US, based in Washington DC

Donald Trump said on Monday that his administration would declare a national emergency and use the US military to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.

In an early morning social media post, Trump responded “TRUE!!!” to a post by Tom Fitton, the president of the conservative group Judicial Watch, who wrote on 8 November that the next administration “will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program”.

Since his decisive victory, Trump has said he intends to make good on his campaign promise to execute mass deportations, beginning on the first day of his presidency. But many aspects of what he has described as the “largest deportation program in American history” remain unclear.

Trump has previously suggested he would rely on wartime powers, military troops and sympathetic state and local leaders. Such a sprawling campaign – and the use of military personnel to carry it out – is almost certain to draw legal challenges and pushback from Democratic leaders, some of whom have already said they would refuse to cooperate with Trump’s deportation agenda.

Through personnel announcements, the president-elect has put together a team of loyalists and hardliners to implement a second-term immigration crackdown.

Tom Homan, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in his first administration, was named “border czar” with a wide-ranging remit. In a short social media post announcing the position, Trump said Homan would be “in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin”.

Also returning for a second term is Stephen Miller, a chief defender of the last administration’s most controversial immigration policies, including the use of family separation as a means of deterrence. Miller was named White House deputy chief of staff for policy and a homeland security adviser, giving him far-reaching influence over immigration policy.

You can read the full story here:

The US House ethics committee is expected to discuss next steps in its investigation into Donald Trump’s attorney general pick Matt Gaetz, the former Florida congressman, tomorrow, according to Reuters.

A growing number of Republicans in the Senate, which has a constitutional duty to confirm or reject high-level presidential appointments, have called on the House panel to turn over its findings on allegations of sexual misconduct involving a teenager and drug use by Gaetz.

It is uncertain whether the probe will continue because Gaetz, 42, resigned his seat in the Republican-controlled House last week, hours after Trump unveiled announced him as his choice for AG and as the probe was nearing completion. Gaetz denies any wrongdoing.

Amid growing cross-party concern, Axios is now reporting that Trump is personally calling senators to press them to confirm Gaetz to be his attorney general. Here is an extract from the outlet’s report:

Trump is digging in on his embattled and controversial nominee and is sending an unmistakable message to Senate Republicans that he expects him to be confirmed.

“He clearly wants Matt Gaetz,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who received a call from Trump. “He believes Matt Gaetz is the one person who will have the fearlessness and ferociousness, really, to do what needs doing at the department of justice.”

“One thing about Donald Trump, people should never confuse his support for one of his nominees as a tactical or strategic tool for somebody else,” Cramer said. “And at least to this point, he’s putting his own political capital behind it.” “And he’s a pretty persuasive guy,” Cramer said.

Another senator also confirmed to Axios that Trump reached out, calling on them to rally behind him.

Donald Trump has nominated former congressman and co-host of “The Bottom Line” on Fox Business Sean Duffy to be his transport secretary in his next administration.

Duffy served in Congress from 2011 until 2019. Before being elected to public office, he was district attorney for Ashland county, Wisconsin, from 2002 to 2008 and previously had a reality TV show role. Duffy was a cast member on The Real World: Boston in 1997 where he would meet his wife, Fox news contributor Rachel Campos-Duffy (you can read more about Duffy’s time in Congress here).

In a post on Truth social, Trump said Duffy would use his experience in Congress “to maintain and rebuild our nation’s Infrastructure, and fulfil our mission of ushering in the golden age of travel, focusing on safety, efficiency and innovation”.

“The husband of a wonderful woman, Rachel Campos-Duffy, a STAR on Fox News, and the father of nine incredible children, Sean knows how important it is for families to be able to travel safely, and with peace of mind,” the president-elect added.

If confirmed, Duffy will oversee aviation, automotive, rail, transit and other transportation policies at the department with about a $110bn (£86bn) budget.

A spokesperson for Fox News Media wished Duffy “the best of luck in his return to Washington” and said he left the company on Monday.

Duffy is so far the second Fox-affiliated television host that Trump has named to his Cabinet. Trump last week announced his choice of Fox News host Pete Hegseth to serve as his defence secretary.

Hegseth was a major in the Minnesota national guard who served as a prison guard at Guantánamo Bay detention camp and served in Iraq and Afghanistan before becoming an outspoken rightwing critic of the military. He has no experience in government and is untested on the global stage.

Good morning, and welcome to our US politics blog.

Donald Trump, 78, was convicted in May of falsifying business records to cover up a $130,000 (£102,809) hush money payment his former lawyer Michael Cohen made to porn star Stormy Daniels for her silence before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump, who denies it.

The president-elect had been scheduled to be sentenced on 26 November, but justice Juan Merchan last week put all proceedings in the case on pause at the request of Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s office.

The prosecutors had asked for more time to consider next steps in the case, citing the need to balance the “competing interests” between having the criminal case go forward as normal and protecting the office of the president.

They are due to propose their next steps later today.

Trump’s win in the 2024 presidential election has thwarted his other criminal cases, including the federal election interference and classified documents cases.

The state-level election case in Georgia is on pause pending appeal in the wake of news that the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, had hired a man with whom she had an affair as prosecutor.

You can read more on the legal battles Trump faces in this story.