Donald Trump wants a billionaire as NASA boss. The Democrats win the last election for the House of Representatives. All developments in the news blog.
1.30am: Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, wants to push forward the US president-elect’s diplomatic efforts to achieve a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and the release of the Israeli hostages before he takes office on January 20th. A person familiar with the matter confirmed this to the Reuters news agency.
According to the insider, Witkoff, who will officially take office under Trump’s administration, met separately with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani at the end of November.
9:05 p.m.: Donald Trump reversed one of his personnel decisions after just 22 days – long before he even moved back into the White House. Shortly after his election, Trump announced that William McGinley would become White House counsel. But now the position falls to David Warrington.
Warrington has already represented him “well” as his personal lawyer, writes Trump on his “Truth Social” network. McGinley will have a new role: in the “Department of Government Efficiency,” which will be headed by Elon Musk, among others.
7:07 p.m.: US President-elect Donald Trump wants to make billionaire and space traveler Jared Isaacman head of the NASA space agency. “Jared’s passion for space, his astronaut experience and his unwavering desire to advance research, unravel the mysteries of space and advance the space business mean he is ideally suited to lead NASA into a bold new era “Wrote Trump on the platform he co-founded, Truth Social. The nomination is an honor for him, wrote the 41-year-old Isaacman, who made his money with a payment processing company, among other things, at X.
Isaacman has caused a stir in recent years with two private space missions: In 2021, he was part of the first space crew in space consisting only of amateur astronauts and orbited the earth for almost three days together with three other people. In September he took part in the “Polaris Dawn” mission together with three other amateur astronauts, during which they climbed to an altitude of around 1,400 kilometers and also briefly got out of their spacecraft. On both missions, Isaacman worked with SpaceX, the private space company owned by tech billionaire Elon Musk, who is now also set to become part of the Trump administration.
6:01 p.m.: Democrat Adam Gray has won the last uncounted election for the US House of Representatives. This means the balance of power in the chamber of Congress is clear: the Republicans have 220 seats, the Democrats 215.
Adam Gray prevailed against the Republican John Duarte. The two are running against each other in a voting district in California. The race between the two was already very close in the last election in 2022 – at that time the Republican won by 564 votes.
5.30 a.m.: The future US President Donald Trump apparently wants to replace his previous candidate for the leadership of the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth, with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. The Wall Street Journal reported this on Tuesday (local time), citing people familiar with the discussions.
