Trump chooses Bessent to be treasury secretary, Vought as budget chief, Chavez-DeRemer for Labor

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump announced Friday that he'll nominate billionaire hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, an advocate for deficit reduction, to serve as his next treasury secretary, one of several personnel decisions that he unveiled as he closed out the workweek.

Trump also said he would nominate Russell Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget, the same position he held during Trump's first presidency. Vought was closely involved with Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for Trump's second term that the GOP nominee tried to distance himself from during the campaign.

The announcements showed how Trump was trying to balance competing perspectives as he pursues an aggressive and sometimes contradictory economic agenda that includes cutting taxes, reducing government spending, putting tariffs on foreign imports and lowering prices for American consumers.

Although Bessent is closely aligned with Wall Street and could earn bipartisan support, Vought is known as a Republican hardliner on budget and cultural issues.

Trump said Bessent would “help me usher in a new Golden Age for the United States," while Vought “knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end Weaponized Government.”

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Matt Gaetz says he won't return to Congress next year after withdrawing name for attorney general

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Rep. Matt Gaetz said Friday that he will not be returning to Congress after withdrawing his name from consideration to be attorney general under President-elect Donald Trump amid growing allegations of sexual misconduct.

“I’m still going to be in the fight, but it’s going to be from a new perch. I do not intend to join the 119th Congress,” Gaetz told conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, adding that he has “some other goals in life that I’m eager to pursue with my wife and my family.”

The announcement comes a day after Gaetz, a Florida Republican, stepped aside from the Cabinet nomination process amid growing fallout from federal and House Ethics investigations that cast doubt on his ability to be confirmed as the nation’s chief federal law enforcement officer. The 42-year-old has vehemently denied the allegations against him.

Gaetz's nomination as attorney general had stunned many career lawyers inside the Justice Department, but reflected Trump's desire to place a loyalist in a department he has marked for retribution following the criminal cases against him.

Hours after Gaetz withdrew, Trump nominated Pam Bondi, the former Florida attorney general, who would come to the job with years of legal work under her belt and that other trait Trump prizes above all: loyalty.

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Vance takes on a more visible transition role, working to boost Trump's most contentious picks

WASHINGTON (AP) — After several weeks working mostly behind closed doors, Vice President-elect JD Vance returned to Capitol Hill this week in a new, more visible role: Helping Donald Trump try to get his most contentious Cabinet picks to confirmation in the Senate, where Vance has served for the last two years.

Vance arrived at the Capitol on Wednesday with former Rep. Matt Gaetz and spent the morning sitting in on meetings between Trump’s choice for attorney general and key Republicans, including members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The effort was for naught: Gaetz announced a day later that he was withdrawing his name amid scrutiny over sex trafficking allegations and the reality that he was unlikely to be confirmed.

Thursday morning Vance was back, this time accompanying Pete Hegseth, the “Fox & Friends Weekend” host whom Trump has tapped to be the next secretary of defense. Hegseth also has faced allegations of sexual assault that he denies.

Vance is expected to accompany other nominees for meetings in coming weeks as he tries to leverage the two years he has spent in the Senate to help push through Trump's picks.

The role of introducing nominees around Capitol Hill is an unusual one for a vice president-elect. Usually the job goes to a former senator who has close relationships on the Hill, or a more junior aide.

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Beyond evangelicals, Trump and his allies courted smaller faith groups, from the Amish to Chabad

A social-media tribute to Coptic Christians. A billboard in Amish country. A visit to a revered Jewish gravesite.

While Donald Trump's lock on the white evangelical vote is legendary, he and his campaign allies also wooed smaller religious groups, far from the mainstream.

As it turned out, Trump won by decisive margins, but his campaign aggressively courted niche communities with the understanding that every vote could be critical, particularly in swing states.

Voter surveys such as exit polls, which canvass broad swaths of the electorate, aren’t able to gauge the impact of such microtargeting, but some backers say the effort was worth it.

Just one week before the election, Trump directed a post on the social-media platform X to Coptic Christians in the United States —- whose church has ancient roots in Egypt. He saluted their “Steadfast Faith in God, Perseverance through Centuries of Persecution and Love for this Great Country.”

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NATO and Ukraine to hold emergency talks after Russia's attack with new hypersonic missile

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — NATO and Ukraine will hold emergency talks Tuesday after Russia attacked a central city with an experimental, hypersonic ballistic missile that escalated the nearly 33-month-old war.

The conflict is “entering a decisive phase,” Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Friday, and “taking on very dramatic dimensions.”

Ukraine’s parliament canceled a session as security was tightened following Thursday's Russian strike on a military facility in the city of Dnipro.

In a stark warning to the West, President Vladimir Putin said in a nationally televised speech that the attack with the intermediate-range Oreshnik missile was in retaliation for Kyiv’s use of U.S. and British longer-range missiles capable of striking deeper into Russian territory.

Putin said Western air defense systems would be powerless to stop the new missile.

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Texas education board approves optional Bible-infused curriculum for elementary schools

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas’ education board voted Friday to allow Bible-infused teachings in elementary schools under optional new curriculum that could test boundaries between religion and public classrooms in the U.S.

The material adopted by the Texas State Board of Education, which is controlled by elected Republicans, passed in a 8-7 final vote over criticism that the lessons would proselytize to young learners and alienate students of faiths other than Christianity. Supporters argued the Bible is a core feature of American history and that teaching it will enrich lessons.

The vote allows schools in Texas, which has more than 5 million public school students, to begin using the material in kindergarten through fifth grade classrooms as early as next year.

Republican lawmakers celebrated the vote, including Texas' powerful lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, who has pledged to pass legislation next year that would follow Louisiana in trying to require schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms.

In a statement, Gov. Greg Abbott called the vote “a critical step forward to bring students back to the basics of education and provide the best education in the nation.”

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2 convicted in human smuggling case after Indian family froze to death on US-Canada border

FERGUS FALLS, Minn. (AP) — A jury convicted two men on Friday of charges related to human smuggling for their roles in an international operation that led to the deaths of a family of Indian migrants who froze while trying to cross the Canada-U.S. border during a 2022 blizzard.

Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel, 29, an Indian national who prosecutors say went by the alias “Dirty Harry,” and Steve Shand, 50, an American from Florida, were part of a sophisticated illegal operation that has brought increasing numbers of Indians into the U.S., prosecutors said.

They were each convicted on four counts related to human smuggling, including conspiracy to bring migrants into the country illegally.

“This trial exposed the unthinkable cruelty of human smuggling and of those criminal organizations that value profit and greed over humanity,” Minnesota U.S. Attorney Andy Luger said.

“To earn a few thousand dollars, these traffickers put men, women and children in extraordinary peril leading to the horrific and tragic deaths of an entire family. Because of this unimaginable greed, a father, a mother and two children froze to death in sub-zero temperatures on the Minnesota-Canadian border,” Luger added.

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Storm inundates Northern California with rain, heavy snow. Thousands remain in the dark in Seattle

HEALDSBURG, Calif. (AP) — Heavy downpours fell over much of Northern California on Friday, causing small landslides, overflowing a river and flooding some streets, including in parts of San Francisco. Meanwhile tens of thousands of people were still without power in the Seattle area after several days in the dark.

The storm arrived in the Pacific Northwest earlier this week, killing two people and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands, mostly in the Seattle area, before moving through Northern California, where several roads were closed due to flooding and strong winds toppled trees.

Forecasters warned about the risk of flash flooding and rockslides in areas north of San Francisco from this season’s strongest atmospheric river — a long plume of moisture that forms over an ocean and flows through the sky over land.

On the East Coast, another storm brought much-needed rain to New York and New Jersey, where rare wildfires have raged in recent weeks. The rain eased the fire danger for the rest of the year and was a boost for ski resorts preparing to open in the weeks ahead. Parts of West Virginia were under a blizzard warning through Saturday morning, with up to 2 feet (61 centimeters) of snow and high winds making travel treacherous.

In California's Humboldt County, the sheriff’s office downgraded evacuation orders to warnings for people near the Eel River after forecasters said the waterway would see moderate but not major flooding. Officials urged residents to prepare for storm impacts throughout the week.

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Archaeologists discover 4,000-year-old canals used to fish by predecessors of ancient Maya

WASHINGTON (AP) — Long before the ancient Maya built temples, their predecessors were already altering the landscape of Central America’s Yucatan peninsula.

Using drones and Google Earth imagery, archaeologists have discovered a 4,000-year-old network of earthen canals in what’s now Belize. The findings were published Friday in Science Advances.

“The aerial imagery was crucial to identify this really distinctive pattern of zigzag linear canals” running for several miles through wetlands, said study co-author Eleanor Harrison-Buck of the University of New Hampshire.

The team then conducted digs in Belize's Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary. The ancient fish canals, paired with holding ponds, were used to channel and catch freshwater species such as catfish.

“Barbed spearpoints” found nearby may have been tied to sticks and used to spear fish, said study co-author Marieka Brouwer Burg of the University of Vermont.

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California case is the first confirmed bird flu infection in a US child

Health officials on Friday confirmed bird flu in a California child — the first reported case in a U.S. minor.

The child had mild symptoms, was treated with antiviral medication and is recovering, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in announcing the test results. State officials have said the child attends day care and lives in Alameda County, which includes Oakland and surrounding communities, but released no other details.

The infection brings the reported number of U.S. bird flu cases this year to 55, including 29 in California, the CDC said. Most were farmworkers who tested positive with mild symptoms.

One exception was an adult in Missouri who did not work at a farm and had no known contact with an infected animal. It remains a mystery how that person was infected — health officials have said there was no evidence of it spreading between people.

A British Columbia teen also was recently hospitalized with bird flu, Canadian officials have said.

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