Raw Story

President-elect Donald Trump was expected to meet with TikTok CEO Shou Chew at Mar-a-Lago on Monday as the social media company faces a potential ban starting Jan. 19.

CNN host Kaitlan Collins reported that Chew's meeting would come hours after Trump said he would consider saving TikTok when he takes office on Jan. 20.

"We'll take a look at TikTok," Trump said at a news conference. "You know, I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok."

The president-elect suggested TikTok's reach with young voters could have helped him win the 2024 election.

In a request Monday, TikTok asked the Supreme Court to block a law requiring its Chinese owner to sell the company to continue operating in the U.S.

ALSO READ: We're watching the largest and most dangerous 'cult' in American history

"The Act will shutter one of America's most popular speech platforms the day before a presidential inauguration," TikTok's lawyers said in the filing. "This, in turn, will silence the speech of Applicants and the many Americans who use the platform to communicate about politics, commerce, arts, and other matters of public concern."

Former Solicitor General Noel Francisco, a staunch defender of Trump, represented the company.

A report published Monday by a coalition of human rights groups estimates that as many as 1,360 children who were separated from their parents under the first Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy have yet to be reunited, causing immense suffering for families ensnared in the punitive effort to deter border crossings.

The 135-page report was produced by Human Rights Watch (HRW), the Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP), and the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School, and it comes as immigrant rights advocates brace for President-elect Donald Trump's return to power alongside officials who helped develop and implement the large-scale family separations.

"Forcible separation of children from their families inflicted harms that were severe and foreseeable," states the report, which examines public and internal government documents, materials from legal proceedings, and the findings of government investigations and features interviews with parents and children who were forcibly separated by the Trump administration.

"Once parents realized they would not be immediately reunited with their children, they were distraught," the report continues. "Some children sobbed uncontrollably. Many felt abandoned. Nearly all were bewildered, not least because immigration officials would not tell them where their parents were or gave responses that proved to be lies."

The groups estimate that the first Trump administration separated more than 4,600 children from their families during its four years in power, and nearly 30% of the children are unaccounted for and "may remain separated from their parents."

"A government should never target children to send a message to parents."

While family separations predated Trump's first term and have continued under President Joe Biden, experts argue the Trump administration's policy was uniquely expansive and cruel. The groups behind the new report said the Trump administration's family separation efforts "constituted enforced disappearance and may have constituted torture."

"We need to take away children," Jeff Sessions, then Trump's attorney general, reportedly said during a May 2018 call with five federal prosecutors, the report observes, citing handwritten notes from one of the prosecutors.

Michael Garcia Bochenek, senior children's rights counsel at HRW and an author of the new report, said in a statement Monday that "it's chilling to see, in document after document, the calculated cruelty that went into the forcible family separation policy."

"A government should never target children to send a message to parents," Bochenek added.

The separations traumatized both parents and children, according to the report.

"Migrant children who have been forcibly separated from their parents demonstrate greater emotional and behavioral difficulties than children who have never been separated," the report notes. "Parents repeatedly told Al Otro Lado, a legal services organization based in Tijuana, that forced separation from their children was 'the worst thing they had ever experienced' and reported 'continued disturbances in sleep, nightmares, loss of appetite, loss of interest, fear for the future, constant worry, hopelessness, and loss of the ability to concentrate.'"

"In May 2018," the report adds, "a man killed himself after [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] agents forcibly separated him from his children."

HRW, TCRP, and the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic called on Congress and the Biden administration to "put in place comprehensive measures to remedy the wrongs these families suffered" and urged the U.S. Department of Homeland Security—soon to be led by far-right South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem—to "adopt standards that presumptively keep families together, separating them only when in a child's best interest."

Trump campaigned during the 2024 election on a pledge to launch the "largest domestic deportation operation in American history," and he said during an interview aired last week that "we don't have to separate families."

"We'll send the whole family, very humanely, back to the country where they came," Trump said, suggesting he'll also deport children who are U.S. citizens.

When pressed on whether he intends to revive the "zero tolerance" policy, Trump said, "We need deterrence."

"When somebody comes here illegally, they're going out. It's very simple," he added. "Now if they come here illegally but their family is here legally, then the family has a choice. The person that came in illegally can go out, or they can all go out together."

The ACLU, which has represented separated families in court, has pledged to take swift legal action if the incoming Trump administration brings back "zero tolerance."

"I am hopeful that the Trump administration recognized the outpouring from the American public and the worldwide revulsion to ripping little children away from their parents and will not try to separate families again," ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt toldTIME magazine last month. "But if it does we will be back in court immediately."

by Michel COMTE

Canada's Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland quit Monday in a surprise move after disagreeing with Justin Trudeau over U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's tariff threats.

Freeland also stepped down as finance minister, and her resignation marked the first open dissent against Prime Minister Trudeau from within his cabinet and may threaten his hold on power.

Liberal Party leader Trudeau lags 20 points in polls behind his main rival, Conservative Pierre Poilievre, who has tried three times since September to topple the government and force a snap election.

"Our country today faces a grave challenge," Freeland said in her resignation letter, pointing to Trump's planned 25 percent tariffs on Canadian imports.

"For the past number of weeks, you and I have found ourselves at odds about the best path forward for Canada."

First elected to parliament in 2013, the former journalist joined Trudeau's cabinet two years later when the Liberals swept to power, holding key posts including trade and foreign minister, and leading free trade negotiations with the EU and the United States.

Most recently, she had been tasked with helping lead Canada's response to moves by the incoming Trump administration.

Canada's main trading partner is the United States, with 75 percent of its exports each year going to its southern neighbor.

In her resignation letter, Freeland said Trudeau wanted to shuffle her to another job, to which she replied: "I have concluded that the only honest and viable path is for me to resign from the cabinet."

As finance minister, she explained the need to take Trump's tariffs threats "extremely seriously."

Warning that it could lead to a "tariff war" with the United States, she said Ottawa must keep its "fiscal powder dry."

"That means eschewing costly political gimmicks, which we can ill afford," she said in an apparent rebuke of a recent sales tax holiday that critics said was costly and aimed at bolstering the ruling Liberals' sagging political fortunes.

- Trouble for Trudeau -

Dalhousie University professor Lori Turnbull called Freeland's exit "a total disaster."

"It really shows that there is a crisis of confidence in Trudeau," she said. "And makes it much harder for Trudeau to continue as prime minister."

Until now, the cabinet has rallied around Trudeau as he faced pockets of dissent from backbench MPs, noted Genevieve Tellier, a professor at the University of Ottawa.

Freeland's rejection of his economic policies poses "a big problem," she said, and shows his team is not as united behind him as some thought.

Freeland's departure comes on the same day she was scheduled to provide an update on the nation's finances, amid reports the government would blow past Freeland's deficit projections in the spring.

"This government is in shambles," reacted Poilievre's deputy leader, Andrew Scheer, to Freeland's news, saying "Even she has lost confidence in Trudeau."

Housing Minister Sean Fraser, who also announced Monday he was quitting politics, described Freeland as "professional and supportive."

One of her closest friends and allies in cabinet, Anita Anand, told reporters: "This news has hit me really hard."

Freeland said she would run in the next election, expected in 2025.

© Agence France-Presse

Pete Buttigieg has earned a reputation as a rare Democrat who can go on Fox News and hold his own, but he said there's no secret to his success there.

The transportation secretary sat down with Rolling Stone for a wide-ranging exit interview on his time in President Joe Biden's administration, and he was asked to comment on his technique in communicating to a conservative TV audience.

"I don’t know if there’s any magic to it," Buttigieg said. "A lot of it’s just simply going there. If there is a technique, what I do is I think about people in my life, or people in the community where I came from, who I might jostle with or spar with or disagree with, but I also actually like. And I imagine that’s the viewer, and I imagine I’m talking to them."

"Because another thing — and I say this without meaning in the least bit to propose that the answer is ideological centrism — it results not only in a lot of ugliness, but something that’s even more dangerous, which is people checking out," he added.

That dynamic reminded Buttigieg of his time as a student in Tunisia under the dictatorship of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

"I mean, framed pictures of the dictator in your dorm, and on the street, and everywhere," Buttigieg said. "Everything seemed to be named after the 7th of November. The main square, the avenue. I kept asking, 'What is this?' And they’re like, 'Ah, something historical.' Because that was the day in 1987 when the leader took power. But what you felt wasn’t this overbearing — well, it was overbearing. A lot of what made that authoritarianism work was that a lot of people were just checked out. Or at least they created the impression of being checked out."

ALSO READ: It’s time to decimate the Republicans’ standing with the public — and the press

"The newspaper didn’t have an opinion page," he added, "and if you talked to people, even young people, students, they just didn’t want to engage in it. And that’s even more dangerous, and I think that happens when politics is exhausting. And politics is less exhausting if we imagine it as a dialogue."

Buttigieg butted heads publicly with tech billionaire Elon Musk, and he was asked to comment on the Tesla and SpaceX CEO's influence on President-elect Donald Trump.

"It’s not unusual for the richest person in a country to be very powerful in that country," Buttigieg said. "It’s a little more unusual for them to have a government or quasi-government role, but not unheard of. What I think hasn’t happened in a while is the concentration of so much wealth and so much power in the hands of so few people.

"And we’ve talked about that generically as a problem in our politics and economy for the last 20, 30, 40 years. But in the last three, four, five years, we’ve seen whole new forms of it that I think will require us to change and think differently about how we manage the access that some people, who haven’t been elected to anything, get to power over everybody’s life. And I think those are the questions that are at stake when you have very powerful, wealthy people given sweeping, undefined roles in or around government."

Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.Generate Key Takeaways

President Joe Biden is considering preemptive pardons for several prominent names facing possible retribution from the incoming Trump administration, US media has reported.

Among those being considered for the historic pardons are Anthony Fauci, the former White House special advisor on Covid-19, and former Republican lawmaker Liz Cheney, who has become a fierce critic of Donald Trump.

The president-elect has made no secret of his desire to exact vengeance against critics and those he claims stole the 2020 election from him.

Biden has discussed with advisors the possibility of using his constitutional power to protectively issue preemptive pardons -- even to people yet to be charged with any crime -- before he leaves the White House on January 20.

The discussions were reported by Politico and later by the New York Times, CBS News and the Washington Post, all citing anonymous sources close to the talks.

Biden sparked controversy on Sunday when, in a reversal, he pardoned his son Hunter, who was due to be sentenced this month in cases involving a gun purchase and tax fraud.

Democratic Representative Adam Schiff of California, who served as lead manager during the first Senate impeachment of Trump, and retired general Mark Milley might also be in line for preemptive pardons to shield them from Trump.

Milley, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during Trump's first term, later told journalist Bob Woodward that Trump was "a total fascist" and "the most dangerous person to this country."

Overseeing such prosecutions would be the man who the president-elect has nominated to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Kash Patel.

Patel, who held a high position in the Pentagon during the first Trump term, has said that as FBI chief he would "come after" those "who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections."

"WHEN I WIN," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform in September, "those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law."

Presidential pardons, issued at the end of a term, have a long history in the United States. On his last day in the White House in January 2021, Trump pardoned 74 people accused of various crimes and misdemeanors.

And in September 1974, a month after Richard Nixon resigned as president during the Watergate scandal, his successor Gerald Ford announced "a full, free and absolute pardon" for any crimes against the United States which Nixon might have committed while in office.

But the multiple preemptive pardons reportedly being considered by Biden -- to insulate several people from future prosecutions that might not ever happen -- could constitute a first.

America's incoming First Lady, Melania Trump, in a rare public appearance, sat down with the "Fox & Friends" crew Friday morning to discuss how she is getting ready to return to the White House, how her husband, President-elect Donald Trump, is handling his second transition, and to promote her apparently for-profit business ventures, including her book, Christmas ornaments, NFTs, and other "collectibles."

Other First Ladies have had careers after serving the American public in the White House, notably Hillary Clinton and Jacqueline Kennedy, but should she continue with this venture or others, Melania Trump may become the first First Lady who has a for-profit business during her time in the White House.

On Fox News, Trump was asked about the public programs she will focus on as First Lady.

She spoke briefly about her signature "Be Best" program, which she launched in May, 2018. It was widely mocked when she introduced it, and reports found some of it was a repackaging of existing federal initiatives around cyberbullying, including those from the Obama administration.

Trump then quickly moved to talking about what she said were her "Web 2" and "Web 3" businesses.

READ MORE: ‘You Answer to Us’: Hegseth Slammed for Saying He Only Answers to Trump, Senators, and God

"Well, when I was in the White House for four years, I established my Be Best initiative and I also successfully brought it overseas and around the world. It was very successful and after I left the White House, I established my Web 3 and Web 2 platforms where I design, where I have collectibles like ornaments every season, this is the third season. And many other collectibles that are available now."

She then appeared to suggest some of the proceeds from those businesses go to support students, but she did not offer any specifics, nor do her websites. The website where she sells her Christmas ornaments does not appear to say anything about donations to charity.

"So with those, I have students from a foster community that I sponsor and I'm very proud of and we have many of them now, so their life changes because they will have an education," Trump said.

Asked on Fox & Friends what programs she's going to champion in the White House this time around, Melania Trump brings up her ornaments collection pic.twitter.com/mEYBmrfQsi
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 6, 2024

Juliet Jeske, who runs Decoding Fox News, writes: "The money from the overpriced ornaments doesn’t go to charity. I went through her entire website. The profits go back to her."

On her website, the Christmas ornaments sell for $75 each. The "USA Star" ornament is listed at $90.

"So this are the ornaments that they are available this season, this is the third season that I design and they are very special," Trump told the "Fox & Friends" co-hosts. "For example, Lady Liberty, it was inspiration from my necklace that I bought when I was modeling in Paris. And now we have an ornament and we have also a necklace that it's available on MelaniaTrump.com. So I, also, this one it's the necklace and inspiration, the flower and they're very patriotic this year. As you could see, it's all red white and blue and I was inspired by that."

READ MORE: ‘Sympathy for Dictators’: Ex-NatSec Officials Warn on Gabbard, Want Closed Door Hearings

"They discontinue, they retire, and this is available right now. And it's a great gift and great collectible, actually."

Attorney Michael Kasdan, an adjunct professor at NYU School of Law, remarked, "The Fox-Trump Home Shopping Network."

Attorney Jeffrey Evan Gold, a CNN legal analyst, called it "Free advertising for Melania Grift."

Melania was on Fox this morning selling “patriotic” Christmas ornaments. pic.twitter.com/wm07nuqrEF
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) December 6, 2024

Last year, The New York Times reported, "In February 2022, Mrs. Trump started 'Fostering the Future,' a scholarship program for foster children aging out of the system. A person familiar with the program, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, would not offer details or disclose how many scholarships have been awarded, saying only that it was 'more than two.' No charity with the name Fostering the Future or Be Best is registered in Florida or New York."

Hillary Clinton, who served as First Lady from 1993 to 2001, has authored nine books, including three during her eight years inside the White House. First Ladies Eleanor Roosevelt and Barbara Bush also authored books while serving in the White House.

For her first book, the 1996 New York Times bestseller "It Takes a Village and Other Lessons Children Teach Us," Hillary Clinton donated all royalties to charity and took no money except to cover expenses, according to The New York Times. Similarly, for the other two books she wrote during her time as First Lady, Clinton donated the proceeds to charities, including the National Park Foundation and the White House Historical Association.

Barely weeks after Donald Trump's first inauguration, in 2017, Melania Trump's "representatives issued statements saying that the first lady 'has no intention' of using her public position for personal gain," The Washington Post reported. The paper noted those statements came one day "after Melania Trump filed a lawsuit accusing a British news company of hurting her ability to build a profitable brand."

Before Election Day this year, CNN reported Melania Trump's publisher had requested the news network pay $250,000 for an interview.

“This is completely unprecedented.” The Trump grifting never stops. Melania Trump’s team wants a whopping $250,000 for her to be interviewed by CNN…to promote her own book! (Video: CNN) pic.twitter.com/tSQKiuYxco
— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) October 3, 2024

PEOPLE magazine reported on Friday that "Melania Trump is gearing up for another four years as first lady and all the duties that come with the title, including decorating the White House for Christmas."

"The ex-model wife of President-elect Donald Trump, 54, previously made headlines surrounding the holidays for her bold choice of Christmas decor — and because of leaked audio recordings where she griped about the responsibility of decorating 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.," PEOPLE's report notes.

“'I’m working … my a-- off on the Christmas stuff, that you know, who gives a f--- about the Christmas stuff and decorations?' she was heard saying in a recording from 2018 that has recently resurfaced on social media. 'But I need to do it, right?'"

Watch the videos above or at this link.

RELATED: ‘Unethical’ and ‘Corrupt’: Melania Trump Slammed Over Six-Figure Fee for Political Event