Live updates: Trump signs executive order to reclassify cannabis; Kennedy Center board votes to change building’s name – NBC News

The Senate tonight voted along party lines, 53-43, to confirm a third batch of Trump nominees all at one time using a new procedural tool it unlocked by nuking the Senate rules so it can confirm nominees en bloc instead of one by one.

Tonight’s batch consisted of 97 nominees, including former Rep. Anthony D’Esposito of New York to be inspector general of the Labor Department and Media Research Center founder Brent Bozell III to be U.S. ambassador to South Africa.

Erika Kirk, widow of assassinated Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk, endorsed Vice President JD Vance for the 2028 presidential election in a speech opening the group’s America Fest annual conference tonight.

“We are going to get my husband’s friend JD Vance elected” in 2028, she told thousands of activists at the Phoenix Convention Center. The end of Kirk’s statement was drowned out by cheers for the endorsement.

The backing of Turning Point USA, one of the most influential conservative organizations — particularly among young activists and MAGA voters — could provide a major boost to Vance if he seeks the presidency in three years.

Kirk, who took over as head of her late husband’s organization, had previously said a Turning Point USA endorsement of Vance was “in the works.” Tonight, she put a fine point on her support for Vance and for helping Republicans try to hold their majorities in the House and the Senate in next year’s midterm elections.

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Jeffrey Epstein’s estate has turned over roughly 95,000 photographs to the House Oversight Committee. So far, the public has seen only a tiny fraction of that trove of files.

Today, Democrats on that committee released 68 photos from the Epstein estate, including photos of the convicted sex offender with high-profile people. The release and another one last week by Oversight Democrats include dozens of photos of Epstein posing with Trump, his top ally Steve Bannon, former President Bill Clinton, former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, movie director Woody Allen and others. All have denied any wrongdoing, and none have been charged related to Epstein’s crimes.

The latest batch of photos comes just one day before tomorrow’s deadline when the Justice Department will be required, under a new law, to release all of the government’s Epstein files with very limited exceptions.

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Trump has signed the annual National Defense Authorization Act, a sweeping defense policy bill.

The signing, initially scheduled as a press event, comes after the Senate approved the bill yesterday.

The measure includes a provision that would limit Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s travel budget if he doesn’t release video of recent military strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific.

The Democratic National Committee won’t release its completed postmortem of the 2024 election, a DNC official confirmed to NBC News.

DNC Chair Ken Martin ordered an autopsy shortly after he took over as the national party chairman this year, stressing that the report should be released to help the party learn from its mistakes. But Martin said in a statement today that his top priority is to not distract from helping the party “win.”

“We completed a comprehensive review of what happened in 2024 and are already putting our learnings into motion. And we’re winning again — even in places that haven’t gone blue in decades,” he said.

“In our conversations with stakeholders from across the Democratic ecosystem, we are aligned on what’s important, and that’s learning from the past and winning the future. Here’s our North Star: does this help us win? If the answer is no, it’s a distraction from the core mission,” Martin’s statement continues.

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As both parties race to redraw congressional lines before next year’s midterm elections, Virginia represents one of Democrats’ best chances to blunt Republicans’ attempts to pad their congressional majorities.

It’s unclear whether Virginia Democrats will be able to execute a high-wire act to successfully change their map for next year’s elections. Regardless, last month’s election results highlight how an energized Democratic Party could win back control of the House next year.

High turnout helped propel Democratic Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger in more Republican-leaning areas, and Spanberger improved on Democrats’ 2024 margins in the most diverse congressional districts, a new NBC News Decision Desk analysis of the governor’s race results showed.

Throughout the year, Trump’s strong performance in 2024 with nonwhite voters and younger voters has served as something of a baseline for Republicans who, at his behest, touched off a redistricting arms race that’s expected to continue into next year. The Virginia gubernatorial results, broken down by congressional district, underscore how quickly voters can shift from one election to the next and highlight some of the risks of the extraordinary effort.

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The Trump administration announced that it would begin to take steps aimed at ending transition-related care — or what the Department of Health and Human Services has termed “sex-rejecting procedures” — for minors nationwide.

The proposals — which, if enacted, would pull federal funding from hospitals that offer transgender care to minors — are the latest effort by the administration to restrict access to certain transgender care.

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Former Rep. Joe Kennedy III, D-Mass., a grandnephew of the late president, responded to news that the Kennedy Center board had voted to rename the arts institution the Trump-Kennedy Center.

“The Kennedy Center is a living memorial to a fallen president and named for President Kennedy by federal law. It can no sooner be renamed than can someone rename the Lincoln Memorial, no matter what anyone says,” said Kennedy, a former board member at the Kennedy Center.

In July, after House Republicans proposed renaming the Kennedy Center, four sources familiar with the matter told NBC News that the plans would violate the law that created it.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump continued to blame Democrats for the Affordable Care Act tax subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year, leading to higher health care costs next year for many people.

“I want that money to go to the people directly and let the people buy their own health care, and they’ll get much better health care than they get with the ‘Unaffordable Care Act,’ as it’s known by a lot of people,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when he was asked whether he’ll allow the subsidies to expire Dec. 31.

Asked whether he wants Congress to extend the subsidies, Trump said: “I’d like not to be able to do it. I’d like to get right into this. … I don’t know why we have to extend. This could be done rapidly if the Democrats would come along.”

“We have a problem,” he continued, adding that Democrats are “going to have to decide do they want to do the right thing, or do they want to be beholden to the, you know, insurance companies.”

Trump’s announcement that U.S. troops would get a $1,776 bonus in their stockings this year will cost about $2.6 billion, and the one-time payment will come from military housing funds, according to a senior administration official. Trump directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to draw the funds as a “basic allowance for housing supplement” to all eligible service members, from the lowest-ranking enlisted troops to colonels or captains.  

The pay, a “warrior dividend” for about 1.45 million troops, includes compensating those eligible recipients even if they are not receiving BAH, or what the military calls basic housing allowance.  

The money is from the “one big, beautiful bill,” not tariffs, according to a Senate Appropriations source. That bill allocated $2.9 billion for basic housing allowance to reduce out-of-pocket costs for service members for two years. The Pentagon decided to give the money as a one-time payment instead of creating precedent for housing costs down the line, according to that person.

It applies to reserve component service members, colonels or captains and below, and to active-duty orders of 31 days or more in duration as of Nov. 30.  

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., reiterated to reporters that a three-year extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies “is not happening” in his chamber.

Democrats have garnered enough Republican support to force a vote on the measure in the House.

“I think a straight-up extension is a waste of money,” Thune said, adding that he would not put the House extension up for a vote in the Senate without amending it. 

Affordable Care Act subsidies expire at the end of the year, which will cause health care premiums to rise.

Evita Duffy-Alfonso, the daughter of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, urged Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem this morning to abolish the Transportation Security Administration.

“I nearly missed my flight this morning after the TSA made me wait 15 minutes for a pat-down because I’m pregnant and didn’t feel like getting radiation exposure from their body scanner,” Duffy-Alonso, an independent journalist who has appeared on Fox News, wrote in a series of posts on X that ripped the agency.

The House passed a bill last night that would make it a federal criminal offense to provide gender-affirming care to minors. The legislation, introduced by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., now heads to the Senate. 

The Protect Children’s Innocence Act would make it a crime to “perform procedures or provide medications (e.g., hormonal treatments) to a minor for the purpose of changing their body to correspond to a sex that differs from their biological sex,” according to the bill’s summary. There are exceptions for procedures for “individuals who have both ovarian and testicular tissue or abnormal sex chromosome structure or hormones.” 

The vote was 216-211. Four Republicans voted against the measure: Gabe Evans of Colorado, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Mike Kennedy of Utah and Mike Lawler of New York. Three Democrats supported it: Henry Cuellar of Texas, Don Davis of North Carolina and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas. 

A.J. McCarron, the former University of Alabama back-to-back national championship-winning quarterback, is ending his bid for Alabama lieutenant governor to accept a job coaching a professional football team in his home state.

McCarron had been running in a crowded GOP primary to be Alabama’s next No. 2. But he announced in a statement that he will end his bid and was named the head coach of the Birmingham Stallions, a professional football team in the United Football League.

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are calling on Republicans to hold a hearing “on the Trump administration’s executions of alleged drug traffickers via military strikes on boats at sea.”

In a letter to Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, they wrote that at least 95 people have been killed in 25 separate strikes. The committee said it has jurisdiction over extrajudicial killings, murder, war crimes and the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which wrote a classified memo providing cover for the killings.

Trump launched a nonpartisan group called Freedom 250, which the organization said in a press release was “fulfilling the President’s promise to deliver the most extraordinary commemoration in American history.”

The country’s 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence takes place next year.

Freedom 250 announced a series of events next year as part of the anniversary commemoration, including a “Great American State Fair” on the National Mall from June 25-July 10, and a “major address” from Trump on the Fourth of July.

Next fall, the administration will host “the first-ever Patriot Games,” an athletic competition of high school athletes. The group also announced a parade for Memorial Day and reiterated the president’s plans to hold a UFC event at the White House during Flag Day, which is also Trump’s birthday.

Trump Media & Technology will merge with a fusion power company in an all-stock deal that the companies said today is valued at more than $6 billion.

Devin Nunes, the Republican congressman who resigned in 2021 to become the CEO of Trump Media, will be co-CEO of the new company with TAE Technologies CEO Michl Binderbauer.

Shares of Trump Media & Technology, the parent company of Trump’s Truth Social media platform, have tumbled 70% this year but jumped 20% before the opening bell today.

TAE is a private company and the merger with Trump Media would create one of the first publicly traded nuclear fusion companies.

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Trump is scheduled to sign the National Defense Authorization Act today. The act is a massive defense bill, which lays out the military programs and provisions that will later be funded through the defense appropriations bill.

The Senate yesterday voted to pass the bill. It had already been passed by the House.

The bill includes a provision to restrict Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s travel budget to 75% until he provides the House and Senate Armed services committees with “unedited video of strikes conducted against designated terrorist organizations in the area of responsibility of the United States Southern Command.”

Amid slumping approval ratings, President Donald Trump used a prime-time speech yesterday to deride his predecessor, assert that his economic plan is working and suggest that Americans need to be patient as his policies start to kick in.

Trump, in an 18-minute address from the White House, rolled out no new proposals apart from what he called a $1,776 “warrior dividend” that will go to nearly 1.5 million military service members in honor of the nation’s founding almost 250 years ago.

“And the checks are already on the way,” he said. “No one understood that one until about 30 minutes ago; we made a lot more money than anyone thought because of tariffs.”

Trump marshaled the power of incumbency to command broad television network coverage for a speech that largely reiterated points he has made in public appearances and interviews since he returned to office in January.

He spoke at a faster clip than usual and for the most part appeared to stick to the prepared text. He rattled off the price of eggs, Thanksgiving turkeys and airline tickets to amplify his argument that costs are dropping on his watch and to persuade the nation that former President Joe Biden left behind “a mess” that will take time and effort to fix.

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