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Trump Team
The Senate confirmed wealthy financier Howard Lutnick as commerce secretary on Tuesday, putting in place a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump's hardline trade policies. At the Commerce Department, Lutnick, who was CEO at the investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald, will oversee 50,000 employees who do everything from collecting economic statistics to running the census to issuing weather reports. But he's likely to spend a lot of time -- along with Jamieson Greer, Trump's nominee to be the top US trade negotiator -- managing the president's aggressive plans to impose import taxes on US trading partners, including allies and adversaries alike. The Senate vote to confirm Lutnick was 51-45. Trump views the tariffs as a versatile economic tool. They can raise money to finance his tax cuts elsewhere, protect US industries and pressure other countries into making concessions on such issues as their own trade barriers, immigration and drug trafficking. Mainstream economists mostly view
Although Donald Trump has often avoided talking about abortion as he campaigns again for the White House, his former vice president, Mike Pence, is not shying away from celebrating Trump's efforts to restrict abortion rights. Pence, who is weighing whether to launch his own presidential campaign, raised his voice to nearly a roar when speaking to religious conservatives in Iowa on Saturday night as he touted Trump's nominations of three conservative judges to the US Supreme Court. The appointments paved the way to the court in 2022 overturning the landmark Roe. v. Wade ruling, which had affirmed a federal right to abortion. Pence, long known for his conservative values, called the appointments the most important of all the accomplishments of the Trump administration, drawing loud applause and cheers from the crowd of influential religious conservatives. We did that, Iowa, he said. I couldn't be more proud to have been a small part of an administration that did just that. Pence's .