
South Korea's parliament has voted to impeach acting President Han Duck-soo, plunging the country deeper into political chaos, as suspended President Yoon Suk Yeol is set to face trial. The motion led by opposition parties passed with 192 of the 300 votes amid rowdy scenes by ruling People Power Party members who surrounded the speaker's podium chanting the vote was invalid and parliament had committed "tyranny." The impeachment of Han, who has been acting president since Yoon was impeached on 14 December for declaring martial law on 3 December, has thrown South Korea's once-vibrant democratic success story into uncharted territory. How South Korea's martial law chaos unfolded, and what could happen next Ahead of the parliamentary session, opposition leader Lee Jae-myung said accused Han of "acting for insurrection". "The only way to normalise the country is to swiftly root out all the insurrection forces," Lee said in a fiery speech, adding the party was acting on the public order to eradicate those who have put the country at risk. The plan for a vote to impeach Han was unveiled on Thursday by the main opposition Democratic Party after he declined to immediately appoint three justices to fill vacancies at the Constitutional Court, saying it would exceed his acting role. Source: Getty / Jung Yeon-JE/AFP Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok will assume the acting presidency by law. Choi had warned that impeaching the acting president would seriously damage the country's economic credibility and asked political parties to withdraw the plan. "The economy and the people's livelihoods are walking on thin ice under a national state of emergency and it cannot cope with any greater political uncertainty that will result from another acting president assuming the acting presidency," he said. The South Korean won weakened to a low of 1,486.7 to the dollar on Friday, the weakest since March 2009, as analysts said there was little to reverse the negative sentiment stemming from the political uncertainty. The vote to impeach Han came on the same day the Constitutional Court held its first hearing in a case reviewing whether to overturn the impeachment and reinstate Yoon or remove him permanently from office. Speaking for the court in a preparatory hearing, Justice Cheong Hyung-sik said the court will move swiftly on the case considering its gravity. The hearing follows weeks of defiance by Yoon ignoring requests by the court to submit documents as well as summons by investigators in a separate criminal case over his martial law declaration. Yoon shocked the country and the world with a late-night announcement on 3 December that he was imposing martial law to overcome political deadlock and root out "anti-state forces". South Korea's Yoon Suk Yeol suspended from presidential duties after impeachment vote The military deployed special forces to the national assembly, the election commission, and the office of a liberal YouTube commentator. It also issued orders banning activity by parliament and political parties, as well as calling for government control of the media. But within hours 190 lawmakers had defied the cordons of troops and police and voted against Yoon's order and about six hours after his initial decree, Yoon rescinded the order. Yoon and senior members of his administration also face criminal investigations for insurrection.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Democrats failed Wednesday to confirm a Democratic member of the National Labor Relations Board after independent Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema opposed the nomination, thwarting their hopes of locking in a majority at the federal agency for the first two years of President-elect Donald Trump’s term. A vote to move ahead with the nomination of Lauren McFarren, who currently chairs the NLRB, failed 49-50. Had she been confirmed to another five-year term, it would have cemented a Democratic majority on the agency’s board for the first two years of the incoming Trump administration. Now, Trump will likely be able to nominate McFarren’s replacement. The NLRB oversees labor disputes, supervises union elections and has the power to investigate unfair labor practices . The partisan breakdown of the NLRB’s leadership is fiercely contested by businesses and labor groups, as the majority on the board sets the agenda and determines how readily the agency uses its power to investigate and enforce labor laws. “It is deeply disappointing, a direct attack on working people, and incredibly troubling that this highly qualified nominee — with a proven track record of protecting worker rights — did not have the votes,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement. The rejection of McFarren was yet another blow to Senate Democrats and President Joe Biden from Manchin and Sinema, who served as major brakes — and at times outright obstacles — to much of their legislative agenda the first two years of Biden’s term. Manchin left the Democratic Party in May, while Sinema withdrew from the party in 2022. Both chose not to run for another Senate term and will be leaving the Congress in January. Some congressional Republicans praised Manchin and Sinema for preventing the confirmation. “This NLRB seat should be filled by President Trump and the new incoming Senate. Not a historically unpopular president and a Senate Democrat Majority that has lost its mandate to govern,” Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, said in a statement after the vote. “Big Labor knows the days of having the federal government do its bidding are numbered,” Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., wrote in a statement. Foxx, who chairs the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said that the incoming Trump administration would focus on “enacting a truly pro-worker agenda.” Business groups also praised the rejection of McFarren. Kristen Swearingen, a vice president at Associated Builders and Contractors, a trade group, called McFarren’s policies “harmful” and said the process to nominate her was “flawed.” “Under McFerran’s leadership, the NLRB has issued decisions and expanded interpretations of the National Labor Relations Act that have been rejected by the business community, Congress and federal courts,” argued Swearingen. Labor unions decried the vote. Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest consortium of labor unions, said the senators who rejected McFarren’s nomination “voted against the working people of this country” and warned that the incoming Trump administration would direct the NLRB to side with management over workers. “Make no mistake: This vote had nothing to do with stopping Chair McFerran’s renomination and everything to do with reversing generations of progress workers have made toward building a fairer and more just economy,” Shuler said. Democratic lawmakers, like Schumer, took a dim view of the vote. Some directed their anger directly at Manchin and Sinema. “Shortchanging workers is a bad way to leave,” Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., wrote on social media . ___Shedeur Sanders Predicted To Land In NFC After ‘All-In’ Draft Trade
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — An online spat between factions of Donald Trump's supporters over immigration and the tech industry has thrown internal divisions in his political movement into public display, previewing the fissures and contradictory views his coalition could bring to the White House. The rift laid bare the tensions between the newest flank of Trump's movement — wealthy members of the tech world including billionaire Elon Musk and fellow entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and their call for more highly skilled workers in their industry — and people in Trump's Make America Great Again base who championed his hardline immigration policies. The debate touched off this week when Laura Loomer , a right-wing provocateur with a history of racist and conspiratorial comments, criticized Trump’s selection of Sriram Krishnan as an adviser on artificial intelligence policy in his coming administration. Krishnan favors the ability to bring more skilled immigrants into the U.S. Loomer declared the stance to be “not America First policy” and said the tech executives who have aligned themselves with Trump were doing so to enrich themselves. Much of the debate played out on the social media network X, which Musk owns. Loomer's comments sparked a back-and-forth with venture capitalist and former PayPal executive David Sacks , whom Trump has tapped to be the “White House A.I. & Crypto Czar." Musk and Ramaswamy, whom Trump has tasked with finding ways to cut the federal government , weighed in, defending the tech industry's need to bring in foreign workers. It bloomed into a larger debate with more figures from the hard-right weighing in about the need to hire U.S. workers, whether values in American culture can produce the best engineers, free speech on the internet, the newfound influence tech figures have in Trump's world and what his political movement stands for. Trump has not yet weighed in on the rift. His presidential transition team did not respond to questions about positions on visas for highly skilled workers or the debate between his supporters online. Instead, his team instead sent a link to a post on X by longtime adviser and immigration hard-liner Stephen Miller that was a transcript of a speech Trump gave in 2020 at Mount Rushmore in which he praised figures and moments from American history. Musk, the world's richest man who has grown remarkably close to the president-elect , was a central figure in the debate, not only for his stature in Trump's movement but his stance on the tech industry's hiring of foreign workers. Technology companies say H-1B visas for skilled workers, used by software engineers and others in the tech industry, are critical for hard-to-fill positions. But critics have said they undercut U.S. citizens who could take those jobs. Some on the right have called for the program to be eliminated, not expanded. Born in South Africa, Musk was once on an a H-1B visa himself and defended the industry's need to bring in foreign workers. “There is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent," he said in a post. “It is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley.” Trump's own positions over the years have reflected the divide in his movement. His tough immigration policies, including his pledge for a mass deportation, were central to his winning presidential campaign. He has focused on immigrants who come into the U.S. illegally but he has also sought curbs on legal immigration , including family-based visas. As a presidential candidate in 2016, Trump called the H-1B visa program “very bad” and “unfair” for U.S. workers. After he became president, Trump in 2017 issued a “Buy American and Hire American” executive order , which directed Cabinet members to suggest changes to ensure H-1B visas were awarded to the highest-paid or most-skilled applicants to protect American workers. Trump's businesses, however, have hired foreign workers, including waiters and cooks at his Mar-a-Lago club , and his social media company behind his Truth Social app has used the the H-1B program for highly skilled workers. During his 2024 campaign for president, as he made immigration his signature issue, Trump said immigrants in the country illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country" and promised to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. But in a sharp departure from his usual alarmist message around immigration generally, Trump told a podcast this year that he wants to give automatic green cards to foreign students who graduate from U.S. colleges. “I think you should get automatically, as part of your diploma, a green card to be able to stay in this country," he told the “All-In" podcast with people from the venture capital and technology world. Those comments came on the cusp of Trump's budding alliance with tech industry figures, but he did not make the idea a regular part of his campaign message or detail any plans to pursue such changes.By MARY CLARE JALONICK and MATT BROWN WASHINGTON (AP) — Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Defense Department, said he had a “wonderful conversation” with Maine Sen. Susan Collins on Wednesday as he pushed to win enough votes for confirmation. He said he will not back down after allegations of excessive drinking and sexual misconduct. Related Articles National Politics | Donald Trump will ring the New York Stock Exchange bell. It’ll be a first for him National Politics | The Trump and Biden teams insist they’re working hand in glove on foreign crises National Politics | ‘You don’t know what’s next.’ International students scramble ahead of Trump inauguration National Politics | Trump is threatening to raise tariffs again. Here’s how China plans to fight back National Politics | Trump won’t be able to save the struggling US beef industry Collins said after the hourlong meeting that she questioned Hegseth about the allegations amid reports of drinking and the revelation that he made a settlement payment after being accused of a sexual assault that he denies. She said she had a “good, substantive” discussion with Hegseth and “covered a wide range of topics,” including sexual assault in the military, Ukraine and NATO. But she said she would wait until a hearing, and notably a background check, to make a decision. “I asked virtually every question under the sun,” Collins told reporters as she left her office after the meeting. “I pressed him both on his position on military issues as well as the allegations against him, so I don’t think there was anything that we did not cover.” The meeting with Collins was closely watched as she is seen as more likely than most of her Republican Senate colleagues to vote against some of Trump’s Cabinet picks. She and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a fellow moderate Republican, did not shy from opposing Trump in his first term when they wanted to do so and sometimes supported President Joe Biden’s nominees for the judicial and executive branches. And Hegseth, an infantry combat veteran and former “Fox & Friends” weekend host, is working to gain as many votes as he can as some senators have expressed concerns about his personal history and lack of management experience. “I’m certainly not going to assume anything about where the senator stands,” Hegseth said as he left Collins’ office. “This is a process that we respect and appreciate. And we hope, in time, overall, when we get through that committee and to the floor that we can earn her support.” Hegseth met with Murkowski on Tuesday. He has also been meeting repeatedly with Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, a military veteran who has said she is a survivor of sexual assault and has spent time in the Senate working on improving how attacks are reported and prosecuted within the ranks. On Monday, Ernst said after a meeting with him that he had committed to selecting a senior official to prioritize those goals. Republicans will have a 53-49 majority next year, meaning Trump cannot lose more than three votes on any of his nominees. It is so far unclear whether Hegseth will have enough support, but Trump has stepped up his pressure on senators in the last week. “Pete is a WINNER, and there is nothing that can be done to change that!!!” Trump posted on his social media platform last week.Mason Maggio Expected to Sign 2025 NASCAR Season Contract 'Soon'
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NoneHegseth meets with moderate Sen. Collins as he lobbies for key votes in the SenateBERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — Andrej Stojakovic converted 11 of 15 from the free throw line and scored 20 points as California held off a late rally to post an 83-77 win over Sacramento State in the Cal Classic tournament on Sunday. Cal came into its tournament without three starters, Jovan Blacksher Jr., DJ Campbell and BJ Omot and the Golden Bears earned back-to-back wins over Air Force and the Hornets. Stojakovic scored a career-high 21 points and freshman guard Jeremiah Wilkinson stepped up with career-best 23 points against the Falcons. Against Sacramento State, Wilkinson came off the bench to score 16 points. Sacramento State took an early 12-7 lead after Emil Skytta hit a pair of free throws five minutes into the game, but Wilkinson hit back-to-back buckets and Stojakovic drew a foul on a three-point attempt and hit all three foul shots to take a 14-12 lead and the Bears pulled away to take a 40-33 lead at intermission. Julian Vaughns knocked down a trey three minutes into the second half to pull Sacramento State even at 43 and his free throw put the Hornets in front. Ryan Petraitis and Wilkinson hit back-to-back 3-pointers to put Cal up 51-47 and the Bears never trailed the rest of the way. Petraitis finished with 13 points, five assists and three steals for Cal (5-1). Joshua Ola-Joseph and Mady Sissoko each added 10 points. Jacob Holt scored 25 points with eight rebounds, two assists and a steal to lead Sacramento State (1-4). Vaughns scored 18 points and EJ Neal added 16. The game was just the third meeting between schools separated by roughly 80 miles, and first since 1992. Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here . AP college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-basketball