Trump news live: Latest updates as government avoids shutdown and Senate clashes with president

Congress plans to pass defense funding bill despite Trump’s threats to veto over Confederate name changes

The Senate is preparing to send the $741bn defense authorisation bill to President Trump for his approval.

Mr Trump has said in the past that he would veto the defense funding legislation because it mandates name changes to installations that are named after Confederate military figures.

He said he would sign if the language was removed.

However, Congress has veto-proof majorities in both chambers supporting the bill.

German news magazine Der Spiegel names Trump “Loser of the Year”

The German news magazine Der Spiegel has named Donald Trump its “Loser of the Year,” which it announced on the same day that TIME Magazine announced that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were its “Person of the Year.”

The article says Mr Trump has always been concerned “with one thing – himself,” and said his presidency will end “as it began. Without decency and without dignity.”

New art installation using human blood takes aim at Trump

A new art installation using human blood will be unveiled in Washington DC, with the hopes of “confronting” Trump and his supporters.

The piece, called “The White House Filled With the Blood of US Citizens” is a screen projection featuring the actual blood of US citizens pouring through an acrylic model of the White House. Andrei Molodkin, an artist based in France, is the mind behind the piece.

The artwork will be projected onto the windows of the CulturalDC’s Source Theater in DC.

The blood was obtained from American volunteers who donated to the work at a church in France.

Geraldo Rivera thinks Trump is mad at him for recognising Joe Biden as president-elect

Fox News host Geraldo Rivera said he believes Donald Trump is mad at him for acknowledging that Joe Biden won the 2020 election.

He said the president has rejected his last two calls.

Mr Rivera said Mr Trump “may not be speaking to me right now” and that he just wanted his friend to “recognise the reality” that he has lost the election.

Trump loses recount appeal in Wisconsin

A Wisconsin state court has ruled against a lawsuit filed on behalf of Donald Trump appealing the results of the state’s recount in Milwaukee and Dane counties.

The appeal was one of Mr Trump’s longshot attempts to overturn the election results.

Mr Trump lost the state by more than 20,000 votes.

Trump to execute tenth federal inmate Friday

The Trump administration is on track to execute another inmate tonight.

Just one day after the execution of Brandon Bernard, the Trump administration will move to execute Alfred Bourgeois.

Bourgeois will be executed in the federal execution chamber at the US Pentitentiary in Terrahaute, Indiana. He was convicted in 2002 of horrifically abusing his two-year-old daughter over the course of several weeks and eventually beating her to death on the dashboard and windows of his truck.

Federal executions were reinstated in July. Mr Trump has approved ten executions since then.

Critics of the president called his sudden spate of executions a “killing spree” prior to his exit from office. These are the first executions to be carried out in a lame duck session in 130 years.

Ivanka Trump praises president’s task force examining Native American deaths and abductions

Ivanka Trump praised her father on Twitter as the first “president to formally recognise and take on the long-overlooked crisis of Missing and Murdered Native Americans.”

She shared a report that outlined the first year of operation for the Operation Lady Justice Task Force, which Mr Trump created to investigate the missing and murdered Native Americans and Alaska Natives.

Mr Trump established the taskforce on 26 November, 2019 through executive order.

The White House will be deep-cleaned before Joe Biden moves in following his inauguration over coronavirus fears, according to reports.

The Inauguration Day clean-up is nothing new but in the midst of the pandemic, the executive mansion will receive a deeper, more thorough cleaning, a White House official reportedly told CNN.

There are not yet said to be “firm plans” in place for the cleaning process but it is certain that cleaners will have a mammoth job on their hands with 132 rooms, 35 bathrooms, 412 doors and 147 windows to disinfect before Mr Biden moves in.

The president seems to have endorsed an extraordinary claim from Fox Business anchor Stuart Varney that Donald Trump himself deserves credit for developing the coronavirus vaccines.

For those with an eye on Congress today, Griffin Connolly details how both Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul could shut down the government: