Trump transition live updates: Latest news on cabinet picks

Pam Bondi, the Trump woman has been tapped to be his next attorney general, found herself caught up in a canine custody battle where she was accused of stealing a pet dog.

Bondi, 59, adopted St. Bernard after he was separated from his family by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 from Florida’s Pinellas County Humane Society. She changed her name from Master Tank to Noah.

When the animal’s true owners, Louisiana couple Steve and Dorreen Couture, tracked Master Tank down to Bondi’s home in Tampa Bay in January 2006 and found him in the lawyer’s custody, their request for his return was refused.

Instead, Bondi accused the grandparents of neglecting the animal.

“I took a dog who was a walking skeleton,” she told The St Petersburg Times at the time.

“If I thought I was sending him to a stable environment, where he would be cared for, as hard as it would be, I’d put him in my car and drive him back myself.

The Coutures denied her accusation, revealing that Master Tank had suffered from heartworms since he was 10 months old and continued to demand his return.

The family sued and a 16-month legal battle ensued, which ended with the two sides settling before the dispute came to trial.

Bondi eventually returned Master Tank to the Coutures with a supply of food and medication.

The Texas State Board of Education has approved the use of Bible-based lessons in public elementary schools.

Officials voted 8-7 on the measure during a hearing in Austin on Friday. The new curriculum, developed by Bluebonnet Learning and the Texas Education Agency, pertains to reading and language arts lessons for kids in grades K-5 and math lessons for kids in grades K-8.

The teachings call into question the constitutionally of such tax-payer-funded instruction. It remains unclear whether the curriculum would violate the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from establishing a religion or providing official support for a religion.

The instruction includes lessons on Biblical beliefs, including the stories of Moses, the Good Samaritan, the Golden Rule and readings from the Book of Genesis.

The curriculum is optional but schools could get additional funding if they implement the teachings, set to be available to educators in August 2025.

The incoming Trump administration didn’t waste any time on Thursday after Matt Gaetz said that he was dropping his bid to become attorney general. Soon afterward it announced that Pam Bondi, the former attorney general of Florida, would seek the top position at the Justice Department instead.

Bondi, 59, who served as Florida’s attorney general from 2011 to 2019 and represented the president-elect at his first impeachment trial in the Senate, is both an experienced public official and a long-time Trump ally.

Read more from Josh Marcus and Joe Sommerlad

The Canadian musician, real name Claire Elise Boucher, said she had spent a year “locked in battle” with Musk over her rights as a mother and that her social media posts had been used against her.

Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary, has said that leftists are America’s “internal enemies” and suggested a Democratic victory could have ended in a civil war.

Trump named the 44-year-old veteran and Fox News host as his nominee for secretary of defense earlier this month. Now, Guardian reports the man who could lead the Pentagon once wrote in 2020 that the US might undergo “civil war” if Democrats won.

In his book American CrusadeHegseth laid out “the strategy we must employ in order to defeat America’s internal enemies” and called on the GOP to “mock, humiliate, intimidate, and crush our leftist opponents.”

“America will decline and die,” Hegseth wrote, referring to a now-moot future where Joe Biden won the election, according to Guardian. “A national divorce will dream. “Outnumbered freedom lovers will fight back.”

The US armed forces are similarly-minded freedom lovers who would have to “make a choice,” he continued.

If confirmed, Hegseth would lead the Pentagon and assume the second-most powerful position in the military’s chain of command.