Donald Trump calls Canadian PM Justin Trudeau ‘governor’ for second time as he weighs in on deputy PM’s departure – live

President-elect criticizes Chrystia Freeland in social media post after doubling down on tariff pledges on Monday

Good morning, US politics blog readers. Since winning re-election last month, Donald Trump has, for reasons that are not clear, taken to calling Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau “governor”. He’s done it in two instances that we can think of, the most recent coming last night, in a post on Truth Social where the president-elect weighed in on the departure from Trudeau’s government of deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland, who had disagreed with Trudeau over how to handle Trump’s threatened economic policies. Without giving examples, the president-elect said “her behavior was totally toxic”, and accused her of standing in the way of a trade deal between the two countries.

The “governor” moniker is a strange one to bestow on Trudeau, considering it is both inaccurate, and because the prime minister has made efforts to reach out to Trump, including by dining with him at Mar-a-Lago. Hanging over the two men’s relationship is Trump’s threat to impose steep tariffs on Canada, which Trudeau is trying to convince him not to follow through with. But at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago yesterday, Trump made clear he’s not changing course. “We lose a lot of money to Canada, tremendous amount,” the president-elect said, later adding: “Tariffs will make our country rich.”

Kamala Harris will give a speech billed as encouraging young people to be active in their communities in the Washington DC suburbs at 11.35am ET.

Congress is scrambling to pass a year-end spending bill to ward off a government shutdown that will otherwise occur on 20 December. Neither party wants that to happen, but, as usual, their negotiations may go down to the wire.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is making one last push to become the top Democrat on the high-profile House oversight committee. Yesterday, a Democratic committee that recommends candidates for ranking members passed the New York progressive over in favor of longtime congressman Gerry Connolly.