Jim Watson / AFP / Getty Images

Aaron Schock, a former member of the House from Illinois, was indicted on Thursday by a federal grand jury on 24 counts relating to actions he allegedly took regarding federal and campaign funds before, during and after the time he was a member of Congress.

The charges include wire fraud, mail fraud, theft of government funds, and submitting false Federal Election Commission filings and false tax returns.

Schock resigned from Congress in March 2015, a month and a half after a Washington Post feature raised questions about the Downton Abbey-themed redecoration of his congressional office.

On Thursday, allegations regarding that redecoration effort appeared in Schock's federal indictment.

The indictment also spent significant time detailing allegations related to mileage reimbursements claimed by Schock — expenses investigated back in 2015 extensively by Politico immediately preceding Schock's decision to resign.

The indictment details alleged fraudulent reimbursement sought from the federal government relating to a photographer who Schock had hired for his staff.

Perhaps most brazenly, the indictment alleges the Schock "embezzled and converted [campaign funds] to his personal use" after his resignation from Congress.

The case has been assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Sue E. Myerscough, appointed to the bench by President Obama.

Read the indictment:

Maria Perez

BuzzFeed News/Leticia Miranda

HOMESTEAD, Florida — Maria Perez has not found the right words to soothe her 12-year-old son's fear of what will become of their family with Donald Trump as president.

"He thinks, 'Why does Donald Trump want to get rid of all immigrants?'" she told BuzzFeed News. "'What does that mean?'"

Perez, a 30-year old undocumented Guatemalan immigrant, believes Trump has fueled a war against immigrants throughout his presidential campaign which has only stoked fear in the community and her children.

"People can kill you," said Perez, who left Guatemala in 2003 because of the country's widespread violence and limited jobs. "Why? Because of the example of Donald Trump. That’s how I feel because now they can can look at you and see you are an immigrant and kill you."

One of Trump’s most effective campaign promises was to crack down on illegal immigration and build up President Obama's deportation strategy. But through the campaign that plan was drowned out by Trump's calls to have Mexico pay for a wall along the border and his describing of immigrants as "criminals" and "rapists."

Now two days after his historic win, Trump's aggressive comments have many families with undocumented relatives overwhelmed by fear that his campaign promises will mean families broken apart with deportations once he takes the White House.

Mercedes Rosales

BuzzFeed News/Leticia Miranda

Mercedes Rosales, a 17-year-old senior at Homestead High School, still wells up with tears when she tells the story of her father's deportation back to Mexico when she was 12.

That day her mother, who is also undocumented from Mexico, picked her up early from school, Mercedes said. She didn't have to ask what happened to know that her father was gone.

"I know what its like to have a parent taken from you," she said.

She started work at a flea market on the weekends to help support her family while her father was away. He returned to the US a year later.

But when Trump won the presidency on Tuesday, Mercedes said her father told her he wanted to go back to Mexico.

"I just don't want him to be scared," she said. "I think it's more likely to happen now that he's president more than it was before because of the discrimination he has on Mexicans saying we're rapists all those kind of things. That he just wants to get rid of Mexicans, or Latinos."

AP/Ted S. Warren

Despite these anxieties, it is unlikely that Trump will inaugurate a campaign of mass deportations and violence, David Abraham, a law professor at the University of Miami Law School, told BuzzFeed News. He said under Trump it's more likely life for undocumented immigrants will become so difficult they will choose to leave.

"Worst case scenario is he feels he needs to satisfy some of his most strident supporters and use police forces and every possible occasion to demand identification from people," said Abraham. "The kind of Arpaio strategy."

Abraham said Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state and a strong opponent of illegal immigration who is on Trump's transition team, is likely encouraging demonstrative criminal prosecutions and "showy" workplace raids that would satisfy "people who are just looking for a little show of force."

Trump's "10 Point Plan to Put America First" does include a plan to force Mexico to pay for a wall along the border by reforming the Patriot Act to keep undocumented immigrants from sending remittances home, enforcing trade rules and suspending Visas. But the plan is an "impossibility" said Abraham.

"What is useful for the purposes of mobilization of people in an election is not necessarily useful for governing effectively on behalf of your total agenda," said Abraham. "There are a number of things he wants to do and you don’t start with the most radical things first."

Monica Lopez

BuzzFeed News/Leticia Miranda

Monica Lopez, an 18-year-old senior at Homestead High School, said that if Clinton had won the presidency she would be less afraid of her parents being deported back to Oaxaca, Mexico than she is now of that possibility with Trump set to take office.

Lopez knows that Obama campaigned on a pro-immigrant platform, but deported more than 2.5 million people between 2009 and 2015 through immigration orders.

"If Barack Obama was able to do that with him supposedly helping us, imagine what Donald Trump could do?" she said. "It's scary."

Lopez said her parents are everything she knows, the "backbone" of their family. She lives in fear everyday that her mom won't return from a grocery store run or she won't be there when she comes home from school.

Lopez doesn't believe that Trump knows that fear.

"He doesn't care," she said. "He doesn't care about separating families. He wouldn't know the feeling to separate the parents from the children."

Lucia Quij holding her daughter in downtown Homestead.

BuzzFeed News/Leticia Miranda

Lucia Quij, a 39-year-old undocumented immigrant from Guatemala and mother of five children, has hope that the country's laws and organizing power will keep Trump from instituting any rash anti-immigrant policies.

"Yes, we are afraid, but the community has to stand up and use our voice and bring justice," she said. "If not, then the country will go down if we don't do anything."

Quij's husband was deported four or five years ago, she said. Her hope stems in part from her faith in the country, but also her role as a mother.

If we just have all this fear the kids will become distressed and cry," she said. "They're children. They need to go forward, go to school."

She also said she has faith in God, who she prays will change Trump's mind about immigration.

"Us as hispanics we enrich the country and make this country greater," she said. "I have hope he will have a change of mind. May God help him to come to a better consciousness."

Paul Sancya / AP

PHOENIX — Silvia Salguero wasn’t surprised when her 13-year-old son told her that a day after Donald Trump won the election, another student shook his hand and said, “You’re going back to Mexico.”

“I got upset even though I knew it was going to happen,” Salguero told BuzzFeed News.

Salguero, a Mexican immigrant who lives in Park City, Utah, offered to talk to someone at the school about the incident. Her son told her not to go because there’s a police officer at the school and he didn’t want her to be deported.

“I burst into tears,” Salguero said. “I really couldn’t stop crying and as tears were falling down my face I told him that everything will be all right.”

Salguero has protection from deportation and a work permit under President Obama’s executive actions on immigration. She didn't go to the school but urged her son to report the incident because other students might have experienced something similar and were afraid to speak up.

In the aftermath of Trump's victory, Latino parents and activists say they are getting reports of increased bullying of Hispanic students by emboldened white students.

At a press conference featuring leading national Latino groups, Hector Sanchez, chair of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, a coalition of 40 Hispanic organizations, said he fears for the safety of Latinos around the country and said he hoped that Trump would promote tolerance as president.

Still, the incidents have come fast since Trump won, leading many Hispanics to fear it will only get worse.

At the same press conference, the president of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), Roger Rocha, said he received a call in the morning from students at the University of Texas at Austin who were handed Trump's ubiquitous Make America Great Again hats and told "we’re shipping your brown ass home."

Cristina Jimenez, who leads the youth immigration group United We Dream, said they've received many calls from teachers who said kids are being bullied because they are Latinos or immigrants. "One shared that a seventh grader asked a Latino student who he would have voted for and when he said Hillary he got smacked in the face," she said, noting that the incident didn't exactly happen in Trump country — it was in New York City.

In Royal Oak, Michigan, a chant of "build the wall" broke out among middle schoolers in a cafeteria, prompting the superintendent to send a letter detailing parents' concerns over the event.

And in Redding, California, a student at Shasta High School posted a video of himself handing out “deportation” letters to several students, said Jim Cloney, superintendent for Shasta Union High School District.

The video has since been removed and the student said he did it to be funny.

“It goes without saying, we don’t think this sort of behavior is funny nor reflective of the culture at Shasta High and behavior that is racially or culturally insensitive will not be allowed to go on at any of our schools,” Cloney said.

The rise of Trump has included anecdotal reports of increase violence against Hispanics but also harder data. The Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations found that hate crimes against Latinos rose 69% in 2015 after declining during the seven years prior.

Speaking on a conference call of immigration activists, Cristine Neuman-Ortiz, executive director of respected Wisconsin group Voces de la Frontera Action, said she was speaking to a mother whose son and other Latino kids were bullied by students with Trump T-shirts and stickers who said, "Oh now you’re going to have to go back to Mexico," with the students having to be separated by teachers.

"Her son said, 'Is it worth fighting for something that we could lose?'" Neuman-Ortiz recalled. "His mother said, 'Yes, we have to keep fighting for our dreams and our hopes. We’re human beings.'"

Jose Luis Magana / AP Photo

US Senator Harry Reid on Friday released a statement acknowledging Donald Trump's election has unearthed fears among several minority groups, including African Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, and people from the LGBT community, saying the president-elect must begin to “roll back the tide of hate he unleashed.”

“The election of Donald Trump has emboldened the forces of hate and bigotry in America,” Reid added.

The Democrat has represented Nevada in the US Senate since 1986 and became Senate Minority Leader in 2015. In his statement Friday, he the said that after having been on the ballot in the Silver State for 26 elections, he had “never seen anything like the reaction" to Tuesday's election.

He acknowledged that groups like white nationalists, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and ISIS have openly celebrated Trump’s victory, “while innocent, law-abiding Americans are wracked with fear.”

Reid said that he has heard countless stories over the past two days from people in communities that Trump has directly targeted throughout his campaign.

“Hispanic Americans who fear their families will be torn apart, African Americans being heckled on the street, Muslim Americans afraid to wear a headscarf, gay and lesbian couples having slurs hurled at them and feeling afraid to walk down the street holding hands,” he said.

The senator had also heard from “young girls unable to understand why a man who brags about sexually assaulting women has been elected president.”

Reid said the country must not cast people into the background as it works on ways to move forward. He also held the media accountable for the way it covers the president-elect over the next few months.

“Every news piece that breathlessly obsesses over inauguration preparations compounds their fear by normalizing a man who has threatened to tear families apart, who has bragged about sexually assaulting women, and who has directed crowds of thousands to intimidate reporters and assault African Americans,” he said.

Finally, Reid acknowledged that as people recover, they “must first put the responsibility for healing where it belongs: at the feet of Donald Trump.”

Carlo Allegri / Reuters

They laughed at him. They taunted him. They snubbed him and sneered at him. And then, in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, he won.

Taking the stage at the New York Hilton ballroom just before 3:00 a.m., President-elect Donald Trump squinted reverently out on a sea of suit coats and red caps, the very model of grace in victory. "For those who have chosen not to support me in the past, of which there were a few people," he said, "I'm reaching out to you for your guidance and your help, so that we can work together and unify our great country."

But the brief moment of magnanimity belied the more personal — and visceral — triumph Trump was celebrating that night: the ultimate humiliation of his haters.

Indeed, from the madcap launch of his improbable presidential bid to the mad-dash sprint in his final days, Trump's campaign was a vehicle powered by personal grievance — a score-settling crusade against the politicos who'd shunned him, the business rivals who'd dismissed him, and the media elite who'd mocked him. A Queens-born billionaire who had long burned with resentment for the Manhattanites who treated him like a nouveau-riche rube, Trump was able to marshall millions this year in his scorched-earth revenge march toward the White House. When it was over, the totality of his payback was undeniable: his doubters were disgraced, his loyalists were vindicated, and Trump himself had won access to the the most exclusive club in American history.

But what if all that isn't enough?

"The interesting psychodrama that I think rattles around inside Donald's head is that he ultimately despises the establishment, yet desperately wants to be courted and approved by it," said Trump biographer Timothy O'Brien. And no singular moment of validation — not even winning the presidency — will sate his bottomless need for retribution against critics and enemies.

"He's just that insecure," said O'Brien. "And that's never going to change."

Christopher Gregory / Getty Images

From the very beginning of Trump's campaign, the stated strategy was to win over aggrieved voters by railing against the key institutions of American life. In a series of early internal memos obtained by BuzzFeed News, the rationale for Trump's candidacy was laid out in blunt terms: "The voters are in an angry mood and they completely distrust politicians, congress, the media, and other institutions." Trump was viewed as "incorruptible because of his personal wealth," and therefore the only candidate willing to "take on the entire system."

"It is very important that Trump continue to say that the system is broken, that the system is rigged against the citizens," an adviser wrote in one 2015 memo. In another, an aide succinctly summed up Trump's message as "us vs. them."

In a quaint bit of early advice for the trash-talking candidate, a consultant suggested in a memo, "Instead of attacking any individual opponent, I recommend that you attack them as a class — 'career politicians.'" Instead, of course, Trump spent the next year lashing out at his rivals by name, often in the most bitterly personal and incendiary terms possible.

When Sen. Lindsey Graham called him a "jackass," for example, Trump responded by reading out the senator's personal cell phone number at a campaign rally. When Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren needled him on Twitter, Trump took to calling her "Pocahontas" — a reference to her family's claim of Native American ancestry — and egged on his gleeful crowds as they responded with faux-Indian war chants. The opponents that most got under Trump's skin were branded with taunting nicknames: "Low-energy Jeb" Bush, "Liddle Marco" Rubio, "Lyin' Ted" Cruz, "Crazy Megyn" Kelly.

Shortly after entering the race, Trump faced a firestorm of criticism after attacking Sen. John McCain's record as a P.O.W. "He's not a war hero," Trump said. "He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured." Pundits pounced, Republicans piled on, and Trump refused to apologize. But even as he oozed pure bravado on the campaign trail, he privately obsessed over how the dig was playing with the insiders on cable news. According to Sam Nunberg, a former Trump adviser who was later fired, the candidate called him one day in the pre-dawn hours, fretting about whether he should make amends with McCain. Trump had woken early to watch TV coverage of the controversy, and was increasingly anxious about the dire pundit chatter. Nunberg advised him to stay defiant — and when the dust had settled, Trump's supporters remained.

It was a pattern that persisted throughout the election, as Trump channeled his own strange form of status anxiety and class warfare into a world-stunning political movement. The enemies he compulsively railed against — from politicians, to journalists, to financial titans — were the same people that Trump's base felt most victimized by. As long as he kept his sights trained on those targets, even the most petty insults flung from the stump became boons to candidacy.

Of course, Trump wasn't always so calculating in the way he meted out retribution. He liked to say that he was a "counterpuncher" — that he only lashed out when he was attacked. But he seemed to make no distinction between a primary opponent on a debate stage and a private citizen who opposed his candidacy. When a Muslim Gold Star Family spoke out at the Democratic National Convention against Trump's treatment of their faith, he spent days feuding with them. And when a former Miss Universe contestant appeared in a Clinton ad chronicling Trump's demeaning treatment of her, he responded by doubling down on his complaints about her weight. There was no political calculus driving these episodes — in both cases, they sent his poll numbers spiraling — but Trump felt he had been treated unfairly, and he couldn't help but hit back.

In the end, Trump's most satisfying victory might be his humiliation of a media establishment that thoroughly underestimated him at every turn. While Republicans have complained of press bias for decades, Trump treated journalists like enemy insurgents to be distrusted and destroyed. At his rallies, he kept reporters confined to gated pens in the back, and led his crowds in a ritual booing of the "dishonest media." Often, he arrived at the podium infuriated by a cable news segment he had just watched on his plane, and kicked off his remarks with barbed criticism of the coverage.

Some in the political media responded to these attacks with a certain measure of glee. When the conservative National Review published a special issue titled "Against Trump" shortly before the Iowa caucuses, the candidate spent a week assailing the magazine from the stump as a "failing publication that has lots its way." Editor Rich Lowry was said Trump's eruption came as no surprise. "He does this thing with people where he'll attack you really harshly and say you're stupid or a loser, and then if you say anything favorable about him, he'll praise you to the hilt." Lowry recalled sitting in his living room one night shortly after the issue came out, excitedly monitoring coverage of the fallout on Twitter and TV. "Like any journalist, when you target someone and he or she takes real umbrage, you're happy."

Of course, it was Trump who ultimately got the last laugh, and the day after the election, the National Review — the self-proclaimed guardian of the conservative movement — was forced to run an editorial congratulating a politically promiscuous president-elect with authoritarian flirtations. "We hope he now proves us doubters wrong," the editors wrote.

Simon Maina / AFP / Getty Images

While the tone of Trump's victory speech was conciliatory, the mood at his election night party was decidedly not. VIP supporters in suits and high heels broke out in chants of "LOCK HER UP!" as they watched the returns come in on Fox News. High-level surrogates who had spent the past year being ridiculed for their support of Trump — from Rudy Giuliani to Jerry Falwell Jr. — roamed the electric ballroom holding boastful, told-you-so press gaggles. Minutes before the candidate took the stage, Sean Spicer, the chief strategist for the Republican National Committee and one of Trump's most rabid defenders, approached me and demand that my colleagues and I "eat crow."

Their inclination to gloat was, perhaps, understandable. But within 24 hours — as tens of thousand of anti-Trump protesters began pouring into city streets across a raggedly divided country — a more urgent question came to the surface: How will the president-elect respond?

On Thursday night, he answered with a tweet: "Just had a very open and successful presidential election. Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair!"

President-elect Donald Trump gives a thumbs-up while walking on Capitol Hill in Thursday.

Molly Riley / AP

After months of promising to eliminate Obamacare, Donald Trump on Friday appeared to reverse himself, saying instead that the law could merely be "amended."

Trump made the comment in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, explaining that after meeting with President Obama Thursday at the White House, he might keep parts of his predecessor's signature health care law.

“Either Obamacare will be amended, or repealed and replaced,” Trump told the Journal.

Obama and Trump shake hands in the Oval Office Thursday.

Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

During the meeting between Obama and Trump, the president suggested elements of the law could be saved. Trump told the Journal that he would "look at his suggestions, and out of respect, I will do that."

Trump cited the provisions of the law allowing young adults to stay on their parents' health care plans, as well as the ban on denying people coverage due to pre-existing conditions, an elements of the law that he likes.

“I like those very much,” Trump said.

Trump spent much of his campaign railing against the president's policies, and Obamacare was one of his chief targets. As of Friday, Trump's campaign website still described the law as "certain to collapse of its own weight" and singled out the individual mandate, saying "no person should be required to buy insurance unless he or she wants to."

The website goes on to repeatedly promise that Trump will eliminate Obamacare.

"On day one of the Trump Administration, we will ask Congress to immediately deliver a full repeal of Obamacare," the website states.

LINK: Health Care Industry Braces For Repeal Of Obamacare

60 Minutes / Via cbsnews.com

President-elect Donald Trump is doing an about-face regarding Hillary Clinton in his first on-camera interview since winning the presidency.

After referring to Clinton during the raucous presidential campaign as crooked and "such a nasty woman," Trump told 60 Minutes "she's very strong and very smart."

His comments were released Friday in a clip of the interview that is scheduled to air Sunday.

Trump's compliments for the former secretary of state are a complete reversal to how he referred to Clinton during the contentious campaign for the White House, during which he often referred to only as "Crooked Hillary." During one of the debates, Trump also called her "such a nasty woman," and said she would be jailed if he were president.

But when asked about Clinton's congratulatory phone call conceding the election overnight Tuesday, Trump told 60 Minutes his opponent "couldn't have been nicer."

"It was a lovely call, and it was a tough call for her," Trump said. "She couldn't have been nicer. She just said, 'Congratulations, Donald. Well done.' And I said, 'I want to thank you very much. You're a strong competitor.'"

Trump also spoke positively about a phone call he received from President Bill Clinton.

"He couldn't have been more gracious," Trump said. "He said, 'It was an amazing run.' One of the most amazing he'd seen. He was very, very, really, very nice."

Bill Clinton was also often targeted by Trump during the campaign. In an interview with the New York Times, Trump called him "the single greatest abuser of women in the history of politics."

Asked whether he would consider consulting with the Clintons during his presidency — as he has said he would do with President Obama — Trump said he would "definitely think about that."

"He's a very talented guy, both of them," Trump said of the Clintons. "I mean, this is a very talented family."

Watch a preview of the interview here:

youtube.com

Spencer Platt / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — The day after Donald Trump is sworn in as president, protesters will gather in the nation's capital to ensure he can't ignore their displeasure with him as he sits in the Oval Office.

A women's march is being organized in Washington for Saturday, January 21, 2017, the day after President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

The event is still clearly a work in progress. What began as a "Million Women March" is now being called the "Women's March on Washington," according to the national Facebook page for the event.

"This is all about a grassroots movement of women," Fontaine Pearson, a national organizer, told BuzzFeed News, adding that the event grew faster and bigger than anticipated. "We're just watching it grow."

Protesters are quickly organizing and plan to come far and wide: More than 40 state and regional pages are listed on the Facebook page for the event.

"I think it's my obligation as someone who still has hope in this nation to fight for more than just me," Joanna Smith, the Utah state organizer for the march, told BuzzFeed News.

The protesters are set to travel from Lincoln Memorial to the White House, according to the New York Times.

Pearson said the permit process will begin soon, and there is no indication that the event will not be approved.

The march is being marketed as inclusive, open to anyone who supports women's rights.

The Facebook event also says the protesters are looking for hosts in the District of Columbia area and more organizers to join the cause. Inauguration weekend is traditionally very busy in Washington, so organizers are encouraging participants to begin lining up accommodations for their visit.

"I think it's bigger than Donald Trump," Pearson said about the march. She added the protestors do not dispute that he was elected fairly but will be marching to show that Trump "embodies" what so many women have had to put up with.

As of Saturday morning, more than 37,000 people have RSVP'd to indicate they will attend the event.

"We recognize that there's something we can do here. And we recognize that there are lessons that were learned immediately," Smith said.

Internationally acclaimed author and celebrated feminist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie had a smart response to a man who claimed President-elect Donald Trump had not been racist throughout his campaign.

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The exchange was part of a larger discussion between the Nigerian novelist and R. Emmett Tyrrell, editor-in-chief of the conservative magazine American Spectator, on BBC Newsnight, which aired Friday.

BBC reporter Emily Maitlis pointed out that Republicans like Paul Ryan had previously acknowledged that Trump has been racist in the language he’s used.

“That’s not true,” Tyrrell said. “He hasn’t been racist.”

But Adichie quickly interrupted him, saying, “I am sorry, but if you are a white man, you don’t get to define what racism is. You really don’t.”

Tyrrell pushed back, but Adichie continued: “No, you don’t get to sit there and say that he hasn’t been racist when objectively, he has.”

The author said that “racism is an objective reality, and Donald Trump has inhabited that reality.”

Tyrrell claimed that Adichie’s argument, which he called false consciousness, was a Marxist concept.

“In other words, I can’t even open my mouth here because I’m a white male,” he said.

This was Adichie's response.

BBC Newsnight / Via youtube.com

“No, of course you can,” she said. “I’m just saying to you that Donald Trump has shown us and has said recently things that are objectively racist.”

She used the example of Trump saying in June that a federal judge's “Mexican heritage” would mean he couldn't impartially preside over a case involving Trump.

“I looked at Judge Curiel, and he didn’t look any other color than my color,” Tyrrell said.

"But that's not the point," Adichie countered. "It's about what your candidate said."

Watch the full interview here.

youtube.com

Jewel Samad / AFP / Getty Images

In a conference call with top donors on Saturday, former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton reportedly placed some of the blame of her election loss on FBI Director James Comey.

Clinton reportedly blamed Comey for releasing a letter to Congress just two weeks out from Election Day that detailed a renewed probe into her emails. After nine days, the FBI director then released a subsequent letter stating that the review of freshly discovered emails had been completed and that investigators still did not believe Clinton should be criminally charged.

Clinton told donors Saturday that Comey's first letter stopped the momentum in the polls she had been enjoying after the presidential debates, while his second letter energized Donald Trump voters, Politico and the Washington Post reported.

The new batch of emails were discovered during a separate investigation of disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, for allegedly sexting a teenage girl.

While the FBI's ultimate decision to not press charges was good news for Clinton, Democrats were angry that the FBI caused such a stir right before the election.

On Friday, Clinton held a separate phone call to thank campaign volunteers.

“Look, I’m not going to sugarcoat it: These have been very, very tough days,” she told the volunteers. “I hope that you will all take some time to regroup. It’s important that you understand that, you know, there’s still a lot to be done in our country, by people like you, who are so, so important to us.”

LINK: Hillary Clinton: “These Have Been Very, Very Tough Days”

Carlo Allegri / Reuters

WASHINGTON — A cluster of black Republicans met Friday at Trump International in Washington about their effort to seek White House appointments in the Trump administration.

In recent days, Omarosa Manigault, who ran Trump’s campaign’s black outreach, has told black Republican leaders that Trump is appreciative of the work the RNC and its black advisory councils made. According to two sources, Manigault said black Republican leaders that Trump wants to have the “most diverse” administration.

Senior black Republicans may have been dubious of Trump’s chances at winning, but many remained loyal to the campaign through months of infighting and power struggles, as well as tension over the resources and recognition. Those have all been forgotten. Now black Republicans who were Never Trump or were overtly critical of the Trump campaign’s black outreach are coming back.

Even one of the most anti-Trump black Republicans told BuzzFeed News, "We must support Mr. Trump helping him make the best of his presidency."

In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Glo Smith, a congressional candidate from Florida, declined to discuss Trump or whether she supported him. But a source said that in a mostly celebratory RNC call Thursday, Smith suggested that while she lost her race, she was delighted at Trump’s big win.

“I did not win my campaign, but Trump became my president,” she said according to a source briefed on the call. "Praise God!"

Sean Jackson, the chair of the black Republican caucus of South Florida had written a scathing open letter slamming the Trump campaign for its lack of black outreach. Jackson reportedly wanted the Trump campaign to implement a plan to engage black voters, and got upset when the campaign rebuffed his offer.

"Last week, prior to the November 8th election I addressed you out of frustration," Jackson wrote on Nov. 10, "stating that though I was to still vote [sic] for President–Elect Trump I was to suspend my last minuet [sic] efforts of campaigning out of aggravation with the lack of outreach from both the Campaign and the Republican National Committee – I WAS WRONG!"

"As I reflect on my mistake to be silent in the last 3 days of the campaign I am reminded of Proverbs 3:7 'do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and shun evil.'"

On Thursday, he apologized for his letter and jumped in on the RNC call offering to open his Rolodex: He explained that he still had contacts from his time as a backup singer for Patti LaBelle and wanted to know how to put people in touch with people planning entertainment for inauguration.

Jackson — who phoned Manigault this week — called Manigault "a friend" and the RNC "a strong ally" he's worked with closely to help elect Trump.

"I clearly misspoke when suggesting that enough hadn't been done to target the black vote and I made that clear by stating I was wrong while congratulating Omarosa, then the campaign staff and RNC for their efforts," he told BuzzFeed News.

Manigault was on that RNC call, and is expected to be working closely with the transition team. She'll be the point of contact for black Republicans either looking to work in the administration. She has had the confidence of black Republicans since she was first named by the Trump campaign as the black outreach director, citing her obvious place in Trump's orbit and popularity.

She did not attend the meeting on Friday in Washington. Elroy Sailor, a special adviser to Reince Priebus said the meeting about black Republicans place in transition was largely informational, as Republicans go "from campaigning to governing mode."

Trump's ascendance is full of irony for black Republicans. Trump's big win now puts Manigault, a relative outsider, front-and-center in the black Republican Beltway ecosystem. One of its most senior leaders, former George W. Bush administration official Kay Cole James, keynoted Friday's meeting.

Had Manigault, one of the key figures in Trump's orbit been in Washington, however, a source said, she'd have run the show.

Jim Watson / AFP / Getty Images

President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday picked Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, to be his White House chief of staff and appointed former campaign chairman and conservative media firebrand Steve Bannon his chief strategist and a senior counselor.

In a list of potential Trump cabinet picks previously obtained by BuzzFeed News, Priebus was the only candidate listed for the position.However, Trump advisors had indicated that Breitbart News executive Bannon was also in the running for the job.

Priebus and Bannon are the first two people to officially join the Trump administration. "Steve and Reince are highly qualified leaders who worked well together on our campaign and led us to a historic victory. Now I will have them both with me in the White House as we work to make America great again," Trump said in a statement.

Both men said they were thankful for the chance to serve in Trump's White House.

"I want to thank President-elect Trump for the opportunity to work with Reince in driving the agenda of the Trump Administration,” said Bannon. “We had a very successful partnership on the campaign, one that led to victory. We will have that same partnership in working to help President-elect Trump achieve his agenda.”

“It is truly an honor to join President-elect Trump in the White House as his Chief of Staff,” said Priebus. “I am very grateful to the President-elect for this opportunity to serve him and this nation as we work to create an economy that works for everyone, secure our borders, repeal and replace Obamacare, and destroy radical Islamic terrorism. He will be a great President for all Americans.”

Bannon in Trump Tower on Friday.

Drew Angerer / Getty Images

Unlike other mainstream Republicans, Priebus maintained a close relationship with Trump during the chaotic 2016 presidential election campaign, urging the businessman to tone down his controversial comments while repeatedly pleading with his party members to unite behind their nominee.

During Trump's victory's speech early Wednesday morning, the president-elect singled out Priebus for his assistance during the campaign, saying, "Reince is really a star and he is the hardest-working guy."

The position of chief of staff is a hugely influential role during any administration, with the office-holder serving as a form of gatekeeper to the president and providing advice.

Despite this, Bannon's appointment was listed first in the statement released by the Trump team. Before taking the reins of the Trump campaign in August, Bannon helmed Breitbart News, a right-wing media outlet known, in part, for its critical coverage of establishment conservatives. Bannon has framed Trump’s rise as part of a "sea change in American politics," connected to a global nationalist wave.

Some political observers on the left voiced their dismay to the announcement. David Axelrod, the former top adviser and chief campaign strategist to President Barack Obama said Bannon's appointment is "deeply troubling." Jon Lovett, a former Obama speechwriter said, "My stomach dropped when I saw the Bannon news, but not because I was surprised. It's just our worst fears in the grim wide open."

John Weaver, the top campaign strategist for Republican presidential contender and Ohio Govenor Jon Kasich, was even more critical. "The racist, fascist extreme right is represented footsteps from the Oval Office. Be very vigilant America," he said on Twitter, referring to Bannon's new post.

In a statement released Sunday night, the head of the Anti Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, said the organization "strongly opposes the appointment of Steve Bannon."

"It is a sad day when a man who presided over the premier website of the ‘alt-right’ — a loose-knit group of white nationalists and unabashed anti-Semites and racists — is slated to be a senior staff member in the ‘people’s house,’" Greenblatt said.

A spokesperson for the RNC did not initially respond to a request for comment as to who would serve as the interim RNC chairperson.

"The Bannon-Priebus team is a tremendous choice by President elect Trump," Newt Gingrich said on Twitter after the announcement. "Bannon for key strategies, Priebus for daily management. Great team."

Gingrich is among other names being considered for the Trump cabinet, according to a list obtained by BuzzFeed News, including Chris Christie, Ben Carson, Sarah Palin, Rudy Giuliani, and Mike Huckabee.

LINK: Secretary Of Education Ben Carson? Here’s A List Of Potential Trump Cabinet Picks

Mandel Ngan / AFP / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — Elated Republicans returned to Capitol Hill after the election Monday and still found themselves in a familiar situation: having to defend the latest controversial move by Donald Trump.

The president-elect named Steve Bannon, who ran the right-wing website Breitbart, as his chief strategist in the White House. And thus began a familiar ritual practiced all summer: the ducking of questions, the silences, the feigning of ignorance, and the blaming of the media.

Trump satisfied establishment Republicans by naming Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus as his chief of staff over Bannon, who served as his campaign's CEO for the last few months. Although in the press release Trump's transition team stressed they would be "equal partners," lawmakers on Monday praised the decision to hire Priebus while downplaying or largely ignoring Bannon.

Bannon has acknowledged that his website was a platform for the alt-right — a movement associated with white nationalism that has been emboldened by Trump's rise. Under Bannon's leadership, Breitbart published racist, anti-immigrant, anti-semitic, and anti-Muslim content — while also antagonizing Republican leaders, especially Speaker Paul Ryan.

Asked specifically about what Bannon's role says about Trump's administration, Ohio Rep. Steve Stivers, a close Ryan ally, responded: "But I also see Reince Priebus as the chief of staff, and the White House chief of staff is the most important, powerful position... so I feel like (Trump's) done a good job of doing an inclusive pick so far."

Pressed on Bannon, Stivers said: "I don't know a lot about Steve Bannon, so I don't care to be an expert on him."

And more broadly on his ties to Breitbart, which routinely attacks Ryan and his allies, Stivers said that was irrelevant. "Everybody has a paycheck, and to get a paycheck, they work. He worked to get a paycheck, and he worked for an employer. And I'm not going to attack somebody based on where they work."

North Dakota Rep. Kevin Cramer, who served as Trump's energy adviser, took a similar approach to answering repeated questions about Bannon. "I have to stress that him hiring Reiner Priebus as chief of staff, he clearly understands that an objective analysis is appropriate even in his own shop," he said.

Cramer also emphasized he didn't know Bannon and tried to defend Trump's decision in naming him chief strategist, growing visibly frustrated with reporters for all the Bannon-related questions. "Listen, this might be eluding some of you, but Donald Trump won," he said when asked if Bannon symbolizes the divisiveness of Trump rhetoric. "I'll tell you what it symbolizes to me — tremendous loyalty."

"He's obviously a good enough strategist for him to win the White House," Cramer said. "That takes a little broader swath than just being anti-semitic. Obviously, I would have serious problems with anti-semitic strategy coming out of the White House, but I don't expect that out of Donald Trump."

Earlier in the day, during an awkward and often contentious meeting with reporters, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy also tried to defend Trump's decision to hire Bannon. He cautioned against pre-judging, saying: “I’ve always believed in giving someone a chance."

Speaker Paul Ryan's office referred Bannon-related questions on Monday to the Wisconsin Republican's CNN interview with Jake Tapper on Sunday — hours before Bannon was officially named chief strategist. "I've never met the guy," Ryan said at the time. "I don't know Steve Bannon, so I have no concerns. I trust Donald's judgment."

House Republicans also said they weren't too familiar with Bannon's ties to the alt-right. "It's a good combination of level-headedness and conservatism in the White House," said North Carolina Rep. Richard Hudson on the combination of Priebus and Bannon, before saying, "I don't follow that as closely" on Bannon's past.

One of Trump's biggest and earliest supporters in the House, Pennsylvania Rep. Lou Barletta, initially praised the addition of Bannon. "Steve Bannon was very helpful to Donald Trump during the campaign," he said. "I think him and Reince Priebus will work well together. I think they can both add value to Donald Trump."

But when asked about his ties to the alt-right and if that concerned him, Barletta just said: "I haven't really looked at that. I'm not. No."

Other Republicans said it wasn't their job to critique Trump's appointments. "I think you have to trust the president to pick his staff," said Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole. "I've never really thought it was particularly a place where we had any business."

Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz said he'll continue to be a "champion for religious freedom," but he doesn't have "the bandwidth" to go through what every staffer he hires has said in the past.

Aaron Klein, Breitbart's Jerusalem bureau chief, dismissed accusations Bannon is anti-semitic.

"These smears are laughable to anyone who knows Bannon, a committed patriot who is deeply concerned about the growing threats to Israel," Klein said. "He has been particularly concerned with the dangerous trend of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel sentiment on U.S. college campuses. While at Breitbart, he pitched countless articles on these and other themes in defense of the Jewish state."

Bannon was the topic of the day on Capitol Hill, but Trump's transition too spent time Monday responding to criticism of Bannon, according to the President-elect's transition pool report.

Kellyanne Conway, Trump's campaign manager, said she was "personally offended" that reporters thought she'd "manage a campaign where that would be one of the going philosophies. It was not."

She also encouraged people to look at Bannon's full resume. "He has got a Harvard business degree. He’s a Naval officer. He has success in entertainment. I don’t know if you’re aware of that. And he certainly was a Goldman Sachs managing partner. Brilliant tactician.”

Cliff Owen / AP

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid on Tuesday blasted racist acts that have occurred across the US since the election, and blamed President-elect Donald Trump for not doing enough to heal the divisions opened up by his raucous campaign.

"We failed to hold Trump accountable," Reid said on the Senate floor. "We all bear major responsibility for normalizing his behavior."

During his speech, Reid went through a list of incidents that have occurred in recent days, including some experienced by his own friends and children of his staff.

Trump repudiated the acts in an interview with 60 Minutes Sunday, but Reid said it was not enough.

"Talk is cheap and tweets are cheeper," said Reid, who will be retiring.

Reid also criticized Trump's appointment of Steve Bannon to his staff, calling the controversial appointee a "champion of white supremacy.

"Rather than healing these wounds, Trump's actions has deepened them," Reid said. "By placing a champion of white supremacist in the Oval Office, what message is Trump sending."

Reid called on Trump to rescind the appointment and to do more to reach out to communities that have been struck by fear since the election.

"Take responsibility, rise to the dignity of the office of the President of the United states," he said, addressing the president-elect. "Show America that racism, bullying and bigotry have no place in the White House or in America."

LINK: This Is How Steve Bannon Sees The Entire World

Alex Wong / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — Democrats didn't think 2016 was going to end this way. They especially didn't think that they would suddenly be the party that seemed out of touch with a segment of working-class America.

As Democrats returned to Capitol Hill after a disappointing election for them, divisions among the party were clear Tuesday with lawmakers soul-searching for the path forward. House Democrats decided to delay their leadership elections "to recalibrate" as they try to figure out what went wrong.

Although Hillary Clinton's performance with white college-educated voters and whether voters of color would turn out big were the big questions in the lead-up to the election, her dismal performance with working-class whites has animated the election's aftermath at the exclusion of almost all else.

And in Washington, many Democrats emphasized the path forward is determining how they lost those working-class voters in the Rust Belt, specifically in areas that President Obama won by double digits, and how they can win them back while maintaining their advantage with black and Latino voters. Lawmakers were outspoken about the need to appeal to white, working-class voters with ideas ranging from a complete reform of the party's infrastructure to changing up communication tactics and espousing more progressive policy ideas.

The Democratic National Committee "has to have a really serious family conversation about where we're going, about how we win in Scranton, how we win in Harrisburg, how we win in Youngstown, how we win in Michigan as we go forward," said retiring New York Rep. Steve Israel.

Asked about how the Democrats might have misread the electorate, Israel said: "I think we failed to tap into those anxieties of middle-class voters and working-class voters, and we need to do a much better job of understanding where they are."

"There are historic convergences on them, the economy is changing radically before their very eyes, historic breakdown in faith and institutions across the board," he continued, "unprecedented levels of threat at home and abroad, and a sense that democracy has just sold them out. And until we understand those convergences, how to give voice to them, and also solve those anxieties, then we're going to continue to be running from a position of weakness."

Some Democrats — including Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva — are pushing for top-to-bottom reform that looks at middle-class voters more broadly instead of trying single out white voters.

“I think you begin by looking at your own infrastructure. Our own infrastructure is the DNC...has run this same kind of campaign now for decades. Kind of a middle-of-the-road, take-no-risks, and pay a lot of consultants and pay a lot of pollsters to tell you what to say and what to do and not have any emotion or feeling in what you’re doing,” Grijalva said in an interview. “You have to clean house, you have to change the leadership, and you have to change the strategy.”

Grijalva is the co-chairman of the House Progressive Caucus and backed Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic presidential primary.

“Some people are promoting the idea that we have to have a whole new white strategy in terms of how the DNC works. I think we have to have a whole-America strategy,” Grijalva said. “The demographics are not going to change. They’re going to continue to head into a multicultural, multi-ethnic constituency toward the Democratic Party. That doesn’t mean you leave some behind in order to appeal then and try to win back.”

But the party needs to affirm that Democrats, who have traditionally represented working-class voters, still look out for their interests, said Wisconsin Rep. Mark Pocan in an interview.

“That voter feels a little left behind by both parties over the last several decades, and Donald Trump gave simple, appealing answers. Maybe not simple, easy solutions, but he gave simple, easy answers,” Pocan said.

A better economic message also needs to be crafted, said Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, adding that working-class voters didn't hear the economic message they wanted from Hillary Clinton's campaign. "You do have to have a strong economic message. That's critical — certainly in Michigan," Peters said. "That's what voters are looking for... I think she should have had a stronger economic message. That would have been helpful. There's no question about that."

While Democrats maintain their policies would be the most beneficial for economically-frustrated Americans, they recognize that they will have to push harder to deliver their message to those voters.

“One of the things we do as Democrats to talk to essentially to address the white male, not-in-college male, is we propose policies that we think will help them, but we don’t really ever talk empathetically to them,” said Kentucky Rep. John Yarmuth.

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy said "big ideas" from the progressive wing need to be incorporated more into the party's overall message to get the attention of these voters.

"I think we have to be crystal clear about where we stand and not be afraid of big ideas that solve big problems," Murphy said. "I think we've been addicted to incrementalism."

"You know a tax credit for higher education doesn't scratch the itch. They want to hear us talking about free college, or debt-free college. They want to hear why we're not taking on drug companies, why people who were responsible for the Wall Street crash haven't gone to jail...Trump was very good at articulating some easy to understand — albeit dangerous — ideas. There are a lot of white papers in the Clinton campaign, but very few of them broke through."

WASHINGTON — As Democrats survey the rubble of Hillary Clinton’s stunning loss, a group led by black Democrats is seizing the opportunity to argue that the party erred gravely and must give meaningful investment to engaging young and minority voters or risk Donald Trump winning again.

The Democracy in Color campaign was launched this past summer in part by Steve Phillips, the Democratic donor and activist whose new book, Brown Is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority, rankled Democrats on its way to becoming a New York Times best seller.

“There were five million fewer Democratic votes than there were in 2012,” Phillips told BuzzFeed News. “Clearly, for whatever constellation of reasons, the New American Majority that came out to win enough states for Obama did not come out for Clinton,” though he noted that Clinton won the popular vote.

In the days following the election, a number of Democrats, as well as liberal groups and writers, have debated what the source of Clinton and Democrats’ failure really was and what the next step should be. Some contend the issue was that the party has become too alienated from white working-class voters — others argue that those voters weren’t coming Democrats’ way, and that the path forward must involve truly engaging people of color and young voters, and infusing the party with a more clear message.

Before the election, Democracy in Color’s challenge to Democrats was simple: If the party wanted to win elections going forward, it was best off investing in reaching low propensity voters of color to gain traction, the group argued. The DSCC started, as part of this effort, a questionnaire to collect data on hiring and engagement efforts.

“The struggle is that there isn’t enough data around what we do when it comes to communities of color. Whether it’s hiring, spending resources on voter engagement — I wish that I could say there was a template that we could give everyone that they could just overlay on all of their operations for success,” said Democratic consultant Jessica Byrd, a co-founder of the campaign. “Instead, we had to have a new and very different conversation with the DSCC and all of the campaigns about where they were and all of the information they needed to gather in order to address whether they were doing a good job or not.”

But the group’s efforts have gained new urgency since Democrats were defeated in what were considered safe blue states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Phillips contends the Clinton campaign and allied super PACs like Priorities USA wasted $1.5 billion speaking to the wrong voters, particularly with ill-targeted and ultimately ineffective television ads. The larger problem, he said, is that ads are a function of who is controlling the budgets.

“Of the $1.5 billion spent by the Democratic Party and allied organizations, all of the top budget-making roles were held by whites in a party that is 48% people of color,” Phillips added.

Albert Morales, who served three tours as part of the DNC, most recently running Hispanic engagement efforts before leaving before the summer, said Democrats spent no money on Spanish-language television in Philadelphia. “They have a huge Puerto Rican population there,” Morales said. “Why not saturate that market?”

Democracy in Color is also calling for a generation of new Democratic leadership, with the intent of establishing the engagement in communities of color by campaigns as a standard operating practice to go beyond what it considers to be empty rhetoric and token hires.

“We have unfortunately been met with the worst-case scenario of what we assumed could have potentially happened if we stayed the course that we were on in the spring, which is the result of undevelopment and underinvestment in communities and voters of of color,” Byrd said.

"The reinvention of the Democratic Party must reflect the importance of key parts of the base coalition, Byrd argued. That means innovative and heavy investment in voters of color. "Our communities are in imminent danger. We know the leadership of the Party is only a fraction of what needs to be done. But we must create a party system that reflects its base voters and the urgency of the moment we're in"

For their part, Latino groups say that the Hispanic community showed up for Clinton in record numbers, and dismiss exit polls that many consider to be flawed when it comes to demographic breakouts. They say Latinos voted for Clinton in huge numbers, with 20% being first-time voters, and they must be engaged, too, or the party risks losing them in the age of Trump.

“It’s time for a Latino to serve as the DNC chair and for them to be considered in leadership roles across the spectrum at the party committees,” said Cristobal Alex, one of the top Hispanics on Clinton’s campaign who has returned to his role as president of Latino Victory. He pointed to “qualified progressive champions” like former Labor Secretary Tom Perez, Rep. Ruben Gallego, and Rep. Xavier Becerra, who all supported Clinton’s bid for the presidency.

Alex said that groups must also ensure that experienced, outgoing Obama administration and Clinton minority staffers are aided in finding new roles to strengthen the party. He said his group has partnered with the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda (NHLA), a coalition of 40 national Latino groups, for a Latino talent initiative that hopes to do just that.

For Democracy in Color, these efforts begin Wednesday. On a call bringing together national stakeholders, the campaign plans to announce their focus on a broad “transition of power,” laying out their demand that the DNC chair, as well as the executive leadership of the DNC, Democratic Governor’s Association, and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee are people of color — and place women and people of color in executive leadership.

“It’s critical that leadership chairs and top staff people have deep cultural competence and familiarity with the communities of color,” Phillips said. “We’re laying out a blueprint for how the party should be functioning so that whoever takes over will adhere to it.”

With an open, public election of the DNC chair coming early part of 2017, Democracy in Color will invite the candidates for chair of the DNC to partake in a public forum in Washington.

While the campaign is not endorsing a particular candidate, Phillips spoke well of Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, who is black, and has received the backing of outgoing Minority Leader Sen. Harry Reid and and his successor Sen. Chuck Schumer. “What Ellison has done are the type of things the party should be doing,” Phillips said.

“We want leaders who are not beholden to greater party interests, choosing relationships over leading the community, I want a person who is connected to movement and advocacy and people are at the center,” Byrd added.

As for the Clinton campaign, in a tersely worded memo obtained by BuzzFeed News, Democracy of Color writes that the campaign was diverse, but no minority staffer led a department with a meaningful budget.

“As was painfully proven on November 8th, that is not a formula for victory,” Byrd said.

Georgia Department of Corrections via AP

Georgia executed Steven Spears Wednesday evening for the 2001 murder of his ex-girlfriend, Sherri Holland.

Spears, 54, had refused any legal efforts to spare his life since being convicted of Holland's murder. He did not file any appeals apart from the automatic challenge brought on his behalf after his conviction and death sentence. He has also never denied killing Holland.

On Wednesday, correction officials said the 54-year-old convict also refused a final prayer and to record a final statement before he was executed at 7:30 p.m. by lethal injection.

He became the 68th person to be executed by Georgia since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, according to the department of corrections.

The Georgia Parole Board on Wednesday, denied a request for clemency filed by Spears' trial attorney and death row lawyers, hours before Spears' execution scheduled for 7 p.m. local time. Spears had not authorized the clemency request.

The clemency request was denied after a Butts County judge dismissed a "next friend” petition filed by Spears' third ex-wife in an effort to stop his execution, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution (AJC) reported. A "next friend" petition is one that is brought by someone acting on behalf of an individual determined not to have legal capacity to act on his own.

According to court filings, Spears told a state-hired psychiatrist on Tuesday that decision to die was rational, AJC reported.

“Would you want to live in six by nine cell?” Spears told the psychiatrist. "That’s not living ... Everything I do, I’ve got to get permission to do."

“I don’t want to live like I’m living. It’s like a cancer eating me up every day,” Spears said, according to the psychiatrist’s report.

Spears also refused to meet or talk to his lawyer for more than a year. It would be the first time Georgia would have executed a convicted murderer who did not voluntarily challenge his trial, conviction, or sentence, AJC reported. Spears would become the eighth inmate to be executed by Georgia this year.

When Spears began dating Holland — a 34-year-old single mother — he later said he that he had told her, "If I caught her or found out she was screwin’ somebody else, I’d choke her ass to death," according to court documents.

After their relationship ended, Spears suspected that Holland was involved with someone else and prepared four different ways to murder her. They included electrocution; beating her to death with a baseball bat carved from a tree branch; shooting her with her shotgun; and choking, binding, and suffocating her inside her house, court documents said.

After making arrangements for each plan, he entered Holland's house on Aug. 25, 2001, and hid in her son's closet for several hours until Holland fell asleep. The two struggled from the bedroom to the hallway while he attempted to bind her hands and legs with duct tape. Spears later recounted Holland's last words, saying, "Last thing she said was she loved me. Swear to God, that’s the last thing she said. Last words came out of her mouth.” He then said that he told her "I love you, too," and then proceeded to "choke her ass right out."

Once he choked her to unconsciousness with his arm around her neck, he took her back to the bedroom, bound her hands, wrapped her face and mouth in duct tape and placed a plastic bag over her head and secured it with duct tape. Her body was found the next day by her ex-husband and her son.

Win Mcnamee / Getty Images

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday slammed President-elect Donald Trump for his "totally unacceptable" appointment of Steve Bannon, the editor of the far-right website Breitbart, to a senior White House position.

Trump's selection of his former campaign chairman to serve as his chief strategist and senior counsel has infuriated Democrats and others who view Bannon as a leading proponent of an alt-right, white nationalist message.

The Vermont senator, who was on Wednesday appointed to the leadership team for Senate Democrats, said the president-elect must rescind Bannon's appointment so as not to take the country "backward" to an era of racism.

“This country, since its inception, has struggled to overcome discrimination of all forms: racism, sexism, xenophobia and homophobia," Sanders said in a statement. "Over the years we have made progress in becoming a less discriminatory and more tolerant society – and we are not going backward."

"The appointment by President-elect Trump of a racist individual like Mr. Bannon to a position of authority is totally unacceptable," he said. "In a democratic society we can disagree all we want over issues, but racism and bigotry cannot be part of any public policy."

Steve Bannon with Trump's former campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway.

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups, has described Bannon as the “main driver behind Breitbart becoming a white ethno-nationalist propaganda mill.”

Under Bannon's tenure as Breitbart editor, the site published incendiary and often racist content targeting minorities, women, immigrants, and the LGBT community.

Sanders' statement came one day after 169 House Democrats signed an open letter to Donald Trump, calling on him to drop Bannon.

"Your appointment of Stephen Bannon, whose ties to the White Nationalist movement have been well-documented, directly undermines your ability to unite the country," the Democrats wrote.

The Democrats pointed out that individuals affiliated with the KKK have praised Bannon's hiring, with former white nationalist David Duke telling CNN that Bannon had been "basically creating the ideological aspects of where we're going."

In his statement announcing the hiring of Bannon, Trump praised him as a "highly qualified leader" who will help him "make America great again."

LINK: Here Are Some Of The Incendiary Stories Published By Trump’s Chief Strategist

Mark Makela / Getty Images

The #NotMyPresident Alliance, a national anti-Donald Trump protest group, has released the personal information of dozens of Electoral College members in states that voted Republican.

A spreadsheet distributed to supporters Wednesday included the personal phone numbers, addresses, religions, races, genders, and candidate preference of the electors. The document does not have a complete set of data on every elector.

The group hopes that its members and citizens around the country will contact electors and persuade them to change their vote from Donald Trump to another candidate before Dec. 19, when electors cast their votes. The group does not advocate for Hillary Clinton or any other specific candidate, rather asking protesters to encourage electors from each state to a consensus that isn't Trump.

The group has color-coded each elector with how likely they are to change their vote based on their previous comments to press and social media.

Kurt Brown, an elector in Iowa, told BuzzFeed News he has not "totally committed yet" on where his electoral vote will go. His personal phone number and home address were posted in the spreadsheet.

Jon Gedney, the spokesperson of #NotMyPresident and one of its lead organizers, said the information in the document was publicly available and that his group uncovered it through Google searches.

Asked if members of the Electoral College might face hacking or harassment, Gedney said he believed there was "no more potential than there was already."

Elaborating, he said the group "rejected all acts of aggression and violence."

"The point was to collect as a tool for peaceful action," Gedney said. "The whole thing is we’re fighting against someone who’s contentious and hateful. No one in our group is going to use it for nefarious purposes."

Experts have previously told BuzzFeed News that the chance of faithless electors swinging the election is incredibly slim. Gedney was optimistic, though, because of the scale of protests across the country in the week following the election.

"If we somehow do still fail to win the hearts and minds of the Electoral College on December 19," Gedney wrote in a Facebook post, "we are creating the much needed infrastructure and solidarity we're going to need if we're to survive a Trump administration."

Alex Brandon / AP Photo

Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper announced his resignation on Wednesday, saying it “felt pretty good” after more than 50 years of service.

Clapper had repeatedly said that he planned to step down from his position at the end of President Barack Obama’s final term in office.

Clapper confirmed his resignation during an Intelligence Committee open hearing on Thursday.

“I submitted my letter of resignation last night,” he said. “It felt pretty good.”

Clapper has 64 days left in his role, and said that despite rumors that he might stay in his position through the transition of power to President-elect Donald Trump, “I think I’d have a hard time with my wife" if he tried to stay any longer.

Congressman Adam Schiff, a ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, thanked Clapper for his service during the hearing.

“Director Clapper, in particular, I want to thank you for honorably serving us since the 1960s, first as an Air Force officer, later as director of DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency], NGA [National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency], under the secretary of defense for intelligence, and of course for the last six years of DNI,” Schiff said.

“You took a position that will still very much in the process of formation, and you gave it substantive and effective content, and we’re very grateful for all you have done,” he added.