President-elect Trump has nominated Somers Farkas and John Arrigo for ambassadorships.

If confirmed, Arrigo, Arrigo, who is the vice president of the Arrigo Auto Group in West Palm Beach, Florida, would serve as ambassador to Portugal. 

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“John is a highly successful entrepreneur in the automotive industry, and a champion golfer. For over thirty years, he has been an incredible leader in business in West Palm Beach, and is respected by all,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “I have known John for a long time. He will do an incredible job for our Country, and always put America FIRST.”

Arrigo has been a longtime associate of Trump’s, a Business Insider report said in 2021. 

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Farkas, a model and philanthropist, would serve America’s interests in the island nation of Malta. 

Farkas previously served on Trump’s Commission on White House Fellowships. 

Somers Farkas attends New York City Police Foundation 2017 Gala at Sheraton New York on May 18, 2017 in New York City. (Jared Siskin/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)

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In his announcement, Trump said she “has raised Millions of Dollars for charity, including for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Alzheimer’s Associate, Lighthouse Guild, the New York Women’s Foundation and, as a Trustee of the New York City Police Foundation where she has always BACKED THE BLUE.”

Two San Fernando Valley men, who were sentenced to death over a decade ago for killing five people, had their sentences commuted to life in prison on Monday by President Biden.

In 2007, Iouri Mikhel and Jurijus Kadamovas were sentenced to death after they were convicted of murdering five people in a kidnapping-for-ransom scheme. Prosecutors said the pair dumped the bodies in a remote Northern California reservoir.

Mikhel and Kadamovas were among 37 criminals whose death sentences Biden commuted to life without parole. Biden didn’t commute the sentences of three other men on federal death row convicted of mass murder and terrorism: Robert Bowers, convicted of the 2018 mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing; and Dylann Roof, convicted of the 2015 mass shooting at a Black church in Charleston, S.C.

“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said in a statement. “I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.”

Mikhel and Kadamovas, Soviet-born immigrants, hatched the kidnapping plot while working at an aquarium store on Ventura Boulevard. They kidnapped five people over a four-month period starting in 2001.

They lured their victims with offers of business deals and demanded more than $5.5 million from the victims’ family members. They received more than $1 million in ransom but killed their victims by strangulation anyway.

The pair drove to the New Melones reservoir near Yosemite to dump the bodies.

Their victims were Nick Kharabadze, 29, of Woodland Hills; Alexander Umansky, 35, of Sherman Oaks; Rita Pekler, 39, of West Hollywood; George Safiev, 37, of Beverly Hills; and Meyer Muscatel, 58, of Sherman Oaks.

Once behind bars, Mikhel hatched several escape plans, including a scheme to use bolt cutters, a pepper shaker, a rake and fence cutters to break out of a detention center in San Bernardino and make a getaway with Kadamovas on motorcycles. But a letter that detailed the plot was found in a trash can by a guard and the plan was foiled.

President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to expand the death penalty to “drug dealers and human traffickers.” During Trump’s first term, 13 inmates were put to death on federal death row, restarting federal executions after about 20 years.

During the end of his first term in office, Trump commuted the sentences of 70 people and pardoned 73 others, including former campaign and White House advisor Stephen K. Bannon, who was charged with federal fraud and money laundering in a scheme to defraud supporters of building a border wall with Mexico.

President Biden on Monday vetoed a bill that would have added 66 federal district judgeships over a span of more than a decade, a once-bipartisan effort designed so that neither political party would have an advantage in molding the federal judiciary. 

Three presidential administrations, beginning with the incoming Trump administration, and six Congresses would have had the opportunity to appoint the new trial court judgeships, according to the legislation, which had support from organizations representing judges and attorneys.

Despite arguments from the organizations that additional judgeships would help with cases that have seen serious delays in resolution and ease concerns over access to justice, the White House said that Biden would veto the bill.

In a statement, Biden said he made his decision because the “hurried action” by the House of Representatives left open questions about “life-tenured” positions.

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“The House of Representative’s hurried action fails to resolve key questions in the legislation, especially regarding how the new judgeships are allocated, and neither the House of Representatives nor the Senate explored fully how the work of senior status judges and magistrate judges affects the need for new judgeships,” Biden said.

“The efficient and effective administration of justice requires that these questions about need and allocation be further studied and answered before we create permanent judgeships for life-tenured judges,” Biden added.

The White House announced Monday that Biden vetoed a bill that would have added 66 federal district judgeships over a span of more than a decade. (Pete Marovich/Getty Images, File)

He said the bill would also have created new judgeships in states where senators have not filled existing judicial vacancies and that those efforts “suggest that concerns about judicial economy and caseload are not the true motivating force behind passage of this bill now.

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When Biden’s plan to veto the legislation surfaced earlier this month, Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told “America’s Newsroom” that the act is “the last spasm of a lame-duck.”

“President Biden and his team don’t want to allow it to become law simply because a Republican administration would get to appoint some of the judges,” Kennedy said. 

“I wish they’d put the country first,” the senator added.

The legislation was passed unanimously in August under the Democratic-controlled Senate, though the Republican-led House brought the measure to the floor only after Donald Trump was reelected president in November, creating an air of political gamesmanship.

Biden’s veto essentially shelves the legislation for the current Congress. 

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Overturning Biden’s veto would require a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate, and the House vote fell well short of that margin.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.