Trump Trans 2

===

see fascism bypass senate, gaetz weaponize doj

see swamp thing lobby rev dr

fail on vetting? homan? secur clearances?

see kaki- kelpto- buy election bribe musk 6 hedge find plumBROligarchy

see grift

see conspiracy wingnut

maddow public servant announce omfg billy long

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scorecard on votes

How senators voted on Trump Cabinet nominees, 2025 - Ballotpedia

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an 12 25 himan fail

Reporting from MS NOW shows the Trump administration knew current White House immigration advisor Tom Homan was under investigation for bribery before Trump submitted Homan’s name to Congress for approval.

In early January, a Justice Department lawyer passed an envelope with news of Homan’s “bombshell” crookery, according to two people briefed on the meeting. The official who received the information, Trump’s personal attorney Emil Bove “closed his eyes and grimaced, according to two people briefed on the meeting,” reports Pulitzer Prize-winning author and MS NOW contributor Carol Leonnig,

Giving Bove the memo was an unprecedented move,, but a small group of career lawyers at the Justice Department felt “an urgency to share this sensitive information with the president-elect's team as soon as possible.”

Not that the team appeared to care, said Leonnig. After the FBI’s criminal bribery probe into Homan came to light, the Trump team didn't quietly cut him loose. It's not even clear what Bove did with the information DOJ officials gave him about Homan. Instead, Homan got both the job and the security clearance it required, and Trump's FBI director quietly closed the bureau's criminal bribery probe into Homan, despite Homan never denying taking a paper bag full of cash proffered by agents in a sting. And Trump would later elevate Bove to a U.S. Circuit Court judgeship.

“Donald Trump balked at the notion that all other presidents had followed before him of submitting names for these FBI background checks,” Leonnig told Johnson. “If the president-elect had done that the way normal people do, he would have gotten the alert and the benefit of the FBI’s research, and known that the guy he was considering for a very senior law enforcement post was indeed under criminal investigation for potentially soliciting bribes, and had been recorded accepting $50,000 in cash in a bag.”

Johnson pointed out that many federal jobs vet employees so thoroughly that even a candidate’s debt-to-income ratio can boot them from the running because of the threat their financial hunger represents to taxpayers.

“That's … why DOJ officials believed there was no way [Homan] was going to get a security clearance, and that he would be suitable for such a job, Leonnig said. “How could he have access to some of the government's most important secrets and sensitive information if he was a person who might be willing to take money in exchange for things of value? Could a foreign adversary approach him and say, ‘let me give you $100,000 in a Chipotle bag?’”

During his first term, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner did not initially receive a top-secret security clearance, based on the fact that Kushner had “made a lot of outreach to foreign sovereign wealth funds for financing, because he was in dire financial straits and very much in the red on a very large mortgage," per Leonnig.

“And so, the worry as described by those security officials was that [Kushner] was very manipulable," she said. "That was their word: manipulable. And in this instance, DOJ officials believed that Homan had already illustrated he was willing to take cash in appearing to promise to steer contracts. What else might he be willing to do?”

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AN 11 25

A little over a year since he was reelected,the New York Times reports that the list of donors for President Donald Trump's transition efforts has finally seen the light of day. The list is notable for the presence of various billionaires, lobbyists, and future administration appointees, with one expert summing it up as a rundown of "who is buying the government."

In the past, prior incoming presidential administrations, including Trump's first, signed an agreement pledging to disclose their list of transition donors within 30 days of their inauguration in exchange for $7 million in federal funding and support from the General Services Administration. The second time around, however, Trump refused to sign the agreement, leaving the list shrouded in secrecy.

The agreement would have also capped donations at $5,000 and blocked donors from foreign countries. At the time, Trump's chief of staff Susie Wiles said the decision to forgo the agreement was made to “save taxpayers’ hard-earned money," while also pledging to release the list at a later date and ensure that no non-citizen donations were accepted.

On Wednesday, the New YorkTimesreleased a report finally delving into the 46 names now disclosed by the Trump administration, roughly 10 months after the inauguration. The report highlighted two notable billionaires included in the list, Jeff Yass and Paul Singer. Yass is the co-founder of the trading firm Susquehanna International Group and an investor in TikTok. He has been credited with convincing Trump to soften his stance on a ban of TikTok in the U.S. Singer is a venture capitalist who founded Elliott Management, where he works as co-CEO.

Elsewhere on the list are numerous names of individuals who went on to receive appointments to key positions in the Trump administration. This includes former WWE executive and first-term cabinet member Linda McMahon, who now serves as Secretary of Education, leading the charge to try and disband the Department of Education altogether. There is also Howard Lutnick, who now serves as Trump's secretary of commerce.

"Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, donated, as did Stanley Woodward Jr., the third-ranking official in the Justice Department," the Times report explained. "Dominick Gerace II, who was sworn in as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Ohio in August, is also listed as a donor."

The report also noted several names on the list that match those of known lobbyists, but could not reach them to confirm.

“They claimed they were saving taxpayers money, but what they were doing was hiding the ball about who is buying the government,” Max Stier, the president of the nonprofit watchdog group Partnership for Public Service, said in a statement about the list to the Times.

REF

NO LNX

Ken BensingerDavid A. Fahrenthold

By Ken Bensinger and David A. Fahrenthold

Nov. 26, 2025

A full year after making a public pledge to do so, President Trump has disclosed a list of donors who helped pay for his transition to power.

The list of 46 individuals, released by the transition team, includes billionaires like Jeff Yass and Paul Singer as well as several supporters who went on to be appointees in the current administration.

In total, the transition said it raised slightly more than $14 million, but did not specify how much each donor contributed. It said $13.7 million was spent on the transition effort.

“President Trump greatly appreciates his supporters and donors; however, unlike politicians of the past, he is not bought by anyone and does what’s in the best interest of the country,” Danielle Alvarez, a spokeswoman for the Trump transition, said in a statement. “Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.”

Among those on the list are Linda McMahon and Howard Lutnick, who served as co-chairs of the transition and were subsequently appointed as the secretaries of education and commerce, respectively. Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, donated, as did Stanley Woodward Jr., the third-ranking official in the Justice Department. Dominick Gerace II, who was sworn in as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Ohio in August, is also listed as a donor.

Image

President Trump turns to his left to look at a smiling Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary.

Mr. Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in the Oval Office earlier this year. Mr. Lutnick was one of the dozens of donors to Mr. Trump’s transition, and his family donated to the $300 million White House construction project.Credit...Tierney L. Cross for The New York Times...

NO LNX 3X TRY BING

A Year Later, Donors to Trump’s Transition Come to Light

A 46-person list includes billionaires and people he went on to appoint to positions of power.

By Ken Bensinger and David A. Fahrenthold

Nov. 26, 2025

A full year after making a public pledge to do so, President Trump has disclosed a list of donors who helped pay for his transition to power.

In total, the transition said it raised slightly more than $14 million, but did not specify how much each donor contributed. It said $13.7 million was spent on the transition effort.

At least three of the entries on the list matched names of Washington lobbyists, but their identities could not be confirmed. Lobbyists with those names did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday evening. Because the list did not include addresses, hometowns or professions, it was not possible to confirm the identity of many other individuals described as donors.

Until now, the Trump administration had not released any information about the finances of its transition, the work-intensive project of preparing to take control of the government in the period after a presidential election.

Late last year, Mr. Trump’s transition team refused to sign an agreement with the General Services Administration that would have required it to publish the names of its contributors and the amount of money they donated within 30 days of the inauguration in exchange for more than $7 million in federal funding and administrative support.

Prior administrations, including Mr. Trump’s in 2016, signed that agreement, which in addition to the disclosure obligation caps individual donations at $5,000 and bars foreign contributions. By declining to sign, the second Trump transition sidestepped those strictures and presumably could accept far larger contributions.

Almost exactly one year ago, Susie Wiles, now serving as Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, described the decision not to sign the G.S.A. agreement as a way to “save taxpayers’ hard-earned money.” At the time, she also pledged to disclose the names of donors and to ensure that no noncitizens contributed to the transition.

Mr. Trump had reported raising $6.5 million for his first presidential transition, all from private donations under the $5,000 cap. In 2021, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. disclosed $22.1 million in contributions to his transition.

Image

Education Secretary Linda McMahon was a donor for Mr. Trump’s transition and for his inaugural fund.Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

Watchdog groups had raised alarm about the lack of transparency surrounding the most recent Trump transition, noting that by not revealing who was contributing — and how much they had chipped in — it was nearly impossible for the public to know about potential conflicts of interest or pay-for-play arrangements.

“They claimed they were saving taxpayers money, but what they were doing was hiding the ball about who is buying the government,” said Max Stier, the president of the nonpartisan nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, which promotes best practices in the federal government and runs the Center for Presidential Transition.

Last week, that group released a report on the Trump transition that criticized it for “significant departures from established norms,” noting that it started late and relied heavily on a handful of outside think tanks, chiefly the Heritage Foundation and the America First Policy Institute, to develop policy and hire personnel for the new administration.

The report called on Congress to create laws requiring transitions to disclose the names of donors who give over a threshold amount as well as to publicly account for spending by the transition, which it said would “create public scrutiny that encourages the transition team to police itself tightly against conflicts of interest.”

The transition organization, formally known as Trump Vance 2025 Transition Inc., was incorporated in Florida and registered with the I.R.S. as a type of non-charitable nonprofit. As such, it does not have to pay taxes, but cannot give its donors a tax break for their gifts.

By law, the nonprofit must file an annual report with the I.R.S. showing what it raised and how it spent its money, although it is not required to disclose the names of donors. That report must be provided to the public upon request. The New York Times requested that report on Tuesday from the nonprofit’s agent, a lawyer in West Palm Beach, Fla. He said it would be released in the coming days.

Image

Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, with the president in May. Mr. Witkoff was one of Trump’s donors.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Three of the donors also gave to Mr. Trump’s inaugural fund. Ms. McMahon and Mr. Singer each donated $1 million, while Marlene Ricketts, the wife of the founder of TD Ameritrade, contributed $1.1 million. In total, the incoming president raised a record $250.4 million for his inauguration, more than double the amount raised for his first one.

Mr. Lutnick’s family was also a donor to the $300 million White House construction project, according to a list disclosed by the administration last month.

List of donors

Linda McMahon

Howard Lutnick

Robert Johnson WOODY

MRS

Suzanne Johnson

Marlene Ricketts

Robert Bishop

Samantha George

Stephen Plaster

Adam Clampitt

Jeff Yass

Paul Singer

Steve Witkoff

Robert Bigelow

Stanley Woodward

Gene Ventura

Andrew Cuff

Elias Levy

Jeff Littlejohn

Stephen Dewey

Robert Turley

James Tuell

Michael Desmond

Susan Silverie

Jonathan Slemrod

Thomas Schiavone

Marcel Kaminstein

Conor Sheehey

Wade Eyerly

Robert Foran

Kenneth Bridger Roy

Dominick Gerace

Kameel Ali

Matthew Iager

Robert Newton

Anita Winsor

Jeremy Isenberg

Scott Pillath

Harry Jackson

Douglas deWysocki

Jesus Cuartas

Thomas Griffy

Frederick Wilson

Charles Mccarthy

Hector Wong

Brigette Frantz

Catalina Lamontain

Ken Bensinger covers media and politics for The Times.

David A. Fahrenthold is a Times investigative reporter writing about nonprofit organizations. He has been a reporter for two decades.

See more on: General Services Administration, Linda McMahon, Donald Trump, Paul E Singer

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fail documented

4 25

our Tweet Ended Kathleen Sgamma’s Bid to Lead Trump Public Lands Agency

https://substack.com/app-link/post?publication

Memo Revealed Sgamma Was 'Disgusted' by Trump's Role in Inciting Jan. 6 Violence

Sgamma, President, Western Energy Alliance, speaks during a House Committee on Natural Resources hearing on America's Energy and Mineral potential, Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)

On Tuesday morning, I posted on social media a private memo from Kathleen Sgamma that revealed criticism of Donald Trump from within his own circle. Trump is well known to demand absolute loyalty from his nominees. By Thursday afternoon, just hours before her confirmation hearing, Kathleen Sgamma withdrew her nomination to lead the Bureau of Land Management. It has been widely reported that it was the memo that forced her out.

In February Donald Trump nominated Sgamma to oversee the BLM. Few were surprised by his choice. Sgamma has been a longtime advocate for the oil and gas industry and president of the Western Energy Alliance, a prominent trade group representing the industry.

Trump's position on climate change has been well reported since before his first term. Since his 2020 victory, he has openly pushed for expanded drilling, vowed to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, and said(once again), "We will drill, baby, drill," during his inauguration address.

During that speech, Trump also stated that the U.S. has the “largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth—and we are going to use it.”

Sgamma seemed like a natural fit, albeit one that was horrifying for many environmental groups. Taylor McKinnon of the Center for Biological Diversity called her nomination an "unmitigated disaster," citing her "breathtaking disdain" for protecting public lands.

But behind the scenes, we uncovered a revealing internal memo buried among internal Western Energy Alliance documents from 2021, written by Sgamma to the group's member companies. In it, she strongly criticized Trump’s actions around January 6th.

Crucially, the Sgamma memo was sent to WEA members on January 7th, amid intense political backlash following the January 6th attack on the Capitol, and when Trump's leadership faced widespread condemnation and calls for impeachment. Some dissent (or honesty) was possible in that brief window.

In the memo, Sgamma expressed being “disgusted” by the violence on January 6th, placing blame squarely on Trump’s "role in spreading misinformation that incited it.” She went further, offering supportive words to incoming President Joe Biden, hoping he could restore “normalcy and moderation” to a nation shaken by unrest—even as she openly acknowledged their obvious policy differences.

Here is what Sgamma wrote in 2021:

I don’t usually bother you with reactions to major events shaping the country and world, because there is plenty of coverage on those. We take positions on issues in our portfolio, and I usually do not like to stray into larger issues that are outside the lanes directed by our committees and boards. We stick to our issues in social media, and I personally limit engagement on most other issues because of my professional position and general intolerance for a medium that quickly devolves into people yelling past each other.

However, the events yesterday at the Capitol were so shocking that our policy engagement with and PAC support for the Trump Administration compels me to speak up. I am disgusted by the violence witnessed yesterday and President Trump’s role in spreading misinformation that incited it. I’m disgusted he discredited all the good work he did reorienting the judiciary back toward respect for the rule of law and constitution by dishonoring the vote of the People and the rulings of those very same judges on his numerous challenges. I’m disheartened he besmirched his smart, well-intentioned people in the agencies who did such good work on important policies that advance the crucial mission of making life-sustaining, affordable energy accessible to all Americans, no matter their race, gender, and political orientation.

Senator Mike Lee, Chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources announced Ms. Sgamma's withdrawal as the committee gathered on Thursday. “We accept her withdrawal and look forward to putting forth another nominee,” said a White House spokesperson.

Former Trump Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, now in private practice at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, tweeted after the withdrawal: "Individuals who know their views don’t align with the president, yet seek political appointments hoping such divergence won't be noticed, cause needless harm. Sad. Self-inflicted."

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FAIL

3/12? nom pulled hours before hearing bc not votes?

white-house-pulls-cdc-director-nomination-day-confirmation-hearing-rcna196208

Trump administration

White House withdraws CDC director nomination just before his Senate confirmation hearing

Former Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Fla., was set to face questions at his Senate confirmation hearing Thursday morning.

March 13, 2025, 6:16 AM PDT / Updated March 13, 2025, 11:25 AM PDT

By Garrett Haake, Rebecca Shabad, Berkeley Lovelace Jr. and Erika Edwards

WASHINGTON — The White House has withdrawn the nomination of former Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Fla., whom President Donald Trump had chosen to be director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a senior administration official said.

The nomination was withdrawn just before Weldon was scheduled to testify at his confirmation hearing Thursday morning before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Axios first reported the news.

Weldon was told Wednesday night that his nomination was being withdrawn, another Trump administration official said. The White House decided to pull Weldon’s nomination when it became clear that he would not have the votes to be favorably reported out of committee because of his past controversial comments about vaccines, the official said.

The Senate committee chairman, Bill Cassidy, R-La., had been looking forward to the hearing, but Weldon did not have the votes from the committee to get the nomination onto the Senate floor, a source on Capitol Hill close to Cassidy said.

Follow live politics coverage here

In a lengthy statement, Weldon said he assumed the White House withdrew his nomination because Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, had reservations and because Cassidy planned to vote against him. He added that Cassidy had asked for his nomination to be withdrawn over concerns that he could be “antivax.”

There are 12 Republicans and 11 Democrats on the committee, Weldon noted, so losing even one of the Republican senators would have been a problem.

“So, he was a big problem, and losing Collins, too, was clearly too much for the White House,” Weldon said, referring to Cassidy. “The president is a busy man doing good work for our nation, and the last thing he needs is a controversy about CDC.”

Former Rep. Dave Weldon (R-FL) in 2005.

Former Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Fla., in 2005.Joe Raedle / Getty Images file

A spokesperson for Cassidy denied that Cassidy asked the administration to withdraw Weldon's nomination and that Cassidy was expected to vote against him.

Cassidy said later in a statement: "I was looking forward to the hearing. I was surprised when Dr. Weldon’s nomination was withdrawn.

"His poor response to this situation shows that the pressures of being CDC director would have been too much,” he said.

Weldon also claimed the pharmaceutical industry lobbied against his nomination, and he defended the work of Andrew Wakefield, the British physician who published a study that falsely claimed the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella causes autism.

Cassidy, a doctor, had raised concerns about the anti-vaccine advocacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. before Kennedy was confirmed as health and human services secretary last month. Weldon has held some vaccine views similar to Kennedy's.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., met with Weldon last month and signaled she would oppose his nomination, saying she had little confidence he would stand up to Kennedy. She said Weldon "spent years promoting the false conspiracy that vaccines cause autism, but he has also criticized the CDC’s essential role in vaccine safety research."

After his nomination was withdrawn, Murray called Weldon "a vaccine skeptic who spent years spreading lies about safe and proven vaccines" and "should never have even been under consideration to lead the foremost agency charged with protecting public health."

"While I have little to no confidence in the Trump administration to do so, they should immediately nominate someone for this position who at bare minimum believes in basic science and will help lead CDC’s important work to monitor and prevent deadly outbreaks," she said.

Weldon served 14 years in the House until 2009, during which he criticized the CDC and questioned the safety of vaccines. Similar to Kennedy, Weldon has made statements linking vaccines to autism even though research shows there is no connection, and he has called on the CDC to further research it.

As a congressman, he questioned the safety of the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella, and he also promoted disproven claims that a mercury-containing preservative, thimerosal, used in children's vaccines caused autism, even sponsoring a bill called the Mercury-Free Vaccines Act.

In 2007, he unveiled legislation that would have transferred oversight of vaccine safety from the CDC to an independent agency within the Department of Health and Human Services.

Weldon also reportedly helped anti-vaccine researchers Mark Geier and his son, David, access the Vaccine Safety Datalink, a CDC database containing patient health records, according to an account in the 2004 book “Evidence of Harm” by journalist David Kirby.

The CDC has decided to begin researching autism and potential links to vaccines, said a source familiar with the agency's planning.

Garrett Haake

Garrett Haake is NBC News' senior White House correspondent.

Rebecca Shabad

Rebecca Shabad is a politics reporter for NBC News based in Washington.

Berkeley Lovelace Jr.

Berkeley Lovelace Jr. is a health and medical reporter for NBC News. He covers the Food and Drug Administration, with a special focus on Covid vaccines, prescription drug pricing and health care. He previously covered the biotech and pharmaceutical industry with CNBC.

Erika Edwards

Erika Edwards is a health and medical news writer and reporter for NBC News and "TODAY."

Vaughn Hillyard contributed.

AN 1 25

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For Trump appointees, being a predator isn’t a liability — it’s a career booster

Lindsay BeyersteinJanuary 24, 2025

Before leaving office, President Joe Biden announced that the Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution had been ratified. A few days later, Donald Trump, an adjudicated rapist and convicted felon, took Biden’s place as the president of the United States.

The contrast could not be more stark.

In a Trump administration, rape is a career-booster. And why not? For the narcissist-in-chief, slavish emulation is the sincerest form of flattery. Trump has been accused of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment by at least 26 women since the 1970s, including his ex-wife Ivana and writer E. Jean Carroll.

Trump confessed to a pattern of sexual assault in the 2005 Access Hollywood tape, in which he confided that he habitually grabbed and kissed women without asking, because "when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. ... Grab 'em by the pussy."

Carroll won a lawsuit against Trump for raping her in the dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman in the mid-1990s and a defamation lawsuit against him for claiming she made the whole thing up. The jury found that Trump shoved his fingers into Carroll’s vagina against her will. The judge clarified that this was rape as most people understand the term, and therefore that Carroll’s claim that Donald Trump raped her was true – even though New York’s outdated rape statute only covered rapes with penises. The law has since been updated to include all forms of non-consensual penetration.

Trump chose Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh to administer the oath of office. Kavanaugh was confirmed despite compelling testimony that he attempted to rape Christine Blasey Ford. Kavanaugh’s contemptuous denials and self-pitying antics won him the admiration of Trump, who considers such performances as a testament of strength and a badge of honor.

Trump’s first pick for US Attorney General was Matt Gaetz, who resigned from Congress and withdrew from consideration before the House Ethics Committee could reveal substantial evidence that Gaetz violated Florida's statutory rape law.

Prospective Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth paid a settlement to a woman who said Hegseth raped her at a Republican convention in 2017. Hegseth blindsided the Trump transition team by not disclosing the California episode, but willingness to furiously deny a rape allegation counts for more than honesty in Trump’s book.

Trump stood by his nominee while his allies waged an unprecedented campaign to intimidate witnesses who might speak to Hegseth’s drinking and his stormy history with women. Republican Senators enabled the deception by refusing to meet with Hegseth’s accuser. During his confirmation hearing, Hegseth refused to say whether rape would be disqualifying for a secretary of defense.

Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. apologized by text to his former babysitter after she alleged that he sexually assaulted her in the 1990s, cornering her in a bedroom and groping her against her will. In public, however, Kennedy was contemptuous of the allegations and hinted there were many more where that came from. “I had a very, very rambunctious youth,” Kennedy said when asked about the allegations, “I said in my announcement speech that I have so many skeletons in my closet that if they could all vote, I could run for king of the world.”

SpaceX paid $250,000 to silence a SpaceX flight attendant who accused Trump’s co-consul Elon Musk of exposing his erect penis to her on a flight, pawing her leg and promising to buy her a horse if she jerked him off. Musk has also been sued by eight former employees who claim that Musk personally fired them after they objected to the sexually-charged work environment he created at SpaceX, accusing him of running high-tech empire like the “dark ages,” barraging employees with vile sexual banter, obscene memes and degrading comments, and retaliating against anyone who complained.

There’s not enough space to delve into the allegations against senior Trump’s campaign strategist Corey Lewandowski, senior advisor Jason Miller, former personal lawyer (and former lawyer) Rudy Giuliani, prospective secretary of education Linda McMahon, or future ambassador to the Bahamas, Herschel Walker.

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AN 1 25

Trump, who made baseless attacks against FEMA during his 2024 campaign, suggested on Wednesday night that he wants to defund the Homeland Security emergency management agency and shift the burden for disaster relief to individual states. The move would revoke federal responsibility for managing crises like hurricanes, earthquakes, flooding, and wildfires. While his remarks appear to align with The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, he appears to have gone further in appointing an interim FEMA head who reportedly “does not appear to have experience coordinating responses to large scale disasters.”

Although he has repeatedly denied knowing anything about Project 2025, despite at least 140 of his former administration’s officials having been involved with the program, President Trump appears to be following the far-right plan to eliminate or largely downsize the 45-year-old agency. Its current incarnation was created by President Jimmy Carter, but the federal government of the United States has been assisting states with disaster relief for well over 200 years.

“Now, I will say that Los Angeles has changed everything, because a lot of money’s gonna be necessary for Los Angeles, and a lot of people on the other side want that to happen,” Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity in a pre-taped interview that aired Wednesday night (video below). In recent weeks, California’s wildfires, fueled in part by climate change according to Scientific American, have decimated large swaths of the Los Angeles area, killing dozens of people.

“Well, they don’t care about North Carolina. The Democrats don’t care about North Carolina. What they’ve done with FEMA is so bad. FEMA is a whole other discussion. Because all it does is complicate everything,” Trump baselessly charged. “FEMA has not done their job for the last four years. You know, I had FEMA working really well, we had hurricanes in Florida, we had Alabama, tornadoes, we had. — but unless you have certain types of leadership, it’s really, it gets in the way.”

“And FEMA is gonna be a whole big discussion very shortly because I’d rather see the states take care of their own problems,” Trump declared, alluding to wanting to dismantle the agency. “If they have a tornado, someplace, and if they have — let that state, Oklahoma is very competent. I love Oklahoma. 77 out a 77 districts and uh that’s never been done,” he claimed, referring to his Electoral College win.

On Thursday, The Independent reported, “Trump wants to shut down the Federal Emergency Management Agency and let states handle their own disaster needs.”

Project 2025 describes the Department of Homeland Security as a “bloated” bureaucracy that would “provide real opportunities for a conservative Administration to cut billions in spending and limit government’s role in Americans’ lives.”

It calls for “privatizing” FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program, and “reforming FEMA emergency spending to shift the majority of preparedness and response costs to states and localities instead of the federal government,” as well as “eliminating most of DHS’s grant programs, and removing all unions in the department for national security purposes.”

Trump’s remark, “I’d rather see the states take care of their own problems,” is similar to a portion of Project 2025’s proposal.

But Trump appears to have taken yet another step that could harm FEMA.

Trump has appointed a former Navy SEAL, Cameron Hamilton, who “does not appear to have experience coordinating responses to large-scale disasters, like the wildfires in California,” to be the interim head of FEMA, according to The New York Times.

“Mr. Hamilton is an unusual choice to lead the agency, even in a temporary capacity. Since Hurricane Katrina, when the federal response was severely criticized, FEMA has been led by disaster management professionals who have run state or local emergency management agencies, or were regional administrators at FEMA,” the Times reported. “Mr. Hamilton does not appear to have experience coordinating responses to large scale disasters like the wildfires that are raging in Los Angeles or the hurricanes, floods and earthquakes that FEMA typically manages.”

===

LOYALTY PURITY

AN 1 25

Republican Michael Allen, known for his focus on national security, has been aggressively promoting John Ratcliffe for CIA director.

But according to Politico sources, he is being ousted from President-elect Donald Trump's transition orbit because he once hosted a fundraiser for former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming).

A member of Trump's transition team, interviewed on condition of anonymity, told Politico that Allen did a "fine job" promoting Trump's nomination of Ratcliffe for CIA director.

"Still," Politico's Daniel Lippman reports in an article published on January 13, "the ouster appeared to be further evidence of efforts within the president-elect's orbit to purge Republicans who have supported outspoken critics like Cheney, who voted to impeach Trump and served on the House January 6 Committee."

Allen, interviewed by Politico, didn't get into the details about being ousted. And he told the publication, "I was happy to pitch in. Ratcliffe will make a great CIA director, and I’m looking forward to President Trump's term."

But a transition official, quoted anonymously, told Politico, "There are all sorts of purity tests in this new administration, more so than in the first term."

After the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building, Liz Cheney blamed Trump for the attack and was relentless in her criticism of him. And in the 2024 presidential race, Cheney campaigned for Vice President Kamala Harris — who was also endorsed by her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney.

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an 1 25

Trump's own supporters on Saturday lashed out as the President-elect announced the nomination of a contributor to Project 2025.

Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign distanced himself from Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation's blueprint for a Republican presidential administration. The project was found by polls to be devastating for Republicans, and Trump did what he could to disassociate from those who headed it.

But over the weekend, the former and incoming president announced he would be bringing on someone who had a role in the document.

ALSO READ: Trump intel advisor Devin Nunes still dismisses Russian election meddling as a 'hoax'

"I am pleased to announce that Steven Gill Bradbury will be the next United States Deputy Secretary of Transportation," Trump wrote. "For the entirety of my First Term, Steven served as the General Counsel of the Department of Transportation, where he helped rebuild our crumbling Infrastructure, and cut regulations that were killing jobs and our incredible Small Businesses. He previously clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas."

Trump added, "Steven will work with our fantastic Secretary of Transportation Nominee, Sean Duffy, to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN."

Not all Trump's supporters were happy with the move.

David W. Reinauer, a conservative Christian who has posted pro-Trump material, said, "Oh great! Another satanic (f)reemason from the Heritage freemason society!"

"The 'conservative deep state' of the USA," he added. "Let's hope it is a SPOTLIGHT like most of the rest."

Another self-identified "MAGA" supporter, @blacklisterd, said, "We already have roads. Close it down."

A user who celebrated Trump's election win, @Cheshiret, said the President-elect was making appointments to an "unconstitutional agency."

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an 1 25

top House Democrat is leveling strong criticism against Donald Trump for what he mockingly referred to as the president-elect’s “dream team” of cabinet nominees.

Democratic Rules Committee Vice Chair Jim McGovern of Massachusetts told his colleagues Tuesday afternoon (videos below) that the incoming Trump administration “is leaking plans to court martial military officers who are not sufficiently loyal.”

“Isn’t that usually how things go in authoritarian dictatorships? Purge the military of anyone who might have a spine and refused to obey an unlawful order? I mean, what the hell is going on here?” he asked.

“And their cabinet picks so far? I mean, these are like beyond insane,” McGovern declared. “Someone who is credibly accused of having sex with an underage girl. Someone who sucks up to foreign dictators and has attracted major concern that they can’t be trusted to protect America’s secrets from our adversaries. Someone who paid hush money to cover up a sexual assault accusation, you know, to lead our military, he’s picked because Donald Trump likes him on Fox News? Someone who says that tap water turns kids gay? I mean, this is the dream team? This is the dream team? Really?”

McGovern appeared to be referring to Attorney General presumptive nominee Matt Gaetz, Director of National Intelligence presumptive nominee Tulsi Gabbard, Defense Secretary presumptive nominee Pete Hegseth, and HHS Secretary presumptive nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“I mean, seriously, it would be funny if it weren’t so sad. And hopefully, you United States Senate has a backbone and insists on a thorough confirmation process. Look, the truth is this. The truth is that this is not what people voted for. They voted for their pocketbooks, and frankly, I don’t blame them.”

Congressman McGovern also declared, “every decision that has been made by this incoming administration so far has not been about the American people. It has been about them.”

“I’m reading the newspaper again this morning that they want to issue blank pardons to those who committed crimes on January 6th,” he said, referring to the 2021 insurrection. “Republicans call them ‘political prisoners.’ I mean, these are people who were arrested, indicted, tried, and convicted by juries and judges and courtrooms across this country for violently attacking our brave law enforcement officers people who smashed cops in the heads with metal barricades, who jammed them indoors until blood was coming out of their mouths. And the incoming administration is thinking about pardoning them.”

According to the U.S. Dept. of Justice, as of August 5, over 1,488 defendants have been charged, including approximately 547 defendants who “have been charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or employees,” and, “including approximately 163 individuals who have been charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer.”

McGovern continued, adding, “I do not believe any of what my Republican friends are talking about on the floor today is in line with what the American people voted for. They voted for cheaper groceries, not whatever the hell this stuff is. They are asking us to vote for a bill, my Republican friends, that we give the incoming administration the ability to revoke the nonprofit status of any advocacy group they want, just by labeling them as a ‘terrorist sympathizer.’ A bill that would give President-elect Trump a new power to just unilaterally accuse an American group of terrorism and then shut them down.”

The Massachusetts Democrat also went on to say that he blames, “the billionaires who have rigged our country against working people and spent the last four decades squeezing every penny they could out of people. I blame the politicians, including the incoming administration, who have abandoned workers and who have and who have done nothing while the rich get richer and everyone else gets screwed.”

“My friends on the other side, they want to blame trans people. Guess what? Trans people aren’t the ones raising people’s grocery prices. Big corporations are. They wanna blame immigrants. And here’s the deal. Immigrants aren’t the ones denying health insurance claims, Mr. Speaker. It’s the billion dollar insurance companies that do that on a daily basis. And they want to blame woke this and woke that, what’s woke about thinking special interests should not be able to buy tax breaks?”

Watch the short clips below or at this link.

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AN 1 25

President-elect Donald Trump is taking over the "staggering challenge" of a military that is unprepared to fight America's enemies, conservative analyst Max Boot wrote for The Washington Post — and worse still, he has nominated a man to lead it who doesn't understand why.

This comes as Trump's pick to lead the Department of Defense, Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, has come under fire for his history of alleged sexual misconduct, heavy drinking, and advocacy to pardon war criminals — and it also comes as Trump refuses to rule out using military force to seize territories like Greenland and the Panama Canal Zone as part of a neo-imperialist project.

But the military is not even prepared to perform its basic defense duties right now, wrote Boot, let alone engage in wars of aggression and conquest.

"The essential question that senators must ask is whether Hegseth, a Fox News host and former National Guardsman, has the capacity and experience to prepare the armed forces to fight a major war — and, if so, how he would go about it," wrote Boot. "Because right now, the U.S. military simply is not ready to defeat an adversary such as China or Russia in a protracted conflict."

ALSO READ: Trump intel advisor Devin Nunes still dismisses Russian election meddling as a 'hoax'

Hegseth has repeatedly claimed the military is failing to meet its recruitment goals due to "wokeness" and commitments to diversity alienating the type of masculine soldier stock America once relied on — but that completely misunderstands the issue, wrote Boot: the real problem "is that America became complacent after the Cold War when it downsized its armed forces and its defense-industrial base. Since then, the United States has prepared a military suitable for fighting insurgents in Afghanistan or Iraq — but utterly inadequate for an extended fight against a major power."

Today, Boot wrote, we're facing a military that has a degraded ability to construct and service its own ships, a massive shortage of drones, and a lack of infrastructure or institutional knowledge to fix these problems — and despite common complaints about how much money is spent on the military, "While high in absolute terms, U.S. defense spending is just 3 percent of gross domestic product, far below Cold War levels."

"Now it will be up to senators to decide if Hegseth — who was dogged by accusations of mismanagement and misconduct at the two nonprofits he ran — is the right person to rebuild America’s atrophied defense capabilities," Boot concluded. "The committee members should grill him not only about his past, but also about his plans to address this massive challenge. His record doesn’t inspire confidence that he can rise to a task that would severely test far more experienced executives."

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an 1 25

After clashing with many of the traditional conservatives who were part of his first administration — from former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to ex-White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly — President-elect Donald Trump is hoping to surround himself with MAGA loyalists during his second term. That includes top officials as well as people further down the ladder.

But according to CBS News reporters Jennifer Jacobs and Ed O'Keefe, Trump's transition team is falling short of their hiring goals.

In an article published on January 6 — the day the 2024 Electoral College votes will be counted and certified during a joint session of Congress — Jacobs and O'Keefe explain, "The Trump transition had set a goal of bringing on as many as 2000 political appointees on January 20, Day One of the administration," the reporters explain. "But it's falling short of that target, two sources told CBS News. About 4000 political appointees serve across the federal government currently."

The CBS News reporters continue, "Around 1200 political appointees were in place when Trump assumed the presidency in January 2017, aides estimated. President Biden's transition chair Ted Kaufman said, in 2021, his administration had 1136 political appointees on Inauguration Day."

Trump, according to Jacobs and O'Keefe, has "warned against bringing in anyone who might subvert his agenda and was highly involved in selecting his Cabinet-designees and several top management posts."

However, he has "left the decisions about the bulk of staffing for mid- and lower-level positions to those on his team who will lead departments and agencies."

Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Florida), Trump's pick for national security adviser, is emphasizing that anyone who joins the second Trump Administration must be a loyalist through and through.

On January 6 on X, formerly Twitter, Waltz posted, "Let me be clear: anyone working under President Trump in the NSC will be fully aligned with his America First agenda. Any rumors or suggestions to the contrary are fake news and a distraction from the mission. We will clear the decks to Make America Great Again!"

READ MORE:['Frightening': Trump not ruling out pardoning January 6 participants convicted of sedition

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an pro pub 12 24

As Donald Trump’s nominee to run the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Scott Turner may soon oversee the nation’s efforts to build affordable apartments, protect poor tenants and aid the homeless. As a lawmaker in the Texas House of Representatives, Turner voted against those very initiatives.

Turner supported a bill ensuring landlords could refuse apartments to applicants because they received federal housing assistance. He opposed a bill to expand affordable rental housing. He voted against funding public-private partnerships to support the homeless and against twobills that called merely to study homelessness among young people and veterans.

Behind those votes lay a deep-seated skepticism about the value of government efforts to alleviate poverty, a skepticism that Turner has voiced again and again. He has called welfare “dangerous, harmful” and “one of the most destructive things for the family.” When one interviewer said receiving government assistance was keeping recipients in “bondage” of “a worse form to,” Turner agreed.

Such views would seemingly place Turner at odds with the core work of HUD, a sprawling federal agency that serves as a backstop against homelessness for millions of the nation’s poor, elderly and disabled. With an annual discretionary budget of $72 billion, the department provides rental assistance to 2 million families, oversees the country’s 800,000 public housing units, fights housing discrimination and segregation and provides support to the nation’s 650,000 homeless. If Turner’s record indicates how he will direct the agency’s agenda, it is those clinging to the bottom of the housing market who have the most to lose, researchers and advocates said.

“It just doesn’t seem to me like this is someone who is at all aligned with what the values of that agency should be,” said Cea Weaver, director of the advocacy group Housing Justice for All. “It’s a deregulatory agenda, and it’s an anti-poor people agenda.”

Shamus Roller, executive director of the National Housing Law Project, said Turner’s views, if translated into policy, could increase homelessness. “If, at a fundamental level, you believe that people getting assistance with their rent when they’re very poor and struggling, if you think that’s actually dependence and a bad thing, you’re going to try to undermine those programs,” he said.

One former colleague offered a more optimistic view of Turner’s stewardship of HUD. “My sense of him is he will try to help people,” said Richard Peña Raymond, a Democratic Texas House member who served on a committee with Turner. “I do think he’ll do a good job.”

Turner did not respond to detailed questions. A spokesperson for the nominee said: “Of course ProPublica would try and paint a negative picture of Mr. Turner before he is even given the opportunity to testify. We would expect nothing less from a publication that solely serves as a liberal mouthpiece.”

The Trump transition team and HUD did not respond to requests for comment. Trump’s announcement of Turner’s nomination praised him for “helping lead an Unprecedented Effort that Transformed our Country’s most distressed communities” as head of a White House council that promoted opportunity zones, a plan to spur investment in low-income neighborhoods by offering generous tax breaks, during Trump’s first administration. “Under Scott’s leadership,” the announcement went on, “Opportunity Zones received over $50 Billion Dollars in Private Investment!”

Turner is hardly the only Trump cabinet nominee to display skepticism or outright hostility toward the work of agencies they may lead. But, while other nominees have faced intense scrutiny in recent weeks, Turner has attracted little public attention and said even less about his intentions, beyond vowing to “bring much-needed change” to HUD, as he wrote on Facebook last month. ProPublica pieced together his views on housing through a review of legislative records and of Turner’s public speeches, podcast appearances and sermons at the Plano, Texas, megachurch where he is a pastor.

A possible HUD agenda for Turner can be found in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s recommendations for a conservative presidential administration. The report calls for cutting funding for affordable housing, repealing regulations that fight housing discrimination, increasing work requirements and adding time limits for rental assistance and eliminating anti-homelessness policies, among other changes. The Project 2025 chapter on HUD lists Ben Carson, the department secretary during the first Trump administration and a mentor to Turner, as its author. Carson, as secretary, was involved in efforts to end an anti-segregation rule, add work requirements for housing assistance and make it harder to prove housing discrimination.

Turner’s views appear to be deeply rooted in his upbringing outside Dallas, where he was, as he later put it, “a young kid from a broken home, from a poor family.” His parents’ relationship was “filled with violence, domestic violence, abuse, a lot of anger [and] alcohol.” Years later, as a legislator, Turner said that his sister had been “on state assistance and wasn’t feeding [Turner’s] nephew while she was on drugs.” (ProPublica was unable to locate Turner’s sister for comment.)

Football proved an escape. Turner received a scholarship to play for the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and then he went on to a nearly decadelong career in the National Football League. He began transitioning into politics while still in the league, interning for California Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican who years later would be convicted of stealing from his campaign account. After an unsuccessful run for a California congressional seat in 2006, Turner moved back to Texas and was elected in 2012 to the state House of Representatives, where he served for four years.

There, Turner solidified his position as a deeply conservative member opposed to many government interventions into the housing market, legislative records show. He voted against supporting foreclosure prevention programs. He opposed legislation to help public housing authorities replace or rehabilitate their property (although he voted for a minor expansion of that bill two years later). He also sought to require drug testing for poor families applying for government assistance, the Houston Chronicle reported at the time. Turner did support some modest housing assistance measures, such as bills helping housing developments for seniors and in rural areas seek low-income housing tax credits.

During his time in office, Turner was the lead author of 17 substantive bills. None were related to housing, and none of them became law.

“He’s a very nice guy,” but “he didn’t really make much of a legislative impression,” said a former high-ranking Republican Texas lawmaker, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about a former colleague. “He didn’t leave a deep footprint.”

That did not stop Turner, however, from mounting an audacious bid for the House speakership, a move reportedlybackedby Tim Dunn, a West Texas pastor and oil billionaire who has used his fortune to push the state Legislature far to the right. Turner’s speaker campaign failed, but it helped solidify his position within Texas’ deep-red Christian political milieu, where he has remained ever since.

Turner is an associate pastor at Prestonwood Baptist Church, a political force in Texas that has counted numerous statewide elected officials as congregants. Jack Graham, the church’s senior pastor, prayed over Trump at an event in October and from the pulpit in November. Turner’s skepticism about government assistance has found its way into his sermons there, where the “perverse incentives created by the government and the welfare system, which in turn creates an epidemic of fatherlessness in our country.”

Turner or his political staffers also used campaign money to attend three conferences held by WallBuilders, an organization that seeks “to reveal the historical truths” about the “Christian foundation of our nation,” campaign finance records show. In 2016, Turner gave a $10,000 gift to WallBuilders from his campaign account.

Turner’s allies on the Christian far right also include Ziklag, a secretive network of ultrawealthy Christian families and religious influencers that support Trump. As ProPublica reported, Ziklag has raised millions of dollars as part of a larger mission to help Christian leaders “take dominion” over key areas of American society, from education and business to media and government. This year, Ziklag spent millions of dollars to mobilize Republican-leaning voters in swing states despite being a tax-exempt charity that isn’t allowed to intervene in politics. (A lawyer for Ziklag previously told ProPublica that the organization does not endorse candidates for political office.)

In June 2019, Turner and his wife, Robin, attended a private Ziklag conference at the Broadmoor luxury resort in Colorado Springs, Colorado, according to photos of the event posted by an attendee. At the time, Turner was working in the first Trump administration as executive director of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council, where he served as a public salesman for the opportunity zones initiative. Turner as a way to improve neighborhoods with high poverty and unemployment rates. Previous reporting by ProPublica found that the program was exploited by wealthy, politically connected investors, which drew scrutiny from members of Congress.

Internal documents obtained by ProPublica and Documented show that Ziklag members sought to take advantage of the program; in May 2019, Ziklag said in one of its newsletters that members of the group had met with three administration officials about opportunity zones. “The administration informed the group they are in a state of listening and learning about the program,” the document reads. “Ziklaggers are exploring additional avenues to make an impact on the program moving forward.”

After leaving the Trump administration, Turner started a nonprofit that promotes “Christ-centered reading enhancement programs” for children and helps people get driver’s licenses. He also became “chief visionary officer” at the multifamily housing developer JPI.

Now, if confirmed, Turner will be in charge of an agency with some 10,000 employees at a critical time. “We’re dealing with a pretty terrible housing crisis all across the country,” said Roller, of the National Housing Law Project. HUD will be “essential to any effort” to solve it.

Jesse Coburn covers cities, housing and transportation for ProPublica. He’s interested in how the second Trump administration will reshape federal policy in those areas, particularly at the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Transportation. If you work for one of those agencies or are affected by their work, he’d like to hear from you. You can email him at jesse.coburn@propublica.org, or reach him via phone, Signal or WhatsApp at 917-239-6642. His mailing address is: Jesse Coburn, ProPublica, 155 6th Avenue, 13th Floor, New York, NY 10013.

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AN 12 24

After Politico reported on Wednesday that federal officials are worried that sharing documents with Donald Trump's transition team via email could put sensitive government data at risk, critics are taking aim at the president-elect's "hypocrisy".

Washington Monthly politics editor Bill Scher replied: "But her emails," referring to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's 2016 run against Trump, in which the ex-Democratic candidate faced criticism "over her use of a personal email server while secretary of State," according to The Hill.

The Washington Post's Meryl Kornfield replied:"Trump — who attacked his then-opponent Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email server for official business during his first presidential run — is overseeing a fully privatized transition."

Fair Fight Action communications director Max Flugrath wrote: "Trump 2016: BUT HER EMAILS!!! Trump 2024: Our private email server is secure enough for classified information. The hypocrisy is staggering — and dangerous."

The Hill noted, "The former first lady’s emails were subject to numerous investigations, including by the FBI, which declined to charge her with violating federal records-keeping requirements or other crimes."

READ MORE:['He's trying to steal from you': Dem issues warning over Trump's 'relentless campaign' against press

AN 12 24

During an appearance on MSNBC on Sunday morning, former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade raised red flags over Donald Trump's appointment of Truth Social exec Devin Nunes as chairman of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.

Speaking with MSNBC fill-in host Melissa Murray, the former prosecutor claimed that, with all of the president-elect's problematic nominations, allowing Nunes access to sensitive intel secrets may be the worst of all.

McQuade got right to the point, calling the appointment, "A shocking, astonishing, disturbing, and fill in your descriptor, conflict of interests."

ALSO READ:The reckoning: Plenty of hurts coming for the people who didn't care about their country

"As chairman, Devin Nunes will have access to all of the intelligence that is gathered by the intelligence community," she explained. "The idea is that he is supposed to be the president's eyes and ears over the intelligence community. With that information, and simultaneously serving as the head of Truth Social, it means he has the ability to post things he shouldn't know but also as Rick Wilson points out, the fact that Truth Social receives funding from foreign governments, while they are also targets of our intelligence come is deeply disturbing."

"If someone had to go through a routine background investigation, those conflicts would be flagged with screaming sirens and I would imagine that most presidents, most offices of personnel management would find him to be a nonstarter," she added.

"But here we have Donald Trump putting [him] in place, knowing about this conflicts," she suggested. "I think of all of the appointments, this conflict might be the most disturbing."

Watch below or at the link:

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an 12 24

Trump's second administration is shaping up to be much different from his first.

The first Trump Administration had its share of establishment Republicans and traditional conservatives who clashed with him, including those who served as secretary of state (Rex Tillerson), national security director (John Bolton), White House chief of staff (John F. Kelly) or U.S. attorney general (Jeff Sessions). And some members of the first Trump Administration — former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham and ex-Mike Pence national security aide Olivia Troye — endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and spoke at the National Democratic Convention in Chicago.

In contrast, many of the picks for Trump's second administration are hardcore loyalists and far-right MAGA Republicans. And quite a few critics, from Democrats to Never Trump conservatives, are warning that the president-elect is trying to put together an administration of extremists.

Conservative attorney George Conway, a Never Trumper, isn't optimistic that Trump's most "appalling" nominees will encounter a lot of resistance from "spineless" senators in 2025. But Conway has pointed out that the GOP's U.S. Senate majority will be only a small one, and that four or five Republican defections could sink a nominee if Senate Democrats stick together.

In "Senate Republicans Could Still Deny Trump His Worst Picks," an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on December 16, journalist Jill Lawrence argues that it's too soon to assume that all of Trump's worst nominees will be rubber-stamped by Senate Republicans next year.

"Each day, the damning information mounts about one Trump pick or another, with more reasons for various senators to vote against them," Lawrence explains. "I cannot predict, for instance, whether Sen. Mitch McConnell — a polio victim as a toddler, before vaccines — will support anti-vax Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the nation's top heath leader, especially since we now know that RFK Jr.'s lawyer wants the government to withdraw approval for the polio vaccine, and McConnell has said that is dangerous for public health and potentially disqualifying for RFK Jr.’s nomination."

Lawrence adds, "So I don't think it's fair to predict what McConnell will do next year, when he is no longer the GOP leader and is unlikely to run for reelection in 2026."

Lawrence notes that when Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) spoke at a recent No Labels gathering, she was vehemently critical of Trump allies who are trying to bully Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) into rubber-stamping Trump's more controversial nominees.

"It's not fair to give up on any potential Republican resistance at this point — before Trump is president; before anyone has been officially nominated; before FBI background checks and continued revelatory reporting by journalists; before it is necessary to cast a series of fateful votes," Lawrence argues. "Most Senate Republicans will vote to confirm all of Trump's personnel choices. But a fluid group of four GOP no votes, depending on the nominee and added to the Democratic opposition, could block those with the most potential to cause havoc or tragedy."

Lawrence adds, "With that in mind, I'm not going to indulge in anticipatory disappointment. Even though I may be disappointed in the end.

READ MORE:[Memo to Rupert Murdoch: Now is the time to sell Fox News

*Jill Lawrence's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.

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12 11 See the full list of Trump Cabinet picks and major White House appointments

shORt bios

Full list of Trump's Cabinet picks

In addition to Vice President-elect JD Vance, who is part of the Cabinet, here's the list of the people Trump has chosen to fill his Cabinet. They're listed in order of succession to the presidency, which is determined by when the department was created.

Secretary of State: Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida
Treasury Secretary: Scott Bessent
Defense Secretary: Pete Hegseth
Attorney General: Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi
Interior Secretary: North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum
Agriculture Secretary: Brooke Rollins
Commerce Secretary: Howard Lutnick
Labor Secretary: Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon
Health and Human Services Secretary: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Housing and Urban Development Secretary: Former Texas state Rep. Scott Turner
Transportation Secretary: Former Rep. Sean Duffy of Wisconsin
Energy Secretary: Chris Wright
Education Secretary: Former Small Business Administrator Linda McMahon
Veterans Affairs Secretary: Former Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia
Homeland Security Secretary: South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem

Other key roles and positions in Trump administration

Chief of staff: Susie Wiles
FBI director: Kash Patel
CIA director: Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe
Director of National Intelligence: Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii
Border czar: Tom Homan
Department of Government Efficiency: Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy
Office of Management and Budget director: Russ Vought
Environmental Protection administrator: Former New York Rep. Lee Zeldin
National security adviser: Rep. Michael Waltz of Florida
Ambassador to the U.N.: Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York
Administrator of the Small Business Administration: Kelly Loeffler
Counselor to the president: Alina Habba
"Crypto czar": David Sacks
Surgeon General: Dr. Janette Nesheiwat
White House press secretary: Karoline Leavitt

...Trump announced that he has selected former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard to serve as his director of national intelligence.

"For over two decades, Tulsi has fought for our country and the freedoms of all Americans," he said in a statement.

Gabbard served in the Army National Guard and represented Hawaii in the House from 2013 to 2021 before becoming an independent in 2022. In his statement, Trump said she "is now a proud Republican!" Gabbard ran for president in the Democratic primaries in 2020.

Gabbard does not have experience in the field of intelligence and opposes U.S. intervention in the war in Ukraine. Her views on Russia and her 2017 meeting with Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad have drawn controversy.

"Border czar": Tom Homan

Tom Homan

Tom Homan, former acting director of U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE), speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 22, 2024.

Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Trump announced Tom Homan will serve as "border czar" in his incoming administration. Homan was the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the first Trump administration.

"I am pleased to announce that the Former ICE Director, and stalwart on Border Control, Tom Homan, will be joining the Trump Administration, in charge of our Nation's Borders," the president-elect wrote on his Truth Social site.

In addition to overseeing the southern and northern borders and "maritime, and aviation security," Trump said Homan "will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin" — a major theme of Trump's campaign.

This role does not require Senate confirmation.

Homan was recently interviewed by 60 Minutes' Cecilia Vega before the election. During the conversation, he said Trump's plan for mass deportation would be implemented.

"I hear a lot of people say, you know, the talk of a mass deportation is racist. It's— it's— it's threatening to the immigrant community. It's not threatening to the immigrant community," Homan said. "It should be threatening to the illegal immigrant community. But on the heels of [a] historic illegal immigration crisis. That has to be done."

Department of Government Efficiency: Elon Musk & Vivek Ramaswamy

Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk

File photos of entrepreneur and former Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy (left); Tesla, SpaceX and X CEO Elon Musk (right).

Getty Images

Trump announced he is naming billionaire ally Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, a former GOP primary rival, to lead a newly created Department of Government Efficiency — nicknamed DOGE, which is also the name of a cryptocurrency Musk has promoted.

"I am pleased to announce that the Great Elon Musk, working in conjunction with American Patriot Vivek Ramaswamy, will lead the Department of Government Efficiency ("DOGE"). Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies," Trump said in a statement, adding a quote from Musk, who said: "This will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!"

Trump's statement indicated their roles may not be formally part of the government but would "provide advice and guidance from outside." He said their work "will conclude no later than July 4, 2026."

Office of Management and Budget director: Russ Vought

Russell Vought

File: Office of Management and Budget Acting Director Russell Vought testifies before the House Budget Committee on March 12, 2019.

Susan Walsh / AP

Trump announced he will name Russ Vought as OMB director. Vought served in this role in the latter part of the first Trump administration.

Vought was involved in writing the conservative Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, which contains a detailed blueprint for the next Republican president to usher in a sweeping overhaul of the executive branch.

He was also the policy director for the 2024 Republican National Committee's platform committee, which adopted the GOP platform at July's convention.

—Ed O'Keefe and Major Garrett

EPA administrator: Lee Zeldin

Former Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., is seen at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on July 16, 2024.

Trump announced that he will nominate former New York Republican congressman Lee Zeldin to head the Environmental Protection Agency.

"Lee, with a very strong legal background, has been a true fighter for America First policies. He will ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses, while at the same time maintaining the highest environmental standards," Trump said in a statement.

Zeldin wrote, "It is an honor to join President Trump's Cabinet as EPA Administrator."

Zeldin represented New York's 1st Congressional District, on Long Island, from 2015 to 2023, and he ran for governor in 2022 but was defeated by Gov. Kathy Hochul.

National security adviser: Michael Waltz

u-s-rep-mike-waltz-of-florida.png

U.S. Rep. Mike Waltz of Florida

waltz.house.gov

Rep. Michael Waltz, a Florida Republican, was named national security adviser. Trump praised his military record and expertise on China, Russia, Iran and global terrorism.

"Mike has been a strong champion of my America First Foreign Policy agenda, and will be a tremendous champion of our pursuit of Peace through Strength!" the president-elect said in a statement.

Waltz, a Green Beret veteran who served multiple combat tours in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa, was elected to Congress in 2018, replacing Ron DeSantis who had been elected Florida's governor.

Waltz, a China hawk, serves on the House China Task Force that aims to develop solutions to address the Chinese Communist Party's influence. He has also been skeptical of giving more aid to Ukraine as it fights Russia's invasion.

U.N. ambassador: Elise Stefanik

Trump has offered the job of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations to Rep. Elise Stefanik.

Stefanik, who represents a district in upstate New York, is a vocal and staunch Trump ally and the No. 4 House Republican as chair of the House Republican Conference.

"I am honored to nominate Chairwoman Elise Stefanik to serve in my Cabinet as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Elise is an incredibly strong, tough, and smart America First fighter," Trump said in a statement to CBS News.

Stefanik withdrew from the race to be conference chair, confirming in a letter to her GOP colleagues she had spoken with Trump and "shared how deeply humbled I am to accept his nomination."

The role of U.N. ambassador requires Senate confirmation.

—Fin Gomez and Nikole Killion

Administrator of the Small Business Administration: Kelly Loeffler

Kelly Loeffler

Former Sen. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia speaks at the Georgia Republican Party's state convention on June 9, 2023, in Columbus, Georgia.

Cheney Orr for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Trump on Dec. 4 announced he is selecting former Sen. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia to lead the Small Business Administration.

Loeffler served in the Senate briefly between 2020 and 2021. She was appointed to the post following the resignation of former Georgia Sen. Johnny Isakson, but lost a bid for a full term about a year later to current Sen. Raphael Warnock in a runoff election.

In a post to his Truth Social platform, Trump said "Kelly will bring her experience in business and Washington to reduce red tape, and unleash opportunity for our Small Businesses to grow, innovate, and thrive. She will focus on ensuring that SBA is accountable to Taxpayers by cracking down on waste, fraud, and regulatory overreach."

Loeffler, a Trump loyalist, supported efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. She co-owned the WNBA team the Atlanta Dream, but sold the franchise in 2021 after she received backlash over being publicly critical of the league for supporting the Black Lives Matter movement.

She was also briefly investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee over allegations of insider trading before the pandemic, but that investigation was dropped.

Counselor to the president: Alina Habba

Attorney Alina Habba

Attorney Alina Habba looks on as former President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference at Trump Tower in New York City on Sept. 6, 2024.

Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images

Trump on Dec. 8 announced Alina Habba, a lawyer who has represented the president-elect in numerous legal proceedings over the past few years, would serve as counselor to the president.

"She has been unwavering in her loyalty, and unmatched in her resolve - standing with me through numerous 'trials,' battles, and countless days in Court," Trump said in a statement.

"Crypto czar": David Sacks

David Sacks

David Sacks, former CEO of Yammer, speaks at the Republican National Convention on July 15, 2024, in Milwaukee.

Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Trump announced on Dec. 5 that he is selecting venture capitalist David Sacks to be his so-called "White House A.I. & Crypto Czar."

In a post to his Truth Social platform, Trump said that Sacks "will guide policy for the Administration in Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency, two areas critical to the future of American competitiveness."

It's unclear exactly what Sacks' role will consist of. The move comes one day after Trump selected Paul Atkins as his pick to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission. Atkins has been a major proponent of cryptocurrency. On the same day that Atkins was named, the price of Bitcoin surpassed the $100,000 mark for the first time ever, a major milestone for the industry.

Sacks, who was a key figure in developing Paypal, served as its COO and later founded the social networking service Yammer. He was also an angel investor in major companies like SpaceX, Uber and Palantir.

A past supporter of Democrat Hillary Clinton, Sacks supported Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance in the last election cycle and was an early adopter of the Trump tech money machine, urging others in Silicon Valley to give to Trump.

He also spoke at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July.

—Daniel Klaidman

Surgeon general: Dr. Janette Nesheiwat...

Trump has selected Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright as his pick to lead the U.S. Department of Energy.

Trump also said in a statement that Wright will serve on the newly-created National Energy Council, which will be chaired by North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Trump's selection for secretary of the Interior.

===

Trump has picked Lebanon-born businessman Massad Boulos — whose son Michael Boulos is married to his daughter Tiffany Trump — as a senior adviser on Middle Eastern affairs.

The older Boulos has been described as a "billionaire attorney" in articles. But according to Business Insider's Jack Newsham, "public records and interviews" indicate that he "appears to be neither a billionaire nor a licensed attorney."

President-elect Trump, Newsham reports in an article published on December 12, "apparently inflated Boulos' réesumé."

"Business Insider found no proof of Boulos' supposed billions," according to Newsham. "And while he may have attended law school, he hasn't passed a bar exam and can't practice law."

Newsham adds that Massad Boulos "doesn't run" the company Boulos Enterprises, according to "several former employees and its actual boss, Boulos Boulos."

"A due-diligence report for Boulos Enterprises Ltd. created by Moody's Orbis database doesn't mention Massad Boulos," Newsham reports. "Archived copies of the Boulos Group website from 2016 and 2018 didn't mention him, either. And Elephant Africa Holding, a Mauritius company created by the Boulos Group to hold its paper businesses, also doesn't mention Massad in its corporate filings."

Newsham notes that Massad Boulos, whose son met Tiffany Trump in Greece in 2018, has been "credited in news stories with playing a key role in Donald Trump's 2024 electoral victory, helping peel Arab-American voters away from Democrats in battlegrounds like Michigan."

DESMOG

Climate Deniers Waiting in the Wings as Trump Reclaims Presidency

Meet those aiming to capitalize on Trump’s re-election by slashing climate action, from Koch network fixtures to Project 2025 and beyond.

ByJoe Fassler and Sharon Kelly

on Nov 8, 2024

Donald Trump peers around a flag while waiting to appear onstage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in February 2024. Credit: Zach D. Roberts

In the wake of Donald Trump’s electoral victory early Wednesday morning, climate policy in the U.S. enters an uncertain new era. Some themes are already apparent: Trump has pledged to scale up domestic fossil fuel production while making a broader push to deregulate industry. He also seems intent on scaling back the Inflation Reduction Act, the groundbreaking spending bill that’s already built out clean-tech infrastructure and added thousands of green jobs (mostly in politically conservative states).

But how far will Trump go, and how exactly will his administration’s anti-environmental stance play out? That remains to be seen — and will surely depend on the counsel of senior staffers in his orbit. It’s too soon to say exactly who those key appointees will be (UPDATE 11/11/24: although some are starting to trickle in, like his pick of Lee Zeldin to lead the Environmental Protection Agency), and, as Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer points out, their policy positions won’t be monolithic. Just look at Elon Musk, the key Trump campaign ally and megadonor who appears poised to play an influential role in the White House, who also happens to be CEO of a famous EV company.

Yet judging from Trump’s track record and recent statements, antipathy toward environmental regulations and decarbonization incentives seems an all but certain theme. And many of Trump’s first-term appointees — including some potentially poised to return to power — have histories of active climate crisis denial and delay. Former Trump officials spent the past four years lobbying for energy companies (including those they’d recently regulated), and contributed to the Heritage Foundation’s “Mandate for Leadership” document, the foundation of the now-notorious Project 2025 initiative. The Heritage-led effort, despite the once and future president’s feigned disavowals, features key contributions from his former staffers, including in sections that suggest dismantling the parts of government most focused on addressing climate change and environmental injustice.

Here are the individuals and organizations that may do the most to help shape the incoming administration’s energy and climate-related moves as well as the environmental policy priorities that Project 2025 outlines for each executive branch agency.

Key Individuals

Former EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, right, appeared with two oil industry representatives on a February 2024 panel titled “Putting our Heads in the Gas Stove.” Credit: Zach D. Roberts.

**Andrew Wheeler** — After leaving office as Trump’s (second) U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator, Wheeler spent much of his post-Trump tenure working for Virginia Republican governor Gov. Glenn Youngkin. But in April, Wheeler left government and joined the law firm Holland & Hart, which touted the benefits Wheeler could bring for its “energy and natural resources clients.”

During his earlier stint leading the EPA, Wheeler came under fire for overseeing “favorable decisions” for his past lobbying clients, including fossil fuel giants like coal company Murray Energy and the utility Xcel Energy. The New York Times tracked over 100 environmental rules rolled back by the EPA under Trump, the majority on Wheeler’s watch.

Long before he took over the EPA, Wheeler worked for the notorious climate denier Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe. During his 2019 nomination hearing, which followed the resignation of Trump’s first EPA chief Scott Pruitt, Wheeler said he would “not use the ‘hoax’ word myself” to describe climate change, but added he would also “not call it the greatest crisis.” Mandy Gunasekara, a Project 2025 co-author, backed a Wheeler return for Trump’s second term in a November 1 New York Times interview.

**David Bernhardt** — A long-time oil lobbyist, Bernhardt replaced Ryan Zinke as Trump’s Secretary of the Interior in April 2019. “It’s not so much who has he helped. It’s who hasn’t he helped in industry so far,” Bobby McEnaney, a Natural Resources Defense Council analyst, told The Guardian in 2018 during Bernhardt’s nomination hearings.

In 2019, Bernhardt told Congress he hadn’t “lost any sleep” over rising greenhouse gas levels on his watch. He also shrank the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in southern Utah to allow drilling and mining (a move later reversed by Pres. Biden), called in National Park Service police to tear-gas peaceful civil rights protesters at Washington, DC’s Lafayette Square, undercut protections for endangered species — and much more.

In 2021, Bernhardt returned to Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, the same law firm where he’d worked for oil industry clients before joining the Trump administration. His past lobbying clients include the Independent Petroleum Association of America, the Freeport LNG Expansion, Targa Resources, Noble Energy, Halliburton, and a host of other fossil fuel industry companies. Bernhardt is rumored to be a candidate for a “senior post” in the incoming Trump administration, according to E&E News.

President Donald Trump, joined by U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt (third from right), California representatives Devin Nunes and Tom Clintock, and Central Valley farmers, signs a U.S. Interior Department Record of Decision to improve California water accessibility for rural stakeholders February 19, 2020, in Bakersville, California. Credit: White House/Shealah Craighead, public domain.

**Mandy Gunasekara** — The former Environmental Protection Agency Chief of Staff under Andrew Wheeler, Gunasekara helped to drive environmental priorities for the Trump-Pence administration; in her bio on X, she has claimed to be Trump’s “top environmental person.” After leaving office, she became director of the Center on Energy and Conservation at the Independent Women’s Forum, a think tank with a history of taking obstructionist stances on climate progress.

Her career after government also included work as a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the think tank current Heritage Foundation CEO and Project 2025 mastermind Kevin D. Roberts spent much of his career leading. Gunasekara authored Project 2025’s chapter on the EPA, where she accused the agency of saddling industry with “costly, job-killing regulations,” and proposed rolling back greenhouse gas emissions standards and reporting protocols as well as a sweeping agency reorganization that includes axing the office overseeing environmental justice. She also authored Y’all Fired, a forthcoming book proposing to reshape federal oversight using mass layoffs.

Bernard McNamee — The author of Project 2025’s plans for the Department of Energy and “related commissions,” McNamee was first nominated to serve as one of five Federal Regulatory Energy Commission (FERC) commissioners by Trump in 2018. After leaving FERC in September 2020, McNamee returned to the law firm McGuireWoods where, according to his LinkedIn, he now “assists clients with rulemakings before federal agencies, including FERC, USDOE and EPA.” While most of those clients aren’t publicly known, they appear to include Dominion Energy, a utility company that today still runs on coal, natural gas, and oil. McNamee has been registered as a lobbyist for the company in Virginia since December 2023. (Dominion denied any involvement in Project 2025 in a statement to Virginia Public Media in August).

It’s not McNamee’s first time spinning through the revolving door between regulator and industry. Before arriving at FERC, he spent 10 months as a deputy general counsel at the Department of Energy. On leaving that job, he ran the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s pro-fossil fuel Life:Powered initiative for about four months — then returned to DOE, where he briefly directed the Office of Policy.

“There’s an organized propaganda campaign against fossil fuels,” McNamee said in 2018, while he spoke at a Texas Public Policy Foundation event, according to video unearthed by the Energy and Policy Institute. “You talk to people in corporate boardrooms now. They’re all buying into this.”

Key Organizations

A Trump supporter at CPAC in February 2024. Credit: Zach D. Roberts

In the sections of Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership” that deal directly with climate, staffers from a handful of organizations play an outsized role — suggesting their influence within conservative politics, and their likely relevance to the incoming administration. The organizations that specifically helped to craft Project 2025’s climate agenda include several tracked by DeSmog, especially:

**The Heritage Foundation** — Forty-seven of Project 2025’s 233 contributors gave their Heritage Foundation affiliation, including contributors to sections on the Department of Energy, Interior, Transportation, Commerce, and the Treasury — all of which push for climate-related policy changes.

Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts personally wrote the foreword to the Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership. Roberts was CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, another long-time part of the Koch network with a history of climate denial, before he took the helm at Heritage in 2021. “[W]e are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be,” Roberts said on Steve Bannon’s radio show in July.

In 2016, Heritage was nicknamed Trump’s “Shadow Transition Team.” Their 2024 directors include Diana Furchgott-Roth, author of a 2022 Forbes post on climate change, in which she claimed that “some research shows little change.”

**Competitive Enterprise Institute** — Eight Project 2025 contributors listed their Competitive Enterprise Institute affiliations, making CEI the third-most represented organization in Project 2025’s plans for the incoming Trump administration.

CEI’s representatives contributed to Project 2025’s sections on the Department of Energy, the Treasury, the Department of Commerce, and trade policies — all of which discuss climate change or carry implications for the climate.

In 2016, CEI’s then-leader Myron Ebell (who spent nearly 25 years at CEI before retiring this year) led Trump’s EPA transition team. “CEI questions global warming alarmism,” the organization wrote in 2016, as DeSmog notes in the group’s Climate Disinformation Database profile, adding that it opposed “EPA regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.”

Today, CEI calls itself “instrumental in fighting decades of climate alarmism.” The organization credits itself with leading coalitions that defeated ratification of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, stopping a major cap-and-trade bill in 2009, and “convincing President Trump to withdraw from the 2015 Paris climate treaty.”

**Texas Public Policy Foundation** — Brent Bennet, policy director of TPPF’s Life:Powered initiative, contributed to Project 2025’s Energy Department discussion. In addition to its long-running ties to the Koch network, TPPF has also been funded by oil majors, including Shell (which funded many other groups involved in Project 2025, DeSmog revealed in August) and ExxonMobil.

At a TPPF event this summer, Benny Peiser, the director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation “claimed that net zero ‘requires governments to become authoritarian,’” DeSmog reported in June.

**Institute for Energy Research** — The Institute for Energy Research’s long-time leader Tom Pyle, who also runs the advocacy group American Energy Alliance, was one of the contributors to Project 2025’s section on the Department of Energy. IER’s Dan Kish is also acknowledged as a contributor to Project 2025’s discussion of the Interior Department.

“Both Pyle and his firm have lobbied for the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association (now the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers) and for Koch Industries,” DeSmog’s profile on Pyle notes.

Pyle previously worked to shape the first Trump administration’s energy policies as head of Trump’s transition energy team, as DeSmog reported back in December 2016.

Trump went on to pursue many of the goals called for in Pyle’s 2016 “Trump Administration Energy Plan,” including backing out of the Paris Agreement, increased oil and gas leasing on federal lands, and rolling back fuel economy standards, which was a major priority of Pyle’s client the oil refining group AFPM.

RELATED: [*We unraveled the $122 million web of climate denial, political extremism, and Trump ties to Project 2025

Mapped: How 6 Billionaire Family Fortunes Fund Project 2025 - DeSmog

**Western Energy Alliance** — In the footnotes to Project 2025’s chapter on the Department of the Interior, author William Perry Pendley reveals that “Kathleen Sgamma, Dan Kish, and Katie Tubb wrote the section on energy in its entirety.” Sgamma is president of the Western Energy Alliance. (Tubb is a former Heritage Foundation policy analyst and Kish, as noted above, is with IER).

Western Energy Alliance is an oil and gas trade group. It calls itself “the unified voice and backbone for independent oil and natural gas companies in the West” and, DeSmog’s profile notes, the group represents hundreds of oil and gas companies. Under the first Trump administration, the Western Energy Alliance was involved with a possible plan to move control of oil and gas development on federal lands to the states.

Other groups contributing to Project 2025 chapters that discuss climate change include the Koch-linked Americans for Prosperity, Reason Foundation and Mercatus Center.

Policy Priorities

So what exactly do many of these groups want from a second Trump term? Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership plan organizes its demands for rolling back environmental protections and preventing climate action into chapters, each covering its plans for executive branch agencies, including:

Environmental Protection Agency headquarters in Washington, D.C. Credit: US EPA

The Environmental Protection Agency— Section author: Mandy Gunasekara (see above)Project 2025’s plan for the EPA would effectively “cut any program focused on climate, limit the agency’s ability to regulate under both the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act,” slash environmental justice programs, revive the ‘secret science’ proposal from Trump’s first term, undercut the Inflation Reduction Act and more, as Drilled’s Amy Westervelt summarized it.

And that’s not all. Project 2025 also seeks to gut the National Environmental Policy Act (or NEPA, one of the nation’s bedrock federal environmental laws) as well as the Endangered Species Act. “The President should instruct the [White House Council on Environmental Quality] to rewrite its regulations implementing NEPA along the lines of the historic 2020 effort and restoring its key provisions such as banning the use of cumulative impact analysis,” Gunasekara wrote, referring to Trump’s bid to single-handedly slash permitting regulations just before the 2020 election.

Department of Energy and Related Commissions— Section author: Bernard L. McNamee (see above)“End the focus on climate change and green subsidies,” McNamee wrote in the Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership. “Eliminate energy efficiency standards for appliances.”

“End grid planning,” he added, faulting DOE’s electricity grid planning as working “for the benefit of renewable resources or supporting low/carbon generation.”

Project 2025’s DOE recommendations also include dismantling efforts to combat racism in the energy sector and unfair impacts from pollution on communities of color, dismissing energy justice as “politicized social agendas.”

DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy should be revived, it adds, “with its original mission: increasing energy security and supply through fossil fuels.”

Not all of Project 2025’s plans are likely to draw support across the oil and gas industry, however. McNamee also proposed scrapping the controversial 45Q carbon capture tax credit, whose biggest expected beneficiaries include oil and gas companies like Occidental and BP.

Treasury — Project 2025’s section on the Treasury was co-authored by Steven Moore, a Heritage Foundation senior fellow and co-author with Sgamma of a pro-fracking book titled Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy.

“The next Administration should eliminate the Climate Hub Office and withdraw from climate change agreements that are inimical to the prosperity of the United States,” Project 2025’s section on the Treasury Department proposes.

RELATED: *Meet the friendly new face of dark money:How Fidelity, Schwab, and Vanguard helped wealthy donors pour $171 million of dark money into Project 2025

Interior— Mostly written by William Perry Pendley (who, a federal court found in 2020, illegally ran the Bureau of Land Management under Trump), Project 2025’s Interior Department section covers major federal agencies with big impacts on oil, gas, and coal. That includes agencies such as the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), which is tasked with regulating offshore oil and gas drilling to prevent oil spills and protect worker safety, the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, and the U.S. Geological Survey.

‘“Given the dire adverse national impact of Biden’s war on fossil fuels, no other initiative is as important for the DOI under a conservative President than the restoration of the department’s historic role managing the nation’s vast storehouse of hydrocarbons, much of which is yet to be discovered,” Project 2025 claims. (Under Biden, the U.S. became the world’s top exporter of liquefied natural gas and the top producer of oil globally.)

Department of Transportation— In a chapter penned by Diana Furchgott-Roth, Project 2025 calls for making cars less fuel efficient by unwinding fuel economy requirements, preventing the EPA from playing a role in carbon dioxide emissions from vehicle engines, and revoking California’s unique ability to set stricter fuel economy standards.

Department of Commerce— The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is a Commerce Department agency that houses the National Weather Service and many climate, environmental, and ocean research offices — and Project 2025 has a simple plan for NOAA: elimination.

The agency “should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories,” Project 2025 says.

International Development Agency— “USAID should cease its war on fossil fuels in the developing world and support the responsible management of oil and gas reserves as the quickest way to end wrenching poverty and the need for open-ended foreign aid,” Project 2025’s plan demands. “The agency should cease collaborating with and funding progressive foundations, corporations, international institutions, and NGOs that advocate on behalf of climate fanaticism.”

Securities and Exchange Commission— If Project 2025’s backers have their way, the SEC will be required to “oppose efforts to redefine the purpose of business in the name of social justice; corporate social responsibility (CSR); stakeholder theory; environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria; socially responsible investing (SRI); sustainability; diversity; business ethics; or common-good capitalism.”

Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission — In addition to direct attacks on climate policies, the new administration is expected to “turn the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission against the media, which will entail a raft of leak investigations, the politicization of broadcast licenses and antitrust litigation, and the potential indictment of journalists for espionage,” according to the Columbia Journalism Review. “Reporters covering protests and immigration enforcement will face detention from not just local police, but the Department of Homeland Security. It’s possible that Trump may even seek congressional action to reform libel laws or otherwise criminalize dissent.”

Project 2025 urges the Justice Department to “use all of the tools at its disposal to investigate leaks” while its FCC chapter calls for the unwinding of media ownership rules designed to keep the press independent by limiting the number of broadcast stations that one corporation can own.

RELATED: *See DeSmog’s Climate Disinformation Database for more research on the individuals and organizations that have helped to push climate denial and delay

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see funder get gigs plums //

an 12 24

President-elect Donald Trump pledged to fast-track permits and tamp down regulations, including environmental, for any entity that wants to invest $1 billion or more in America, while offering no specifics or parameters, including how the federal government could arbitrarily overrule state and local laws.

“Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals. GET READY TO ROCK!!!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social website.

During the campaign, Trump told oil and gas executives and lobbyists at a closed-door Mar-a-Lago fundraiser that if they invested $1 billion in his campaign, he would scale back or remove environmental regulations.

“Attendees included executives from ExxonMobil, EQT Corporation and the American Petroleum Institute, which lobbies for the oil industry,” The New York Times had reported in May. “The event was organized by the oil billionaire Harold Hamm, who has for years helped to shape Republican energy policies.”

Trump has announced his nominee for Secretary of the Interior will be North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum.

“Under the National Environmental Policy Act,” Forbes reports, “the federal government is required to conduct environmental reviews before approving energy production plans, infrastructure builds and other projects. How Trump will help investors get around regulations isn’t clear, but Trump has vowed to increase domestic production of oil and natural gas, projects that are often stymied or killed in the regulatory process.”

Critics blasted Trump’s statement.

314Action, which says it is “the only organization in the nation focused on recruiting, training, and electing Democrats with a background in science to public office,” wrote: “To tackle the climate crisis, Congress needs to pass and enforce bold, evidence-based legislation. However, Donald Trump doesn’t believe that billionaires should have to follow the law. In his world, they can pay-to-play and bypass crucial environmental protections. That’s why we’ll always fight to #ElectScientists who will fight back against his anti-science agenda and hold these bad actors accountable.”

“A government of oligarchs that will exist to solely serve the interests of oligarchs while distracting working people with culture wars. Foreign corporations & persons can loot & pollute the US and bypass regs that protect the health of Americans as long as they got lots of cash,” observed MeidasTouch editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski.

Journalist David Leavitt asked, “How many animals will go extinct because of this? How much quicker will this hasten the destruction of our planet?”

===

aha not pm

msnbc 12 24

carusone says tucker has taken place of limbaugh as setting major uber narrative [ // bannon?], so not nec literally picking cab but trump has to cast to fit the story?

what is his meta narrative? GRT but tucker primary on that? trump as disrupter accounts for how basically incumbent could run against biden status quo?

bannon survival depends on being seen as influential in trumpworld? teaser: not what you expect hint j6

kash copies russian icons on mantle bkdrop?

===

12 24

Trump appoints ambassadors Kimberly Guilfoyle and Tom Barrack, plus 5 more picks

ABC News on MSN.com

President-elect Donald Trump posted a flurry of announcements on Tuesday, including Kimberly Guilfoyle as ambassador to Greece and Tom Barrack as ambassador to Turkey.

no lnx

To the Trump transition, the president-elect is named Kimberly Guilfoyle

President-elect Donald Trump posted a flurry of announcements to his Truth Social account on Tuesday night, including the appointment of Kimberly Guilfoyle as the ambassador to Greece and Tom Barrack as the ambassador to Turkey.

Guilfoyle, a former fundraiser for Trump and a former host on Fox News, is currently in an established relationship with Donald Trump Jr.

In announcing her position, Trump wrote, "For many years, Kimberly has been a close friend and ally. Her extensive experience and leadership in law, media, and politics along with her sharp intellect make her supremely qualified to represent the United States, and safeguard its interests abroad."

The post also stated, "Kimberly is perfectly suited to foster strong bilateral relations with Greece, advancing our interests on issues ranging from defense cooperation to trade and economic innovation."

The 2024 Republican National Convention

Tom Barrack is Trump's longtime friend who chaired his first inaugural committee — and he was notably acquitted of federal charges accusing him of illegal foreign lobbying on behalf of the United Arab Emirates.

Barrack was charged during the first Trump administration and campaign, in 2021. During his trial, he was accused by federal prosecutors of acting as a foreign agent but failing to register between 2016 and 2018 while allegedly trying to "leverage his access" to Trump with his contacts in the UAE.

A jury found him not guilty on all charges -- which also included conspiracy, obstruction and lying to the FBI -- in November 2022.

MORE: Trump ally Tom Barrack found not guilty on foreign lobbying charges

Trump praised Barrack's acquittal at the time, saying in a statement: "Great news for our Country, Freedom, and Democracy in that businessman Tom Barrack, who should have never been charged or tried, was just acquitted of all charges."

Barrack's testimony during the trial was at times critical of Trump. He said on the witness stand that his support for Trump politically was "disastrous" for him professionally, at one point mocking Trump's understanding of the Middle East.

"This amazingly good businessman became the president of the United States who could not spell the Middle East," Barrack said.

Asked about his criticism of Trump at the time of the acquittal, Barrack told ABC News: "I'm just done with politics."

In announcing his ambassadorship to Turkey on Tuesday, Trump said that Barrack is "a well respected and experienced voice of reason."

MORE: Trump names Alina Habba counselor to the president, with other State Department roles

The president-elect also announced roles at the Federal Trade Commission. He named Andrew Ferguson as chairman and Mark Meador as commissioner.

"Andrew has a proven record of standing up to Big Tech censorship, and protecting Freedom of Speech in our Great Country. Sworn in as a Commissioner on April 2, 2024, he will be able to fight on behalf of the American People on Day One of my Administration," Trump wrote in his announcement.

The post continued, "Andrew will be the most America First, and pro-innovation FTC Chair in our Country’s History."

For Meador, Trump listed a series of degrees and accomplishments in the announcement post.

MORE: Jan. 6 panel questions Donald Trump Jr.'s fiancee, GOP fundraiser Kimberly Guilfoyle

At the Office of Management and Budget, Trump announced Congressman Dan Bishop as deputy director and Ed Martin as the chief of staff.

For Bishop, he posted, "Dan has been a tireless fighter for our MAGA Movement in the House of Representatives on the Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees. Dan will implement my cost-cutting and deregulatory agenda across all Agencies, and root out the Weaponized Deep State."

"Ed is a winner who will help Make America Great Again!" he wrote for Martin.

Jacob Helberg

Lastly, Trump announced that Jacob Helberg will serve as undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment at the State Department.

In his post on Truth Social, Trump said, "In this role Jacob will be a champion of our America First Foreign Policy. He will guide State Department policy on Economic statecraft, promoting America’s Economic security and growth, and American technological dominance abroad. Jacob is a successful technology executive, has the knowledge, expertise, and pragmatism to defend America’s Economic interests abroad, and always puts AMERICA FIRST!"

Helberg is a former Democrat who went from being a little-known tech adviser to a rising star in Trump's circles, known largely as a China hawk and as a major proponent of the bill that may lead to banning TikTok in the U.S.

He’s a commissioner for the U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission, and he helped shore support on Capitol Hill for the bill that would ban TikTok if it’s not sold from its Chinese parent company by Jan. 19, 2025.

After Biden signed the TikTok bill into law earlier this year, Helberg posted photos of himself with several powerful members of Congress, including Speaker Mike Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, thanking them for being “truly outstanding people who can come together when our security is at stake.”

Helberg called TikTok a “Chinese weapon of war” in August, and he previously published a book titled, “The Wires of War.” The 2021 book is about tech-fueled wars shaping the world’s balance of power in the coming century, arguing that “without a firm partnership with the government, Silicon Valley is unable to protect democracy from the autocrats looking to sabotage it from Beijing to Moscow and Tehran.”

Helberg’s harsh criticism of TikTok could clash with Trump’s vow to “save” TikTok, even though Trump tried to ban the app during his first administration.

Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance “have laid out an aggressive agenda to face the twin convulsions of technological and geopolitical change, and ensure America wins the economic contests that define this century,” Helberg wrote on X after Trump announced his appointment on Tuesday.

“The State Department will play a critical role in acting on this vision," his post continued. "I look forward to earning the support of the U.S. Senate and working with @MarcoRubio to implement President Trump's agenda.”

In previous years, Helberg and his husband were "significant supporters" of Ron DeSantis and then reportedly shifted fundraising support to Nikki Haley in 2023.

By midway through the following year, however, Helberg had personally contributed $844,600 to the Trump 47 Committee, Inc. and another $1 million to the Make America Great Again, Inc. super PACs, according to filing data made available by the FEC.

===

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an 12 24

Trump's first priority since defeating Vice President Kamala Harris last month has been to fill his Cabinet with controversial nominees.

In a report published Monday, the Atlantic staff writer Jonathan Chait laid out three recent "disturbing" moves the MAGA leader made to further solidify his far-right agenda.

First, over the weekend, "The New York Timesreported that the Trump transition team is asking applicants for high-level positions in the Defense Department and intelligence agencies three questions: which candidate they supported in the last three elections, what they thought about January 6, and whether they believed the 2020 election was stolen," The Atlantic writer notes.

On Sunday, December 8, Chait continues, "in aninterview with NBC, Trump reiterated his promise to free the January 6 insurrectionists.

Later on that day, The Atlantic staff writer adds, "Trump announced that he will appoint Michael Anton as director of policy planning at the State Department. This announcement attracted little attention, and given that Anton already served the first Trump term (in a communications role), it hardly moves the needle. But Anton’s appointment does highlight the banal ubiquity of authoritarian thinking in the Trumpified Republican party."

Additionally, Chait notes that the Trump pick "called 'The Flight 93 Election,'" in which "heargued that conservatives should support Trump, despite their serious reservations about his character, because another Democratic term in office would amount to the final death of the republic."

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withpod billionaires have 1% chance to be in cab

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desmog 12 24

Right-wing populists enjoy stretching the boundaries of hypocrisy by raging about the crimes of the supposed “liberal metropolitan elite” from the comfort of Trump Tower or their financier-funded offices.

Four of Nigel Farage’s five MPs (including Farage himself) used to work in the City of London. James McMurdock worked for Lehman Brothers – the now-deceased investment bank that went bust during the 2008 crash, while both McMurdock and party chair Zia Yusuf spent time at Goldman Sachs, which attracted the following description from Rolling Stone magazine in 2010:

“The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”

As we all know, oil and gas reek of cash, so these investment funds and the pinstripe populists they bankroll have a vested interest in keeping fossil fuels flowing.

As revealed by DeSmog this week, Donald Trump’s new pick for UK ambassador has a cluster of oil and gas interests. Billionaire investor Warren Stephens and his family own a bunch of fossil fuel assets, including Stephens Natural Resources, which “continues to expand its production and reserves in the continental U.S. and offshore Gulf of Mexico”.

Campaigners have warned that Stephens’s appointment risks bringing a fossil fuel lobbyist in direct contact with the Labour government, potentially threatening its ambitious climate agenda.

Westminster is well acquainted with people like Stephens, whose vast corporate interests belie their anti-establishment prose.

This includes Tory peer Jon Moynihan (grandly known as Lord Moynihan of Chelsea), who has spent recent months blasting the UK’s climate targets, all while holding shares (worth at least £300,000) in fossil fuel giants including Shell and TotalEnergies. Truly a man of the people.

Elsewhere, dozens of campaign groups have penned a letter urging governments across the world not to fall for an industry-backed method of recording methane emissions. The groups say that the controversial GWP* system – which New Zealand appears close to adopting – is “open to significant abuse”.

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mma

Fox guests and medical contributors encouraged Trump's worst COVID impulses. Now they're running the show.

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 11/26/24 mma

Then-President Donald Trump repeatedly favored the Fox News hosts and guests he saw on his television screen over federal health policy experts as he managed the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and it had calamitous consequences. He's going even further as he prepares for his second term, picking familiar faces from the right-wing propaganda network to run the government health bureaucracy.

Trump, a Fox obsessive, staffed his first administration with at least 20 former Fox personalities, and he continues to rely on that method as he stocks his second one. But the network’s dominance among Trump’s announced picks to carry out his second-term health policy is nonetheless striking.

Anti-vaccine activist and Fox hero Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will lead the Department of Health and Human Services. He will potentially oversee :{former Fox contributor Dr. Marty Makary:(style="background-color:#ffbb16"):}: at the Food and Drug Administration, Fox medical contributor Dr. Janette Nesheiwat as U.S. surgeon general, and frequent Fox guests Dr. Jay Bhattacharya at the National Institutes of Health and Dr. Mehmet Oz at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. (Bhattacharya has not been formally announced but is reportedly the top pick for the position.)

These picks, to an extent, show Trump aligning his health policy hires with his own Fox-molded views.

As president during the pandemic, he clashed with his official advisers when they contradicted what he was hearing from Fox personalities. The result was often chaos in decision-making, implementation, and public messaging.

Makary, Bhattacharya, Oz, and Nesheiwat received regular Fox airtime because on issues like the use of untested drugs such as hydroxychloroquine or nonpharmaceutical interventions like office and school closures, they tended to hew close to the Fox line — which also became the Trump line. If another pandemic hits, it is possible that they will be able to mitigate Trump’s worst impulses; they have real medical credentials, and Trump is likely to have greater confidence in them due to their shared past views.

But while Trump’s promotion of COVID-19 vaccines through Operation Warp Speed was an unalloyed triumph in his first term, Kennedy is a crank who was openly hostile to the drugs. And other members of the second-term team regularly went on Fox to warn about the purported health impacts of the vaccines and criticize mandates to ensure their use. That does not bode well for the prospect of a successful response should another pandemic hit during the next four years.

RFK Jr. at HHS is a Fox-fueled disaster for health policy

Fox hosts and other right-wing media figures like Tucker Carlson spent 18 months irresponsibly championing Kennedy as part of a strategy to return Trump to the White House. The network regularly promoted him as a Democratic candidate, then showered him with praise and vouched for his health views after Carlson ensured that he endorsed Trump.

The result is that Kennedy — who has pushed debunked claims about childhood vaccination causing autism, questioned the well-established science over whether HIV actually causes AIDS, and promoted kooky conspiracy theories about 5G cellular towers and chemtrails — is Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

Kennedy was among the biggest U.S. sources of anti-vaccine misinformation during the coronavirus pandemic, terming the COVID-19 vaccine “the deadliest vaccine ever made.” Other noted anti-vaccine figures and fringe crackpots claim to be advising him on the transition.

He also suggested that the pandemic may have been “planned,” that public health efforts taken in response constituted “a pharmaceutical-driven, biosecurity agenda that will enslave the entire human race and plunge us into a dystopian nightmare,” and that the virus itself had been “ethnically targeted” to afflict “Caucasians and Black people” while sparing “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese."

Trump picked other people he saw on Fox to run health agencies

Several other Trump picks for top health posts were heavily featured during the Fox’s coronavirus coverage.

Oz, the television personality and grifter Trump selected to lead the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, became a Fox regular in 2020. He made scores of network appearances at the start of the pandemic, particularly championing hydroxychloroquine, the antimalarial drug that right-wing media figures promoted as a treatment for or preventative to COVID.

Oz’s commentary attracted the attention of Trump, who reportedly urged aides to consult with the TV doctor about the outbreak. Oz subsequently ran for the U.S. Senate with the support of Fox star and Trump adviser Sean Hannity, but he came up short in the 2022 midterms.

Makary, Nesheiwat, and Bhattacharya also seemingly became Fox regulars because of their willingness to contradict COVID-19 guidance from federal public health agencies on its airwaves.

FDA selection Makary — who argued in a February 2021 Wall Street Journal op-ed that the U.S. would reach “herd Immunity by April” — used his Fox platform in the months leading up to the emergence of the deadly delta variant to criticize public health officials for warning of new strains of the virus. He also criticized vaccine mandates, particularly for children, citing the vaccine’s purported health risks.

Reported NIH pick Bhattacharya — a signatory of the 2020 Great Barrington Declaration, which called for building up herd immunity through “natural infection” — likewise used his time in Fox’s spotlight to criticize vaccine mandates. He agreed with Fox host Laura Ingraham during an August 2021 segment that the FDA approved COVID-19 vaccines “too fast,” saying, “The FDA approval does not change the fact that we don't have long-term safety data with the vaccine."

And Nesheiwat, the Fox medical contributor Trump selected as surgeon general, promoted the use of supplemental zinc as a COVID-19 treatment and repeatedly highlighted the purported health risks of vaccination for children and young men.

Their commentary was part of a massive and effective effort by Fox to undermine the COVID-19 vaccination program. Now, if confirmed, they will be running major federal health bureaucracies.

### The last pandemic — and the next one

Trump regularly leaned on Fox’s programming and personalities for advice, and the network shaped both his worldview and his administration’s actions. No event demonstrated the extent of the network’s influence more than his response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump didn’t treat COVID’s initial spread as an emergency because Fox was telling him that the media and Democrats were deliberately exaggerating the danger it posed.

He propped up hydroxychloroquine because the network told him it could be a miracle cure, refused to wear masks or socially distance because its hosts said those interventions didn’t work, and then urged the swift reopening of the economy they demanded.

He cut off support to the World Health Organization because one of Fox's stars suggested it and selected a White House adviser from the network’s green room to implement a “herd immunity” strategy.

The result was mass death.

The saving grace of the Trump pandemic response was Operation Warp Speed, an innovative program that sped the development of safe, effective vaccines against the virus. But Trump was out of office by the time the vaccines were deployed, and Fox responded with a yearslong campaign against the drugs. Fox regulars like Makary, Nesheiwat, and Bhattacharya pitched in by criticizing the safety of the vaccines or mandates for their use.

The four doctors Trump picked from Fox’s airwaves do have real medical credentials, and their selections have received some praise from public health experts.

Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine scientist, said Nesheiwat is “a good appointment,” describing her as “very smart, thoughtful, interested in learning.”

Dr. Ashish Jha, who served in President Joe Biden’s White House, called the appointments of Makary, Oz, and Bhattacharya “pretty reasonable,” adding: “I have plenty of policy disagreements with them. They are smart and experienced. We will need them to do well.”

Indeed, they may take office as H5N1 bird flu spreads in American livestock and from livestock to people. If that virus makes the jump to human-to-human transmission, the U.S. health bureaucracy will be forced to grapple with another deadly pandemic.

Focusing specifically on Bhattacharya, Slow Boring’s Matt Yglesias offered the best-case scenario for how Trump’s health appointees could impact a pandemic response:

Bhattacharya’s criticisms of nonpharmaceutical intervetions during 2020 went further than I would have, and I don’t agree with him per se. That said, he is well-credentialed and smart and also aligned with Trump on the substantive question.

Four years ago, Trump had a lot of people in place who he didn’t have confidence in and didn’t listen to, and then he had a lot of unqualified people articulating his views.

Bhattacharya can do what an executive branch official is supposed to do and channel Trump-style views in a professional way.

What’s more, precisely because his anti-NPI credentials are unimpeachable, if a much deadlier virus comes around that shifts Trump’s sense of the cost-benefit balance, he would be the right person to deliver that message.

But as he further notes, “the most effective weapon against Covid was pharmaceutical interventions” — and in Kennedy, Trump has selected “an anti-vaccine crank” as Bhattacharya’s boss.

That means things could get bad fast.

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AN 12 24

Since narrowly defeating Vice President Kamala Harris in the United States' 2024 election, President-elect Donald Trump has made one controversial pick after another for his incoming administration.

Some of Trump's more conventional picks are likely to be confirmed with bipartisan support by the U.S. Senate in 2025, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) for secretary of state and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum for secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior. But Trump's more controversial choices have been drawing vehement criticism from both Democrats and Never Trump conservatives.

Among them: Kash Patel for FBI director, former Fox News host Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard for national intelligence director, and anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Hegseth is so embattled that Trump is reportedly considering nominating Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for defense secretary instead.

But according to The Bulwark's Marc A. Caputo, Trump is ready to "fight" for RFK Jr. and Gabbard.

"The most imperiled confirmation battle involves Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News host whose nomination for defense secretary has been weighed down by accusations of sexual assault and drunkenness, both of which he denies," Caputo explains in an article published on December 5. "Another pitched fight ahead involves longtime Trump loyalist Kash Patel, whose nomination to lead the FBI has triggered his own avalanche of controversy over his embrace of conspiracy theories and calls to incarcerate journalists. But the most critical fights for the president-elect, at least in regard to his immediate political legacy, center around Tulsi Gabbard and Robert Kennedy Jr., former Democrats tapped to head the nation's sprawling intelligence and health bureaucracies, respectively."

Trump's allies, Caputo reports, "view the stakes differently" with Gabbard and RFK Jr.

Veteran GOP operative Roger Stone told The Bulwark, "The appointments of RFK and Tulsi Gabbard represent a realignment in American politics that you saw in the election. He understands the historical significance of that realignment."

READ MORE: '[Nothing at all historic': Mehdi Hasan debunks false claim that Trump won by a 'landslide'

Trump's allies, according to Caputo, expect the president-elect to "expend more of his political capital on Gabbard and Kennedy than on any of the other nominees."

A Trump adviser, interviewed on condition of anonymity, told The Bulwark, "Frankly, Pete (Hegseth) might not make it. We'll see. I'm not sure if the boss is willing to fight for that because there are people in our own camp who aren't sure it’s worth it. But Kash should get confirmed. And if they try to touch Tulsi and Kennedy, then it's war."

Another Trump adviser, also quoted anonymously, told The Bulwark, "If Tulsi or Bobby face real trouble, that's when Trump will really start to fight. They represent the challenging of the status quo of the bureaucracy. That's what MAGA is about.”

*Marc A. Caputo's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.

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an 12 24

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's nominee to run the Internal Revenue Service, former Rep. Billy Long, didn't serve on the House committee tasked with writing tax policy during his six terms in office, and his lack of relevant experience is likely "exactly what Trump was looking for," according to one economic justice advocate.

Progressive lawmakers joined advocates on Wednesday in denouncing Trump's selection of Long, who since leaving office in 2023 has promoted a tax credit that's been riddled with fraud and who spent his time in the House pushing to abolish the very agency he's been chosen to run.

As a Republican congressman from Missouri, Long repeatedly sponsored legislation to dismantle the IRS, which under President Joe Biden has recovered at least $1 billion from wealthy people who previously evaded taxes.

He also co-sponsored legislation to repeal all estate taxes, which are overwhelmingly paid by the wealthiest households, but "said almost nothing on the floor regarding taxes, the IRS, and taxation during his 12 years in Congress," said John Bresnahan of Punchbowl News.

Long's limited experience with tax policy "ought to set off alarm bells," saidSen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who pointed to "vastly improved taxpayer service" under the leadership of IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel, who Biden chose to replace Trump's nominee from his first term, Charles Rettig, after Rettig served his full term.

Werfel has "set up a tremendous direct-file system, and begun badly needed crackdowns on ultra-wealthy tax cheats who rip off law-abiding Americans," said Wyden. "If Trump fires Mr. Werfel, it won't be to improve on his work; it'll be to install somebody Trump can control as he meddles with the IRS."

The appointment is likely to commence an "open season for tax cheats," said Lindsay Owens, executive director of Groundwork Collaborative.

Since leaving office, Long haspromoted the Employee Retention Tax Credit (ERTC), a pandemic-era credit that was intended to incentivize employers to continue paying workers during the economic shutdown when the coronavirus pandemic hit the United States.

He has worked to help businesses claim the credit from the IRS, but fraudulent and improper claims have so permeated the program that the IRS stopped processing new claims temporarily. The U.S. House passed a bill to entirely halt ERTC claims, but it has been stalled in the Senate.

"These ERTC mills that have popped up over the last few years are essentially fraud on an industrial scale, conning small businesses and ripping off American taxpayers to the tune of billions of dollars," said Wyden. "I'm going to have a lot of questions about Mr. Long's role in this business, first and foremost why the American people ought to trust somebody involved with a fraud-ridden industry to run an agency that's tasked with rooting out fraud."

Wyden also pointed out that Long has not been named in a "typical nomination like you'd see after every presidential election." Werfel's term was set to go until November 2027, and the IRS typically operates as a nonpartisan agency.

"Replacing Commissioner Werfel with over three years remaining in his term is a terrible mistake," said Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.). "He has done an excellent job rebuilding the IRS, boosting customer service, and enhancing enforcement aimed at wealthy tax evaders. Removing him will clearly signal Trump's intention to make the agency less responsive to the American people, while giving a green light to wealthy tax cheats to evade their fair share of the tax burden."

"Trump's nominee has clearly stated that he wants to abolish the IRS," added Beyer. "The change Trump proposes in IRS leadership would be a gift to tax cheats and a blow to anyone who believes it is important to rein in deficits."

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) added that Trump's nomination of Long signals "the weaponization of the tax agency."

"If he's confirmed," she said, "taxpayers can expect longer wait times for customer service, a more complicated process to file taxes, and free rein for the rich and powerful to continue rigging the system at the expense of everyone else."

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an 12 24

Former Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.), who President-elect Donald Trump picked to head the U.S. Department of Labor, has been viewed by Democrats as one of his least offensive Cabinet appointments. But her reportedly pro-labor record is being scrutinized in a new report.

International Brotherhood of Teamsters President Sean O'Brien has endorsed Trump's nomination of the Oregon Republican (the daughter of a Teamsters member). More Perfect Union founder Faiz Shakir — who was Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) presidential campaign manager in 2020 — called her a "pro-labor pick" in an interview with MSNBC's Alex Wagner. But according to a Wednesday article by the American Prospect's Hassan Ali Kanu, Chavez-DeRemer's supposedly pro-worker bona fides don't hold up.

Chavez-DeRemer is known for being one of the few Republican sponsors of the PRO (Protecting the Right to Organize) Act, which makes it easier for workers to organize unions in the workplace. However, Kanu noted that Trump's labor secretary-designate didn't add her name to the list of cosponsors until July, approximately four months after its two other House Republican supporters — Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Christopher Smith (R-N.J.) — backed it, and well after its failure to pass the House was assured. She notably declined to co-sponsor the bill in 2023.

University of Calfornia-Los Angeles labor historian Trevor Griffey told the Prospect that Chavez-DeRemer's support of the PRO Act could be more accurately described as "posturing in a swing district." He added that "political support for the PRO Act or any other labor rights should be measured by votes and not declarations of intent."

Kanu found that the one-term lawmaker (she lost to Democrat Janelle Bynum in November) only supported pro-worker legislation 10% of the time according to her AFL-CIO scorecard. While that's slightly higher than the Republican average of 6%, the average House Democrat's score is 99%.

"She voted in favor of a bill that would undermine the unemployment insurance program, for example, including by penalizing recipients for inadvertent errors; and for legislation that would loosen regulation of health benefits and allow employers to offer plans that aren’t backed by adequate reserves," Kanu wrote. "Chavez-DeRemer has also voted against one of the biggest labor priorities of the past decade—a 'joint employer' rule to restrict companies’ ability to effectively outsource certain legal, pay, and benefits obligations to third parties, like contractors and franchisees."

According to the Prospect, Chavez-DeRemer has also "staked out a slate of now-standard Republican positions" that make her more palatable to Trump. This includes "skirting the question" when the Oregonian asked her directly in 2022 if she believed President Joe Biden was the true winner of the 2020 election. In her 2022 bid for Congress, Chavez-DeRemer also ran on red meat "culture war" issues popular with the GOP base, like opposition to transgender rights and climate change denial.

Click here to read Kanu's full report in the American Prospect.

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rww 12 24

12/03/2024

Kyle Mantyla

In the wake of former President Donald Trump's reelection, former Trump White House chief strategist and podcaster Steve Bannon spoke to the secretive Council for National Policy, a coalition of Christian nationalists and right-wing activists that was deeply engaged in the plot to keep Trump in office after he lost the 2020 election.

Bannon, fresh from his stint in prison for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, told the CNP audience that the Senate's role is simply to confirm whoever Trump nominates and celebrated that conservatives are on the verge of having a complete monopoly on the Supreme Court.

"Donald Trump took a bullet to the head, and then four months later won in a landslide," Bannon proclaimed. "He can pick anybody he wants to serve in his government and all I wanna hear is a cheery 'aye, aye' from the United States Senate."

"It's advice and consent," Bannon said. "We'll take your advice, but you're going to give us your consent."

The Senate serving as a mere rubber stamp for the president is, of course, not what the Constitution proscribes, but the fact that Bannon's bellicose pronouncement received raucous applause says a lot about the CNP's supposed reverence for the nation's founding document.

Bannon then hailed Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, Robert Kennedy Jr., and Matt Gaetz as "the Four Horsemen of the deep state apocalypse" and vowed that all four are "going to be confirmed." Since Bannon delivered his speech, Gaetz has already withdrawn his nomination and the other three are all plagued by controversy.

"We we have a unique time," Bannon continued. "We have the White House, we have the executive branch. We have the House and the Senate—small majorities, but we have them. We have the courts. And if we do our work and stop [Sen.] Elizabeth Warren—there are 47 court openings right now—if we stop her in the Senate between now and [January] 20th, we will actually redo the district court level. And then these corrupt appellate courts. And guess what? We're going to get two or three pickups in the Supreme Court. We're going to go for a 9-0 court of conservatives."

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an 12 24

President-elect Donald Trump is reportedly set to nominate Stephen Feinberg, a billionaire defense industry investor and major Trump megadonor—despite his lack of military or organizational leadership experience—for the second-highest position at the U.S. Department of Defense, Deputy Defense Secretary. The Washington Post first broke the news on Tuesday afternoon, which comes as Trump’s pick for U.S. Secretary of Defense, Fox News weekend host Pete Hegseth, faces mounting criticism and negative press amid numerous scandals including alleged sexual assault, “aggressive drunkenness,” and financial mismanagement of veterans’ organizations.

Trump has already offered the job to Feinberg, according to the Post, calling it “a decision that could elevate a longtime political supporter with investments in defense companies that maintain lucrative Pentagon contracts.”

“Feinberg is the co-CEO of Cerberus Capital Management, which has invested in hypersonic missiles and which previously owned the private military contractor DynCorp,” the Post reports. “DynCorp was acquired by another defense firm, Amentum, in 2020. During the first Trump administration, Feinberg led the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, which provides the U.S. leader advice on intelligence assessments and estimates and counterintelligence matters.”

“The deputy defense secretary typically manages day-to-day operations of the massive bureaucracy with a combined workforce of more than 3 million service members and civilian employees,” the Post explained.

The current Deputy Defense Secretary is Kathleen Hicks. She holds a master’s in national security studies, and her PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Hicks started her career at the Pentagon as a civil servant in 1993. For three years she was a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) before returning to the Pentagon under President Barack Obama in 2009. She has served as Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for strategy, plans, and forces, and Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for policy.

In 2020, President-elect Joe Biden chose Hicks to lead “the 23-person agency review team’s assessment of defense and national-security related issues,” Defense Daily reported.

“These teams are composed of highly experienced and talented professionals with deep backgrounds in crucial policy areas across the federal government. The teams have been crafted to ensure they not only reflect the values and priorities of the incoming administration, but reflect the diversity of perspectives crucial for addressing America’s most urgent and complex challenges,” the Biden transition team said in a statement, according to Defense Daily.

Feinberg has a bachelors’ from Princeton.

In 2021, The New York Times reported that the four Saudis “who participated in the 2018 killing of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi received paramilitary training in the United States the previous year under a contract approved by the State Department, according to documents and people familiar with the arrangement.”

“The training was provided by the Arkansas-based security company Tier 1 Group, which is owned by the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management,” the Times reported.

In July of 2017, a New York Times report noted Feinberg’s ties to the now far-right podcaster and political strategist Steve Bannon, and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.

“Erik D. Prince, a founder of the private security firm Blackwater Worldwide, and Stephen A. Feinberg, a billionaire financier who owns the giant military contractor DynCorp International, have developed proposals to rely on contractors instead of American troops in Afghanistan at the behest of Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, and Jared Kushner, his senior adviser and son-in-law, according to people briefed on the conversations.”

A 2012 Rolling Stone profile of then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney, included this statement from Feinberg.

“’We try to hide religiously,’ explained Steven [sic] Feinberg, the CEO of a takeover firm called Cerberus Capital Management that recently drove one of its targets into bankruptcy after saddling it with $2.3 billion in debt. ‘If anyone at Cerberus has his picture in the paper and a picture of his apartment, we will do more than fire that person,’ Feinberg told shareholders in 2007. ‘We will kill him. The jail sentence will be worth it.’ ”

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RT media approves

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an 12 24

Although some of President-elect Donald Trump's picks for his incoming administration are almost certain to receive bipartisan confirmation in the U.S. Senate — including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) for secretary of state and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum for interior secretary — others are extremely controversial. And one pick that is drawing vehement criticism from both the left and the right is Fox News star Pete Hegseth, Trump's choice for defense secretary.

Hegseth's critics have been arguing that although he is a veteran, he lacks the experience necessary to lead the U.S. Defense Department. Moreover, critics warn, Hegseth has faced a sexual assault allegation (https://www.npr.org/2024/11/21/nx-s1-5199630/police-report-gives-details-timeline-of-the-sexual-assault-claim-against-pete-hegseth) (although he hasn't been charged with anything) and embraces dangerous Christian nationalist views (https://idahocapitalsun.com/2024/11/21/trumps-defense-secretary-nominee-has-close-ties-to-idaho-christian-nationalists/).

Now, bombshell reporting by journalist Jane Mayer (https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/pete-hegseths-secret-history) in The New Yorker gives Hegseth's critics more arguments to use against him.

READ MORE:'National laughingstock:' Election denialism has staying power even after Trump's win (https://www.alternet.org/election-denialism-2024/)

Mayer, in an article published on December 1 (https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/pete-hegseths-secret-history), reports that "Hegseth's record before becoming a full-time Fox News TV host, in 2017, raises additional questions about his suitability to run the world's largest and most lethal military force."

"A trail of documents, corroborated by the accounts of former colleagues, indicates that Hegseth was forced to step down by both of the two nonprofit advocacy groups that he ran — Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America — in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct," Mayer explains (https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/pete-hegseths-secret-history). "A previously undisclosed whistle-blower report on Hegseth's tenure as the president of Concerned Veterans for America, from 2013 until 2016, describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity — to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization's events."

Mayer continues (https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/pete-hegseths-secret-history), "The detailed seven-page report — which was compiled by multiple former CVA employees and sent to the organization's senior management in February 2015 — states that, at one point, Hegseth had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club, where he had brought his team. The report also says that Hegseth, who was married at the time, and other members of his management team sexually pursued the organization's female staffers, whom they divided into two groups — the 'party girls' and the 'not-party girls.'"

According to Mayer (https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/pete-hegseths-secret-history), a separate letter of complaint alleges that during a visit to Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio on May 29, 2015, a drunken Hegseth was chanting, "Kill All Muslims! Kill All Muslims!"

READ MORE:Why Kash Patel is Trump's 'scariest hire yet': report (https://www.alternet.org/trump-kash-patel/)

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, discussed the alcohol abuse allegations against Hegseth.

Blumenthal told Mayer (https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/pete-hegseths-secret-history), "Much as we might be sympathetic to people with continuing alcohol problems, they shouldn't be at the top of our national-security structure. It's dangerous. The secretary of defense is involved in every issue of national security. He's involved in the use of nuclear weapons. He's the one who approves sending troops into combat. He approves drone strikes that may involve civilian casualties. Literally life-and-death issues are in the hands of the secretary of defense, and entrusting these kinds of issues to someone who might be incapacitated for any reason is a risk we cannot take."

*Jane Mayer's full report for The New Yorker is available at this link (https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/pete-hegseths-secret-history) (subscription required).

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an 12 24

Donald Trump Saturday made a move that is being seen as a middle finger to both the Supreme Court and the intelligence community, experts say.

Trump over the weekend announced his appointment of Kash Patel as the director of FBI, leading critics to lash out and causing a pre-emptive strike against Senate Republicans by a top MAGA lawyer who said he would make their political lives hell if they opposed Patel.

Sophia Cai, senior national politics reporter for Axios, said, "Trump's decision to name hardline loyalist Kash Patel to FBI director amounts to a massive middle finger to the intelligence community."

ALSO READ:A dark mystery from America's past could save us from Trump's tyranny

Conservative commentator Charlie Sykes also weighed in on the big picture of the Patel appointment.

"Underappreciated angle to the appointments of Patel, Gaetz, Bondi, et al. Massive Fuq U to institutions … But also a huge FU to the Supreme Court, because Trump doesn’t think they will be a check on his campaign of lawless retribution," he wrote Saturday. "Nice work, John Roberts."

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an 11 24

Watchdog groups are warning that the Cabinet that President-elect Donald Trump is assembling is already showing signs of being a pay-for-play arrangement in which his biggest backers are rewarded with the ability to shape government policy in their favor.

According to a Tuesday report in the Guardian, the president-elect is raising red flags with several of his Cabinet picks, who are slated to oversee agencies regulating the industries in which they have a significant financial stake. In one example, Interior Secretary-designate Doug Burgum – the current Republican governor of North Dakota with close ties to fracking magnate Harold Hamm — will be in charge of issuing oil and gas drilling licenses.

Hamm himself donated roughly $4 million to Trump's election effort, while soliciting additional donations from others in the industry. The Guardian reported that the oil and gas industry put up approximately $75 million toward sending Trump back to the White House. Hamm was also at the Mar-a-Lago meeting in which Trump asked the oil industry to pony up $1 billion to his reelection bid in exchange for favorable policies.

Other Trump Cabinet appointees, like Department of Commerce secretary-designate Howard Lutnick and Department of Education secretary-designate Linda McMahon, also donated millions of dollars to Trump's bid for the presidency. According to the Guardian's calculations, they donated $6 million and $21 million to his campaign and allied super PACs, respectively. Both are also the co-chairs of his presidential transition.

Meanwhile, billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk — who spent more than $200 million of his own money to get Trump elected — is chairing a so-called "government efficiency" advisory board in which he'll be recommending steep, draconian budget cuts to the agencies regulating his businesses.

"Trump has taken the cliche that ‘all politics is local’ and turned it into ‘all politics is about personal payback’," former Federal Election Commission general counsel Larry Noble told the Guardian. "The naked transactional nature and potentially dangerous conflicts of interests reflected in Trump’s ongoing paybacks are unprecedented in modern times."

The president-elect was particularly open in his promises of exchanging policy for campaign cash while he was running his third campaign for the White House. In October, the New York Times reported that Trump has flip-flopped on numerous issues after being faced with the prospect of bringing in additional donations from wealthy contributors. This includes cryptocurrency, tobacco, marijuana and TikTok, among others.

Saurav Ghosh of the Campaign Legal Center decried Trump's rewarding of political donors with Cabinet posts, saying his "transactional approach to governing epitomizes corruption and will sadly ensure that in his second term, big donors’ interests will continue to come before the needs of millions of Americans.

“Major donors have had a hand in shaping policy in every recent administration, but the unprecedented role that Musk and certain other donors, especially from the tech and finance industries, played in the campaign and are now playing in the transition means that their influence over the incoming administration’s agenda is likely to be unprecedented,” said Brennan Center for Justice director of elections and government Dan Weiner.

Click here to read the Guardian's report in its entirety.

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an 11 24

Although some of President-elect Donald Trump's picks for his incoming administration are almost certain to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate without significant delay — including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) for secretary of state and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum for secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior — others are way more controversial.

Critics of former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), Trump's pick for national intelligence director, are attacking her as an apologist for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. In the medical field, opponents of Trump's choice for director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are slamming him as an anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist with dangerous, unscientific ideas.

Trump's picks are also drawing condemnation for being climate change deniers.

In an article published on November 27, The Guardian's Oliver Milman explains, "Donald Trump's cabinet picks have been eclectic and often controversial, but a unifying theme is emerging, experts say, with the U.S. president-elect's nominees offering staunch support to fossil fuels and either downplaying or denying the climate crisis caused by the burning of these fuels."

The nominees Milman specifically mentions include Lee Zeldin as Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator and Chris Wright as energy secretary. Wright, Milman notes, once claimed that "there is no climate crisis."

Milman, however, described Burgum as a "moderate compared to these other picks, having accepted that the climate crisis is real and even, as governor of North Dakota, setting a target for the state to be carbon-neutral."

Daniel Esty, who focuses on environmental policy at Yale University in Connecticut, described Wright as "the most worrisome of these folks."

Etsy told The Guardian, "Some people didn't think Trump would actually try to execute this, but it looks like he really is going to pull back on climate change commitments, against the tide of history."

Read The Guardian's full report at this link.}:

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3 of Trump's top cabinet-level picks recently worked as ...}:

Business Insider

https://www.businessinsider.com › Politics](https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-lobbyists-ties-wiles-bondi-duffy-ballard-2024-11)

5 days ago — Incoming White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, attorney general nominee Pam Bondi, and Transportation secretary nominee Sean Duffy have all ...

several of Donald Trump's top picks have recently been lobbyists.
Susan Wiles, Trump's incoming chief of staff, maintained ties to a lobbying firm until this month.
Sean Duffy, Trump's pick for Transportation secretary, has lobbied for a group of major airlines.

President-elect Donald Trump is set to rely on a trio of former lobbyists to help implement his agenda to shake up Washington.

Incoming White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, attorney general nominee Pam Bondi, and Transportation secretary nominee Sean Duffy have all been registered lobbyists. According to disclosure filings, Bondi and Wiles did lobbying work as recently as this year, with Duffy working as a lobbyist into 2023.

Their combined clients range from blue chip companies — including Amazon, GM, and Uber — to insurance giants like MetLife and Fidelity National Financial. Wiles and Bondi were also separately registered to lobby for foreign interests, which included one of Nigeria's largest political parties and the Qatarian embassy.

Wiles and Bondi have both once worked for Ballard Partners, once a regional firm in Florida that exploded in popularity due to its ties to Trump world. Earlier this summer, the firm opened an office in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

"Part of why you hired Ballard Partners over the last few years is knowing that if Trump is president, the people you are working with stand at having a pretty good chance at having influence in a Trump administration," Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, a public interest group, told Business Insider.

Brian Ballard, a major Republican fundraiser and founder of the firm, did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Wiles continued to have K-Street ties as she helped run Trump's campaign.

Wiles, according to The New York Times, did not cut ties to her most recent firm until Trump announced his intention to have her lead his second White House.

Her past work included an effort to get the Trump administration to approve a cooper and gold mine in a sensitive area of Alaska. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, widely viewed as a key vote in the narrowly divided US Senate, and other top state officials have long opposed the Pebble Partnership. The EPA, under Obama, Trump, and Biden's administrations, have repeatedly opposed efforts to mine in the bay, home to one of the world's largest salmon fisheries.

Duffy, who if confirmed would oversee the Federal Aviation Administration, lobbied in 2020 for an airline group that includes American, Delta, and United among its members.

Starting not long after he left Congress in 2019, Duffy lobbied for Polaris, a US auto manufacturer known its off-road and recreational vehicles. Former lawmakers are only restricted from lobbying Congress for a year, though they can immediately lobby the rest of the federal government. According to his disclosures, Duffy's work at times included advising the company on how to navigate EV incentives and tariffs.

ProPublica previously reported that Duffy lobbied White House trade adviser Peter Navarro as Polaris sought to win exemptions to tariffs on the parts it was importing. ProPublica found that Polaris' efforts, including use of Duffy, ultimately led the company to get most of what it wanted.

Bondi's work for Amazon was related to trade and tariff policy, according to disclosures. She also lobbied for General Motors, Uber, Fidelity National, Carnival North America, and even Major League Baseball.

Trump didn't start the revolving door, but the swamp could get larger.

Wiles, Bondi, and Duffy's respective work all fits within the larger revolving door narrative that dominates Washington, even as Trump portrays himself as ready to shake up the status quo.

Ron Klain, President Biden's first chief of staff and longtime adviser, was a lobbyist for Fannie Mae in the early 2000s. Steve Ricchetti, another longtime Biden fixture, spent so much time lobbying that top Obama administration officials tried to prevent then-Vice President Biden from hiring him after the 2008 election. His brother Jeff Ricchetti, who remains a registered lobbyist, saw his business boom after Biden won the 2020 election.

President Barack Obama initially received high praise for his limits on hiring lobbyists who had recently lobbied the federal agency they sought to join, though he granted some limited waivers including to a former top lobbyist to Raytheon. Ultimately, Obama was unable to stop the revolving door, as Politico reported in 2015.

Hauser said what stands out about the Trump team so far is their unorthodox approach to the transition, including refusing to sign formal agreements with the current administration which would include ethics guidelines.

While Trump, like Obama and Biden, issued an ethics-related executive order after taking office in 2017, Hauser isn't convinced it will happen again.

"Given the aversion of his transition to the ethics process of the transition, I think it's an open question whether or not he is going to make his appointees sign additional ethics pledges in office this time," Hauser said.

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AN 11 24

BEWARE PALACE INTRIGUE?

Behind closed doors, President-elect Donald Trump's transition team has become a somewhat fractious and chaotic environment according to a new report.

The Washington Post reported Saturday that "new camps have formed" at Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida with competing visions for how to prepare for the next four years. The outlet described "shouting matches, expulsions from meetings and name-calling" as frequent occurrences between various factions.

"As during Trump’s first term, competing factions have begun to run roughshod over each other, sometimes kicking up clouds of dust," wrote the Post's Josh Dawsey, Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer.

According to the Post, three different factions have formed — each with their own leaders and strategic goals. One of those camps is led by Trump's eldest son, Donald Jr., with Vice President-elect JD Vance on his side as well as "longtime MAGA warriors" like former Fox News primetime host Tucker Carlson, Vance advisor Andy Surabian and ex-Trump White House official Cliff Sims.

Another faction is led by Trump White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, who also co-chaired Trump's 2024 campaign. Wiles' camp mostly includes her advisors and acolytes, like Trump campaign political director James Blair and deputy campaign officials Taylor Budowich and Robert Gabriel. And a third group consists of transition co-chair and Secretary of Education-designate Linda McMahon and alumni from the America First Policy Institute like Brooke Rollins (who was rumored as a finalist for chief of staff) and Keith Kellogg, who was former Vice President Mike Pence's national security advisor.

Dust-ups between top Trump advisors are also breaking out during Trump transition team meetings. The Post's report began by describing an altercation between Trump attorney Boris Epshteyn and transition team co-chair Howard Lutnick (whom Trump has tapped to lead the Department of Commerce). Lutnick physically blocked Ephsteyn's path as he tried to enter a Mar-a-Lago meeting about potential Cabinet appointees, telling him: "We're not talking legal nominees today." But Ephsteyn reportedly stiff-armed Lutnick, saying: "I'm coming in."

In another contentious meeting, billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk — who is sometimes referred to as "co-president" over Vance — and Epshteyn got into a loud back-and-forth, with the former suggesting the latter was leaking sensitive details of meetings to the press. One unnamed witness described the encounter on the Mar-a-Lago patio as a "huge fight" and a "big blowup," with Epshteyn reportedly saying: "I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t do anything wrong."

“It’s Boris against the world,” one unnamed "Trump confidant" told the Post, with another anonymous source saying Epshteyn was on “an island of his own.”

Vance has also participated in some the more heated arguments among transition team leaders, with one culminating in a social media post the vice president-elect has since deleted. While several Republican senators were at a SpaceX launch earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) managed to get several of President Joe Biden's last remaining federal judges confirmed. Grace Chong, who works for former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon on his "War Room" podcast, criticized Vance for missing the vote.

"You guys better show up and do your one fricken[sic] job!!" Chong posted to X, referring to both Vance and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who Trump picked to head the State Department. Vance responded by calling Chong a "mouth-breathing imbecile" in the now-deleted tweet. Chong has since added "mouth-breathing imbecile" to her X bio.

:{Click here to read the Post's report in its entirety (subscription required).

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an 11 24

Trump's transition team is actively rejecting a possible Department of Health and Human Services senior role contender, according to Politico.

CNN senior reporter Andy Kaczynski wrote via X, "wow: Donald Trump’s transition team has rejected a push to install a prominent Project 2025 author Roger Severino in a senior role at the Department of Health and Human Services over concerns that his strident anti-abortion views would prove too controversial."

Per Politico's report, "According to six people familiar with the situation, granted anonymity to discuss private conversations," some of Trump's team member "worried Severino’s nomination would further inflame fears among voters and moderate Republican lawmakers that Trump might widely restrict abortion access, distracting from the rest of the president-elect’s agenda, though they added that Trump officials remain open to appointing other anti-abortion officials at HHS."

The team's rejection of Severino comes as "anti-abortion groups had been lobbying" for the Trump ally, the report notes.

"Heritage was lobbying hard," a source told Politico.

However, "the internal feeling was that [Trump campaign manager Chris] LaCivita and that crew had spent a lot of political capital trying to kill Project 2025 and they didn’t want to do this because that would be going backwards."

*Politico's full report is available here

an 11 24

Trump’s latest pick to become Attorney General, former Florida AG Pam Bondi, is a MAGA supporter who vowed last year that if Trump were to return to the White House, the “deep state” would be eliminated from the U.S. Dept. of Justice and the “prosecutors will be prosecuted.”

Trump’s nomination of Bondi comes after his first pick, former U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) was forced to withdraw. Senators on both sides of the aisle made clear Gaetz’s chances for confirmation were slim given investigations into allegations of possible sex with a minor, possible payments for sex, and possible sex-trafficking. He has also been under investigation for possible illicit drug use and questions about possible campaign finance improprieties.

In 2023, Bondi told Fox News host Sean Hannity that “when Republicans take back the White House and we will be back you know what’s gonna happen, the Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones.”

“The investigators will be investigated because the deep state last term for President Trump, they were hiding in the shadows,” she claimed. “But now they have a spotlight on them, and they can all be investigated and the house needs to be cleaned out because now we know who most of them are. There’s a record of it and we can clean house next term, and that’s what has to happen.”

On CNN’s “Out Front,” Erin Burnett Thursday evening reported that Bondi has made “it clear she is on the exact same page as Trump when it comes to his claim that the Justice Department has been politicized.”

And she noted that “Bondi has been a very successful fighter for Trump in the 2020 election. She was on the front lines pushing Trump’s election lies. She said, ‘we’ve won Pennsylvania and we want every vote to be counted in a fair way.’ Of course, he did not win Pennsylvania.”

“During Trump’s criminal trial in New York. She was one of his top defenders,” Burnett added.

Rolling Stone on Friday also notes that Bondi has “supported retaliation against Trump’s political rivals in the past. In 2016, — during Trump’s campaign — she called for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s security clearance to be revoked, and egged on supporters who chanted ‘lock her up’ at the Republican National Convention.”

“’Lock her up, I love that,’ she told the crowd.”

ABC News reports that “Bondi registered as a foreign agent for the government of Qatar as part of her lobbying work.”

Donald Trump was prosecuted by Special Counsel Jack Smith in two separate cases. One for his alleged actions surrounding the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol and the insurrection, and his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost. The second was for Trump’s alleged removal, retention, and refusal to return classified and top secret classified documents, including some of the nation’s nuclear and defense secrets.

In a state criminal trial, Trump was convicted for “falsifying New York business records in order to conceal his illegal scheme to corrupt the 2016 election,” according to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Trump also has been facing prosecution in Georgia for his alleged efforts in that state to overturn the 2020 election. That case is ongoing, according to WMAL.

Trump’s classified documents case, largely prosecuted under the Espionage Act, was dismissed by a federal judge appointed by Trump in 2020 who was confirmed just before he left office.

The Special Counsel is now winding down his work after Trump won the presidential election earlier this month, given sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted, and Trump’s Attorney General would in all likelihood drop the case.

===

an 11 24 it’s bondi

Now that former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) has officially withdrawn his name from consideration to be the next attorney general, President-elect Donald Trump is quickly moving on to his next choice.

According to a Thursday report in NYSun.com, Trump's next attorney general-designate could be Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton. The Sun reported that an unnamed source "with close ties to Trump's team" says Paxton — who has served as the top law enforcement official in the Lone Star State since 2015 — is "the ideal choice for the America First movement."

As Texas' attorney general, Paxton led the charge at the state level to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Paxton was the lead plaintiff in the Texas v. Pennsylvania lawsuit that sought to prevent the certification of election results in the handful of battleground states that President Joe Biden narrowly won four years ago, unsuccessfully arguing that those states' Covid-19 pandemic voting procedures violated the U.S. Constitution.

Paxton is also likely to be agreeable to Trump's stated plans to use the Department of Justice as a vehicle to hound his political enemies. As Texas' attorney general, Paxton launched an investigation into Democratic-aligned advocacy group Media Matters for America in 2023. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ultimately shut down Paxton's attempts to probe Media Matters' financial records and internal communications.

The Sun's Matthew Rice noted that in addition to presumably all Senate Democrats, one unlikely opponent Paxton could have in the Senate would be Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who has publicly feuded with Paxton in the recent past. In February, Cornyn was one of several Republicans who joined all Democrats in supporting a supplemental foreign aid package to help Israel, Taiwan and Ukraine. Paxton accused Cornyn of "stay[ing] up all night to defend other countries' borders, but not America." Cornyn clapped back, mentioning Paxton's criminal charges for alleged securities fraud (which have since been dropped).

"Ken, your criminal defense lawyers are calling to suggest you spend less time pushing Russian propaganda and more time defending longstanding felony charges against you in Houston, as well as ongoing federal grand jury proceedings in San Antonio that will probably result in further criminal charges," Cornyn tweeted.

Aside from Paxton, other potential attorneys general may include Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) — whose father served as solicitor general under President Ronald Reagan — and far-right attorney Mike Davis, who has blamed Democrats for the assassination attempts on then-candidate Trump.

*Click here to read the Sun's report in its entirety (subscription required).

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Alternet+ no lnx

Trump’s appointees are the Trojan horse that could lead to America’s strategic collapse

Thom Hartmann November 21, 2024

The mainstream media is baffled: Why would Trump promote candidates to oversee critical agencies with millions of employees and multi-billion-dollar budgets who have little to no management experience and have openly expressed hostility toward the institutions they’ll oversee?

I’ve seen legendary reporter Bob Woodward, who wrote several books about Trump, on three different TV shows this week asking to the effect of, “What could Trump possibly gain from these incompetent appointments?

If he just wanted loyalty, there’s no shortage of rational, competent members of the military and intelligence community who’re loyal to Trump.

So why is he selecting people like Hegseth, Gaetz, and Gabbard to run agencies that could directly involve confrontations with Russia?

Trump wants Gaetz for the job as our nation’s top law enforcement officer, Attorney General (who oversees the FBI), where he could block the FBI from investigating Trump’s embrace of Putin and Russia’s spying and disinformation efforts here in the US.

Why? Gaetz, after all, has called for Trump to “defund, get rid of, abolish the FBI…”; he apparently hates the agency that investigated and threatened to prosecute him.

Pete Hegseth, who Trump wants to put in charge of our Department of Defense, is openly critical of our NATO allies, saying they are, “self-righteous and impotent nations asking us to honor outdated and one-sided defense arrangements they no longer live up to.”

Who else hates NATO? Vladimir Putin. Hegseth has also echoed Putin’s assertion that he doesn’t have designs on the Baltic states, arguing that he doubted Putin would go “much further” than the Polish border.

And both Hegseth and Gaetz have a history of lurid, possibly illegal sexual activity that could subject them to blackmail by a foreign power…like Russia.

Tulsi Gabbard, who Trump wants to put in charge of all 18 of America’s intelligence agencies — giving her full access to America’s darkest secrets and our spies buried deep within Russia and China — has repeatedly and openly embraced Vladimir Putin’s positions on world affairs.

Regarding Ukraine, she argued that Russia was forced to invade that country because, echoing Putin, she falsely claimed Ukraine was developing (with US help) biological weapons and conspiring with NATO to put troops on Russia’s border.

Former Secretary of State Clinton said Russia was “grooming” Gabbard, and Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz was equally blunt:

“There’s no question I consider her someone who is likely a Russian asset.”

And JD Vance, also selected by Trump and now our vice-president elect, has famously said:

“I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” no doubt bringing cheers from the Kremlin.

So, what’s really going on here?

Is it possible that Trump isn’t trolling us or trying to do “dominance plays” with Congress, but actually wants these people to injure or destroy the agencies he’s putting them in charge of?

Is it even conceivable that Trump, in league with Putin (or at least sharing his goal of weakening and damaging America), actually wants our intelligence, defense, and investigative agencies to be gutted to the point of impotence?

That these appointees could be Trojan horses he’s planning to use to destroy America from within?

That he’s that angry with the country whose past leaders have ridiculed him, whose elites have rejected him all his life, and that has even tried to put him in prison?

That he’d like our country — which he disdains — to be brought to its knees?

That his loyalty, perhaps for years, has been to a country and system of government very different from America and what our founders envisioned?

In 2019 The Washington Post revealed that, throughout his presidency, Donald Trump was having secret phone conversations with Russia’s President Putin (over 20 have been identified so far, including one just days before the 2020 election).

Just months ago, we discovered that he and Elon Musk have both been having regular, secret conversations with Putin for at least the past two years.

This embrace of a foreign dictator first cranked into visibility in 2016.

The Moscow Project from the American Progress Action Fund documented more than 270 known contacts between Russia-linked operatives and members of the Trump 2016 campaign and transition team, as well as at least 38 known meetings just leading up to that year’s election.

The manager of his 2016 campaign, Paul Manafort — who was previously paid tens of millions by Vladimir Putin’s people to install a pro-Putin puppet as Ukraine’s president in 2010 — has admitted that he was regularly feeding secret inside-campaign strategy and polling information to Russian intelligence via the oligarch who typically paid him on their behalf.

Throughout the campaign, he let them know where Trump needed help, and when. Speculation is that they used that information for their successful 2016 Facebook campaigns.

Trump pardoned Manafort, which got him out of prison; he’s still fabulously rich from his work for Russia.

As The New York Times noted in 2020:

“[I]nvestigators found enough there to declare that Mr. Manafort created ‘a grave counterintelligence threat’ by sharing inside information about the presidential race with Mr. Kilimnik and the Russian and [pro-Russian] Ukrainian oligarchs whom he served.”

There is no known parallel to this behavior by any president in American history — one could argue it easily exceeds Benedict Arnold’s audacity — and bringing documents to Mar-a-Lago is just the tip of the iceberg.

The Washington Post reported two years ago last August that Trump had a habit of carrying top-secret information that could severely damage our national security, leaving it in hotel rooms in hostile nations.

Was he bringing these documents with him to sell? Or just to show to leaders or oligarchs in those countries to impress them? Or for bragging rights to impress dignitaries, businessmen, or ladies he brings back to his room?

Trump doesn’t put all that effort into hauling things around unless it’s extraordinarily important to his ego or he thinks he can make money off them.

“Boxes of documents even came with Trump on foreign travel,” The Post noted, “following him to hotel rooms around the world — including countries considered foreign adversaries of the United States.”

When Robert Mueller’s team tried to investigate Trump’s ties to Russia and his possibly sharing sensitive military information with them, they were stonewalled by the Trump administration.

The Mueller Report identified ten specific instances of Trump trying to criminally obstruct the investigation, including offering the bribe of a pardon to Paul Manafort, asking FBI Director Comey to “go easy” on General Flynn after his dinner with Putin, and directing Attorney General Jeff Sessions to limit former FBI Director Mueller’s ability to investigate Trump’s connections to Russia.

As the Mueller Report noted:

“The President launched public attacks on the investigation and individuals involved in it who could possess evidence adverse to the President, while in private the President engaged in a series of targeted efforts to control the investigation.

“For instance, the President attempted to remove the Attorney General; he sought to have Attorney General Sessions un-recuse himself and limit the investigation; he sought to prevent public disclosure of information about the June 9, 2016 meeting between Russians and campaign officials; and he used public forums to attack potential witnesses who might offer adverse information and to praise witnesses who declined to cooperate with the government.”

It adds, detailing Trump’s specific Obstruction of Justice crimes:

“These actions ranged from efforts to remove the Special Counsel and to reverse the effect of the Attorney General’s recusal; to the attempted use of official power to limit the scope of the investigation; to direct and indirect contacts with witnesses with the potential to influence their testimony.”

There are, after all, credible assertions from American intelligence agencies that when Trump was elected, members of Russian intelligence and Putin’s inner circle were literally partying in Moscow, celebrating a victory they believed they made happen.

And apparently Putin and his intelligence operatives had good reason to be popping the champagne in November, 2016. They were quickly paid off in a big way.

In his first months in office, Trump outed an Israeli/American asset/spy to the Russian Ambassador in what he thought was going to be a “secret Oval Office meeting” (the Russians released the photo to the press), resulting in MOSAD having to “burn” (relocate, change identity of) that spy.

The undercover agent was apparently working in Syria that year against the Russians, who were embroiled in the midst of Assad’s Civil War and indiscriminately bombing Aleppo into rubble.

That, in turn, prompted the CIA to worry that another longtime American spy, this one buried deep inside the Kremlin, was similarly vulnerable to Trump handing him over to Putin.

As CNN noted (when the story leaked two years later):

“The source was considered the highest level source for the US inside the Kremlin, high up in the national security infrastructure, according to the source familiar with the matter and a former senior intelligence official.

“According to CNN’s sources, the spy had access to Putin and could even provide images of documents on the Russian leader’s desk.”

The CIA concluded that the risk Trump had burned or was about to burn our spy inside the Kremlin was so great that — at massive loss to US intelligence abilities that may even have otherwise helped forestall the invasion of Ukraine — they pulled our spy out of Russia in the first year of Trump’s presidency, 2017.

Similarly, when they met in Helsinki on July 16, 2018, Trump and Putin talked in private for several hours and Trump ordered his translators’ notes destroyed; there is also concern that much of their conversation was done out of the hearing of the US’ translator (Putin is fluent in English) who may have been relegated to a distant part of the large empty ballroom in which they met.

The Washington Post reported, after a leak six months later, that when Trump met privately for those two hours with Putin the CIA went into “panic mode.” A US intelligence official told the Post:

“There was this gasp’ at the CIA’s Langley, Virginia headquarters. You literally had people in panic mode watching it at Langley. On all floors. Just shock.”

Three weeks after Trump’s July 16, 2018 meeting with Putin in Helsinki, Senator Rand Paul made a solo trip to Moscow to personally hand-deliver a document or package of documents from Trump to Putin. Its contents are still unknown, although Paul told the press he believed it was a “personal” letter of some sort.

Senator Paul has also consistently taken Trump’s and Putin’s side with regard to the Ukraine war: he single-handedly blocked a $40 billion military aid package in the Senate. When the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, he responded with a call for the repeal of the Espionage Act. He further suggested the FBI may have “planted” Secret documents at Mar-a-Lago.

Ten days after Paul’s trip to Moscow, The New York Times reported that the CIA was worried because their sources inside Moscow had suddenly “gone silent”:

“The full reasons the sources have gone silent are not known,” the Times reported, but Trump having intentionally burned a man working for the FBI — whose job at that time was to find and reveal Russian agents involved in or close to the Trump campaign — may also have had something to do with it:

“[C]urrent and former officials said the exposure of sources inside the United States has also complicated matters,” noted the Times. “This year, the identity of an F.B.I. informant, Stefan Halper, became public after [Trump-loyal MAGA Republican] House lawmakers sought information on him and the White House allowed that information to be shared. Mr. Halper, an American academic based in Britain, had been sent to talk to Trump campaign advisers who were under F.B.I. scrutiny for their ties to Russia.”

Things were picking up the following year, in 2019, as Putin was planning his invasion of Ukraine while Trump was preparing for the 2020 election.

In July 2019, Trump had conversations with five foreign leaders during and just before a presidential visit that month to Mar-a-Lago; they included Putin and the Emir of Qatar.

In one of those conversations, according to a high-level US Intelligence source, Trump “made promises” to a “world leader” that were so alarming it provoked a national security scramble across multiple agencies.

As The Washington Post noted in an article titled “Trump’s communications with foreign leader are part of whistleblower complaint that spurred standoff between spy chief and Congress”:

“Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson determined that the complaint [against Trump] was credible and troubling enough to be considered a matter of ‘urgent concern,’ a legal threshold that requires notification of congressional oversight committees.”

On the last day of that month, July 31, Trump had another private conversation with Putin.

The White House spokespeople told Congress and the press that Trump said that he and Putin discussed “wildfires” and “trade between the nations.” No droids in this car…

But the following week, on August 2nd, The Daily Beast’s Betsy Swan reported that Trump had that week asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for a list of all its employees (including all of our spies) who had worked there more than 90 days, and the request had intelligence officials experiencing “disquiet.”

Did Trump ever return that document to the intelligence agencies? I can find no record of a news story suggesting that he did. It appears to have vanished.

Perhaps just by coincidence, months after Trump left office with cases of classified documents, The New York Times ran a story with the headline Captured, Killed or Compromised: C.I.A. Admits to Losing Dozens of Informants:

“Top American counterintelligence officials warned every C.I.A. station and base around the world last week,” the Times’ story’s lede began, “about troubling numbers of informants recruited from other countries to spy for the United States being captured or killed, people familiar with the matter said.

“The message, in an unusual top secret cable, said that the C.I.A.’s counterintelligence mission center had looked at dozens of cases in the last several years involving foreign informants who had been killed, arrested or most likely compromised. Although brief, the cable laid out the specific number of agents executed by rival intelligence agencies — a closely held detail that counterintelligence officials typically do not share in such cables.”

If it turns out the Trump has been acting as an agent for Russia, a Trojan horse right here in America, how long might this have been going on?

Czechoslovakia’s Státní bezpečnost (StB) first started paying attention to Trump back in 1977, as documented by the German newspaper Bildwhen the StB’s files were declassified.

It began when Trump married Czech model Ivana Zelnickova, his first wife, recently buried on his golf course in New Jersey after she fell down a flight of stairs and died.

Czechoslovakia at that time was part of the Warsaw Pact with the Soviet Union, and Ivana and her family had been raised as good communists. Now that a Czech citizen was married into a wealthy and prominent American family, the StB saw an opportunity and started tracking Trump virtually from his engagement.

As 2016 and 2018 investigations by The Guardian found:

“Ivana’s father, Miloš Zelníček, gave regular information to the local StB office about his daughter’s visits from the US and on his celebrity son-in-law’s career in New York. Zelníček was classified as a ‘conspiratorial’ informer. His relationship with the StB lasted until the end of the communist regime.”

An investigative reporting breakthrough by Craig Unger for his book American Kompromat led Unger to Uri Shvets, a former KGB spy who’d been posted to Washington, DC for years as a correspondent for the Soviet news agency TASS.

Shvets told the story — from his own knowledge — of how Trump and Ivana visited Moscow in 1987 and were essentially recruited or seduced by the KGB, a trip corroborated by Luke Harding in his book Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win.

Their trip was coordinated by Intourist, the Soviet travel agency that was a front for the KGB, and the Trumps’ handlers regaled Donald and Ivana with Soviet talking points, presumably about things like the horrors of NATO.

The KGB’s psychological profile of Trump had determined he was vulnerable to flattery and not a deep thinker, so they told him repeatedly how brilliant he was and that he should run for president in the US.

Much to the astonishment and jubilation of the KGB, Trump returned from Moscow to the US to give a Republican presidential campaign speech that fall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

He then purchased a large ad in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe on September 1, 1987 that questioned America’s ongoing support of Japan and NATO, both thorns in the side of the USSR and their Chinese allies.

Trump’s ad laid it on the line:

“Why are these nations not paying the United States for the human lives and billions of dollars we are losing to protect their interests? ... The world is laughing at America’s politicians as we protect ships we don’t own, carrying oil we don’t need, destined for allies who won’t help.”

As The Guardian reported in 2021:

“The bizarre intervention was cause for astonishment and jubilation in Russia. A few days later Shvets, who had returned home by now, was at the headquarters of the KGB’s first chief directorate in Yasenevo when he received a cable celebrating the ad as a successful ‘active measure’ executed by a new KGB asset.

“’It was unprecedented,’ [Shvets said.] … It was hard to believe that somebody would publish it under his name and that it will impress real serious people in the west but it did and, finally, this guy became the president.’”

Meanwhile, Putin was making friends with powerful influence over American foreign policy.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who flipped his nation into a strongman neofascist state following an unsuccessful attempted coup in 2016 (he imprisoned and tortured numerous journalists and political opponents), has been deepening his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin ever since that US election year.

In 2017, Erdoğan apparently gained access to America’s deepest secrets by secretly paying off General Michael Flynn even as Flynn became Trump’s National Security Advisor; he also had at least one secret phone conversation with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak after Flynn started working in the White House.

Flynn pleaded guilty in December of 2017 to “willfully and knowingly” making “false, fictitious and fraudulent statements” to the FBI about one of those conversations with Russian Ambassador Kislyak. Flynn was also charged as an unregistered agent of a foreign government (Turkey) while working in the White House: prosecutors said he had taken about a half-million dollars from Erdoğan.

Around the time he was leaving office, Trump pardoned Flynn, essentially burying the entire story.

The plot thickened when America learned, from a blockbuster 2022 report in Axios by Jonathan Swan, that just before leaving office, back on October 21, 2020, Trump had signed Executive Order 13957.

It would allow him to instantly fire as many as 50,000 senior federal employees encompassing the Civil Service management of every government agency including the FBI, CIA, NSA, large parts of the Pentagon, and DHS, and allow Trump to replace all of them with nakedly political loyalist appointees.

And it wouldn’t stop there. As Donald Moynihan wrote for Slate about this “Schedule F” Executive Order:

“Schedule F would burn down the civil service system. It would be a government of the lawless leading the incompetent. …

“Government data unfavorable to the administration would be suppressed or altered. Public statements about what government actors are actually doing would become rarer and less believable. And questionable actions by the security forces to target political enemies and protect friends could become routine.

“Career public employees would be forced to choose between their oath to the Constitution—in effect, their oath to serve the public—and keeping their job. They will have their loyalty questioned based on which political organizations they associated with in college, or voter registration, or social media activity. Some will not go along with the program. They will be fired. Or never join the government in the first place.”

Trump didn’t have the time to push that executive order through the federal bureaucracy, but it gives us a clear picture of his vision for a second Trump administration, particularly since this is still on the Project 2025 agenda.

Campaigning to destroy NATO; opposing aid to Ukraine; demolishing the free world’s confidence in America’s ability to keep top secret information confidential; utterly destroying our senior-most intelligence and military agencies; installing Trojan horses to lead them: Trump’s goal appears to be, to paraphrase Ron DeSantis, to “Make America Russia.”

What are Trump’s real goals with these appointments?

As the old saying goes, “Watch what he does, not what he says.”

NOW READ: Until there’s a liberal media apparatus, the Democrats will live in Trump’s America

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AN 11 24

President-elect Donald Trump has surprised and even alarmed many across the country, and “puzzled” and “baffled” some within his own party, with his Cabinet and other top White House nominations. Critics on the left have denounced his picks for their apparent lack of experience or qualifications for the roles they are expected to take on, noting some hold controversial or even false positions in the fields they may soon direct policy on. Meanwhile, experts in the fields of government, fascism, and democracy, are raising serious concerns about the potential “danger” some nominees represent, drawing comparisons to the “professional propagandists” often found in authoritarian regimes.

Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an NYU professor of history and a recognized expert on fascism and authoritarianism, on Wednesday pointed to this report on one of Trump’s most-recent nominations, Linda McMahon:

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McMahon was Trump’s former administrator of the Small Business Administration, and is a former CEO of WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment), a major GOP donor, and has recently been the chair of a pro-Trump Super PAC, the board chair of a pro-Trump think tank, and the co-chair of Trump’s second transition team.

“Trump’s cabinet picks are a declaration of war on expertise and facts (that’s why there are several Fox hosts in the mix). The con artists, fraudsters, and professional propagandists that populate authoritarian governments see facts and laws as impediments to their goals,” Dr. Ben-Ghiat wrote.

Trump, announcing McMahon’s nomination, claimed, “Linda will use her decades of Leadership experience, and deep understanding of both Education and Business, to empower the next Generation of American Students and Workers, and make America Number One in Education in the World.”

McMahon’s only brush with the field of education came about 15 years ago, when she served on the Connecticut State Board of Education. She resigned after 15 months. At the time, her appointment was controversial, with one lawmaker lamenting, “her depth of knowledge regarding education is lacking.”

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McMahon is far from the only controversial nominee.

On Tuesday, the vice chair of the powerful House Rules Committee Jim McGovern (D-MA) blasted Trump’s nominees as “beyond insane.”

“Someone who is credibly accused of having sex with an underage girl. Someone who sucks up to foreign dictators and has attracted major concern that they can’t be trusted to protect America’s secrets from our adversaries. Someone who paid hush money to cover up a sexual assault accusation, you know, to lead our military, he’s picked because Donald Trump likes him on Fox News? Someone who says that tap water turns kids gay? I mean, this is the dream team? This is the dream team? Really?”

He appeared to be referring to Attorney General presumptive nominee Matt Gaetz, Director of National Intelligence presumptive nominee Tulsi Gabbard, Defense Secretary presumptive nominee Pete Hegseth, and HHS Secretary presumptive nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The Democratic Association of Secretaries of State posted video calling Trump’s nominees “a trainwreck.”

“Gaetz, Gabbard, RFK – none of them have the experience or qualifications for the positions they’re seeking, in addition to the fact they’re all dangerous MAGA zealots,” the organization declared. They posted a video clip (below) from MSNBC with a chyron that noted opposition from the right to Trump’s Attorney General nominee, Matt Gaetz.

MSNBC’s justice and legal affairs analyst Anthony Coley told viewers that Gaetz, the recently resigned U.S. Congressman, “has no national security experience—not anything meaningful—little anti-trust experience, and he certainly has no experience with criminal law, except for being the target of a federal criminal investigation looking into inappropriate sexual contact, allegedly, with a minor.”

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Trump has also just appointed his former acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, a strong Trump loyalist, to be the U.S. Ambassador to NATO.

“Whitaker has little evident foreign policy or national security experience, making him an unknown to many in U.S. security circles,” The Associated Press reports. “Previous ambassadors to NATO have generally had years of diplomatic, political or military experience.”

“Before serving Trump,” Mother Jones notes, “he helped a company hawk bizarre products like a ‘masculine toilet’ to help ‘well-endowed men’ avoid unwanted contact with water.”

But The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols, a former U.S. Naval War College professor and an expert on Russia and nuclear weapons, served up this warning: “This is just hilarious, but the danger here is that it makes him Senate-confirmed and available for other stuff later.”

In other words, assuming Whitaker is confirmed, Trump could nominate him to another, even more critical role, declaring he’s qualified because he’s already been Senate-confirmed.

Last week, Nichols declared that Trump’s “nominations for intelligence, defense, and justice were revenge on people he thinks are his enemies. This is just endangering millions of innocent people.”

On Monday on MSNBC, Nichols went much further, delivered a scathing analysis of Trump’s nominees, calling them “an all-fronts assault on American democracy,” in another warning.

Trump, he said, is “trying to break the institutions of American government and American society, and what you’ve been seeing for the past few weeks is an all-fronts assault on American democracy, especially with these nominations.”

“I think the most dangerous of these nominations is actually [Pete] Hegseth,” Nichols explained. “And I’m kind of startled that we’re not sitting here talking more about taking a morning Fox [News] host and sticking him in the nuclear chain of command, to lead the largest—one of the largest—bureaucracies in the United States, in the world, including the person that’s supposed to look after the most powerful fighting force on the planet.”

And he concluded, “it’s also important to recognize that we could be in the first phases of a major constitutional crisis, even before Trump is sworn in.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

READ MORE:[‘Damaging’: Unredacted Sealed Sworn Testimony in Gaetz Case Accessed by Alleged Hacker]

an 11 24

Consumer advocacy group Public Citizen feigned surprise on Wednesday over President-elect Donald Trump's nomination of Wall Street CEO Howard Lutnick to lead the U.S. Department of Commerce.

"Oh look, another billionaire has made his way into Trump's Cabinet," said the group, noting Lutnick is also a promoter of cryptocurrency and a Trump megadonor. "The conflicts of interest are almost too many to count."

Among the conflicts are Lutnick's involvement in the crypto industry and federal and state cases against Cantor Fitzgerald.

In addition to running the Wall Street firm, Lutnick is a banker for the "stablecoin" company Tether; purchasers receive a Tether token for $1, with the proceeds invested in reserves and Treasury bonds managed by Lutnick's Cantor Fitzgerald.

As Public Citizennoted, New York Attorney General Letitia James found in 2021 that Tether and another crypto firm "recklessly and unlawfully covered up massive financial losses to keep their scheme going and protect their bottom lines."

The company is also reportedly under federal investigation over alleged criminal violations of anti-money laundering rules and sanctions.

Public Citizen also said that while co-chairing Trump's transition team, Lutnick "may also have helped arrange a meeting between Trump and Coinbase chief Brian Armstrong," who "helped steer a record amount of political spending from the crypto industry into the 2024 election."

Crypto firms poured over $119 million into directly influencing the 2024 federal elections, Public Citizenfound in August, making the industry's spending second only to that of fossil fuel companies.

As Politico reported in October, even other members of Trump's inner circle have accused Lutnick of using his transition team co-chair position to take meetings on Capitol Hill and "talk about matters impacting his investment firm, Cantor Fitzgerald—including high-stakes regulatory matters involving its cryptocurrency business."

Lutnick's nomination, said former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, serves as a reminder that "Trump serves the oligarchy, not the people."

"Debris from crypto's political spending tsunami will jam up more halls in Washington than ever before if Lutnick is confirmed as secretary of commerce," said Bartlett Naylor, a financial policy advocate for Public Citizen. "The president-elect, who once correctly called bitcoin a scam, now surrounds himself with even more crypto enablers. Cryptocurrency won't return good jobs to the heartland or reduce food prices; it will only thin the wallets of those vulnerable to a now government-legitimized con."

Government watchdog Accountable.US pointed to more than $19 million in political donations Lutnick has made since 2009, nearly all of which went to GOP candidates and political action committees. He contributed $6 million to Trump's super PAC, Make America Great Again, Inc., in 2024 alone.

"Howard Lutnick's questionable qualifications to lead the Department of Commerce begin and end with his loyalty to the president-elect," said Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk.

Tether isn't the only Lutnick-linked company that's been investigated for wrongdoing. The Securities and Exchange Commission fined Cantor Fitzgerald $1.4 million in 2023, saying the company repeatedly failed "to identify and report customers who qualified as large traders." The company also agreed to pay $16 million in fines to the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 2022 for using unauthorized communication channels.

Should Lutnick be confirmed as commerce secretary, Accountable.US said a "major regulatory conflict" could arise due to a dispute between the BGC Group, a spin-off brokerage of Cantor Fitzegerald, and futures and commodities exchange CME Group, over a competing trading platform BGC Group is launching.

"Lutnick's company's violations resulting in financial regulator fines and millions in right-wing political donations shows that political devotion takes precedence over actual experience to do the job in Trump's Cabinet," said Carrk.

Trump campaigned as a champion of working people as he railed against high grocery prices. As The New Republicreportedon Tuesday, Lutnick has showered Trump's plan for across-the-board tariffs with effusive praise—even as leading economists warn the plan to impose tariffs on foreign imports will pass higher costs onto consumers, not foreign countries.

"In September, Lutnick told CNBC that 'tariffs are an amazing tool for the president to use—we need to protect the American worker,'" wrote Edith Olmsted. "Lutnick also gushed about tariffs at Trump's fascistic rally in Madison Square Garden last month, claiming that America was better off 100 years ago, when it had 'no income tax and all we had was tariffs.' His high praise for tariffs came even as he admitted Americans would face higher prices as a direct result."

Lutnick's nomination, said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), "is a win for the billionaire class at the expense of working people."

"The across-the-board tariff plan," she said, "is a distraction from the MAGA scam to extend tax giveaways for giant corporations and billionaires like Howard Lutnick."

===

tnr

no lnx pix

Trump’s War With the Press Takes a Terrifying Turn

Donald Trump has nominated a Project 2025 author to lead the Federal Communications Commission.

Donald Trump has announced that the next Federal Communications Commission chair would be Brendan Carr, the senior-most Republican on the FCC and a contributor to Project 2025.

“Commissioner Carr is a warrior for free speech, and has fought against the regulatory lawfare that has stifled Americans’ freedoms, and held back our economy,” Trump said in a statement Sunday. The president-elect did not mention Carr’s involvement in Project 2025.

In his Project 2025 chapter, Carr outlined his agenda for the FCC. Carr wrote that one of the goals for Trump’s administration should be reining in Big Tech’s “attempts to drive diverse political viewpoints from the digital town square,” according to Business Insider. Carr suggested that companies be unable to censor content unless it is illegal, allowing consumers to choose their own content filters and fact-checking services.

Carr’s intentions for social media are perhaps best demonstrated by X, which has been transformed into a MAGA misinformation echo chamber by its owner, Elon Musk, who seems to have permanently attached himself to Trump’s side.

Carr also pushed to ban TikTok if its parent company, ByteDance, does not sell its U.S. operations, warning that Americans were receiving their news and information from China.

In addition to addressing Big Tech, Carr also wrote that the FCC should focus on “promoting national security, unleashing economic prosperity, and ensuring FCC accountability and good governance.”

House Democrats previously called for an investigation into Carr over his partisan activity, but it did not result in formal action, according to NPR. Carr said he received approval from FCC ethics officials to contribute to the right-wing playbook.

Trump spent months on the campaign trail disavowing Project 2025, an authoritarian policy road map cooked up by the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation, only to now welcome its architects into the fold.

Last month, Carr railed against Kamala Harris’s surprise appearance on NBC’s Saturday Night Live, calling it “a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule” and “biased and partisan conduct.” Trump was offered equal time on NBC, and the FCC said they had “not made any determination regarding political programming rules, nor have we received a complaint from any interested parties.”

Still, Carr took up the bullhorn on behalf of the president who’d appointed him to the FCC in 2017.

FCC rules dictate that only three commissioners can be affiliated with the same political party at any given time, and none can have a financial interest in any commission-related business. The FCC is responsible for regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable. Under Trump’s first administration, the FCC repealed net neutrality rules, which were then reinstated this year.

Trump’s Plans for Government Efficiency Keep Getting More Extreme

Vivek Ramaswamy is preparing to go further than even Project 2025.

Vivek Ramaswamy holds a microphone up to his face

Peter Zay/Anadolu/Getty Images

Donald Trump has sweeping plans for his second term, and they include slashing and gutting large parts of the executive branch.

Speaking with Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo on Sunday, Trump’s nominated co-chair for the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, Vivek Ramaswamy outlined the massive agenda, revealing that the plan is akin to—or possibly more extreme than—the road map offered by Project 2025. Ramaswamy proposed that several government agencies under his helm would be “deleted outright.”

“Are you expecting to close down entire agencies? Like, President Trump has talked about the Department of Education, for example. Are you going to be closing down departments?” Bartiromo asked.

“We expect mass reductions,” said Ramaswamy. “We expect certain agencies to be deleted outright. We expect mass reductions enforced in areas of the federal government that are bloated. We expected massive cuts of our federal contractors and others who are overbilling the federal government.”

And Ramaswamy believes that he and his fellow departmental co-chair, world’s richest man Elon Musk, can expedite those changes by leaning on the highest rungs of the third branch of government: the Supreme Court.

“I think people will be surprised by how quickly we’re able to move with some of those changes, given the legal backdrop the Supreme Court has given us,” Ramaswamy told Fox.

From the Trump administration’s perspective, the executive branch can overstep Congress entirely to swiftly remove agencies such as the Department of Education since they were first enacted by executive action.

“It’s the unelected bureaucrats in the administrative state that was created through executive action,” Ramaswamy said. “It’s going to be fixed through executive action.”

“Think about the Supreme Court’s environment,” he continued. “Over the last several years, they’ve held that many of those regulations are unconstitutional at a large scale. Rescind those regulations, pull those regs back, and then that gives us the industrial logic to then downsize the size of that administrative state.”

After that, DOGE (the agency) would begin examining cuts to the budget. Reminder: Musk promised to trim $2 trillion from the federal budget, which constitutes more than Congress has in discretionary spending, a move that would practically defund the entire executive branch, which doles out funding for the military, national security, and federal agencies.

“And the beauty of all of this is that [it] can be achieved just through executive action without Congress,” Ramaswamy added. “Score some early wins, and then you look at those bigger portions of the federal budget that need to be addressed one by one.”

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This Unqualified MAGA Addict Might Become Trump’s FBI Director

Kash Patel is an intellectual lightweight who spends all his time trying to please Dear Leader.

Kash Patel in Charlotte

Peter Zay/Anadolu/Getty Images

Kash Patel in Charlotte in October

Donald Trump has his eye on yet another unqualified lightweight to lead a key agency, as the president-elect reportedly is considering loyalist Kash Patel to head the FBI.

CNN reported Friday that Trump’s right-wing allies are trying to convince him to fire Christopher Wray, whom Trump appointed in 2017 after firing James Comey for allegedly mishandling the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server.

During his presidential campaign, the president-elect expressed his displeasure at Wray, who drew his ire after Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate was searched in 2022 due to alleged mishandling of classified documents. FBI directors are supposed to serve a single 10-year term, but Patel’s appointment would make him the third FBI director in seven years.

Patel is a vehement defender of Trump, showing up regularly on Fox News, at conservative events, and even at Trump’s hush-money trial in New York. In the waning days of his first term, Trump pushed to appoint Patel deputy director of the CIA or FBI but backed down only after receiving pushback from CIA Director Gina Haspel and Attorney General Bill Barr.

“Patel had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency,” Barr would later write in his memoir. Or, as CNN put it, “Even among Trump loyalists, Patel is widely viewed as a controversial figure and relentless self-promoter whose value largely derives from a shared disdain for the so-called deep state.”

Patel has said he wants to go after government employees who leak information to the press, as well as journalists themselves. On Steve Bannon’s podcast in December, he said that he and other Trump loyalists “will go out and find the conspirators not just in government but in the media.

“We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel said to Bannon. “We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly. We’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice.”

If Trump installs Patel at the FBI, it would certainly further Trump and his MAGA allies’ goal of purging the federal workforce of disloyal employees. It also would raise eyebrows for the next FBI director to have three years working in the Department of Justice as his only law enforcement experience. But Patel has demonstrated loyalty to Trump, which might be enough to win over Republicans in Congress.

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Republicans Are Already Trying to Grant Trump Dangerous Powers

The Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, defeated once this week, is already back from the dead.

Donald Trump points a finger

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Donald Trump shortly after winning the 2024 presidential election

House Republicans are trying to push through a bill that would give President-elect Donald Trump powers as president to designate nonprofit organizations as “terrorist-supporting,” even after it was seemingly defeated earlier this week.

The Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act would allow the secretary of the treasury the ability to revoke any nonprofit organization’s tax-exempt status by branding it with a terrorism label. Earlier this week, the bill failed to receive the necessary two-thirds majority in the House to advance to the Senate.

But on Monday, the House Rules Committee plans to hold a hearing that could set up a new vote on the bill, which initially had the support of all but one Republican and 52 Democrats. With the GOP only holding a seven-seat majority in the chamber, they would need the support of more Democrats to advance the bill, which was introduced to combat protests against Israel’s war on Gaza.

Under any circumstances, the bill would threaten First Amendment rights to free speech, but after Trump’s election last week, there are now fears that the president-elect could use these new powers to crack down on his enemies with little recourse. In addition to activist groups, many universities and news outlets are nonprofit organizations.

After the bill’s initial failure on Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union celebrated the rejection of “new broad and easily abused powers.”

“The freedom to dissent without fear of government retribution is a vital part of any well-functioning democracy, and now is not the time to grant the executive branch new powers to investigate and functionally shut down and silence its critics,” said Kia Hamadanchy, senior policy counsel for the ACLU, in a statement.

Now the bill could be given a retooling and sent up for a vote again, giving a president who has already threatened to use the military against his critics even more sweeping powers. The question is if Democrats will recognize the bill as granting dangerous powers to the presidency or see it as a chance to clamp down on protesters they have tried to ignore at their peril for the past year.

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wapo no lnx 11 16? 24

JD Vance

Vice President

Marco Rubio

State

Treasury

Pete Hegseth

Defense

Matt Gaetz

Attorney general

Doug Burgum

Interior

Agriculture

Commerce

Labor

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Health and Human Services

Housing and Urban Development

Transportation

Chris Wright

Energy

Education

Douglas A. Collins

Veterans Affairs

Kristi L. Noem

Homeland Security

Other cabinet-level roles

John Ratcliffe

CIA

Susie Wiles

Chief of staff

Economic advisers chair

Lee Zeldin

Environmental Protection Agency

Management and Budget

Tulsi Gabbard

National Intelligence

Science adviser

Small Business Administration

Trade representative

Elise Stefanik

United Nations

Note: Cabinet shown based on current roles included in that group.

By Washington Post staff

Updated November 16, 2024

The latest: President-elect Donald Trump announced on Saturday that he has selected Chris Wright, the head of fracking company Liberty Energy, to lead the Department of Energy and to serve on a new Council of National Energy.

Donald Trump and his team are rapidly announcing key Cabinet and White House roles. Loyalty to the president is a top consideration, and in some instances, they are also taking an unorthodox approach to filling jobs, picking people with controversial backgrounds and little relevant policy experience.

Here are the people Trump has named to his incoming administration or the top contenders for unfilled roles based on our reporting. We will continue to update this article.

Vice president

JD Vance

NAMED

Does not require Senate confirmation

The vice president is second-in-command, and unlike other Cabinet positions, it’s announced before the presidential election. Trump picked his VP during the Republican National Convention in July.

📝 About Trump’s pick

JD Vance, a one-term senator from Ohio, is one of the youngest vice presidents in history and a rising star in the Republican Party. A former Trump critic who wrote a best-selling memoir on his upbringing in rural Appalachia, he’s worked to more closely align himself with Trump over the years and is now one of his staunchest defenders.

Reported by Meryl Kornfield and Marianne LeVine

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Secretary of state

Marco Rubio

NAMED

Requires Senate confirmation

The secretary of state is America’s lead diplomat and will be the face of Trump’s foreign policy abroad. They are charged with being the principal interlocutor as the president reshapes alliances such as NATO, presses on Iran and seeks to encircle China. This secretary of state will inherit a far more dangerous world stage than existed in Trump’s first term, with raging conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine. Trump has vowed to resolve both in his first days in office.

📝 About Trump’s pick

Marco Rubio is a Florida senator and hawk on China and Venezuela and has previously supported robust aid for Ukraine and advocates a robust U.S. presence in the world. Rubio ran for president in 2016 and clashed bitterly with Trump in the Republican primary, though they repaired their relationship and Trump considered Rubio as a potential running mate earlier this year.

Reported by Michael Birnbaum

Secretary of the treasury NOTE BILL TERROR NGO

Requires Senate confirmation

The head of the Treasury Department will play a key role in setting the economic agenda of the second Trump administration. The treasury secretary is the nation’s chief economic steward, responsible for helping set policy on taxation, trade, debt and financial regulation, while typically taking a leading role in negotiations over all economic policy with Congress.

📝 Potential picks

Scott Bessent, who had virtually no role during the first Trump administration, emerged as a key adviser to Trump over the course of the 2024 presidential campaign. Bessent is a longtime hedge fund executive who made a fortune working for George Soros, the billionaire investor hated by much of the right, and has also taught economics at Yale. Trump has praised him as “central casting.”

Howard Lutnick, who served as co-chair of Trump’s transition team, has become a surprise candidate for treasury secretary. Lutnick is the CEO and chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald, an investment firm. Lutnick could face concerns about conflicts of interest: As The Washington Post reported, the Treasury Department is weighing whether to put financial sanctions on the cryptocurrency Tether, which Lutnick has praised and says he manages some investments for.

Reported by Jeff Stein

Secretary of defense

Pete Hegseth

NAMED

Requires Senate confirmation

The defense secretary is the senior executive in the Defense Department, overseeing the U.S. military and Pentagon bureaucracy, and reporting directly to the president.

📝 About Trump’s pick

A combat veteran and Fox News host, Pete Hegseth has called for a more muscular approach to running the U.S. military. He was not widely expected to fill the role and is likely to undergo a tough Senate confirmation hearing. Hegseth, who served as an Army infantryman in Iraq and Afghanistan as a member of the Minnesota National Guard, has criticized the Biden administration’s approach to national security as weak. He has also written a book describing the military’s leadership as more focused on diversity than confronting global threats.

Reported by Missy Ryan, Dan Lamothe, John Hudson, Alex Horton, Josh Dawsey and Isaac Arnsdorf

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Attorney general

Matt Gaetz

NAMED

Requires Senate confirmation

The attorney general heads the nation’s massive federal law enforcement agency, with more than 100,000 employees. The FBI is its principal investigative arm; other agencies that fall under the Justice Department include the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Prisons, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The department leads federal investigations and prosecutions, including criminal, civil and civil rights cases. Trump and his allies have vowed to reduce the agency’s independence from the White House and use its investigative powers to go after his political enemies.

📝 About Trump’s pick

Matt Gaetz, a Florida representative, has been named to one of the most consequential positions in the Trump administration. Gaetz, who has served in Congress since 2017, has been a loyal and outspoken supporter of Trump, defending the former president after a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol to overturn the election results on Jan. 6, 2021. Upon being named to the position Gaetz resigned from Congress. The House Ethics Committee was set to vote this week on releasing a report about Gaetz, according to four people familiar with the matter. Gaetz is a divisive figure even within his party and could face a tough confirmation battle.

Reported by Perry Stein, Marianna Sotomayor, Jacqueline Alemany and Marianne LeVine

Secretary of interior

Doug Burgum

NAMED

Requires Senate confirmation

The Department of the Interior oversees hundreds of millions of acres of federal land and other natural resources that will be key to the Trump administration’s plans to boost U.S. oil and gas production.

📝 About Trump’s pick

Doug Burgum is governor of North Dakota and a staunch advocate of expanded fossil fuel production. Trump has also named Burgum to a newly created “energy czar” position (for more detail, jump to Other top administrative roles). He’s also a close ally of oil industry tycoon Harold Hamm. The two have been key advisers to Trump since Burgum dropped his own presidential bid and endorsed Trump. After Trump asked oil industry executives to help steer $1 billon toward his campaign, Burgum talked extensively with oil donors and CEOs, and he helped lead the campaign’s development of its energy policy. But unlike many others in Trump’s orbit, Burgum believes human activity is causing climate change. He has pushed plans in his state to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the energy sector, charting a path favored by oil and gas companies that relies on nascent technologies to lower the carbon footprint of energy production. Many climate experts, thought, warn it is not possible to meet crucial targets for slowing warming without cutting production. Burgum supports a vast expansion of oil and gas production.

Reported by Evan Halper and Dino Grandoni

Secretary of labor

Requires Senate confirmation

The labor secretary oversees pressing issues impacting American workers and employers, ranging from artificial intelligence and workplace safety to child labor and overtime regulations. Trump’s pick is expected to enact a pro-business agenda that unwinds labor-friendly policies promulgated by the Biden administration.

📝 Potential picks

Andrew Puzder is a former chief executive of the parent company of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s and was Trump’s early nominee for the position in his first administration. Puzder withdrew his nomination in 2017, despite widespread support from the business community. Republican senators at the time expressed deep concern amid revelations that Puzder had hired an undocumented housekeeper and faced abuse allegations from his ex-wife. He has opposed minimum-wage increases and expanding overtime coverage.

Patrick Pizzella, who is a favorite among conservative employment policymakers, served as deputy secretary of labor during the first Trump administration and has a long record of pushing for pro-business interests from within agency. Pizzella is currently the mayor of Pinehurst, N.C., a storied golf resort town that hosts U.S. Opens.

Johnny C. Taylor Jr. is the chief executive of the Society for Human Resource Management, one of the world’s largest human resource associations, and served as chair of the President’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities during Trump’s first term.

Reported by Lauren Kaori Gurley

Secretary of health and human services

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

NAMED

Requires Senate confirmation

The Department of Health and Human Services, with a nearly $2 trillion budget, oversees health insurance programs such as the Affordable Care Act, which Trump has pledged to run even though he has said he would prefer to overhaul it. HHS and its subagencies are also responsible for administering Medicare and Medicaid; leading the federal response to public health emergencies and outbreaks such as the coronavirus pandemic; and approving medical treatments, vaccines and devices, among numerous other functions. Regulations linked to abortion medication, drug-price negotiations and protections for transgender patients are among the flash points expected under Trump.

📝 About Trump’s pick

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a former Democrat and independent 2024 presidential candidate, whom Trump has named to run the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy threw his support to Trump in August. His “Make America Healthy Again” agenda targets chronic disease and childhood illness; he also founded a prominent anti-vaccine group and has a history of promoting debunked claims about vaccine safety. He recently said the Trump administration would push to get fluoride out of drinking water. Republican advisers have cautioned that Kennedy could face a difficult path to winning Senate confirmation to lead HHS, given his past statements on drugs and vaccines that are not based in science, and his many personal entanglements — a reality that Kennedy and his advisers have acknowledged.

Reported by Dan Diamond and Josh Dawsey

Secretary of housing and urban development

Requires Senate confirmation

The secretary of housing and urban development helps direct and steer policies around fair housing, which can include promoting homeownership, protecting the supply of affordable rental units and eliminating discriminatory housing practices. Housing issues played a major role in the 2024 presidential election, and Trump’s pick to run HUD will be key to forwarding the administration’s goals, especially around affordability.

📝 Potential picks

Ben Carson could return for a second stint as HUD secretary, according to housing experts and others close to the incoming administration. The retired neurosurgeon had no government experience when he was confirmed to lead the department during Trump’s first term. He has since stayed in Trump’s good graces and now runs the American Cornerstone Institute, which he founded to promote conservative ideas.

Brian Montgomery served as deputy HUD secretary under the first Trump administration and also led the Federal Housing Administration under President George W. Bush, President Barack Obama and Trump. He is also a founding partner of Gate House Strategies, an advisory firm for financial services, mortgage lending and the housing sector.

Dana Wade also served as FHA commissioner during Trump’s first term. She also worked at the White House Office of Management and Budget in 2018 and 2019, where she led budget oversight of agencies focused on financial services, including HUD.

Reported by Rachel Siegel

Secretary of transportation

Requires Senate confirmation

The secretary oversees the funding of roads, bridges and rail lines, as well as the running of the aviation system. The post has typically been low-profile, but the current secretary, Pete Buttigieg, has elevated the role, as did the passage of a huge infrastructure funding law early in Biden’s term.

📝 Potential picks

Sam Graves, a congressman from Missouri, chairs the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, giving him a significant role in shaping infrastructure policy that has included passing a major aviation bill this year. Graves is also a pilot. Graves said in a statement that it would be an “honor” to serve Trump but that he was also interested in continuing in his current job.

Garret Graves is a congressman from Louisiana who chairs the aviation subcommittee in the House. He did not run for reelection, so if he is chosen for the position, it would not affect Republicans’ likely majority in the chamber. He also worked with Sam Graves on the aviation bill and has been an advocate for Louisiana’s energy industry.

Troy E. Nehls, a congressman from Texas, is an outspoken supporter of Trump, campaigning with him in Nehls’s home state of Wisconsin this year. But he also has some transportation expertise as the chair of a railroads subcommittee. He sponsored legislation to improve railroad safety as part of a push led by Vance after the fiery derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.

Jeffrey Rosen was the acting attorney general during Trump’s final tumultuous days in office in 2020 and 2021, resisting Trump’s calls for the Justice Department to help discredit the 2020 election. But before that, he was the deputy transportation secretary, and he previously served as the department’s top lawyer in the George W. Bush administration.

Reported by Ian Duncan

Secretary of energy

Chris Wright

NAMED

Requires Senate confirmation

The Energy Department oversees energy production in the United States and will be key to the Trump administration’s plans to boost oil and gas output.

📝 About Trump’s pick

Chris Wright is the head of fracking company Liberty Energy and a skeptic of mainstream science on global warming who argues the “climate crisis” is a myth. The oil executive runs a foundation focused on dispelling the conventional wisdom on climate change and promoting expanded fossil fuel production as a solution to many of the world’s problems, an approach others say would drive dangerous levels of warming. Wright will also serve on Trump’s newly created National Energy Council.

Reported by Evan Halper, Maxine Joselow and Maegan Vazquez

Secretary of education

Requires Senate confirmation

The secretary of education, the administration’s leading voice on schools, typically has a K-12 background, though much of the job deals with higher education, including administering the $1.6 trillion student loan program. The secretary is responsible for enforcing civil rights laws that bar discrimination on the basis of race, sex and other factors in schools. And it runs grant programs that aid high-poverty K-12 schools and subsidize the cost of educating students with disabilities.

📝 Potential picks

Cade Brumley, a former teacher who is now the Louisiana state superintendent of education, has won admirers for improved reading scores in his state. He also has opposed Biden administration rules protecting transgender students and said DEI efforts don’t belong in schools.

Byron Donalds is a congressman from Florida who formerly worked in the banking, finance and insurance industries. Donalds has been a staunch ally of Trump and a critic of liberal lawmakers’ views on racial issues. At the Republican National Convention this summer, he spoke about the importance of school choice. Donalds, an ambitious Republican having served just two terms in the House, has been connected to other possible promotions in the past, including colleagues who nominated him to be House speaker — and some Floridians suspect he could run for governor in 2026 if he does not enter the Trump administration.

Virginia Foxx is a congresswoman from North Carolina and former community college president. She is also chair of the House Education Committee. The committee launched a high-profile investigation into campus antisemitism last year amid protests over the Israel-Gaza war, and is promoting reforms aimed at lowering college costs.

Tiffany Justice is a former school board member and mother of four from Florida. Justice co-founded Moms for Liberty, a conservative advocacy group for parents’ rights that has fought covid restrictions such as masks in schools as well as teaching about race, gender and sexuality.

Ryan Walters is the Oklahoma state schools superintendent. He has made headlines for conservative decisions such as ordering that every public school teacher in the state teach the Bible, but he has also come under fire for management issues in his agency.

Reported by Laura Meckler, Susan Svrluga and Paul Kane

Secretary of veterans affairs

Douglas A. Collins

NAMED

Requires Senate confirmation

The Department of Veterans Affairs, the government’s second-largest agency with more than 450,000 employees, oversees health care, disability and other benefits as well as burial services for millions of former service members. Its health-care system is the largest government-run health system in the country. Donald Trump and his allies have pledged to increase the agency’s reliance on private medical care for veterans and have long been critical of the government-run system.

📝 About Trump’s pick

Douglas A. Collins, an Iraq War veteran who is now a chaplain in the U.S. Air Force Reserve Command, has been tapped to run the Department of Veterans Affairs. Collins served in the House of Representatives from 2013 to 2021 and resigned to run an unsuccessful campaign for the Senate. He emerged as a strong loyalist during Trump’s first impeachment inquiry, when he was the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee. Collins also represented Trump in his efforts to contest the 2020 election results in Georgia. During the new Trump administration, Veterans Affairs is likely to focus heavily on increasing veterans’ options to seek health care from private doctors, a costly policy that Denis McDonough, the current secretary, has tried to curtail.

Reported by Lisa Rein

Secretary of homeland security

Kristi L. Noem

NAMED

Requires Senate confirmation

The homeland security secretary oversees a sprawling federal bureaucracy with a $60 billion budget and more than 230,000 employees. This role is key to Trump’s domestic policy agenda, especially given his pledge to deport millions of undocumented immigrants and his promise of a harsh crackdown at the U.S.-Mexico border.

📝 About Trump’s pick

Kristi L. Noem has served as the governor of South Dakota since 2019 and was an active supporter of Trump on the 2024 campaign trail. She previously served as the state’s at-large member of the U.S. House and in the state legislature. Noem brings less relevant experience to the Cabinet job than recent homeland security secretaries, including those who served during Trump’s first term.

Reported by Nick Miroff, Isaac Arnsdorf, Patrick Svitek and Jennifer Hassan

CIA director

John Ratcliffe

NAMED

Requires Senate confirmation

The director of the CIA manages the government’s premier agency tasked with the acquisition of foreign intelligence through human sources, analyzing all sources of intelligence and conducting covert action.

📝 About Trump’s pick

John Ratcliffe, a former Texas congressman and federal prosecutor, has been named as the new director of the CIA. He served as director of national intelligence from 2020 to 2021 in the first Trump administration. He is viewed as a stalwart Trump loyalist.

Reported by Ellen Nakashima

White House chief of staff

Susie Wiles

NAMED

Does not require Senate confirmation

The chief of staff is often considered the president’s gatekeeper, shaping his schedule and presidential access to him. They serve as a close adviser and also oversee White House staffing.

📝 About Trump’s pick

Susie Wiles, was Trump’s campaign manager, leading his operation since 2021, and played a big role in charting his comeback. She will be the first female White House chief of staff.

Reported by Hannah Knowles, Josh Dawsey and Marianne LeVine

Council of Economic Advisers chair

Requires Senate confirmation

The White House Council of Economic Advisers is primarily responsible for providing analyses about the effect of administration proposals on the economy. The council, led by a chair, is traditionally viewed as a safeguard against ideas from other parts of the administration that could prove harmful to the economy.

📝 Potential picks

Casey Mulligan is a University of Chicago economist who served in Trump’s first administration. He is a conservative and strident critic of President Joe Biden’s administration and has been floated by some officials as a potential choice for the post. He also published a book in 2020 about the “untold successes and failures” of Trump’s first administration.

Kevin Hassett, who was chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers during Trump’s first term, may be returning to the position in the second administration as well. An economist most recently at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, Hassett also served as an outside adviser to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.

Reported by Jeff Stein

Environmental Protection Agency administrator

Lee Zeldin

NAMED

Requires Senate confirmation

The EPA chief will play a central role in the Trump administration’s rollbacks of the Biden administration’s environmental rules. Under Trump, the agency is expected to weaken or scrap dozens of protections for the nation’s air, water and climate, including strict limits on greenhouse gas emissions from cars and power plants. The EPA boss will oversee a workforce of nearly 15,000 employees at the headquarters in Washington as well as 10 regional offices.

📝 About Trump’s pick

Lee Zeldin, a former New York congressman who ran a failed campaign for New York governor in 2022, is a lawyer by trade and does not have an extensive background in environmental issues. During his time in Congress, he sought to protect the Long Island Sound from dredge sediment dumping. But he also voted to end Clean Air Act standards and has a 14 percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental group, for his votes against many environmental bills, with the notable exception involving a measure to protect ecologically and culturally significant areas. He has been a strong defender of Trump, especially during his first impeachment and after he lost the 2020 election.

Reported by Maxine Joselow and Mariana Alfaro

Director of national intelligence

Tulsi Gabbard

NAMED

Requires Senate confirmation

The director of national intelligence serves as the head of the U.S. intelligence community, acting as principal adviser to the president on intelligence matters related to national security and overseeing a budget of $76.5 billion.

📝 About Trump’s pick

Tulsi Gabbard is a former Democratic representative from Hawaii who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 and later became a Republican. Gabbard, a military veteran, is a critic of foreign wars and helped Trump throughout the campaign – even preparing him for the debate. Trump indicated in his announcement that he thinks Gabbard’s history as a Democrat could help her win Senate confirmation, but she is still likely to face tough questions from members of both parties over her unorthodox foreign policy views.

Reported by Josh Dawsey, Patrick Svitek and Ellen Nakashima

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Ambassador to the United Nations

Elise Stefanik

NAMED

Requires Senate confirmation

The U.N. ambassador is the United States’ America’s representative at the United Nations, and meets regularly with the representatives of other countries to advance U.S. priorities and relationships on the world stage.

📝 About Trump’s pick

Elise Stefanik, a congresswoman from New York, is the fourth most senior Republican in the House, as chair of the House Republican Conference, and has been an outspoken defender of Trump in recent years. Stefanik has been deeply hostile to the United Nations, referring to it in recent months as “corrupt, defunct, and paralyzed”; “a cesspool of antisemitism” and as a entity that “rewards barbaric Iranian terrorists while punishing Israel for defending itself,”; and she has called U.N. Secretary -General António Guterres “an absolute disgrace.” Stefanik recently proposed withdrawing U.S. membership from the United Nations, should the body resist certain changes reform sought by the Trump administration.

Reported by Abigail Hauslohner

Border czar

Tom Homan

NAMED

Does not require Senate confirmation

This is a new senior official position in the Trump White House that is intended to help oversee the U.S. border and the deportation of undocumented immigrants.

📝 About Trump’s pick

Tom Homan is a former police officer, Border Patrol agent and special immigration agent investigating fraud and other crimes. Homan has years of experience running deportation operations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and he served as the agency’s acting director under Trump from January 2017 to June 2018. He won praise for deporting serious criminals under President Barack Obama but faced criticism for separating migrant families under Trump. The Senate never confirmed Homan, and he later became a Fox News analyst.

Reported by Maria Sacchetti

Energy czar

Doug Burgum

NAMED

Does not require Senate confirmation

This is a new role in the Trump administration that is intended to help repeal climate rules, scrap clean-energy subsidies and boost oil and gas production on millions of acres of federal lands nationwide.

📝 About Trump’s pick

Doug Burgum is governor of North Dakota and also Trump’s pick to lead the Department of the Interior. Trump has said that, as “energy czar,” Burgum would lead a new National Energy Council comprising all agencies and departments involved in the production, regulation and transportation of energy in the United States. In this role, Burgum could address a number of Trump’s priorities on energy, including plans to revoke limits on planet-warming pollution from cars and power plants, end a “pause” on new exports of liquefied natural gas, and abdicate America’s leadership role in global climate negotiations. Two Democratic presidents, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, also had a top White House climate and energy adviser that did not serve in the Cabinet.

Reported by Evan Halper and Maxine Joselow

National security adviser

Michael Waltz

NAMED

Does not require Senate confirmation

The role and power of the national security adviser vary from president to president. Officially, the adviser coordinates among the members of the National Security Council — the secretaries of state and defense, and the heads of other security agencies — to formulate options for the president on security issues and strategies, and sees that presidential decisions are carried out. But the adviser, based just steps from the Oval Office, has often been a powerful influence on those decisions.

📝 About Trump’s pick

Michael Waltz, a Florida congressman and retired Special Forces officer, has been tapped to be Trump’s national security adviser. Waltz advised George W. Bush’s administration on defense at the Pentagon and the White House, and in Congress, he is known as a China hawk. He serves on the House Armed Services Committee, the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Intelligence Committee.

Reported by Dan Lamothe, Leigh Ann Caldwell, Karen DeYoung and Patrick Svitek

White House press secretary

Karoline Leavitt

NAMED

Does not require Senate confirmation

The press secretary is the president’s most visible spokesperson. Traditionally, they hold regular briefings for reporters — which grew especially combative and less frequent in Trump’s first term. Past press secretaries for Trump include Sarah Huckabee Sanders, now the governor of Arkansas, and Sean Spicer, who famously began his tenure by insisting, inaccurately, that Trump drew the largest-ever audience to witness a presidential inauguration.

📝 About Trump’s pick

Karoline Leavitt was a national press secretary for Trump’s 2024 campaign who handled inquiries from reporters and played a highly visible role on TV. An alum of the first Trump administration and a former congressional candidate, she shares Trump’s criticisms of the press. “I have the great pleasure of fighting the fake news media all day, every day,” she said in a warm-up speech at one of Trump’s rallies.

Reported by Hannah Knowles and Maegan Vazquez

Other senior White House roles

There are a number of senior White House roles, but here are a few of the key positions that will likely play an outsized role in shaping the president’s agenda:

NAMED

James Blair, deputy chief of staff: Blair was the political director on Trump’s presidential campaign and as a deputy chief of staff will focus on legislative, political and public affairs.

Taylor Budowich, deputy chief of staff: Budowich ran Trump’s main super PAC, MAGA Inc., before joining the campaign. He is a trusted lieutenant of Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and will focus on communications and personnel.

Dan Scavino, deputy chief of staff: Scavino was a senior adviser on Trump’s presidential campaign and a longtime top social media aide and confidante to Trump.

Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff: Miller was also a senior advisor on Trump’s presidential campaign and is his top immigration adviser and speechwriter. Miller will focus on homeland security.

Steven Cheung, communications director: Cheung was a top communications adviser on Trump’s presidential campaign and will now serve as his communications director in the White House.

William McGinley, White House counsel: McGinley previously served as the White House Cabinet secretary under Trump and as general counsel to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. This role is expected to be central in the incoming president’s plan to expand executive authority.

Reported by Josh Dawsey, Maegan Vazquez and Hannah Knowles

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director

Requires Senate confirmation

The mission of the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director is to protect the public’s health through disease prevention, health promotion, and preparedness. For the first time, the position will require Senate confirmation.

📝 Potential picks

Casey Means is a Stanford-trained physician and entrepreneur who became an adviser to Kennedy. Means has argued that incentives in America’s food and health systems have rewarded private industry and encouraged unhealthy behaviors, and her recent book on causes of chronic disease has been passed around by Trump transition staff.

Reported by Dan Diamond

Surgeon general

Requires Senate confirmation

The role, frequently invoked as America’s doctor, has a large bully pulpit, if limited federal resources. Recent surgeons general have used their perch to warn about the dangers of opioids, social media and loneliness. The surgeon general also oversees the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service, a cadre of uniformed medical personnel who help provide care in rural and isolated parts of America.

📝 Potential picks

Joseph Ladapo, the Florida surgeon general is close to with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who battled with Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, but has fans such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Ladapo also has drawn criticism from public health leaders for his skepticism of vaccines and rejection of traditional strategies to fight a measles outbreak in his state.

Reported by Dan Diamond

an 1 24 18th signorelle

It’s been less than two weeks since the election, but we can see Donald Trump and the GOP moving rapidly in their efforts to take sweeping authoritarian control of our government and give enormous power to the president.

Let’s be clear first, and just completely vaporize the media narrative: Trump didn’t get a mandate, much less a landslide.

He will, according to estimates, win the popular vote by 1.5% after all votes from California are counted. Kamala Harris will have won more of the popular vote than Hillary Clinton (who of course won the popular vote against Trump). Winning the seven battleground states Trump won by narrow margins—and with just 50% of the popular vote—doesn’t come close to President Obama’s 385 Electoral College vote win and 53% popular vote win.

And yet, Republicans said Obama had no mandate, and no one called it a landslide.

So we need to emphasize that, even as Trump claims a mandate and grabs for absolute power. And grabbing he is.

Trump last week demanded that the Senate allow for recess appointments of his cabinet members—basically, thwarting the advise and consent rule and having nominations subject to a Senate vote. The three senators vying for leadership (the secret ballot will be held Tuesday night), all publicly complied with Trump’s wishes.

This is just pretty much ditching the Senate—dictator on day one.

Democrats can keep Congress from going into recess, but they’ll need to use the filibuster. Does any of us think the GOP, responding to Trump’s rantings, won’t then consider getting rid of the filibuster?

MAGA minions are violently angry, railing on X at anyone in the media who says something that seeks to keep Trump in check.

Trump named his long-time white supremacist aide Stephen Miller as deputy chief of staff, a pick that doesn’t require Senate confirmation and which elevates one of the most racist Nazi emulators we’ve ever seen in government.

Trump is putting anti-immigration hardliner Tom Homan in charge of the border, naming him “border czar.” Homan, who vows mass deportations, had already worked in Trump’s administration the first time around, carrying out its most brutal actions as ICE director.

Homan helped write Project 2025 and attended a white supremacist conference, which he claims was an accident, telling HuffPosthe didn’t know what it was about. But then, fearing that distancingtoo muchfrom the conference organized by Nick Fuentes might put him in political peril, he called Huffpost back to say, “I’m not saying this is a bad group. I’m saying I don’t know.” [vid]

Homan recently that if deporting undocumented immigrants who’ve been here for many years—and who have children who are American citizens—means deporting whole families, then whole families, including those citizens, “can be deported together.” On Sean Hannity’s program on Fox this week, he tried to backtrack, saying they will be starting with convicted criminals who are undocumented.

But that’s only a fraction of undocumented immigrants in the U.S., and most are serving time in prison and will be deported upon release, as has been happening for many years. Trump is talking about deporting 11 to 20 million people, and the vast majority of those people aren’t criminals by any stretch of the imagination. They’re law-abiding people who are contributing to our communities—they’re our co-workers, friends, and families—and they are propping up entire industries, filling jobs because of labor shortages.

Trump has also namedthe MAGA-crazed puppy-killer Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor, as his Homeland Security director. Putting this woman, who has little experience but who’s shown her brutality—which is the most important qualification to Trump, after loyalty—in charge of not only immigration but of thwarting domestic terrorism and overseeing FEMA and disaster relief is pretty horrifying.

Elise Stefanik, the upstate New York MAGA warrior for Trump, has been chosen by Trump as ambassador to the United Nations, while Marco Rubio is his pick for Secretary of State. The fact that Stefanik and Rubio—two bulls in a small china shop—are the closest MAGA can come to “diplomatic” shows just how devoid of any talent there is in the MAGA ranks. I mean, it almost makes you nostalgic for the days of Rex Tillerson and Nikki Haley!

The former Republican House member from New York, Lee Zeldin, will be in charge of stripping the Environmental Protection Agency for the big oil companies, while MAGA loyalist and conspiracy theorist Rep. Mike Waltz has been tapped as Trump’s national security advisor. As of right now, there’s also talk of putting Florida Rep. Byron Donalds into the administration.

And this is just the very beginning, folks. It’s going to be very bad; let’s not sugarcoat it. But advocacy groups like the ACLU are gearing up for the fight on all fronts. And Democratic governors in states like California, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois are vowing to block Trump’s deportations and many other actions. Democrats in the House and Senate have to steel themselves too.

And there are signs of the typical Trumpian screwups that only benefit Trump’s opponents. Republicans are now worried that Trump—who could care less about anyone else—is choosing too many members of Congress for his administration when the GOP will have a very narrow House majority and hold the Senate by a few seats. As the Washington Post reports:

If Republicans only have a one-, two-, or three-seat margin in the House, the vacant seats could jeopardize their majority or put it dangerously close to a de facto Democratic majority if a Republican is absent, giving them the power to block legislation and push through legislation. It’s a scenario that came close to happening several times in the current Congress.

That also means there will be vacant seats and special elections that Democrats can win. And nobody should think that Democrats can’t win special elections in even the reddest places, since they did just that after Trump took office in 2017, went to the extremes, and horrified people.

Democrat Conor Lamb won an open seat in 2018 in a district in Pennsylvania that Trump won by 20 points. We even won the open Senate seat in Alabama when Trump backed his buddy Roy Moore for the Senate, and Democrat Doug Jones won the race.

Beyond special elections, we’ve all got to start planning right now for the 2026 midterms, with the goal of taking back the House and Senate. Ditto 2028. We’ve grieved, and talked about the hate and racism which the majority of voters were fine with bringing back into the Oval Office, something that stunned us all.

Now it’s time to begin organizing and focusing on the fight as Trump and MAGA move quickly to consolidate power.

===

nbc no lnx

Trump transition team compiling list of current and former U.S. military officers for possible courts-martial

All of the officers were involved in the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which independent reviews have blamed on both the Trump and Biden administrations.

Nov. 16, 2024, 5:52 PM PST / Updated Nov. 17, 2024, 3:55 AM PST

By Courtney Kube, Carol E. Lee, Vaughn Hillyard and Mosheh Gains

The Trump transition team is compiling a list of senior current and former U.S. military officers who were directly involved in the withdrawal from Afghanistan and exploring whether they could be court-martialed for their involvement, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the plan.

Officials working on the transition are considering creating a commission to investigate the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, including gathering information about who was directly involved in the decision-making for the military, how it was carried out, and whether the military leaders could be eligible for charges as serious as treason, the U.S. official and person with knowledge of the plan said.

“They’re taking it very seriously,” the person with knowledge of the plan said.

The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Matt Flynn, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for counternarcotics and global threats, is helping lead the effort, the sources said. It is being framed as a review of how the U.S. first got into the war in Afghanistan and how the U.S. ultimately withdrew.

General view of people in a field.

“Matt Flynn has nothing to do with the Trump transition team, much less leading any review concerning military justice matters,” said Mark S. Zaid, Flynn’s attorney. In a statement Zaid said that “no one has sought out Mr. Flynn’s views on this hypothetical legal scenario.”

NBC News did reach out to multiple officials on the Trump transition team about this story.

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“The sources apparently pushing this story appear to be your typical selfish Washington, D.C. insiders seeking to gain better positioning for their own administration jobs,” said an individual with knowledge of the campaign.

President-elect Donald Trump has condemned the withdrawal as a “humiliation” and “the most embarrassing day in the history of our country.”

It is not clear, though, what would legally justify “treason” charges since the military officers were following the orders of President Joe Biden to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

A 2022 independent review by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction blamed both the Trump and Biden administrations for the chaotic U.S. withdrawal in 2021.

Trump first reached an agreement with the Taliban in 2020 to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan, roughly 13,000 troops, and release 5,000 Taliban fighters from prison. The Biden administration then completed the withdrawal and badly overestimated the ability of Afghan government forces to fight the Taliban on their own.

Trump’s choice for secretary of defense, Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, has criticized the withdrawal, saying the U.S. lost the war and wasted billions of dollars.

In his book “The War on Warriors,” Hegseth wrote, “The next president of the United States needs to radically overhaul Pentagon senior leadership to make us ready to defend our nation and defeat our enemies. Lots of people need to be fired. The debacle in Afghanistan, of course, is the most glaring example.”

Afghan Afghan Special Immigrant Visa applicants seek help.

Afghan applicants crowd into a cafe seeking help applying for the Special Immigrant Visas program in 2021 in Kabul, Afghanistan.Paula Bronstein / Getty Images file

Hegseth calls the withdrawal a “humiliating retreat” and says leaders at the Pentagon were not held accountable for the deadly attack at Abbey Gate, which killed 13 U.S. service members and roughly 170 Afghan civilians. Nor were they held accountable for a subsequent U.S. airstrike in Kabul that officials thought would kill the Islamic State group leader behind the suicide attack but instead killed 10 innocent Afghans, including seven children, he wrote.

“These generals lied. They mismanaged. They violated their oath. They failed. They disgraced our troops, and our nation. They got people killed, unnecessarily,” he wrote. “And, to this moment, they keep their jobs. Worse, they continue to actively erode our military and its values — by capitulating to civilians with radical agendas. They are an embarrassment, with stars still on their shoulders.”

The transition team is looking at the possibility of recalling several commanders to active duty for possible charges, the U.S. official said.

It’s not clear the Trump administration would pursue treason charges, and instead could focus on lesser charges that highlight the officer’s involvement. “They want to set an example,” said the person with knowledge of the plan.

Taliban fighters with guns.

Taliban fighters storm into the Kabul International Airport, wielding American supplied weapons, equipment and uniforms after the United States Military have completed their withdrawal, in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 31, 2021.Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images file

Speaking to NBC News days before the election, Howard Lutnick, one of the two advisers leading the transition, said Trump learned after his first administration that he had hired Democratic generals, and he would not make that mistake again.

Former officials who worked in Trump’s first administration have said they advised Trump against policies they thought would weaken U.S. national security, such as withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria. And they advised against actions that they thought might violate the Constitution or inflame tensions domestically, such as deploying active-duty U.S. troops to quell protests after the 2020 police killing of George Floyd.

===

no lnx

alternet

Trump's Cabinet of horrors exposes his totalitarian drift

President Donald Trump and former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard embrace, joined by Tucker Carlson on stage at a campaign event sponsored by conservative group Turning Point USA, in Duluth, Georgia, U.S., October 23, 2024. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

Donald Trump nominated an alleged rapist and sex trafficker to be attorney general. He picked a Russian asset to be director of national intelligence. He chose a religious fanatic and Kremlin stooge to be secretary of defense. And for secretary of health and human resources, he selected an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist who once had a literal brain worm, and who habitually takes (“legal”) steroids to maintain, at the age of 70, the appearance of a physique of a man half his age.

There are the obvious things to say about this motley crew. Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth and Robert F Kennedy Jr are not qualified, respectively, to lead the agencies they have been chosen to lead. None has managed anything larger than an office. None has the expertise required. Gaetz has never worked in law enforcement, Gabbard in intelligence, Hegseth in military leadership or Kennedy in public health. Their only qualification is their loyalty to the man who picked them, and how they look to him when they are on television.

Right now, the discussion seems to be concentrated on the Senate Republicans, who will have majority control of that chamber in January. They will be responsible ultimately for vetting Trump’s cabinet picks. The question is whether they will find the courage to restrain the president-elect or roll over, either by approving them or by letting Trump have what he wants through recess appointments.

Among liberals, the discussion seems to be limited to the absurdities each of these people brings to governance as well as the dangers they pose. “Yes, shake your head at the seeming absurdity of these picks,” wrote MSNBC’s Jen Psaki. “But don’t stop there. These choices aren’t just controversial; they require us to stay vigilant about how each potential new Cabinet member could negatively affect our lives.”

But I think we’re missing the bigger picture. These nominations signal the totalitarian drift that’s coming to Washington and the country. Yes, that’s right. No, I’m not exaggerating. It’s time to start using that word.

Totalitarianism seeks dominion over the individual to the point where individuality is erased. That’s what happened to the Republican Party. Individuals have looked the same, talked the same, acted the same and thought the same for a long time. (The men sometimes literally dress the same as Donald Trump, with a blue suit, a long red tie.) After the election, however, Republican behavior has finally been totalized.

As one GOP congressman said, Trump “is the leader of our party. … His goals and objectives, whatever that is, we need to embrace it. All of it. Every single word. If Donald Trump says jump three feet high and scratch your head, we all jump three feet high and scratch our heads.”

The objective is forcing the rest of America to conform the way the Republican Party has conformed. This can be seen in the anger expressed by some magas. It wasn’t enough to win. Losers must now shut up and get in line, too. As a Trump attorney said recently: “You’ve got to own when you lose and say: this is America. We have to stand behind President Trump.” Senate Republicans are likely to approve his picks, no matter how bad, because the losers must be taught a lesson.

Totalitarianism also seeks to dominate the individual’s mind by going to war against facts, reason, science and any useful meaning of the word “proof.” In normal times, pre-Trump, we could expect in the Senate a spirited debate over a president-elect’s cabinet nominations, beginning with whether they’re qualified. Such debate is going to be impossible now, because “being qualified” is a meaningless term.

It is a stone-cold fact that Kennedy’s views on vaccines are not only insane, but in direct opposition to the moral principles of public health. But that fact won’t be accepted as fact. It will be taken as evidence of Trump’s enemies trying to sabotage his presidency. And there’s no way to break through this conspiracist mindset, as Lindsay Beyerstein calls it. It is impervious, she said. “When scientists or the government or journalists come forward with evidence that vaccines save millions of lives and prevent untold suffering, the conspiracist answer is: Well, that’s what conspirators to kill our children would say.”

Because there’s no empirical anchor to conspiratorial thinking, totalitarians can make reality into whatever they want. Up is down, left is right – or in the words of the totalitarian regime in George Orwell’s 1984: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

Therefore, the Republicans are likely to see nothing wrong with his picks. His nominee for the law is anti-law. His nominee for national intelligence is anti-intelligence. His nominee for national defense is anti-defense. His nominee for science is anti-science. But there’s no dissonance in the world of conspiratorial thinking. Up is the new down, and the only measure of morality is whether it pleases the dear leader.

The drift toward conformity and away from individualism isn’t limited to the GOP. Thanks to the rightwing media apparatus, which is global in scale, totalizing groupthink has also been growing in the culture at large. The trick is that it comes disguised as subversive individualism.

During his interview with Trump, popular podcaster Joe Rogan said “the rebels are Republicans now. They’re like, you want to be a rebel? You want to be punk rock? You want to, like, buck the system? You’re a conservative now. That's how crazy. And then the liberals are now pro-silencing criticism. They’re pro-censorship online. They’re talking about regulating free speech and regulating the First Amendment.”

If you are listening to liberals directly, you know there are no such efforts. But if you are listening the rightwing media apparatus, or if you just feel the conspiratorial ambiance that it generates, it’s possible to cast yourself as a man who’s bucking the system, as if the party of billionaires is the party of the common man, as if people who look the same, talk the same, act the same and think the same are punk rock.

But the strongest evidence of totalitarian drift is the plain awfulness of Trump’s cabinet picks. They have not earned the right to be called on. They haven’t studied or mastered their disciplines. They haven’t built reputations among leaders, peers and professionals in their fields. They haven’t overcome adversity and hardship. They haven’t reached high and achieved. They certainly haven’t followed the road toward the American dream, which asks us to work hard and play by the rules.

And that’s the point. Totalitarians fear individual excellence, first because they can’t understand it, and second because excellence threatens their goal of totalizing conformity. They are not humble enough to admit that they are mediocre people but they are arrogant enough to believe they can force the rest of us down to their level.

With this cabinet, Trump can pick up where his second campaign left off, which is movement toward “the consistent persecution of every higher form of intellectual activity …” as Hannah Arendt once wrote.

“Total domination does not allow for free initiative in any field of life, for any activity that is not entirely predictable,” she said. “Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty” (my italics).

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mma

On Newsmax, Monica Crowley says about Trump's cabinet nominations: “We have not seen this kind of talent pool since the Founding Fathers”

11/15/24

https://www.mediamatters.org/newsmax/newsmax-monica-crowley-says-about-trumps-cabinet-nominations-we-have-not-seen-kind-talent)

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mma

Steve Bannon accuses MSNBC producers of being “part of a vast criminal conspiracy against President Trump”

November 15, 2024 edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

STEVE BANNON (HOST): By the way, a couple of reporters called me last night after a couple of my rants and said, hey we’re getting text messages from a lot of the producers, particularly younger producers at MSNBC and they’re saying is Bannon serious or is he just being Bannon, right?

I am 100 percent serious.

MICHAEL FLYNN (GUEST): I am too.

BANNON: You know what you did with various people out there you had on your shows. You are part of a vast criminal conspiracy against President Trump and that is going to be drilled down.

11/15/24

Steve Bannon on Trump's return in January: “We're going to burn some of these institutions down to the ground”

11/15/24

November 15, 2024, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

STEVE BANNON (HOST): Donald Trump and his revolution is in charge now. And that revolution is going to make its way from Mar-a-Lago and from every part of the country, like Andrew Jackson, it's going to converge on the imperial capitol in late January. And yes, we're going to burn some of these institutions down to the ground. Because you know why? They need to be burned down to the ground. Metaphorically. As the process of creative destruction. The process of the structure of revolutions, the paradigm shift has impact.

...

We're not going to cave. We're not going to give up on Gaetz. We're not going to give up on Tulsi Gabbard. We're not going to give up on Pete Hegseth. We're not going to give up on RFK Jr. We're not going to give up on anybody. And you know why? If President-elect Donald J. Trump wants them, he's going to get them.

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reich an 11 24

trump is giving his middle finger to America.

Nominating the alleged sexual trafficker Matt Gaetz to be Attorney General, Fox News host Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense, and bizarro Tulsi Gabbard to be Director of National Intelligence are acts of nihilistic disruption.

Now, nominating conspiracist and fabulist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the nation’s leading health job — overseeing the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control, and the National Institutes of Health, among other sensitive positions — is an act of utter hubris.

At a time when the truth is a precious common good, and the public’s health is already precarious, RFK Junior has made a name for himself spreading dangerous health lies.

He claimed that COVID-19 was “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people” and that “the people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” And that “the Chinese are spending hundreds of millions of dollars developing ethnic bioweapons and we are developing ethnic bioweapons. They’re collecting Russian DNA. They’re collecting Chinese DNA so we can target people by race.”

He has promoted the baseless claim linking vaccines to autism. He’s been a leading proponent of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, erroneously suggesting the vaccine has killed more people than it has saved.

In his 2021 book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, he alleged, without plausible evidence, that Dr. Fauci performed “genocidal experiments, sabotaged treatments for AIDS, and conspired with Bill Gates to suppress information about COVID-19.”

All nonsense.

Friends, I knew Robert F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy Junior is no Robert F. Kennedy. If not for his lustrous name, RFK Junior would be just another crackpot in the ever-growing pool of bottom-feeding fringe characters encircling Trump like ravenous slugs.

So why nominate this collection of bozos?

If Trump wants to smoke out the Senate Republicans who aren’t fully behind him, he has easier ways of doing so than putting an entire Star Wars cantina of idiots up for Senate confirmation.

I can see why Trump might want total loyalists in key positions that would enable him to turn America into a police state — more on this tomorrow — but why nominate a nut job to run America’s health system?

What possible point is there to subjecting Americans to poisonous food or drugs? Why undermine the Centers for Disease Control when Americans and their children need the protections vaccines provide?

Or is all this just another manifestation of Trump becoming deranged?

If Americans suffer buyer’s remorse for electing him, the next time we’ll have a chance to do anything about it will be the midterm elections of November 2026. But how much damage can Trump and his cantina do between next January and then?

NOW READ:Trump finds a new lawman is who even more lawless than he is

*Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

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an 11 24

rupert Murdoch's conservative New York Post took a swipe at President-elect Donald Trump's pick for the Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday night, joking that Mar-a-Lago must be seeing an outbreak of brain-eating worms.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said that in 2010, a worm got into his brain, “ate a portion of it and then died.” At the time, he said he was suffering from cognitive difficulties. Doctors found it was a parasitic infection: A pork tapeworm larva.

The New York Post on Thursday night ripped Trump's selection for HHS secretary, noting that the "overriding rule of medicine" is "First, do no harm" — and that appointing Kennedy to the role "breaks this rule."

The Post pointed to their sit-down interview last year in which he espoused a "head-scratching spaghetti of what we can only call warped conspiracy theories, and not just on vaccines."

ALSO READ:Why Trump voters should be held accountable for their choice

"'Neocons' are responsible for America’s policy ills. 'Pesticides, cellphones, ultrasound' could be driving an upswing in Tourette syndrome and peanut allergies," the Post recalled he said, adding: "He told us with full conviction that all America’s chronic health problems began in one year in the 1980s when a dozen bad things happened."

While social media users might be "gullible" and "hungry" for conspiracy theories, the Post came away thinking "he's nuts on a lot of fronts." People could be harmed or die, the publication warned. Furthermore, it warned Kennedy could send the industry into a disastrous "tailspin."

"We fear the worm that he claims ate some of his brain some years ago is contagious and there’s been an outbreak at Mar-a-Lago," the Post concluded.

Kennedy has called vaccines into question, broadly questioning their safety and efficacy, including claiming, "There's no vaccine that is safe and effective" — and promoting the debunked theory that vaccines cause autism.

===

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AN 11 24

Ethics experts, legal experts, and current and former members of Congress are blasting Donald Trump and his transition team for skipping critical FBI background checks on at least some of the President-elect’s nominees to top posts in his upcoming administration, leading one member of Congress to warn she sees his top intelligence chief as a “likely” Russian asset.

“Skipping FBI background checks on nominees can be very dangerous,” warns former George W. Bush White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter. “This happened once in the Bush Administration (with Bernie Kerik) and after that fiasco, never again.”

Kerik, a protégé of Rudy Giuliani, had been nominated to become U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, but was forced to withdraw after an allegation of immigration law violation. He later pleaded guilty to eight felony charges, including tax fraud, and served time in prison.

The Trump transition team “is bypassing traditional FBI background checks for at least some of his Cabinet picks while using private companies to conduct vetting of potential candidates for administration jobs, people close to the transition planning say,” CNN reports. “Trump and his allies believe the FBI system is slow and plagued with issues that could stymie the president-elect’s plan to quickly begin the work of implementing his agenda, people briefed on the plans said.”

“US officials are still waiting for the Trump transition team to submit a list of names, including those under consideration for Cabinet-level roles, to be formally vetted for security clearances,” CNN added, citing an unnamed source. “Trump’s team has, to date, resisted participating in the formal transition process, which includes signing memorandums of understanding and secrecy agreements typically considered a prerequisite for accessing classified material before the new administration assumes office.”

CNN also detailed the controversies surrounding two of Trump’s top, Cabinet-level nominees.

The now-former U.S. Congressman Matt Gaetz, who is Trump’s nominee to become Attorney General — the nation’s chief law enforcement official — “has been mired for years in Justice Department and House ethics investigations related to sex trafficking.,” CNN reported. “The Justice Department declined to charge Gaetz, and the House ethics probe, days away from being completed, was effectively ended when the Florida congressman resigned from his seat this week. Gaetz has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.”

On Friday, Speaker Johnson publicly declared the House Ethics Committee should quash the report on its investigation into Gaetz, drawing backlash.

Democrat turned Republican Tulsi Gabbard, also a former member of Congress, “has frequently appeared to take positions more favorable to foreign leaders widely considered not just American adversaries but, in some cases, brutal dictators, including the presidents of Syria and Russia, raising questions from allies and critics alike,” CNN added. “Gabbard notably met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria in 2017, and said in 2019 that he was ‘not an enemy of the United States.'”

“In early 2022, she echoed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rationale for the country’s invasion of Ukraine, pinning the blame not on Moscow but on the Biden administration’s failure to acknowledge ‘Russia’s legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine’s becoming a member of NATO’ — a popular strain of thought in some right-wing circles.”

On Friday, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) blasted the choice of Gabbard, nominated to become the nation’s top intelligence officer, the Director of National Intelligence. The DNI oversees every U.S. Intelligence Agency and has access to all intel, not only American but intelligence shared within the Five Eyes community: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

“Tulsi Gabbard is someone who has met with war criminals, violated the Department of State’s guidance, and secretly clandestinely went to Syria and met with Assad, who gassed and attacked his own people with chemical weapons,” the Florida Democratic Congresswoman told MSNBC (video below). “She’s considered to be essentially by most, by most assessments, a Russian asset.”

Asked if she shares that belief, Wasserman Schultz replied: “Oh, yes, there’s no question, I consider her someone who is likely a Russian asset, who would be as the DNI, responsible for managing our entire intelligence community, hold all of our most significant intelligence information and secrets, and essentially would be a direct line to our enemies.”

Legal experts and current and former members of Congress are blasting the Trump team’s decision to not do FBI background checks.

“Eliminating the traditional FBI background checks for those who would flunk them – MAGA DEI,” Republican former U.S. Rep. Barbara Comstock observed,

“You don’t have to do this if you think your nominees can pass a background clearance. You only do it if you know they can’t,” remarked professor of law and former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance.

“For decades, Presidential nominees have been subject to FBI background checks to ensure that those individuals do not have ties foreign governments or criminal groups. If Gaetz and Gabbard have nothing to hide, they should do the background checks,” noted U.S. Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-RI).

“This is unacceptable. We cannot have our cabinet secretaries overseeing our most sensitive information go without background checks,” added U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY). He said that Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin “should immediately request a background check for all nominees from the FBI while he is still Chair of the Judiciary Committee.”

Watch U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s remarks below or at this link.

===

an 11 24

..."Just so we're clear on where we are: The President: an authoritarian who attempted a coup. A Secretary of Defense who defends war crimes. [An] Attorney General credibly accused of sex crimes A Director of National Intelligence who defends Putin and Assad. An HHS director who opposes vaccines," Nyhan wrote....

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11/14/2024

Kyle Mantyla rww

Jeff Sharlet @ Religion Dispatches: Meet Pete Hegseth, the Man Who Will Lead the Entire US Military — A Man Deemed an ‘Extremist’ by the US Military

Hegseth’s first tattoo, he says, was of a cross with a blade to represent Matthew 10:34, a cherry-picked vision of Jesus-as-warrior popular with Christian nationalists: “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” On his chest he’s had inked a “Jerusalem cross”—a symbol of the crusaders’ holy war against Muslims and Jews.

Annika Brockschmidt and Thomas Lecaque @ The Bulwark: What’s the Deal With Pete Hegseth’s Crusader Tattoos?

Donald Trump’s potential secretary of defense hasn’t been straightforward about the violent symbolism of his ink.

Hunter Walker @ Talking Points Memo: Trump’s Pick For Defense Sec Spent His College Years Crusading Against ‘Glorification of Diversity’ And ‘The Homosexual Lifestyle’

Pete Hegseth, the Army National Guard veteran, and former Fox News weekend host and President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Defense, experienced a political awakening at Princeton University.

Ian Millhiser @ Vox: Matt Gaetz, Trump’s uniquely unqualified pick for attorney general, explained

Gaetz is a reckless pick even by Trump’s standards.

Edith Olmstead @ The New Republic: Matt Gaetz’s Sudden Resignation Sure Makes Him Look Guilty

The Florida representative just resigned from Congress—killing a House Ethics investigation on his alleged sexual misconduct and illicit drug use.

Alex Galbraith @ Salon: "Every single word": GOP Rep. Nehls promises to pass anything on Trump's agenda

Following a meeting between Trump and congressional Republicans on Wednesday, Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas said he was ready to pass "every single word" of the president-elect's second-term agenda.

Michael Luciano @ Mediaite: Tommy Tuberville Claims Senators Have No Business Voting Against Nominees: ‘It’s Not Us to Determine That’

Move over, “Advice and Consent of the Senate,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) said senators have no business scrutinizing the appointments of President-elect Donald Trump.

David Gilbert @ Wired: Donald Trump’s New ‘Border Czar’ Defended Child Separation at Festival Held by Gun-Worshipping Sect

Tom Homan, the man president-elect Donald Trump has selected to serve as “border czar,” defended his family separation policy at an extremist festival last month surrounded by QAnon promoters, election conspiracists, and church leaders wearing crowns of bullets.

===

mma 11 24 only one?

JOE MATHEIU HOST): We had heard from the transition team that no one from Project 2025 was invited, now we’ve got Homan, that apparently was not the case. Have you talked to Donald Trump since he won?

KEVIN ROBERTS: We’ve not spoken yet but I anticipate that we will.

MATHEIU: I mean he’s got to be pretty keyed up on what Heritage is offering here. He was on the record when the team was trying to distance itself from you – I have no idea who is behind it, he put on X, I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Do you have a sense of what he likes or doesn’t like here?

ROBERTS: I think the key thing is that President Trump saw the branding as a liability in the political season but I also would anticipate moving forward that the president-elect and vice president-elect with whom we maintain great relationships will also understand that it’s the policymaking season that Heritage and all of the other groups that are a part of our project are built for.

And if they’re looking, for example as President Trump said this morning, for a plan to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, we know exactly where he can go for that plan. Totally up to him about whether he uses the plan.

…

All of the political calculations of the last few months which were very understandable and about which we have no hard feelings are in the past. We’re now in the policymaking season, we think this is the beginning of a golden era of conservative reform. I will say that because the work of Project 2025 represents the conservative movement, it would be very difficult for anybody to implement policies on education, on the border, on taxation, without at least consulting those ideas and people.

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mma

Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth: “I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles” 11/13/24

Fox News' Shannon Bream says Trump attorney general pick Matt Gaetz would “definitely be a loyal soldier” for Donald Trump

11/13/24

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-shannon-bream-says-trump-attorney-general-pick-matt-gaetz-would-definitely-be)

Trump's pick for secretary of defense has a long history of warmongering on Fox News

11/14/24 3:08 PM EST

### Matt Walsh: “My number one qualification for a Trump cabinet post is that the media freaks out over it”

11/14/24 3:00 PM EST

### CNN’s Bill Weir discusses what to expect from Trump EPA pick Lee Zeldin

11/14/24 2:59 PM EST

### Heritage President Kevin Roberts: “It would very difficult” for the Trump administration to make policy “without at least consulting” Project 2025

11/14/24 2:07 PM EST

### Steve Bannon calls defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth “kind of a madman but hey, you need that”

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mma

an 11 24

Trump chief of staff 'apparently unaware' of Boris Epshteyn effort to lobby on behalf of Gaetz: report

an 11 24

The editors of the conservative Wall Street Journal are warning former President Donald Trump against carrying out a recently leaked scheme to purge the American military of senior officers.

In an editorial about Trump's nomination of Fox News personality Pete Hegseth to lead the United States Department of Defense, the editors urged Trump to act with caution when it comes to plans to shake up the military brass.

"The military isn’t Mr. Trump’s enemy, and a purge mentality will court political trouble and demoralize the ranks," the editorial board argued. "The draft executive order, leaked to the press, about forming a group of former officers to rule on the fitness of current generals would be a mistake that smacks of politicizing the officer corps."

The editorial also argued against taking out his anger against former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley on other military leaders.

"Firing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs CQ Brown would also be counterproductive," they wrote. "Mr. Trump is still furious about former Chairman Mark Milley’s criticisms, and not without cause, but Mr. Trump promoted Gen. Milley. The better path is to look for officers who understand the current global dangers and have good ideas for what to do about it. Adm. Sam Paparo of the U.S. Indo-Pacific command is one."

The editors also expressed concern that Hegseth seems to be obsessed with purging any "woke" elements from the American military rather than focusing on more immediate and concrete problems.

"In the context of America’s security challenges, wokeness is a small concern," they argued.

===

medium

...? early this fall, the Trump campaign made a big announcement on the co-chairs of the pre-election transition team. Linda McMahon, former Small Business Administration administrator, and Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, got those two big jobs. McMahon’s been in charge of policy planning and Lutnick personnel.

...

The other big summer announcement was Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and former member of Congress, Tulsi Gabbard, who were each named honorary co-chairs. At that time, President-elect Trump’s son, Donald Trump, Jr., also was named to the team in an honorary role.

Another name that has been confirmed in the press is the spokesperson for the transition, **Karoline Leavitt**. This was a role played by Jen Psaki during the 2020 transition, before Psaki became the White House press secretary. Another member of the communications team is Brian Vance.

One of the most important transitions is in the Justice Department. Reporting suggests that **Mark Paoletta**is the one overseeing that transition.

Politico reported that **Skip Elliot** is at least one of those working on the Transportation Department transition. The other, Politico, reported, was Brigham McCown, who had assisted in a similar capacity during the 2016 transition.

The transition at the Environmental Protection Agency (that now has former Congressman Lee Zeldin has its director-nominee) includes Andrew Wheeler, Anne Austinand Carla Sands. While, for Interior, it looks like David Bernhardt is in charge.

Robbie Gramerat Politicois collecting names of those involved in the foreign policy transition. Included in that list is: Brian Hook for the State Department; Robert Wilkie at the Defense Department; Joel Rayburn for the White House National Security Council; John Ratcliffe for intelligence; Robert Lighthizerand Jamieson Greer for trade issues.

Also involved in the intelligence transition appears to be **Cliff Sims**.

The transition for the first-lady-elect, Melania Trump, seems to be lead by Goldman Sachs executive, **John F.W. Rogers.**

Artificial intelligence developer and former White House staffer, Michael Krastios, is another name included on the transition team.

Speculation at this point:

Former NC Congressman **Mark Walker**’sname has shown up in the press. Walker said: “We are meeting and talking with the transition team as far as what that might look like there in the White House…I know President Trump was gracious enough to extend such an offer, even back in the spring as we began to work with him. Talking about working in some high-capacity role. So, so, yeah, that’s all to be determined.”

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ref

nyt no lnx

With Ready Orders and an Energy Czar, Trump Plots Pivot to Fossil Fuels

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s transition team for climate and the environment is considering relocating the E.P.A. out of Washington and other drastic changes.

David Bernhardt, who was the interior secretary during the first Trump administration, is playing a lead role in the transition team’s energy and environment agenda.Credit...Al Drago for The New York Times

By Coral Davenport and Lisa Friedman

Nov. 8, 2024

As President-elect Donald J. Trump’s transition team plans his energy and environment agenda, it is relying on two seasoned former cabinet leaders and fossil fuel lobbyists to dramatically reshape the agencies charged with protecting the nation’s air, water, climate and public lands, according to six people familiar with the matter.

The task is familiar to David Bernhardt, a former oil lobbyist who headed the Interior Department in the first Trump administration, and Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist who ran the Environmental Protection Agency. Both are Washington insiders who have years of experience in dismantling federal environmental protections.

People working on the transition have already prepared a slate of executive orders and presidential proclamations on climate and energy. They include withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate agreement, eliminating every office in every agency working to end the pollution that disproportionately affects poor communities and shrinking the size of national monuments in the West to allow more drilling and mining on public lands.

President Biden has made environmental justice a top priority and has sought to ensure that underserved communities benefit from at least 40 percent of clean energy development. That initiative will be scrapped, people familiar with the plan said. The move will be part of a greater effort to dismantle what Mr. Trump’s allies view as the “woke” agenda and any programs that do not help improve the economy.

The boundaries of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in southern Utah will be immediately redrawn to reflect changes that Mr. Trump made in 2017, when he opened hundreds of thousands of acres of land considered sacred to several Native tribes to mining and other development. Mr. Biden expanded the protected areas in 2021.

Mr. Trump is also expected to move swiftly to end the Biden administration’s pause on permitting new natural gas export terminals, and to revoke a longstanding waiver that allows California and other states to set tighter pollution standards than the federal government.

Mr. Trump also intends to install an “energy czar” in the White House to coordinate policies across agencies in an effort to cut regulations and make it easier to ramp up production of oil, gas and coal.

Some people on the transition team are discussing moving the E.P.A. headquarters and its 7,000 workers out of Washington, D.C., according to multiple people involved in the discussions who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to talk about the transition.

The “energy czar” job description is reminiscent of the White House Energy Task Force overseen by Vice President Dick Cheney during the George W. Bush administration, aimed at ensuring that fossil fuels would remain the United States’ primary energy resources for “years down the road” and that the federal government’s energy strategy would mainly aim to increase supply of fossil fuels, rather than limit demand.

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Gov. Doug Burgum, Republican of North Dakota, emerged as a key adviser on energy issues in Mr. Trump’s campaign and could be a candidate for the role of energy czar.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

At the United Nations climate talks last year, the United States and nearly every other country agreed to transition away from fossil fuels, the burning of which is driving climate change.

One possible candidate for the role of energy czar is Gov. Doug Burgum, Republican of North Dakota, who briefly ran for his party’s nomination for president last year before dropping out to endorse Mr. Trump.

Governor Burgum emerged as a key adviser on energy issues to Mr. Trump’s campaign, acting as a liaison between Mr. Trump and the oil billionaires who helped to fund his presidential bid.

Another potential candidate is Dan Brouillette, a former automobile industry lobbyist who served as energy secretary in the first Trump administration.

A spokeswoman for the transition team, Karoline Leavitt, declined to confirm those moves. “President-Elect Trump will begin making decisions on who will serve in his second administration soon,” she said in an email. “Those decisions will be announced when they are made.”

An energy and environment transition team with experience from previous Republican administrations — as well as on Capitol Hill, at lobbying firms and in private business — stands in contrast to the chaos of the first Trump administration’s transition. Eight years ago, some on Mr. Trump’s “beachhead” teams lacked a basic understanding of the underlying statutes that guide the agencies charged with protecting the air, water, land and climate.

Those teams made hasty attempts to erase environmental rules that did not stand up to legal challenges. Later in Mr. Trump’s term, Mr. Bernhardt and Mr. Wheeler, who had both served in their respective agencies in previous Republican administrations, stepped in to ensure that environmental rollbacks were executed with more legal care.

The model for this transition is President Biden, Mr. Trump’s allies said. On the first day of the Biden administration, hundreds of staff members were hired and in place to focus on climate change. The Trump team aims to do the reverse.

“They have the model of what Biden did the first day, the first week, the first month,” said Myron Ebell, who led the transition of the E.P.A. under Mr. Trump’s first term. “We’ll look at what Biden did and put a ‘not’ in front of it.”

Mr. Bernhardt is playing a leading role. He is working on a broad range of issues including energy, public land use and environmental policy, said the people knowledgeable about the transition.

As it did during the first Trump administration, the Interior Department, which oversees 500 million acres of public lands, will be central to Mr. Trump’s vision of unleashing a new era of unfettered oil, gas and coal production.

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The E.P.A. transition includes Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist with years of experience in dismantling federal environmental protections. He is considered a top choice to lead the agency again.Credit...Pool photo by Al Drago.

During his time in the first Trump administration, Mr. Bernhardt helped open more than 10 million acres of public lands to fossil fuel extraction and stripped away protections for endangered species.

Mr. Bernhardt serves as the chairman of the Center for American Freedom at the America First Policy Institute, an organization that has spent the last two years crafting policy plans for the next Republican administration. Mr. Trump has suggested that Mr. Bernhardt would be welcomed back to his administration in almost any role he would like, whether at the Interior Department or the White House.

Mr. Bernhardt and the America First Policy Institute did not respond to requests for comment.

Others who are being considered to head the Interior Department in the second Trump administration are Adam Paul Laxalt, the former attorney general of Nevada; Senator Mike Lee of Utah; Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming; and Kate MacGregor, who served as the deputy interior secretary in the first term.

The E.P.A. transition includes Mr. Wheeler, who is considered a top choice to lead the agency again. It also includes Anne Austin, who served as the agency’s regional administrator in Texas as well as a deputy in its air office, and Carla Sands, who served as Mr. Trump’s ambassador to Denmark and is now a top energy official at the America First Policy Institute.

During Mr. Trump’s first term, Mr. Wheeler dismantled rules to cut fossil fuel pollution from power plants, automobiles and oil and gas wells, essentially ensuring that billions of tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions would continue to heat the atmosphere. The Biden administration restored and expanded those rules.

Mr. Wheeler did not respond to a request for comment.

According to people involved in the talks, the transition team is particularly eager to move forward with Mr. Trump’s vision of relocating tens of thousands of federal employees, starting at the E.P.A. Those discussions are in early stages, the people involved said.

During Mr. Trump’s first term, the administration moved the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management to Colorado and two scientific research arms of the Department of Agriculture to Kansas, resulting in an exodus of employees.

“Just as I moved the Bureau of Land Management to Colorado, as many as 100,000 government positions could be moved out — and I mean immediately — out of Washington to places filled with patriots who love America,” Mr. Trump said in a video on his campaign website.

“This is how I will shatter the deep state,” he said.

Joyce Howell, an E.P.A. attorney in Philadelphia and the executive vice president of the AFGE Council 238 representing agency employees, said that most E.P.A. staff already work outside of Washington. The E.P.A. has ten regional offices and dozens of small facilities and labs throughout the United States.

“I don’t know what they think they’re going to accomplish by moving E.P.A. headquarters other than disruption,” Ms. Howell said. “The patriots who love America are also in Washington, D.C. You can’t find another group of people more dedicated to protecting public health and the environment.”

Coral Davenport covers energy and environment policy, with a focus on climate change, for The Times. More about Coral Davenport

Lisa Friedman is a Times reporter who writes about how governments are addressing climate change and the effects of those policies on communities. More about Lisa Friedman

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 23 of the New York edition with the headline: With Ready Orders and an Energy Czar, Trump Plots Pivot to Fossil Fuels. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

See more on: U.S. Politics, Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Department of the Interior, David Bernhardt, Donald Trump, Andrew R. Wheeler

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Democracy Dies in Darkness

Tracking Trump’s picks for his Cabinet and administration

Here are the people Donald Trump has picked or is considering to fill his Cabinet and key positions in his administration.

White House chief of staff

Secretary of defense

Secretary of education

Secretary of health and human services

Secretary of homeland security

Attorney general, Justice Department

Secretary of state

Secretary of transportation

Secretary of the treasury

Vice president

Central Intelligence Agency director

Council of Economic Advisers chair

Environmental Protection Agency administrator

Director of national intelligence

Ambassador to the United Nations

Border czar

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director

National security adviser

White House press secretary

Surgeon general

By Washington Post staff

Updated November 13, 2024 at 4:00 p.m. EST|Published November 11, 2024 at 5:54 p.m. EST

President-elect Donald Trump has already named several people for top positions in his administration. His latest picks include: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) for secretary of state; Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic representative from Hawaii, for director of national intelligence; and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) for attorney general.

It’s early in the transition-planning process, but Donald Trump and his team are rapidly announcing key Cabinet and White House roles. Loyalty to the president is a top consideration for Trump and his team, and in some instances, they are also taking an unorthodox approach to governing, creating “czar” positions to oversee broad policy portfolios and picking people without much governing experience.

Here are the people Trump has named to his incoming administration or the top contenders for unfilled roles based on our reporting. We will continue to update this article.

White House chief of staff

The chief of staff is often considered the president’s gatekeeper, shaping his schedule and access to him. They serve as a close adviser and oversee White House staffing. This position does not require Senate confirmation.

Susie Wiles | Named | Wiles was Trump’s campaign manager, leading his operation since 2021, and played a big role in charting his comeback. She will be the first female White House chief of staff.

Reported by Hannah Knowles, Josh Dawsey and Marianne Levine.

Secretary of defense

The defense secretary is the senior executive in the Defense Department, overseeing the U.S. military and Pentagon bureaucracy, and reporting directly to the president. This position requires Senate confirmation.

Pete Hegseth | Named | A combat veteran and Fox News host, Hegseth has called for a more muscular approach to running the U.S. military. He was not widely expected to fill the role and is likely to undergo a tough Senate confirmation hearing. Hegseth, who served as an Army infantryman in Iraq and Afghanistan as a member of the Minnesota National Guard, has criticized the Biden administration’s approach to national security as weak. He has also written a book describing the military’s leadership as more focused on diversity than confronting global threats.

Reported by Missy Ryan, Dan Lamothe, John Hudson, Alex Horton, Isaac Arnsdorf and Josh Dawsey.

Secretary of education

Cade Brumley | Potential candidate | Brumley, a former teacher who is now the Louisiana state superintendent of education, has won admirers for improved reading scores in his state. He also has opposed Biden administration rules protecting transgender students and said DEI efforts don’t belong in schools.

Byron Donalds | Potential candidate | A congressman from Florida who formerly worked in the banking, finance and insurance industries, Donalds has been a staunch ally of Trump and a critic of liberal lawmakers’ views on racial issues. At the Republican National Convention this summer, he spoke about the importance of school choice. Donalds, an ambitious Republican having served just two terms in the House, has been connected to other possible promotions in the past, including colleagues who nominated him to be House speaker — and some Floridians suspect he could run for governor in 2026 if he does not enter the Trump administration.

Virginia Foxx | Potential candidate | A congresswoman from North Carolina and former community college president, Foxx is chair of the House Education Committee. The committee launched a high-profile investigation into campus antisemitism last year amid protests over the Israel-Gaza war, and is promoting changes aimed at lowering college costs.

Tiffany Justice | Potential candidate | A former school board member and mother of four from Florida, Justice co-founded Moms for Liberty, a conservative advocacy group for parents’ rights that has fought covid restrictions such as masks in schools as well as teaching about race, gender and sexuality.

Ryan Walters | Potential candidate | Walters, the Oklahoma state schools superintendent, has made headlines for conservative decisions such as ordering that every public school teacher in the state teach the Bible, but he has also come under fire for management issues in his agency.

Reported by Laura Meckler, Susan Svrluga and Paul Kane.

Secretary of health and human services

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. | Potential candidate | The former Democrat and independent 2024 presidential candidate threw his support to Trump in August. His “Make America Healthy Again” agenda targets chronic disease and childhood illness; he also is a longtime vaccine skeptic who could pressure HHS agencies.

Bobby Jindal | Potential candidate | The former Louisiana governor and state health secretary did a stint at HHS during the George W. Bush administration. Jindal has been helping lead health policy work at the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-allied think tank.

Eric Hargan | Potential candidate | The deputy HHS secretary during the first Trump administration avoided many of the political fights that consumed the agency and worked on issues such as telehealth and regulatory overhauls.

Ben Carson | Potential candidate | The former Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon is a longtime Trump ally. Carson ran for president in 2016 before endorsing Trump and being tapped as the secretary of housing and urban development in the first Trump administration.

Seema Verma | Potential candidate | The head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services during the first Trump administration was an ally of then-Vice President Mike Pence but also built a relationship with Trump.

Paul Mango | Potential candidate | The former McKinsey consultant served as deputy chief of staff for HHS during the first Trump administration and helped steer Operation Warp Speed, the federal initiative to expedite coronavirus vaccines.

Reported by Dan Diamond.

Secretary of homeland security

Kristi L. Noem | Named | Noem has served as the governor of South Dakota since 2019 and was an active supporter of Trump on the 2024 campaign trail. She previously served as the state’s at-large member of the U.S. House and in the state legislature. Noem brings less relevant experience to the Cabinet job than recent homeland security secretaries, including those who served during Trump’s first term.

Reported by Nick Miroff, Isaac Arnsdorf, Patrick Svitek, Jennifer Hassan.

Attorney general, Justice Department

Matt Gaetz | Named | Trump has named Gaetz, a Florida congressman, to one of the most consequential positions in the administration. Gaetz, who has served in Congress since 2017, has been a loyal and outspoken supporter of Trump, defending the former president after a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a bid to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory. Gaetz is a divisive figure even within his party and could face a tough confirmation battle.

Reported by Perry Stein.

Secretary of state

Marco Rubio | Named | The Florida senator is a hawk on China and Venezuela and has previously supported robust aid for Ukraine and advocates a robust U.S. presence in the world. Rubio ran for president in 2016 and clashed bitterly with Trump in the Republican primary, though they repaired their relationship and Trump considered Rubio as a potential running mate earlier this year.

Reported by Michael Birnbaum and Patrick Svitek.

Secretary of transportation

Sam Graves | Potential candidate | Graves, a congressman from Missouri, chairs the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, giving him a significant role in shaping infrastructure policy that has included passing a major aviation bill this year. Graves is also a pilot. Graves said in a statement that it would be an “honor” to serve Trump but that he was also interested in continuing in his current job.

Garret Graves | Potential candidate | Graves is a congressman from Louisiana who chairs the aviation subcommittee in the House. He did not run for reelection, so if he is chosen for the position, it would not affect Republicans’ likely majority in the chamber. He also worked with Sam Graves on the aviation bill and has been an advocate for Louisiana’s energy industry.

Troy E. Nehls | Potential candidate | Nehls, a congressman from Texas, is an outspoken supporter of Trump, campaigning with him in Nehls’s home state of Wisconsin this year. But he also has some transportation expertise as the chair of a railroads subcommittee. He sponsored legislation to improve railroad safety as part of a push led by Vance after the fiery derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.

Jeffrey Rosen | Potential candidate | Rosen was the acting attorney general during Trump’s final tumultuous days in office in 2020 and 2021, resisting Trump’s calls for the Justice Department to help discredit the 2020 election. But before that, he was the deputy transportation secretary, and he previously served as the department’s top lawyer in the George W. Bush administration.

Reported by Ian Duncan.

Secretary of the treasury

Scott Bessent | Potential candidate | Bessent, who had virtually no role during the first Trump administration, emerged as a key adviser to Trump over the course of the 2024 campaign. Bessent is a longtime hedge fund executive who made a fortune working for George Soros, the billionaire investor hated by much of the right, and has taught economics at Yale. Trump has praised him as “central casting.”

John Paulson | Potential candidate | Paulson, a billionaire hedge fund manager, was also involved in the 2024 campaign and emerged as a key economic surrogate for Trump. Paulson has vast financial assets that could complicate his selection, including stakes in federal mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which are overseen by the Treasury Department.

Reported by Jeff Stein.

Vice president

The vice president is second-in-command, and unlike other Cabinet positions, it’s announced before the presidential election. Trump picked his VP during the Republican National Convention in July.

JD Vance | Named | Vance, a one-term senator from Ohio, is one of the youngest vice presidents in history and a rising star in the Republican Party. A former Trump critic who wrote a best-selling memoir on his upbringing in rural Appalachia, he’s worked to more closely align himself with Trump over the years and is now one of his staunchest defenders.

Reported by Meryl Kornfield and Marianne Levine.

Central Intelligence Agency director

John Ratcliffe | Named | Ratcliffe, a former Texas congressman and federal prosecutor, will be the new director of the CIA. He served as director of national intelligence from 2020 to 2021 in the first Trump administration. He is viewed as a stalwart Trump loyalist.

Reported by Ellen Nakashima.

Council of Economic Advisers chair

Casey Mulligan | Potential candidate | A University of Chicago economist who served in Trump’s first administration, Mulligan, a conservative and strident critic of President Joe Biden’s administration, has been floated by some officials as a potential choice for the post. He also published a book in 2020 about the “untold successes and failures” of Trump’s first administration.

Reported by Jeff Stein.

Environmental Protection Agency administrator

Lee Zeldin | Named | Zeldin, a former New York congressman who ran a failed campaign for New York governor in 2022, is a lawyer by trade and does not have an extensive background in environmental issues. During his time in Congress, he sought to protect the Long Island Sound from dredge sediment dumping. But he also voted to end Clean Air Act standards and has a 14 percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental group, for his votes against many environmental bills, with the notable exception involving a measure to protect ecologically and culturally significant areas. He has been a strong defender of Trump, especially during his first impeachment and after he lost the 2020 election.

Reported by Maxine Joselow and Mariana Alfaro.

Director of national intelligence

The director of national intelligence serves as the head of the U.S. intelligence community, acting as principal adviser to the president on matters related to national security and overseeing a budget of $76.5 billion. This position requires Senate confirmation.

Tulsi Gabbard | Named | Gabbard is a former Democratic representative from Hawaii who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 and later became a Republican. Gabbard, a military veteran, is a critic of foreign wars and helped Trump throughout the campaign – even preparing him for the June presidential debate. Trump indicated in his announcement that he thinks Gabbard’s history as a Democrat could help her win Senate confirmation, but she is still likely to face tough questions from members of both parties over her unorthodox foreign policy views.

Reported by Ellen Nakashima, Josh Dawsey and Patrick Svitek.

Ambassador to the United Nations

The ambassador is the United States’ representative at the United Nations and meets regularly with the representatives of other countries to advance U.S. priorities and relationships on the world stage.

Elise Stefanik | Named | Stefanik, a congresswoman from New York, is the fourth-most-senior Republican in the House, as chair of the House Republican Conference, and has been an outspoken defender of Trump in recent years. Stefanik has been deeply hostile to the United Nations, referring to it in recent months as “corrupt, defunct, and paralyzed,” “a cesspool of antisemitism,” and an entity that “rewards barbaric Iranian terrorists while punishing Israel for defending itself”; and she has called U.N. Secretary General António Guterres “an absolute disgrace.” Stefanik recently proposed withdrawing U.S. membership from the United Nations should the body resist certain changes sought by Trump.

Reported by Abigail Hauslohner.

Border czar

This is a new senior official position in the Trump White House that is intended to help oversee the U.S. border and the deportation of undocumented immigrants. This position does not require Senate confirmation.

Tom Homan | Named | Homan is a former police officer, Border Patrol agent and special immigration agent investigating fraud and other crimes. Homan has years of experience running deportation operations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and he served as the agency’s acting director under Trump from January 2017 to June 2018. He won praise for deporting serious criminals under President Barack Obama but faced criticism for separating migrant families under Trump. The Senate never confirmed Homan, and he later became a Fox News analyst.

Reported by Maria Sacchetti.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director

The mission of the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is to protect the public’s health through disease prevention, health promotion and preparedness. For the first time, the position will require Senate confirmation.

Casey Means | Potential candidate | The Stanford-trained physician and entrepreneur has become an adviser to Kennedy. Means has argued that incentives in America’s food and health systems have rewarded private industry and encouraged unhealthy behaviors, and her recent book on causes of chronic disease has been passed around by Trump transition staff.

Reported by Dan Diamond.

National security adviser

Michael Waltz | Named | Trump has asked Waltz, a Florida congressman and retired Special Forces officer, to be his national security adviser. Waltz advised George W. Bush’s administration on defense at the Pentagon and the White House, and in Congress, he is known as a China hawk. He serves on the House Armed Services Committee, the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Intelligence Committee.

Reported by Dan Lamothe, Leigh Ann Caldwell, Karen DeYoung and Patrick Svitek.

White House press secretary

Karoline Leavitt | Potential candidate | Leavitt was a national press secretary for Trump’s 2024 campaign who handled inquiries from reporters and also played a highly visible role on TV. An alum of the first Trump administration and a former congressional candidate, she shares Trump’s criticisms of the press. “I have the great pleasure of fighting the fake news media all day, every day,” she said in a warm-up speech at one of Trump’s rallies.

Reported by Hannah Knowles.

Surgeon general

Joseph Ladapo | Potential candidate | The Florida surgeon general is close to Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who battled with Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, but has fans such as Kennedy. Ladapo also has drawn criticism from public health leaders for his skepticism of vaccines and rejection of traditional strategies to fight a measles outbreak in his state.

Reported by Dan Diamond.

Graphic by Nick Mourtoupalas.

Trump’s second presidency

The transition: Follow live updates on the transition to Donald Trump’s second presidency. We’re tracking the people Trump has picked or is considering to fill his Cabinet and key positions in his administration.

What we know: So far, Trump named Susie Wiles to serve as White House chief of staff, Gov. Kristi Noem will be homeland security secretary, Sen. Marco Rubio will be secretary of State, and Fox News host Pete Hegseth will serve as secretary of defense. Trump also picked Mike Huckabee to be U.S. ambassador to Israel and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-New York) to be U.S. ambassador.

What could happen: Here’s what a second Trump presidency could mean for America and key global issues. Also, see how women feel about another Trump term and how Project 2025 could reshape America under a Trump presidency.

A conservative lawyer working on Donald Trump’s transition, Mark Paoletta, offered a stark warning to career Justice Department lawyers Monday that those who refuse to advance Trump’s agenda should resign or face the possibility of being fired.

“Once the decision is made to move forward, career employees are required to implement the President’s plan,” Paoletta wrote in a post on X responding to a POLITICO story detailing widespread fear among DOJ lawyers about being asked to advance or defend policies they consider unethical or illegal.

“If these career DOJ employees won’t implement President Trump’s program in good faith, they should leave,” Paoletta said. “Those employees who engage in so-called ‘resistance’ against the duly-elected President’s lawful agenda would be subverting American democracy. … [t]hose that take such actions would be subject to disciplinary measures, including termination.”

Paoletta recited a laundry list of Trump goals, including mass deportations, ending birthright citizenship, issuing pardons and commutations to Jan. 6 defendants, reversing “lawfare and persecution of political opponents,” and “holding accountable those who weaponized their government authority to abuse Americans.”

Paoletta, a former counsel to Vice President Mike Pence and to the Office of Management and Budget during the first Trump administration, is playing a role in drafting potential changes in Justice Department policy to be put into effect after Trump is sworn in as president in January.

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Trump team 'quietly distancing itself' from RFK Jr. following latest anti-vax remarks

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YMAIL DROP SITE

Barely days after his victory, Trump’s team is already taking shape. Our latest reporting reveals that Brian Hook―known from Trump’s first term to be a major Iran hawk―is being tapped to run the transition at the State Department.

Hook helped lead the “maximum pressure” campaign towards Iran of sanctions, sabotage, and assassinations―the very opposite of Trump and J.D. Vance’s campaign promise to bring peace to the region. In a follow-up report, we exposed a lobbying campaign, involving Hook, Hugh Hewitt, David Urban, and other neoconservatives to bring war hawk Mike Pompeo, who plotted to assassinate Julian Assange during the previous Trump years, back into the cabinet.

But we also reported that he is facing fierce opposition internally, and that Trump is leaning against Pompeo’s return. This comes as Trump has tapped his daughter’s father-in-law, the Lebanese-born Massad Boulos, to advise on Middle East policy. Boulos says he’ll be traveling to Lebanon to seek a “just and comprehensive peace” and enter into a new nuclear deal acceptable to “the Iranians, neighboring countries, and the US.” In other words, things are quite fluid.

In some unusual ways, our reporting has never been more important. The mainstream media will spend its energy pressuring Trump to nominate figures who are “respectable” on the outside, because they speak in complete sentences and observe Washington norms of civility, yet relentlessly pursue war in every direction. The push to make Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Secretary of State is a perfect example.

Yet we’ll be here to remind the Trump universe that he campaigned in explicit opposition to the neocon ideology. There is a strong faction within Trump’s world that can leverage our reporting in the face of Trump’s too-often willingness to buckle to pressure from the militaristic wing of the GOP.

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