Hey, MAGA voters: You’ve been had. Trump’s plans for the economy may ruin you.

USA Today – Opinion

Hey, MAGA voters: You’ve been had. Trump’s plans for the economy may ruin you.

Rex Huppke – December 10, 2024

President-elect Donald Trump cares deeply about the forgotten men and women of the MAGA movement, the regular folks who believe wealthy elites have made America decidedly NOT GREAT.

So I’m sure those forgotten men and women are thrilled to know Trump has stocked his upcoming administration with enough billionaires and multimillionaires to, as The Guardian put it recently, “form a soccer team.”

That’s right. Axios reported last week that, including Trump himself, the administration-to-be is already staffed with 14 billionaires. The list includes Linda McMahon as Education secretary, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as government efficiency overseers, Howard Lutnick as Commerce secretary and billionaire hedge-fund manager Scott Bessent as Treasury secretary.

I’m sure these down-to-earth billionaires care deeply about the forgotten men and women who put Trump in office. Surely they are in no way “elite,” aside from perhaps owning an island, or maybe occasionally hunting poor people for sport on said island.

Trump is surrounding himself with non-elite billionaires who care

Forbes reported in 2021 that President Joe Biden’s Cabinet had a net worth of about $188 million.

The Guardian puts the net worth of Trump’s gang thus far at more than $300 billion. If you believe in math, it’s a staggering sum, about 2,000 times the wealth of those in the Biden administration.

Elon Musk, holding his son, and Vivek Ramaswamy, in blue tie, visit Capitol Hill to meet with members of Congress on Dec. 5, 2024.
Elon Musk, holding his son, and Vivek Ramaswamy, in blue tie, visit Capitol Hill to meet with members of Congress on Dec. 5, 2024.

So, you know … regular folks, the kind who undoubtedly can relate to the day-to-day needs of Americans. The sort who regularly go to grocery stores, which they refer to as “commoner slop-distribution centers.” The kind who would never want to harvest the blood of young people in a narcissistic quest for eternal life.

Musk, Ramaswamy may come after VA health care, but it’s fine

There’s no way billionaire businessmen like Musk and Ramaswamy would do anything that helps the rich at the expense of hardworking Americans. They wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal that they will be “taking aim at the $500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress.”

And yes, that could include things like the Department of Veterans Affairs medical services, billions of dollars in funding for education and housing, and the Head Start program.

But I’m 100% sure we can trust these billionaires because they’re with Trump, and Trump is clearly anti-elite. As the conservative Heritage Foundation trumpeted after the election: “With Trump’s Win, ‘Ordinary’ Americans Declared Independence from the Elites.”

And Fox Business host Stuart Varney said after Trump won: “The elites have been living in a bubble. Trump just burst it.”

Huzzah! Take that, elites! Now please stand back while regular-guy-billionaire Donald Trump installs a phalanx of other billionaires who will, in a totally non-elite way, lower their own taxes while taking away government services that many forgotten men and women rely on for little things like continuing to live.

Opinion: It’s the bitcoin boom, baby! I’m bailing on Beanie Babies and investing bigly!

Trump can’t guarantee tariffs won’t lead to higher prices. Cool!

Consider this: Trump has repeatedly talked about how much he likes tariffs and how, as soon as he takes office, he’s going to tariff the daylights out of other countries like China and Mexico.

Economists ‒ probably elites ‒ say the cost of tariffs will get passed along to American consumers. They say that because it’s exactly what will happen. But Trump, the everyman, has long denied that reality, convincing the forgotten men and women of the middle class he’s an economic wizard and this will all work out great for them.

Fruit could be impacted by Trump’s proposed tariffs, particularly avocados, melons and citrus fruits.
Fruit could be impacted by Trump’s proposed tariffs, particularly avocados, melons and citrus fruits.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, Trump was asked if he can “guarantee American families won’t pay more” under his tariff plan.

Trump, the billionaire, said: “I can’t guarantee anything. I can’t guarantee tomorrow.”

Put your future in the hands of Trump’s caring billionaires

You see? Trump cares about American families to not guarantee anything.

So don’t worry, forgotten men and women. Be confident that Trump and Musk and Ramaswamy and McMahon and Lutnick and all the other totally trustworthy and altruistic non-elite billionaires know what’s good for you.

Because you’re about to get it, regardless.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk

trump, musk and the billionaires can’t wait to begin dismantling American Democracy and our Constitution: Elon Musk warns Republicans against standing in Trump’s way — or his

Associated Press

trump, musk and the billionaires can’t wait to begin dismantling American Democracy and our Constitution: Elon Musk warns Republicans against standing in Trump’s way — or his

Thomas Beaumont, Juliet Linderman, Martha Mendoza – December 9, 2024

President-elect Donald Trump walks with Elon Musk before the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024 in Boca Chica, Texas. (Brandon Bell/Pool via AP)
President-elect Donald Trump walks with Elon Musk before the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024 in Boca Chica, Texas. (Brandon Bell/Pool via AP)
Elon Musk, carrying his son X Æ A-Xii, leaves after a meeting with members of congress to discuss President-elect Donald Trump's planned Department of Government Efficiency on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Dec. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Elon Musk, carrying his son X Æ A-Xii, leaves after a meeting with members of congress to discuss President-elect Donald Trump’s planned Department of Government Efficiency on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Dec. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A week after President-elect Donald Trump’s victory, Elon Musk said his political action committee would “play a significant role in primaries.”

The following week, the billionaire responded to a report that he might fund challengers to GOP House members who don’t support Trump’s nominees. “How else? There is no other way,” Musk wrote on X, which he rebranded after purchasing Twitter and moving to boost conservative voices, including his own.

And during his recent visit to Capitol Hill, Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy delivered a warning to Republicans who don’t go along with their plans to slash spending as part of Trump’s proposed Department of Government Efficiency.

“Elon and Vivek talked about having a naughty list and a nice list for members of Congress and senators and how we vote and how we’re spending the American people’s money,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.

Trump’s second term comes with the specter of the world’s richest man serving as his political enforcer. Within Trump’s team, there is a feeling that Musk not only supports Trump’s agenda and Cabinet appointments, but is intent on seeing them through to the point of pressuring Republicans who may be less devout.

One Trump adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal political dynamics, noted Musk had come to enjoy his role on the campaign and that he clearly had the resources to stay involved.

The adviser and others noted that Musk’s role is still taking shape. And Musk, once a supporter of President Barack Obama before moving to the right in recent years, is famously mercurial.

“I think he was really important for this election. Purchasing Twitter, truly making it a free speech platform, I think, was integral to this election, to the win that Donald Trump had,” said departing Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump, the president-elect’s daughter-in-law. “But I don’t know that ultimately he wants to be in politics. I think he considers himself to be someone on the outside.”

During the presidential campaign, Musk contributed roughly $200 million to America PAC, a super PAC aimed at reaching Trump voters online and in person in the seven most competitive states, which Trump swept. He also invested $20 million in a group called RBG PAC, which ran ads arguing Trump would not sign a national abortion ban even as the former president nominated three of the justices who overturned a federally guaranteed right to the procedure.

Musk’s donation to RBG PAC — a name that invokes the initials of former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a champion of abortion rights — wasn’t revealed until post-election campaign filings were made public Thursday.

Musk has said he hopes to keep America PAC funded and operating. Beyond that, he has used his X megaphone to suggest he is at least open to challenging less exuberant Trump supporters in Congress.

Another key Trump campaign ally has been more aggressive online. Conservative activist Charlie Kirk, whose group Turning Point Action also worked to turn out voters for Trump, named Republican senators he wants to target.

“This is not a joke, everybody. The funding is already being put together. Donors are calling like crazy. Primaries are going to be launched,” Kirk said on his podcast, singling out Sens. Joni Ernst of Iowa, Jim Risch of Idaho, Mike Rounds of South Dakota and Thom Tillis of North Carolina as potential targets. All four Republican senators’ seats are up in 2026.

For now, Musk has been enjoying the glow of his latest conquest, joining Trump for high-level meetings and galas at the soon-to-be president’s Mar-a-Lago resort home in Palm Beach, Florida. The incoming administration is seeded with Musk allies, including venture capitalist and former PayPal executive David Sacks serving as the “White House A.I. & Crypto Czar” and Jared Isaacman, a tech billionaire who bought a series of spaceflights from Musk’s SpaceX, named to lead NASA.

Musk could help reinforce Trump’s agenda immediately, some GOP strategists said, by using America PAC to pressure key Republicans. Likewise, Musk could begin targeting moderate Democrats in pivotal states and districts this spring, urging them to break with their party on key issues, Republican strategist Chris Pack said.

“Instead of using his influence to twist GOP arms when you have majorities in both houses, he could start going after Democrats who vote against Trump’s agenda in states where the election was a referendum for Trump,” said Pack, former communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “Otherwise, if you pressure Republicans with a primary, you can end up with a Republican who can’t win, and then a Democrat in that seat.”

___

Linderman reported from Baltimore and Mendoza from Santa Cruz, California. Associated Press congressional correspondent Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.

I lived in Florida for a decade. The downsides just kept adding up, and now I’m back in the Midwest.

Business Insider

I lived in Florida for a decade. The downsides just kept adding up, and now I’m back in the Midwest.

Debra Pamplin – December 9, 2024

  • I love many things about Florida, but after 11 years, I left to move back to the Midwest.
  • My insurance costs in Florida were high, and driving in our county felt dangerous and intense.
  • I often let the state’s heat, humidity, and many mosquitos deter me from going outside.

We first fell in love with Florida after visiting it on a family vacation in 1997.

After many more pleasant family vacations to the state, we left our hometown in Missouri and moved to Florida in early 2013.

We thought Jacksonville would be a good place to settle, as it was close to many Florida hot spots and great vacation cities in neighboring states.

It turns out, I’m much happier visiting Florida than living there full time. Here are a few things that led me to move back home to the Midwest after 11 years.

I didn’t like driving in our county, and I often worried about my family’s safety on the roads
Cars in traffic on highway in Jacksonville
I didn’t really enjoy driving in Jacksonville.peeterv/Getty Images

Witnessing high-speed chases on the interstate, cars failing to yield, and trucks running red lights were part of our daily life in Jax.

Our county, in particular, has some of the deadliest roads in Florida.

I worried about my young daughter daily as she commuted to work on I-95. Though I trusted her as a driver, I was concerned about everyone else on the interstates and roads.

She’d often tell me about cars going well over the already-high speed limit and how drivers would regularly speed up instead of letting her over for her exit or lane merge.

A few months ago, she moved to a much smaller city in the Midwest, and I stopped worrying so much about her daily commute. I figured if she could manage in a place like Jax, she could drive anywhere.

Insurance felt like a huge part of my budget in Florida

No one likes to pay a monthly insurance premium, but the cost felt especially tough to stomach while I lived in Florida.

MarketWatch analysis found that the average full-coverage car insurance cost in Florida was 42% higher than the national average.

The big kicker was finding out that I’d moved into a no-fault state. This means that no matter who’s at fault in a collision, each driver has to rely on their own insurance to cover medical expenses and other financial losses.

Florida is also dealing with a home-insurance crisis. Homeowners in many parts of the state struggle to keep up with sky-high premiums, especially after the recent hurricanes.

I’d often have to cut spending in other parts of my life just to cover my high monthly insurance costs. Now that I’m out of Florida, my monthly insurance expenses are lower, giving me breathing room to spend my money on more fun stuff.

I didn’t love the high temperatures and humidity during the day
Wooden boardwalk to beach in Florida
Many love Florida’s seemingly endless sunshine, but I found I got tired of it.Laura Sliva Collier/Getty Images

With sunlight beaming down most of the year, it’s clear why Florida is known as the Sunshine State. During some summer months, Florida’s average highs were above 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

I struggled to deal with the heat. Some may love it, but I found it could feel draining. With high humidity, the heat felt even worse. Jacksonville’s average annual percentage of humidity can be a sweaty 72% or higher.

Unfortunately, the heat and humidity kept me from fully enjoying all the beautiful outdoor activities and attractions throughout Florida.

My naturally curly hair turned into a pile of frizz each time I stepped out of the front door — sometimes, I’d feel so self-conscious about it I’d just stay home.

Instead of participating in outdoor adventures throughout the area, I often chose to stay home in the air conditioning.

Lastly, I missed experiencing the variety of the seasons and the temperature drops that come with some of them. The Midwest’s changing weather is a much better fit for me.

Mosquitoes were a huge nuisance to me at night

I also struggled to deal with mosquitoes when I lived in the Sunshine State. Though the pesky insects can be found in every state, Florida has more than most and over 80 species of them.

I seemed to be allergic to their bites, which would stay swollen on my body for days. Because of this, I didn’t journey outside too much without first coating myself in bug repellent.

The repellent wasn’t always super effective, so I eventually stopped going outside in the evenings to avoid getting bit.

Overall, I’m happier in the Midwest

I get why so many spring breakers and snowbirds are drawn to Florida. It has a lot of sunshine, natural beauty, and fun outdoor activities.

Still, for many reasons, I found it tough to fully enjoy the state and its beauty.

The Midwest is a better fit for me, and I’m glad I moved back. These days, I enjoy my slower-paced life in a state where I can feel the seasons change — and I no longer mind going outside so much.

Down About the Election? There Is a Speech I Want You to Read.

By Jamelle Bouie, Opinion Columnist – November 23, 2024

Two images of Frederick Douglass in old age, seated, wearing a suit with a bow tie.
Credit…Brady-Handy photograph collection/Library of Congress

Most Americans who know of Frederick Douglass know that he lived to see the destruction of chattel slavery and the liberation of Black Americans from the despotism of human bondage. Less well known is the fact that Douglass would also live long enough to see the slave stand free, stand a brief moment in the sun, and move back again toward slavery, to paraphrase W.E.B. Du Bois in his book “Black Reconstruction.”

Douglass died in 1895 as the counterrevolution to Reconstruction and the agrarian rebellions of the 1880s and 1890s took final shape. In 1890, Mississippi imposed its Jim Crow Constitution. Other states in the South soon followed suit. In 1896, the Supreme Court would affirm “separate but equal” in Plessy v. Ferguson, a landmark ruling that would stand until 1954, when it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education.

In 1894 at Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., Douglass delivered the last great speech of his career. Titled “The Lessons of the Hour,” it was his attempt to make sense of the rise of Jim Crow and the violent retrenchment of the era. I want to share a little of the speech with you because I think it is worthwhile to read the perspective of someone who continues to fight for his ideals even in the midst of profound reversal and defeat.

Here’s Douglass, moving toward his conclusion.

I have sometimes thought that the American people are too great to be small, too just and magnanimous to oppress the weak, too brave to yield up the right to the strong and too grateful for public services ever to forget them or fail to reward them. I have fondly hoped that this estimate of American character would soon cease to be contradicted or put in doubt. But the favor with which this cowardly proposition of disfranchisement has been received by public men, white and black, by Republicans as well as Democrats, has shaken my faith in the nobility of the nation. I hope and trust all will come out right in the end, but the immediate future looks dark and troubled. I cannot shut my eyes to the ugly facts before me.

He continued:

Strange things have happened of late and are still happening. Some of these tend to dim the luster of the American name and chill the hopes once entertained for the cause of American liberty. He is a wiser man than I am who can tell how low the moral sentiment of this republic may yet fall. When the moral sense of a nation begins to decline and the wheel of progress to roll backward, there is no telling how low the one will fall or where the other may stop.

As much as Douglass intends to stand in the way of those would destroy the victory of an earlier age, he knows that for him, “Time and strength are not equal to the task before me.” And yet:

But could I be heard by this great nation, I would call to mind the sublime and glorious truths with which, at its birth, it saluted a listening world. Its voice then was as the trumpet of an archangel, summoning hoary forms of oppression and time-honored tyranny, to judgment. Crowned heads heard it and shrieked. Toiling millions heard it and clapped their hands for joy. It announced the advent of a nation, based upon human brotherhood and the self-evident truths of liberty and equality. Its mission was the redemption of the world from the bondage of ages.

Douglass concludes:

Apply these sublime and glorious truths to the situation now before you. Put away your race prejudice. Banish the idea that one class must rule over another. Recognize the fact that the rights of the humblest citizen are as worthy of protection as are those of the highest, and your problem will be solved; and, whatever may be in store for it in the future, whether prosperity or adversity, whether it shall have foes without or foes within, whether there shall be peace or war, based upon the eternal principles of truth, justice and humanity and with no class having any cause of complaint or grievance, your Republic will stand and flourish forever.

I hope you find this as useful as I do.


This week’s column was on Donald Trump’s claims to monarchical power and why it is important to contest them.

In our system, the executive branch cannot exercise the full power of the legislature. It cannot act as a monarch would. The sovereign people did not imbue their power into a leviathan. The upshot of this is that any interpretation of the Constitution that grants the president monarchical power is wrong. The structure of the Constitution precludes a royal prerogative, and the ethos of American democracy forbids it. Otherwise, the revolution was for nothing.

I did quite a bit of chatting about the election. You can hear me talk about the results on my podcast with John Ganz as well as with Adam Conover on his podcast and with Adam Shatz on the London Review of Books podcast.


Waleed Shahid for The Nation:

To win, Democrats must inspire the public in a fractured information age, engage meaningfully with the cultural shifts around race, gender, family and migration, make democracy work, despite obstructionists like Manchin and Sinema, and — most critically — deliver tangible results that improve people’s lives. And if the corporate, status quo-loving forces within the party are standing in the way of that mission, they must be moved aside.

Michael Kazin for Dissent:

Perhaps the only positive consequence of the victory of an utterly despicable nominee and his down-ballot faithful is that progressives inside and outside the Democratic Party are groping their way toward a common solution: Revive an aggressive populism of the left.

Anjana Ahuja for The Financial Times:

Researchers across the world will now need courage and resolve in the face of a new Republican war on science, which may lead to the U.S. exiting the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization. It is also a moment for scientists to reflect on how they can nurture constructive relationships with politicians and voters who are instinctively hostile.

J. Jacob Calhoun for Time:

The political obstacles facing Democrats are dire, but it is the very existence of these threats that renders political engagement so important in the first place. Those disappointed by this month’s result should strive to emulate America’s first Black voters and allow the immense challenges ahead to instill in them “better encouragement and ambition.”

Rebecca Sanchez for Mother Jones:

What we found was a crisis of democracy underlying that of our political fever. A historical, generational and ongoing inequality and a systemic exclusion — both racial and economic. Scholars like Martin Wolf, author of “The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism,” have said this inequality has been abetted by the neoliberal system, which “poses the most immediate threat to civil society.”

Well, Well, Well: Trump Gives up the Game on Project 2025

The New Republic

Well, Well, Well: Trump Gives up the Game on Project 2025

Edith Olmsted – November 22, 2024

Donald Trump is taking yet another page out of the authoritarian playbook Project 2025—and it’s the one with a list of MAGA loyalists for hire.

After trying desperately, often unconvincingly, to distance his campaign from Project 2025’s unpopular, extremist policies, Trump’s transition team has been using the right-wing playbook’s staffing database to make appointments within the new administration, a source familiar told NBC News.

“There’s a lot of positions to fill and we continue to send names over, including ones from the database as they are conservative, qualified and vetted,” the source, who had worked on Project 2025, told NBC News. “Hard to find 4,000 solid people, so we are happy to help.”

Paul Dans, the former director of Project 2025, once described his plans to make a “conservative Linkedin” containing information on thousands of potential hires for the Trump administration. He envisioned it as a personnel machine for rooting out the “deep state” and replacing federal employees with devoted MAGA loyalists.

Dans hoped his system would allow Trump to make big changes fast. “If a person can’t get in and fire people right away, what good is political management?” Dans said in December.

Earlier this week, Trump nominated Russ Vought, a Christian nationalist with ties to Project 2025, to lead the Office of Management and Budget. He also nominated Brendan Carr, who wrote the Project 2025 chapter on the Federal Communications Commission, to head that government agency.

Last week, Trump nominated John Ratcliffe, another Project 2025 author, to head the Central Intelligence Agency.

Vladimir Putin Is “Gleeful” Over This Trump Cabinet Nomination

The New Republic – Opinion

Vladimir Putin Is “Gleeful” Over This Trump Cabinet Nomination

Edith Olmsted – November 22, 2024

Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination to be the next director of national intelligence may not be making you happy, but it’s certainly making someone happy: Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In Russia, the response to the former Hawaii representative’s nomination has been “gleeful,” The New York Times reported Tuesday.

Komsomolskaya Pravda, a Russian newspaper, fawned over Gabbard in an article last week, noting that “the CIA and FBI are trembling.” The article also noted that Ukrainians considered Gabbard to be “an agent of the Russian state.”

Trump’s decision to nominate Gabbard, of all people, signals his distinct willingness to cozy up to Putin.

“Nominating Gabbard for director of national intelligence is the way to Putin’s heart, and it tells the world that America under Trump will be the Kremlin’s ally rather than an adversary,” authoritarian scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat told the Times.

Gabbard has defended Russia’s incursion into Ukraine, claiming that the U.S. had provoked Russian aggression and that Ukraine housed U.S.-funded biolabs that were developing secret bioweapons—a piece of foreign state propaganda that earned her the reputation as a Russian asset.

Virginia Representative Abigail Spanberger sounded the alarm about Gabbard on MSNBC, noting that, if confirmed, Gabbard would be responsible for putting together the president’s daily briefings, and would likely include Russian propaganda.

Former CIA Director John Brennan also voiced his concerns about Gabbard on MSNBC Tuesday. “[Gabbard] has done things and said things over the years that really [have] caused great concern about where her sympathies and sentiments lie, but also she has no experience and background in the intelligence profession,” he said.

Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy told MSNBC that Gabbard had been known to “toe the line of brutal despotic regimes.”

Russia isn’t the only authoritarian state Gabbard’s defended: She’s also backed Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Egypt’s Abdel Fattah Al Sisi.

Nikki Haley criticizes Trump cabinet picks Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr

The Guardian

Nikki Haley criticizes Trump cabinet picks Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr

Martin Pengelly in Washington – November 21, 2024

<span>Nikki Haley called Robert F Kennedy Jr a ‘liberal Democrat’.</span><span>Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA</span>
Nikki Haley called Robert F Kennedy Jr a ‘liberal Democrat’.Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

Nikki Haley, the former UN ambassador and Republican presidential hopeful, criticized two of Donald Trump’s cabinet picks, calling his choice for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, “a Russian, Iranian, Syrian, Chinese sympathizer” and Robert F Kennedy Jr, tapped for health secretary, a “liberal Democrat” with no background in relevant policy.

“So now she’s defended Russia, she’s defended Syria, she’s defended Iran, and she’s defended China,” Haley said of Gabbard on her SiriusXM radio show on Wednesday. “No, she has not denounced any of these views. None of them. She hasn’t taken one of them back.

“This is not a place for a Russian, Iranian, Syrian, Chinese sympathizer,” Haley continued, adding that the director of national intelligence “has to analyze real threats” to US security.

Related: Who is Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence?

Gabbard, 43, is a former progressive congresswoman who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 but who has since become a Republican.

Kennedy, 70 and a scion of a famous political family turned vaccine conspiracy theorist, ran for the Democratic nomination this year before switching to run as an independent and then dropping out to back Trump.

Haley said: “He’s a liberal Democrat, environmental attorney, trial lawyer who will now be overseeing 25% of our federal budget and has no background in healthcare. Some of you may think RFK is cool, some of you may like that he questions what’s in our food and what’s in our vaccines, but we don’t know, when he is given reins to an agency, what decisions he’s going to make behind the scenes.”

Haley was governor of South Carolina before becoming UN ambassador in Trump’s first administration, resigning in 2018. This year, she ran second to Trump in the Republican presidential primary – a race in which she called her opponent “unhinged”, “diminished”, “confused” and not “mentally fit”, and said voting him into office would be “like suicide for our country”.

Still, after Trump won the Republican nomination, Haley endorsed him. No job offer has been forthcoming.

Trump has moved quickly to make cabinet picks. The selections of Gabbard and Kennedy have prompted uproar similar to that stoked by his choice of the far-right congressman Matt Gaetz for attorney general and the Fox News host Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense.

Kennedy’s opposition to vaccines, calls for deflouridization of drinking water and other conspiracy theory-laced positions have prompted widespread alarm.

Gabbard’s foreign policy positions have long generated controversy. In 2022, she endorsed a Russian claim that its invasion of Ukraine was justified by the existence of US-funded laboratories on Ukrainian soil, supposedly creating bioweapons for use against Russia. Such labs actually work to stop the creation of bioweapons. Gabbard has said she was calling for such labs to be protected. But other supportive comments about Russia have attracted huge controversy.

On Wednesday, Haley said: “After Russia invaded Ukraine, Tulsi Gabbard literally blamed Nato, our western alliance that’s responsible for countering Russia. She blamed Nato for the attack on Ukraine, and the Russians and the Chinese echoed her talking points and her interviews on Russian and Chinese television.”

Gabbard has also attracted criticism regarding meetings with Bashar al-Assad, the autocratic Syrian president accused of war crimes against his own people. Gabbard has said: “I think we should be ready to meet with anyone if there’s a chance it can help bring about an end to this war, which is causing the Syrian people so much suffering.” She has also accused the US of supporting terrorists in Syria.

While still a Democrat, Gabbard supported the Iran nuclear deal, which the US left during Trump’s first term, and said the US should avoid a trade war with China, a central Trump aim.

Trump’s pick of Gabbard has generated widespread criticism, not least in light of a long-running spat with leading Democrats including Hillary Clinton over whether the former congresswoman might be seen as a “Russian asset”.

Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA officer now a Democratic congresswoman from Virginia, said: “This is a matter of national security. Someone who has aligned herself with Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad and trafficked in Russian-backed conspiracy theories is an unsuitable and potentially dangerous selection.”

Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, said: “You really want her to have all the secrets of the United States and our defense intelligence agencies when she has so clearly been in Putin’s pocket?”

Related: Police report details sexual assault allegations against Pete Hegseth

Anti-Trump rightwingers also spoke out. John Bolton, Trump’s third national security adviser in his first term, said: “The idea that somehow she would be put in charge of this critical function should be giving our adversaries in Moscow and Beijing a lot of relief.”

Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican congressman, published a column with a blunt headline: “I Served With Tulsi Gabbard and Yikes.”

Even the Murdoch-owned New York Post, a pro-Trump paper, said the president-elect should ditch Gabbard (and Gaetz), its editorial board calling her “dreadful” and a “distracting chaos agent”.

In contrast, Russian media has spoken glowingly of Gabbard, one paper noting that Ukrainians consider her “an agent of the Russian state” and saying: “The CIA and the FBI are trembling.”

Opinion – Trump promised to be a dictator on Day 1: Here’s why the Insurrection Act blocks him

The Hill – Opinion

Trump promised to be a dictator on Day 1: Here’s why the Insurrection Act blocks him

Julien Berman and Laura Dickinson – November 19, 2024

Could President-elect Donald Trump use the military within the U.S. to suppress protests on college campuses, patrol the southern border, and conduct mass deportations? By invoking the Insurrection Act — a little-known law that grants the president sweeping authority to deploy the military on American soil — he plans to do just that.

The Posse Comitatus Act generally makes it a crime for the military to engage in domestic law enforcement. But the Insurrection Act provides a crucial exception to this rule, giving the president seemingly broad authority to deploy military forces on American soil. Historically, it has been invoked sparingly and responsibly — only 30 times in the 230 years since its inception. Most famously, the act enabled Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson to desegregate schools in the South and protect civil rights marchers to enforce court orders over the objection of state officials.

But in a moment when our democracy hangs by a thread, when the president-elect has openly declared potentially authoritarian ambitions, it could become the legal mechanism for Trump (or any president) to transform our constitutional democracy into a military state.

In 2020, Trump wanted to deploy military forces to quash the Black Lives Matter protests, but was convinced not to by advisers such as Attorney General William Barr and Gen. Mark Milley. In his second term, with Trump pledging to purge independent voices and install loyalists across government, there may be no one left to say no.

The Insurrection Act contains three triggers for military deployment. The first is relatively uncontroversial because it requires a state to explicitly request military assistance to suppress an insurrection. But the other two triggers appear to grant the president virtually unchecked power to deploy troops without state consent — or even against state wishes.

The language in these other two sections of the law is breathtakingly broad. One section seems to allow the president to deploy troops whenever “unlawful obstructions” make it “impractical” to enforce federal law. The other goes further still, purporting to authorize the use of military force to suppress any “domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” that “opposes or obstructs” federal law enforcement.

Even more alarming, in addition to allowing the deployment of regular troops and federalizing the National Guard, the act permits the president to deputize “private militias.” In theory, Trump could grant federal law enforcement authority to the extremist groups who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 or to militant organizations like the Proud Boys.

Our military is primarily trained for overseas combat, not domestic law enforcement, which requires different rules of engagement and careful protection of constitutional rights. And coordination between federal troops, local police and state officials becomes a logistical nightmare.

But all is not yet lost.

The Biden administration and Congress have roughly two months to reform this dangerous law before Trump returns to office. Experts across the political spectrum have proposed crucial reforms. Congress could explicitly narrow the specific substantive circumstances in which the act can be invoked, eliminate the private militia provisions, or add procedural checks on the use of the act, for example by requiring congressional approval or judicial review.

But even without congressional reform, executive branch lawyers in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel can make it clear that the current language in the Insurrection Act is not as broad as it may seem. Indeed, OLC has long maintained that the act’s sweeping language must be read narrowly in conjunction with other specific constitutional provisions and historical practice. Now, faced with explicit threats to weaponize the act, OLC should forcefully clarify these constitutional constraints, while providing needed guidance to judges should they be required to interpret the scope of the act.

First, OLC should emphasize that Congress enacted much of the act’s broad language immediately after the Civil War pursuant to its authority under the 14th Amendment. Because the 14th Amendment requires state action, the Insurrection Act should too, preventing the president from unilaterally deploying troops unless state authorities are either actively denying federal rights or completely powerless to protect them.

Second, OLC should establish a high bar for military deployment not tied to enforcing specific court orders. Both the Supremacy Clause and Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution suggest that the president must demonstrate a genuine collapse of state and local authority, and that the statute should only be used as a last resort.

Under this constitutional framework, Trump’s threats to deploy troops against protesters or undocumented immigrants are clearly illegitimate. They involve neither state violations of constitutional rights nor a breakdown of civil authority.

The framers of our Constitution were deeply skeptical of standing armies and military involvement in civilian affairs. They understood that turning troops against citizens was a hallmark of tyranny. It is deeply embedded in our Constitution and tradition that, outside of invasion or rebellion, civilian law enforcement — not soldiers — would maintain domestic order.

Our military exists primarily to protect the nation from foreign threats, not to serve as any president’s personal enforcement army against the American people. Now, as we face four more years of a president who has shown contempt for democratic norms and institutional restraints, we must use every legal tool available to prevent the abuse of this extraordinary power.

Julien Berman is a Harvard undergraduate and op-eds editor of The Harvard Crimson. Laura Dickinson is the Lyle T. Alverson Professor of Law at The George Washington University Law School.

Trump doubles down on provocative Cabinet picks as their fates hang in the balance

CNN

Trump doubles down on provocative Cabinet picks as their fates hang in the balance

Analysis by Stephen Collinson – November 18, 2024

Smerconish: Trump is inviting confrontation with cabinet picks

Donald Trump is refusing to back down over his Cabinet picks in the first clash in an epic battle he will wage against Washington when he takes office next year.

The coming days will show whether Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have staying power for confirmation fights in the new Republican Senate over their assignments to safeguard the rule of law, the US intelligence community, the military, and the health and well-being of all Americans.

Each of the most provocative selections is facing criticism that they lack the expertise and experience to run the vast, specialized bureaucracies that would be under their control.

And debate over their prospects is intensifying following fresh revelations and allegations about their pasts, which will set up a test for Trump’s intention to wield what he regards as almost uncheckable power from the Oval Office.

CNN reported this weekend that Hegseth, Trump’s pick for defense secretary, paid a woman who accused him of sexual assault in a settlement agreement that included a confidentiality clause, according to Hegseth’s attorney. The Fox News anchor has denied assaulting the woman, according to the attorney, and was not charged in any criminal case or named as a defendant in any civil lawsuit in connection with the 2017 incident. The initial sexual assault allegation against Hegseth had caught Trump’s team off guard last week, after the president-elect had already picked him.

Intrigue also deepened over a House Ethics Committee investigation into Gaetz, the potential attorney general, after a lawyer who represents two of the witnesses in the probe said Friday that one of his clients saw the Florida Republican, who resigned from Congress last week, having sex with a minor. Gaetz denies any wrongdoing, including ever having sex with a minor or paying for sex. He was not charged after a Department of Justice investigation.

There is also growing scrutiny over Gabbard’s suitability for the job of director of national intelligence because of her positions that sometimes amplified the propaganda of one of the covert community’s top adversaries — Russia.

And some senior medical experts are raising concerns over the qualifications of Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, to safeguard generations of medical advances as the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, even though his outspokenness against processed food has found support among many top physicians.

Not all of Trump’s picks are causing uproar. The selection of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio to serve as secretary of state has won praise on both sides of the aisle. But in a conventional administration, controversies raging around at least four key Cabinet picks would be seen as a disaster.

Trump is adamant he’s not going to give in as he seeks people who will fulfill his goals of tearing down the Washington establishment in a second term he pledged to devote to retribution. A source told CNN over the weekend that Trump sees Gaetz as his most important pick. The president-elect wants the former Florida congressman confirmed “100%,” the source said. “He is not going to back off. He’s all in.”

Johnson tells CNN that releasing Gaetz ethics report would open a Pandora’s box’

Trump has called on the Senate to, if necessary, cooperate with him to make recess appointments if the picks cannot be confirmed. Using such a move as a first resort rather than a final one, as has happened in the past, would be a sign that Trump, with a compliant GOP, plans to bypass the constitutional checks and balances of Congress and act with sweeping, unrestrained authority as president.

The outcome of the coming showdown will depend on whether Republican senators are willing to abrogate their own power to vet nominees and will cave under the furious political pressure that is certain to be trained on them by the “Make America Great Again” movement. The issue represents the first political crisis to confront South Dakota Sen. John Thune, who will take over as Republican Senate majority leader next year. And even if senators take a stand over one or two nominees they view as unqualified, it’s unlikely they will deal a defeat to the new president by throwing out all of the most provocative picks, meaning that some of them are almost certain to take jobs atop key government departments.

The storm over Trump’s picks is deepening as the president-elect is working to complete his future governing team with positions such as treasury secretary and US trade representative — who will be critical to carrying out his populist trade and economic policies — still outstanding.

Gaetz — a pyrotechnical politician who made his name with his outspoken support for Trump and a series of political stunts — is attracting the most attention in part because of his decision to quit the House just days before the Ethics Committee was expected to release its report. Without him being a sitting member of Congress, the investigation will end with the report still under wraps, despite some GOP senators requesting to see what is in it.

House Speaker Mike Johnson told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” on Sunday that releasing the report would open a “Pandora’s box” since Gaetz had left Congress, even though such action would not be unprecedented. “The Senate has a role, the advise-and-consent role, under the Constitution, and they will perform it,” the Louisiana Republican said. “They will have a rigorous review and vetting process in the Senate, but they don’t need to rely upon a report, or a draft report, a rough draft report, that was prepared by the Ethics Committee for its very limited purposes.” Johnson also said he had not discussed the matter with Trump.

The president-elect’s son explains the plan

Gaetz and several other Trump picks have caused consternation in some circles given the questions about their qualifications and past behavior.

“I think the whole point with these nominees, several of them, is their un-qualification, is their affirmative disqualification,” Sen.-elect Adam Schiff said on “State of the Union” on Sunday. “That’s Trump’s point, because what he wants to do with these nominees is establish that the Congress of the United States will not stand up to him with anything,” the California Democrat said. “If they will confirm Matt Gaetz, they will do anything he wants.”

Rep. Jim Himes, a Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, warned Sunday that Republican senators should look to their legacies and not to Trump. “These people are manifestly unqualified, and they’re not prepared to run the very complicated organizations they have been asked to run,” the Connecticut Democrat said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” He added: “A Republican senator who takes a vote to consent to the appointment of Matt Gaetz — a chaos agent, a performative social media, no-respect-for-the-rule-of-law individual — the Republican senator who votes to confirm Matt Gaetz or Robert Kennedy or Tulsi Gabbard will be remembered by history as somebody who completely gave up their responsibility to Donald Trump.”

Trump on the campaign trail made no secret of his plans if he won a second term. Many of his most committed supporters regard the federal government as a liberal deep state that has failed to respond to their needs. Trump, moreover, is still seething over the establishment’s attempts to rein him in during his first White House term. So selecting Cabinet picks who are seen as unqualified to lead their departments may be an attempt to deal a blow against the credibility of government in itself.

The strategy was explained by the president-elect’s son Donald Trump Jr. on “Sunday Morning Futures” on Fox Business. “The reality this time is, we actually know what we’re doing. We actually know who the good guys and the bad guys are. We know who the guys who are fake,” he said. “It’s about surrounding my father with people who are both competent and loyal. They will deliver on his promises. They will deliver on his message. They are not people who think they know better, as unelected bureaucrats.”

Trump Jr. also suggested that the uproar surrounding some of Trump’s picks was exactly why he chose them and that it proves their authenticity. “A lot of them are going to face pushback, for the same reasons. Again, they are going to be actual disrupters. That’s what the American people want.”

It would take a handful of Republican senators to block the most provocative Trump nominees early next year, given that Democrats are likely to vote en masse against them. But several GOP senators made clear Sunday they had no problems with the people Trump has picked to staff the government.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin has a long-standing personal feud with Gaetz and has in the past held his behavior in contempt. But the Oklahoma Republican said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he would give Gaetz a “fair shot.” He added: “I’ve got a tough situation. … I’ve got to set my personal situation with Matt to the side and look at the facts. If he’s qualified, he’s qualified.”

Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt said he believed Trump’s nominees would get confirmed. “You have to have people you trust to go into these agencies and have a real reform agenda. And that’s why I think there’s real momentum, real momentum to get these nominations confirmed,” he said on “Sunday Morning Futures.”

On the same show, however, another Trump ally, Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, warned there was “hard work” ahead in the confirmation process but praised Gaetz as a “fighter” who was loyal to the president-elect. “We have got the numbers. Let’s step to the plate, do our job, because we have to get this country back going in the right direction. President Trump only has a short period of time. Four years is not long.”

Across the aisle, Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman looked ahead to those four years and urged Democrats to acknowledge the big picture rather than playing into Trump’s hands over every controversy. He said on “State of the Union” that the picks of Gaetz and some others were “just absolute trolls” that fit Trump’s purposes. “He gets the kind of thing that he wanted, like the freak-out. … If we’re having meltdowns every tweet or every appointment or all those things, I mean, it’s going to be four years.”

Trump’s worst Cabinet picks aren’t just unqualified, they’re part of a bigger power grab

Los Angeles Times

Column: Trump’s worst Cabinet picks aren’t just unqualified, they’re part of a bigger power grab

Doyle McManus – November 18, 2024

Former President Donald Trump, center, walks by Rep. Matt Gaetz, left, R-Fla., outside the courtroom after the day's proceedings in his trial Thursday, May 16, 2024, in New York. Trump's adviser Boris Epshteyn, and attorney Emil Bove, right, follow behind him. (Mike Segar/Pool Photo via AP)
Donald Trump walks by Matt Gaetz, left, after a day in court during his criminal trial in New York this spring. Former Rep. Gaetz, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, has vowed to purge the Justice Department and FBI of anyone who might get in the president-elect’s way. (Mike Segar / Pool photo via Associated Press)More

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At first glance, President-elect Donald Trump’s most controversial Cabinet nominees — Matt GaetzPete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — are an odd list of ideologues and eccentrics chosen for political loyalty more than any substantive qualifications.

But there’s a more important and potentially more dangerous factor that ties their nominations together: They are foot soldiers in a power grab that, if it succeeds, would weaken the institutional guardrails that limit the president’s powers and concentrate more authority in Trump’s hands.

Former Rep. Gaetz, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, has promised to purge the Justice Department and FBI of anyone who might get in the president’s way. Trump “is going to hit the Department of Justice with a blowtorch — and that torch is Matt Gaetz,” former Trump aide Stephen K. Bannon said last week.

Hegseth, the Fox News host who could become Defense secretary, has proposed purging military officers he sees as too committed to diversity, including Gen. C.Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “The Pentagon likes to say our diversity is our strength,” Hegseth said on Fox News in June. “What a bunch of garbage.” (“Pete’s a leader,” Bannon said. “He’s kind of a madman — but hey, you need that.”)

Former Rep. Gabbard, who as director of National Intelligence would oversee the CIA and 17 other agencies, has criticized the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine so fervently that a Russian state television host once called her “our girlfriend.”

And Kennedy, the anti-vaccine activist who is Trump’s nominee for Health and Human Services, has said he wants to fire hundreds of senior officials in the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health on “day one.” Trump has encouraged him to “go wild.”

Their pledges are all in keeping with Trump’s broader promise to dismantle much of the federal bureaucracy and bring what remains under his personal control.

“We will demolish the deep state,” the president-elect often said at his campaign rallies, “We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country.”

During his first term, Trump often expressed frustration at the legal and political limits on what he could do as president.

In 2018, he expressed an expansive view of his powers under the Constitution: “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want.”

Read more: Trump’s early moves send strong signals about what to expect

But in practice, he found himself hemmed in by experienced Cabinet officials, White House lawyers and military officers, some of whom dubbed themselves “the adults in the room.”

His attorneys general, Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr, quietly sidelined his demands that they prosecute Hillary Clinton and other top Democrats.

His last Defense secretary, Mark Esper, and his appointee as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Mark A. Milley, resisted his proposal in 2020 to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy active duty troops against demonstrators in Washington and other cities.

Read more: News Analysis: Trump’s transition moves raise fears of a politicized military

Trump also denounced the CIA and other intelligence agencies for their finding that Russia interfered in the 2016 election campaign to help him defeat Clinton — a judgment he seemed to consider partisan, rather than based on the evidence.

So it’s no surprise that he wants to bring those national security agencies to heel.

But Trump’s plans to expand his personal authority extend much further.

He has vowed to weaken civil service rules that protect federal bureaucrats from being fired if they disagree with their bosses’ decisions. “We will pass critical reforms making every executive branch employee fireable by the president,” he said last year, adding: “I will wield that power very aggressively.”

Read more: Column: Trump wants to turn the federal bureaucracy into an ‘army of suck-ups.’ Here’s how that would be a disaster

Robert Shea, a former top official in the George W. Bush administration, explained the real world impact. “If you told your boss that what he or she was proposing was illegal, impractical [or] unwise, they could brand you as disloyal and terminate you,” he said.

The result would be what one expert called “transformation by intimidation.”

Trump has also proposed weakening Congress’ power to direct federal spending — one of the legislative branch’s core functions.

He plans to revive the practice of “impounding” funds — blocking agencies from spending money that Congress has appropriated for programs he doesn’t like.

That tactic could enable him, for example, to stop parts of President Biden’s clean energy program from being implemented, even though Congress has already approved the expenditures.

A 1974 law made impoundment illegal, but Trump has suggested that he will ignore the prohibition and challenge it in court.

Read more: Column: What can a new President Trump really do on Day One? A guide for the worried

And, of course, Trump warned the Senate last week that if it refuses to confirm any of his Cabinet nominees, he may put them in office anyway — by using “recess appointments,” which allow a president to fill top jobs when Congress isn’t in session.

And if the Congress doesn’t recess, Trump may have another norm-shattering gambit in reserve. In his first term, he threatened to adjourn both chambers under a presidential power laid out in the Constitution for “extraordinary occasions.”

That wouldn’t just test the guardrails on a president’s powers, it would “crash through them,” wrote Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center for Justice.

That makes it all the more important that Republicans in the Senate, to preserve their constitutional powers, subject Trump’s nominees to searching scrutiny and reject any that are unqualified, dangerous or both.

Those controversial nominations will decide more than the future of the Justice Department, the Defense Department, the intelligence community and the vast Department of Health and Human Services — although those stakes are high enough.

They will help determine whether Trump can undo the checks and balances the founders wrote into the Constitution, and turn the executive branch into an instrument of a would-be autocrat’s will.