What’s Going On With Trump’s Cabinet? Live Updates

At least that’s what the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan report:

In his private conversations over the past few days, President-elect Donald J. Trump has admitted that his besieged choice for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, has less than even odds of being confirmed by the Senate. But Mr. Trump has shown no sign of withdrawing the nomination, which speaks volumes about his mind-set as he staffs his second administration. He remains confident that even if Mr. Gaetz does not make it, the standard for an acceptable candidate will have shifted so much that the Senate may simply approve his other nominees who have appalled much of Washington. …

[T]his time, emboldened by victory and the submission of the Republican Party, Mr. Trump is innovating. He is using an approach that has been discussed in the past for judicial nominees, which is nominating so many extreme choices that they can’t all be blocked. The strategy has never been used for cabinet picks.

It is possible that enough Republican senators are willing to risk their careers to oppose Mr. Gaetz, although it is unclear what the backup plan would be should Mr. Gaetz falter. Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer and pick for deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, is seen as a possibility. It is also possible that Mr. Gaetz is confirmed, along with the three other nominees who have raised such a furor in Washington. Mr. Trump has wasted no time in barreling ahead and putting personal pressure on senators.

The president-elect is nominating former Wisconsin representative Sean Duffy to be Secretary of Transportation. Duffy is both a Fox News contributor and co-host of The Bottom Line on Fox Business. The former professional lumberjack athlete was also once a cast member on MTV’s The Real World. His wife, fellow Real World alum Rachel Campos-Duffy, is a weekend co-host on Fox & Friends (as was Trump’s embattled Defense Secretary pick Pete Hegseth).

Duffy does not appear to have much experience dealing with transportation policy, but he did meet his wife on 1998’s Road Rules: All Stars.

Over the weekend, multiple reports indicated that Trump transition co-chair Howard Lutnick has lost Trump’s favor in his bid to become to Treasury Secretary. Now Semafor reports that the other co-chair of Trump’s transition team, former WWE CEO Linda McMahon, is herself frustrated that she hasn’t been named Secretary of Commerce yet:

The delay in an offer for McMahon is seen by some of Trump’s allies as a sign that he’s saving the commerce secretary job as a potential landing spot for someone else who misses out on a more prominent position. One of the people familiar with the matter described McMahon as “pissed.” A third person inside Trump’s network told Semafor that Commerce is less of a priority for the president-elect than other top national security and economic roles. … McMahon, who led the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term, has been vying behind the scenes for months to lead Commerce; many people close to Trump still see her as the most likely person to land the job.

One source also told Semafor that Lutnick may get it instead.

The Tennessee Senator was one of the people Trump was reportedly considering for Secretary of State, and after Trump went with Marco Rubio, instead, Hagerty’s Cabinet prospects were looking dim. Now, according to the New York Times, Hagerty is in the mix for Treasury, along with Kevin Warsh and Marc Rowan.

We still don’t know if the House Ethics Committee will release their potentially damaging report on Gaetz. Now it sounds like the Senate Judiciary Committee may conduct their own investigation:

At his campaign rallies, Trump regularly recounted, in great detail, what it was like to watch live footage of a SpaceX rocket landing — emphasizing how impressed he was with the feat and SpaceX founder Elon Musk. Now he’s going to go watch a launch in person, per the New York Times:

President-elect Donald J. Trump plans to attend a SpaceX launch in Texas on Tuesday, according to two people familiar with the planning, in yet another demonstration of the billionaire Elon Musk’s increasing closeness to — and influence on — the incoming president.

Bloomberg reports Trump will soon name James Braid, who served as J.D. Vance’s deputy chief of staff in the Senate, to be the White House Director of Legislative Affairs — the staff member responsible for shepherding the Trump administration’s legislative agenda through Congress. Braid also worked in the first Trump administration’s Office of Budget and Management.

According to the Washington Post, Trump’s advisers are considering significant cuts to safety net programs, including Medicaid and food stamps, in order to finance extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts:

Among the options under discussion by GOP lawmakers and aides are new work requirements and spending caps for the programs, according to seven people familiar with the talks, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Those conversations have included some economic officials on Trump’s transition team, the people said.

However, concern is high among some Republicans about the political downsides of such cuts, which would affect programs that provide support for at least 70 million low-income Americans, and some people familiar with the talks stressed that discussions are preliminary.

Read the rest of the report here.

Per Politico Playbook, a lawyer for some of the witnesses who testified before the House Ethics Committee is going on TV this week:

Lawyer JOEL LEPPARD is set to do multiple network TV interviews today as he pushes for the release of the House Ethics report, but he gave Playbook a sneak preview last night: His clients, he said, told investigators they attended more than five and as many as 10 “sex parties” with Gaetz between the summer of 2017 and the end of 2018, during his first term in the House. At those parties, they testified, there were “group sex situations” and illegal drugs were present. One of Leppard’s clients told investigators she witnessed Gaetz “having sex with her friend,” who was underage at the time, against what she recalled as some sort of game table, according to Leppard.

Here’s one of those interviews:

Also, the Committee will meet on Wednesday, though it’s still not clear what will happen with their report on Gaetz.

According to Axios, there was a “massive blowup” between the two top Trump advisers last week (and that is being leaked out):

The friction between Musk and Boris Epshteyn — a top adviser who’s pushed for Cabinet picks that include Matt Gaetz for attorney general — surfaced in public last week. It signaled a rivalry stemming from Musk’s growing influence on the president-elect, to the dismay of some Trump loyalists.

Musk — who fueled Trump’s election effort by giving at least $119 million — has questioned whether Epshteyn has had too much influence in Trump’s selections, especially his top Justice Department picks and the White House counsel, three people familiar with the conversations told Axios.

At the same time, Musk has begun to push for his own Cabinet favorites. Epshteyn has bristled at Musk’s questioning the qualifications of Epshteyn’s favored candidates, two of the sources said. … Their rocky relationship came to a head last Wednesday during a heated discussion at a dinner table in front of other guests at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, three people familiar with the episode told Axios.

At one point during what the sources described as a “massive blowup” and a “huge explosion,” Musk accused Epshteyn of leaking details of Trump’s transition — including personnel picks — to the media. Epshteyn responded by telling Musk that he didn’t know what he was talking about.

To be clear, questioning the qualifications of someone like Matt Gaetz for a job like attorney general is probably a worthwhile exercise. But Musk is apparently ruffling some Trump loyalist feathers:

Many people in Trump’s orbit like having Musk around, or have found ways to work with him. Musk is well-liked by Vice President-elect JD Vance, conservative commentator Tucker Carlson and Trump’s family members, including his sons Don Jr. and Eric. Trump’s granddaughter, Kai Trump, even posted that Musk had reached “uncle status” along with a photo of Kai, Musk and Musk’s son on a golf course.

But Musk’s involvement in the transition process and near-constant presence at Mar-a-Lago has begun to wear on some who’ve been in Trump’s inner circle longer than he has — and who see him as overstepping his role in the transition[.]

Carr is currently the top GOP commissioner on the FCC, and as NBC News points out, he wrote Project 2025’s chapter on the agency:

Carr wrote the FCC chapter in the conservative playbook Project 2025, in which he argued that the agency’s main goals should be “reining in Big Tech, promoting national security, unleashing economic prosperity, and ensuring FCC accountability and good governance.” In his chapter, Carr suggested TikTok should be banned if it fails to disentangle from its China-based parent company — an issue on which Trump held conflicting views before he joined the app himself this year. He also called for working with Congress to reform Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which gives social media companies a level of immunity for the content on their platforms and allows them to moderate certain objectionable content “in good faith.”

NPR adds that the third-term commissioner is definitely considered qualified for the role, and he’s been publicly campaigning for it:

Carr has been “appearing non-stop on Fox News and other outlets with an uncharacteristically partisan message on pending FCC and, notably, non-FCC, issues,” [telecommunications lawyer Andrew Jay] Schwartzman notes. Many of Trump’s other picks for administration positions also have been frequent guests of Fox News.

Earlier this month, Carr used the social network X to attack Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft for playing “central roles in the censorship cartel,” which he said “must be dismantled.” The billionaire Elon Musk — who owns X, advises Trump and has backed Carr’s prospects for the FCC chairmanship — reposted his claims and announcement.

Carr also quickly criticized NBC over Kamala Harris’s cameo in Saturday Night Live’s cold open days before the election, arguing that it clearly violated the FCC’s equal time rules. The network ultimately gave Trump free airtime the night after the SNL broadcast.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump aides have reached out to the Apollo Global Management chief executive:

Trump aides have been in touch with Rowan to gauge his interest and he has affirmed it, a person familiar with the talks said. Rowan has yet to speak to Trump about the job and is not actively lobbying to become Treasury secretary, according to people familiar with the matter.

The New York Times reports that Trump is now also considering former Federal Reserve governor Kevin Warsh — and has soured on earlier top candidates and their drama:

Mr. Trump had been expected to pick either Howard Lutnick, the chief executive of the Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald, or Scott Bessent, the founder of the investment firm Key Square Capital Management and a former money manager for George Soros. And he had been seen as likely to make the selection late last week. But he has been having second thoughts about the top two candidates, and has slowed down his selection process. He is expected to invite the contenders to interview with him this week at Mar-a-Lago.

Mr. Lutnick, who has been running Mr. Trump’s transition operation, has gotten on Mr. Trump’s nerves lately. Mr. Trump has privately expressed frustration that Mr. Lutnick has been hanging around him too much and that he has been manipulating the transition process for his own ends. A person familiar with the process, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described the battle between Mr. Lutnick and Mr. Bessent as a knife fight, with Mr. Lutnick as the primary aggressor. …

Mr. Trump has told people that he wants somebody “big” for the role — and tends to value wealth and status on Wall Street. He has made clear to people close to him that he is very impressed with Mr. Rowan[.] He has also remarked that Mr. Warsh is smart and handsome. Mr. Warsh has also been regularly raised as a possible option for Federal Reserve chairman. Jerome H. Powell currently holds that job, but his term expires in 2026.

Bloomberg reports:

Members of President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team have told advisers they plan to make a federal framework for fully self-driving vehicles one of the Transportation Department’s priorities, according to people familiar with the matter. …

Current federal rules pose significant roadblocks for companies looking to deploy vehicles without steering wheels or foot pedals in large quantities, which Tesla plans to do. The Trump team is looking for policy leaders for the department to develop a framework to regulate self-driving vehicles, according to people familiar with the matter

Trump previously opposed autonomous vehicles, which Musk’s Tesla is now deeply invested in. Bloomberg notes that Congress would need to pass legislation to enable mass adoption of the technology, but there are at least some ways that the DOT’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, via new rules, could pave part of the way.

Trump’s DOGE co-head promised broad rapid cost-cutting during a Sunday morning appearance on Fox News. Per the New York Post:

“We expect certain agencies to be deleted outright,” Ramaswamy, 39, told Maria Bartiromo on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.” “We expect mass reductions in force in areas of the federal government that are bloated.”

“We expect massive cuts among federal contractors and others who are overbilling the federal government,” he continued. “I think people will be surprised by, I think, how quickly we’re able to move.” …

“They haven’t voted for incremental change here this time,” he argued. “We have voted for sweeping change, and the voters actually deserve to get it. And we’re focused on how to do that as early and as quickly as possible.”

That’s how presidential transition historian David Marchick described what Trump is now doing with his cabinet picks to the New York Times:

“This is like the ‘Star Wars’ bar scene of nominees,” he said. Mr. Trump’s camp has made clear, he added, that “it’s a serious strategy to blow out the government as an institution because of their belief that it’s become too big, too powerful and represents the deep state.” …

According to figures from Mr. Marchick, the average tenure for a cabinet secretary in Mr. Trump’s first term other than Treasury, Commerce and Housing and Urban Development was 1.8 years. For the key security agencies — Defense, Justice and Homeland Security — the average term was 10.5 months.

“None of these candidates, I’m sure, were vetted,” Mr. Marchick said of the latest nominees. “It’s all just spontaneous decisions by Trump and then announcement by tweet. No process, no interviews, no vetting, just chaos. He had a mandate to deal with the price of eggs. The question is: Did the mandate extend to this craziness?”

In addition to Trump’s entourage of Elon Musk, RFK Jr., Speaker Mike Johnson, and others who accompanied him to the UFC event at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night, Trump was also seen chatting with Eric Adams:

Adams spokesperson suggested it was happenstance:

Politico Playbook spoke with some of Todd Blanch and Emil Bove’s former colleagues:

“Todd and Emil are both accomplished former federal prosecutors well-trained in the finest nonpartisan traditions of the Department of Justice,” Rep. DAN GOLDMAN (D-N.Y.), a former SDNY prosecutor who overlapped there with Blanche and Bove told us. (Goldman, of course, was lead counsel on the first Trump impeachment and is a staunch Trump critic.) “Donald Trump has been clear that he intends to weaponize the DOJ for his partisan interests,” Goldman added, “but I expect Todd and Emil to adhere to those principles and the rule of law in the face of any pressure to do otherwise.”

“This isn’t about who I would want in that position,” MIMI ROCAH, the sitting Westchester County DA, a Democrat and herself an SDNY veteran, told us. Blanche worked as Rocah’s deputy for about two years when she supervised the White Plains division of the office. “It’s about who’s qualified and has the seriousness, skills, abilities, ethics, to have a role like that,” she added. “And I think Todd certainly does.”

Others were warier. Another former colleague described Blanche as “your typical throwback rough-and-tumble violent crimes prosecutor” and said that “I don’t think any of his colleagues from SDNY would have imagined him running the day-to-day operations of the Justice Department.” The former colleague went on to add that “the bar is so low with these Trump appointments [that] everyone is at least happy to see a ‘real guy’ in there.”

As for Bove — who will not need to go through Senate confirmation for his position — the former colleague questioned his temperament and reminded us of a widely publicized controversy in which Bove supervised a trial team that was eventually taken to task by the presiding judge in the SDNY for trying to bury evidence favorable to the defendant — a mortal sin in prosecutorial circles. “Emil Bove has ridden a hell of a roller coaster to be here,” the former colleague continued, adding that he “was an odd duck at SDNY” who was known for “threatening, pound-the-table antics” that were “wild as a supervisor and as a line assistant.”

The Speaker was asked about his opposition to releasing the report on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. As Politico captions, he denied discussing the matter with Trump:

“The president and I have literally not discussed one word about the ethics report, not once,” Johnson said in an interview with Jake Tapper[.] “And I’ve been with him quite a bit this week between Washington and Mar-a-Lago. And last night in Madison Square Garden.” … Johnson claimed his two statements on staying independent and requesting the report to not be released were not contradictory: “What I said is entirely consistent,” he said to CNN.

“The Speaker of the House is not involved in Ethics Committee work. Can’t be, shouldn’t be, because the speaker can’t put a thumb on the scale or have anything to do with that,” Johnson said. “What I have said with regard to the report is that it should not come out. And why? Because Matt Gaetz resigned from Congress. He is no longer a member.”

Per NBC News:

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.

Trump went to UFC at MSG on Saturday night, accompanied by his new inner circle, and everyone was posting pics to prove it all happened.

Like anti-processed food activist RFK Jr. at least holding a Quarter Pounder with Cheese on Trump Force One:

And this MAGA-packed elevator:

And mild-mannered Mike Johnson having an “epic!” time:

And ringside LOLZ:

Per CNN:

Yet the president-elect has made clear that he views Gaetz as the most important member of the Cabinet he is quickly assembling, sources with knowledge of Trump’s thinking told CNN, and he considers the nomination of the former Florida congressman an urgent priority for the incoming GOP majority in the Senate. Trump wants Gaetz confirmed “100%,” a source told CNN. “He is not going to back off. He’s all in.”

NBC News reported Saturday that Gaetz’s nomination faces a steep climb with Senate Republicans (though that opposition is hardly public, at this point):

More than half of Senate Republicans, including some in senior leadership positions, privately say they don’t see a path for former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., to be confirmed as attorney general and would not support him to lead the Department of Justice, according to multiple people who spoke to NBC News on condition of anonymity. … NBC News spoke to more than 15 additional Republican sources who agreed that there are not enough votes in the Senate to confirm Gaetz, and some estimated that closer to 30 Republicans consider him unqualified.

The Washington Post reports that Trump Defense Secretary pick Pete Hegseth, who has denied the allegations, paid the woman as part of a non-disclosure agreement. The Post got ahold of a four-page memo that a friend of the accuser sent to Trump transition officials detailing the alleged incident:

[Hegseth] maintained that their encounter was consensual, according to a statement from his lawyer Saturday and other documents obtained by The Washington Post. Hegseth’s attorney, Timothy Parlatore, said that Hegseth was “visibly intoxicated” at the time of the incident, and maintained that police who were contacted a few days after the encounter by the woman concluded “the Complainant had been the aggressor in the encounter.” Police have not confirmed that assertion. Hegseth agreed to pay an undisclosed amount to the woman because he feared that revelation of the matter “would result in his immediate termination from Fox,” where he works as a host, the statement said.

The statement came after a detailed memo was sent to the Trump transition team this week by a woman who said she is a friend of the accuser. The memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Post, alleged he raped the then-30-year-old conservative group staffer in his room after drinking at a hotel bar. …

The accuser, whose identity has not been made public, filed a complaint with the police alleging she was sexually assaulted days after the Oct. 7, 2017 encounter in Monterey, California, but the local district attorney did not bring charges. Police confirmed that they investigated the incident. After she threatened litigation in 2020, Hegseth made the payment and she signed the nondisclosure agreement, his attorney said.

Per the memo, the woman, who was staying in the hotel with her husband and children, went to the emergency room the day after the alleged incident:

The following day, the woman returned home and “had a moment of hazy memory of being raped the night before, and had a panic attack,” the memo said. The woman then went to the emergency room, where she was examined with a rape kit that “was positive for semen,” the memo said. The woman gave county authorities a statement about what happened, according to the memo sent to the transition team.

Her statement has not been publicly released. The city of Monterey said in a statement Thursday that its police department investigated a sexual assault allegation against Hegseth, with no charges filed. The friend of Jane Doe wrote in the memo that she had been in the presence of the woman at various events for 15 years and had “never known her to be irresponsible, drunk, or ever of questionable character.” …

The woman’s friend said in her memo to transition officials that she believed no charges were brought because the woman “could not recall all the details” and it became a “he said, she said” situation.

A new Washington Post’s report echoes the Times’ reporting earlier Saturday about the tumult of Trump’s cabinet selection process, and notes how the structure and relative organization of the campaign is now but a memory:

Trump won the election with a unified senior team that had brought some order and a decision-making process to the campaign. But the structure eroded in the days after his Nov. 5 victory, now beholden to Trump’s whims. His team presents names in presentations, and he reacts in real-time. At other times, he suggests names of people who had not been vetted by the transition team.

“Names are being thrown out all over the place. There isn’t really a functional process — it’s really whoever he just decides to name,” said one person involved.

Some people around Trump said Susie Wiles, Trump’s campaign chief and incoming White House chief of staff, has faced challenges to manage the transition with the same level of discipline she maintained during the campaign. She had spent a crucial few days away from Trump at a donor event in Las Vegas after the election. Cheung said she continued to call into meetings and has been “actively involved in the transition process every single day.” …

“Let’s stop pretending that everything is buttoned up and going as planned when people are not thinking that anymore,” said another person familiar with the Trump inner circle about the task facing Wiles. “This is not a campaign where she can control every aspect of it.”

The effort to influence who Trump will pick to be his Treasury Secretary, billionaire transition chair Howard Lutnick or investor Scott Bessent, has become a messy fight, according to the Wall Street Journal — and that’s why Musk and RFK Jr. weighed in with X posts on Saturday:

The fight over Treasury secretary has become a proxy battle over the direction of Trump’s second term, with Bessent emerging as the clear favorite among some who prefer a more steady approach and Lutnick winning the backing of many of Trump’s more die-hard supporters. …

The push by Musk on social media coincides with a behind-the-scenes effort by the Tesla CEO and his allies to see Lutnick become Treasury secretary. In private meetings, Musk has been weighing in to Trump on who should serve in the role, according to people familiar with the matter.  Musk, some of the people explained, has argued to Trump that if Lutnick were to become Treasury secretary he would be someone who can work better with financial institutions, including the big banks on Wall Street. Earlier this week, Lutnick caught wind from Trump’s allies that he might not end up becoming Treasury secretary and turned to Musk to help him try to get the job, these people said. Lutnick didn’t ask Musk to publicly endorse him, another person said.

Musk’s public support for Lutnick comes after Bessent’s supporters reached out to the SpaceX CEO for an endorsement of their preferred candidate for Treasury secretary, one of the people familiar with the matter said. 

The Washington Post’s Jeff Stein adds in an X thread:

We’re in a protracted standoff right now over who Trump will pick for treasury secretary. I think it sounds boring to a lot of people but it’s an absolutely crucial moment.

1) From all my reporting, my sense is that Trump is dead serious about enormous tariff hikes to rebalance global trade. So he wants someone who will actually implement those tariffs.

2) But all the evidence also suggests he really wants the support of Wall Street and STONKS to go up. So he wants someone the markets will respect.

But it’s really hard to see how he gets BOTH of those, which I think is part of why picking the treasury secretary is proving so hard.

This helps explain why [Bessent] who got characterized — maybe somewhat unfairly? — as door #2, has been jumping up and down the last week and insisting that he’s really actually super serious about doing tariffs in a big way.

Wright is a climate change skeptic, GOP fundraiser, and the CEO of Liberty Energy, a Denver-based oilfield services and fracking company. He will also serve in Trump’s newly created National Energy Council (along with Doug Burgum, who is Trump’s Interior pick and will chair the council). Adds CNN:

“Chris has been a leading technologist and entrepreneur in Energy. He has worked in Nuclear, Solar, Geothermal, and Oil and Gas. Most significantly, Chris was one of the pioneers who helped launch the American Shale Revolution that fueled American Energy Independence, and transformed the Global Energy Markets and Geopolitics,” Trump wrote in a statement Saturday.

In addition to his company’s work on fracking oil and natural gas, Wright also sits on the board of a modular nuclear reactor company and has talked about the potential of nuclear energy. Developing nuclear energy has become a big focus of the Biden administration’s Energy Department. The department also houses the National Nuclear Security Administration, a semi-autonomous agency that maintains the nuclear stockpile.

“There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition either,” Wright claimed in a video last year, per Politico. He has also disputed that there is a link between climate change and extreme weather.

Scharf was one of the attorney’s who represented Trump during his presidential immunity hearing before the Supreme Court. Earlier this year, he mounted a GOP primary challenge against Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, but lost. He was backed in the race by Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo, who Scharf has longtime ties with.

As White House staff secretary, he’ll be responsible for managing the flow of paperwork to Trump.

New York Times columnist Zeynep Tufekci writes that among Trump’s cabinet picks, RFK Jr. for HHS Secretary “stands out for the extensive suffering and lasting institutional damage it may cause”:

As the head of Health and Human Services, a position that has, as one former secretary, Alex Azar, put it, “a shocking amount of power by the stroke of a pen,” Kennedy could go far beyond making false claims. For example, he could attempt to stop N.I.H. research on infectious diseases, as he recently vowed to do, or take actions that would make vaccines less available and lower their uptake.

And the victims wouldn’t just be children in families that consciously opt out. Many vaccines aren’t available for any children before the age of 6 months, and it takes years to complete the full schedule to get robust protection. That means infants and young kids are extremely vulnerable, as are immunocompromised people, cancer patients and the elderly. Globally, childhood vaccination rates have already stalled, and any further decline could mean outbreaks start happening much more widely.

All of that is bad enough under the best of times. But what if another pandemic rolls around? … If pandemics sound like yesterday’s news, the H5N1 outbreak among the nation’s dairy cattle continues to rage, as does the avian flu version ravaging birds everywhere. And there are strong signs that many human infections are going undetected.

Yet Kennedy has been a vigorous proponent of raw milk, which unlike pasteurized milk has been shown to carry extremely high levels of the virus.

Read the rest here.

Or “seems to”:

Soon after, RFK Jr. also backed Lutnick, insisting that “Bitcoin will have no stronger advocate than Howard Lutnik”:

The COVID contrarian academic and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration — which in October 2020 controversially advocated for reopening schools and businesses, and was widely criticized by public health organizations and infectious disease experts — seems likely to take a top health role, like the director of the National Institutes of Health, in the second Trump administration, the Washington Post reports:

Bhattacharya is a strong candidate to lead the nearly $50 billion agency in the coming Trump administration, with his name on an internal list of contenders being compiled by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., according to four people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. Kennedy was selected Thursday by President-elect Donald Trump to run the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees NIH.

The rise of Bhattacharya — from being scorned by the nation’s NIH director to possibly occupying his office four years later — reflects how the backlash to coronavirus policies has helped reshape conservative politics and elevate new voices. While Collins and other public health experts maintain that the Great Barrington Declaration’s ideas were rash and would have put vulnerable people at risk, many Americans have come to believe that school shutdowns and other pandemic-related policies lasted too long. …

Bhattacharya, who holds a medical degree and PhD from Stanford, has never held a senior government position, nor any role overseeing a large bureaucratic organization. While that might have stymied his candidacy in prior administrations, [RFK Jr.] and his allies view his inexperience as a positive, saying they are seeking reformers willing to battle the bureaucracy.

The New York Times reports on Trump’s cabinet-picking process, which proceeding much faster than it did in 2016 (when he didn’t know what he was doing):

Emboldened, confident in his instincts and more contemptuous than ever of Washington expertise, Mr. Trump is staffing the most important roles in his government at breakneck speed. …

Much of the action has taken place under the chandelier in the tearoom at Mar-a-Lago, where Mr. Trump surveys his potential Cabinet nominees on giant video screens. He flicks through shortlists that his transition team, led by the billionaire Howard Lutnick, has drafted over the past months. If Mr. Trump shows an interest in a candidate, the presentation is designed to allow him to immediately watch videos of the potential nominee’s TV appearances — essential for any would-be Trump cabinet official.

The Times also confirms what has clearly been his guiding light:

He still loves credentials and pedigrees from top schools and top companies, but he is far more willing to forgo that than in the past. He is hiring — above all else — for loyalty. He has told advisers that his biggest regret from his first term was personnel, and that he was betrayed by “traitors”

But if you have an idea for a cabinet pick and have Trump’s number, he’s apparently listening:

Even with the differences since 2016, all signs so far indicate that the 78-year-old president-elect is sticking to some of his old habits. It sometimes seems to his staff as if half the world now has Mr. Trump’s cellphone number. Even since becoming the president-elect, he still seems willing to take every call — even calls from unknown foreign numbers.

It’s still not clear if the House Ethics Committee’s Gaetz report will come out, but more details about what the Committee heard continue to emerge. ABC News reports that Florida attorney Joel Leppard said that one of his clients testified to the Committee that she saw Gaetz having sex with a 17-year-old minor:

“As the Senate considers former Rep. Gaetz’s nomination for attorney general, several questions demand answers,” Leppard said. “What if multiple credible witnesses provided evidence of behavior that would constitute serious criminal violations?”

ABC News previously reported that:

Over the summer, the House Ethics Committee subpoenaed the woman at the center of the probe – who is now in her 20s – and she sat for multiple days of testimony where she testified to the committee that Gaetz had sex with her when she was a minor in high school, sources close to the investigation said.

Trump’s transition team made the announcement on Friday night. Leavitt was the national press secretary for Trump’s 2024 campaign, and had served as an assistant press secretary during the first Trump administration. The 27-year-old will be the youngest person to ever serve as White House press secretary.

CNN reports that Trump’s son-in-law may still end up being a major influence on Middle East policy:

Kushner is not likely to assume a formal role in Trump’s second administration, but he is likely to serve as an outside advisor, said two sources familiar with his current thinking. Kushner is currently fully available to brief and advise all of those who will be working on issues related to the Middle East, said a source familiar with the situation, adding that he believes further progress is possible under Trump’s leadership. … Since Trump left office in 2021, Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, have moved to Miami and largely exited politics. Kushner founded an investment fund, Affinity Partners, shortly after leaving Washington with major backing from sovereign wealth funds in the Gulf. Kushner has also maintained relationships with key players in the Middle East, including Israeli officials and leaders in the Arab Gulf. In particular, he has remained in contact with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto leader.

As the Associated Press report notes:

Several of Hegseth’s tattoos are associated with an expression of religious faith, according to Heidi Beirich of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, but they have also been adopted by some far right groups and violent extremists. Their meaning depends on context, she said.

Trump announced on Friday afternoon that the outgoing North Dakota governor (and onetime GOP primary rival) will run the Department of the Interior, as well serve as the coordinator of the Trump administration’s energy policy throughout the government. Trump says Burgum will chair “the newly formed, and very important, National Energy Council, which will consist of all Departments and Agencies involved in the permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation, transportation, of ALL forms of American Energy.”

What that actually means is that he’ll be an “energy czar” primarily tasked with increasing the production and use of fossil fuels. He’ll also serve on Trump’s White House Security Council, the president-elect said.

The Washington Post reports that there is internal turmoil within Trump’s transition team over the Defense secretary pick, following the news that Hegseth, a Fox News host, was investigated for sexual assault in 2017:

The internal turmoil over Hegseth’s future was sparked by a complaint shared with the transition team with extensive information about a woman’s claim that Hegseth assaulted her in a hotel in Monterey, California, after a Republican conference, according to a person familiar with the complaint who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. The woman who drafted the complaint said the alleged victim was a friend who later signed a nondisclosure agreement with Hegseth.

Monterey police confirmed they had investigated Hegseth over an allegation of “alleged sexual assault” in 2017 and that the incident did not result in criminal charges.

The transition team was caught by surprise by the detailed allegations and now fears more negative revelations about Hegseth, said the person familiar with the complaint. “There’s a lot of frustration around this,” the person said. “He hadn’t been properly vetted.”

That’s what Garrett M. Graff thinks:

Some people have speculated that Gaetz is a sacrificial offering, a stalking-horse for a slightly-less-outrageous-but-still-awful AG nominee who will be named if and when his nomination fails. That feels far too sophisticated of a power play for a decision that came together on the fly Wednesday afternoon during Trump’s flight to D.C.

I’ve never been a big believer in the “Trump as nine-dimensional-chessmaster theory.” Donald Trump is as close to a walking, breathing political ID as any human ever created.

Instead, I think this week’s nominations are best thought of in the vein of the scene in Jurassic Park when the scientists explain how Velociraptors are able to learn: “They were testing the fences for weaknesses, systematically. They remember.”

This is Donald Trump testing his limits. This is Trump seeing just how much he can get away with.

The Associated Press reports:

Pete Hegseth, the Army National Guard veteran and Fox News host nominated by Donald Trump to lead the Department of Defense, was flagged as a possible “Insider Threat” by a fellow service member due to a tattoo he has that’s associated with white supremacist groups. Hegseth, who has downplayed the role of military members and veterans in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack and railed against the Pentagon’s subsequent efforts to address extremism in the ranks, has said he was pulled by his District of Columbia National Guard unit from guarding Joe Biden’s January 2021 inauguration. He’s said he was unfairly identified as an extremist due to a cross tattoo on his chest.

This week, however, a fellow Guard member who was the unit’s security manager and on an anti-terrorism team at the time, shared with The Associated Press an email he sent to the unit’s leadership flagging a different tattoo that’s been used by white supremacists, concerned it was an indication of an “Insider Threat.”

As I note in my new post, we don’t know yet:

House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Friday that he’s not in favor of releasing the report and he intends to relay his stance to the committee. “I’m going to strongly request that the Ethics Committee not issue the report because that is not the way we do things in the House, and I think that would be a terrible precedent to set,” he said.

Here’s everyone he has announced to be in his cabinet, or in other senior White House roles, thus far (picks that require Senate confirmation are marked with an asterisk). For more information on who these people are and why Trump chose and/or may regret choosing them, head here.

White House Chief of Staff
Susie Wiles
Deputy Chief of Staff
Dan Scavino
Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, and Homeland Security Adviser
Stephen Miller
White House Counsel
William McGinley
White House Communications Director
Steven Cheung
White House Press Secretary
Karoline Leavitt
Head of Presidential Personnel Office
Sergio Gor
Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications and Personnel
Taylor Budowich
Deputy Chief of Staff for Legislative, Political and Public Affairs
James Blair
Staff Secretary
Will Scharf

Attorney General*
Matt Gaetz
Deputy Attorney General*
Todd Blanche, Trump defense attorney
Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General
Emil Bove, Trump defense attorney
Solicitor General*
Dean John Sauer
U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York*
Jay Clayton

Secretary of State*
Marco Rubio
Secretary of Defense*
Pete Hegseth
National Security Adviser
Michael Waltz
Homeland Security Secretary*
Kristi Noem
CIA Director*
John Ratcliffe
Director of National Intelligence*
Tulsi Gabbard
Secretary of Health and Human Services*
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
EPA Administrator*
Lee Zeldin
Secretary of the Interior*
Doug Burgum
Secretary of Veterans Affairs*
Doug Collins
Secretary of Energy*
Chris Wright
FCC Chair
Brendan Carr

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations*
Elise Stefanik
U.S. Ambassador to Israel*
Mike Huckabee

“Border Czar”
Tom Homan
“Department of Government Efficiency” (not an actual department)
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy

Cabinet picks Trump hasn’t announced yet:

Secretary of Agriculture*
Secretary of Commerce*
Secretary of Education*
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development*
Secretary of Labor*
Secretary of Transportation*
Secretary of Treasury*
U.S. Trade Representative*
Small Business Administration Administrator*
Director of the Office of Management and Budget*
Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy*
Council of Economic Advisers Chair