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Donald Trump has sweeping plans for a second administration. Here’s what he’s proposed


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Trump's MAHA moment
 
Illustration of a caduceus with an American flag in place of one wing
 

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

 

A sprawling movement built around concerns about the food supply and drug industry profiteering is poised to shake up health policy in the new Trump administration, Axios Vitals co-author Maya Goldman writes.

  • Why it matters: The "Make America Healthy Again" campaign — led by RFK Jr. — blends generally mainstream views on policing food additives or expanding health savings accounts with conspiracy-tinged ideas about corruption within the FDA, fluoride in water and vaccines.

While President-elect Trump embraced its tenets only late in his campaign, Kennedy and other movement leaders are now in a position to influence federal health policy.

  • Trump's picks to lead health agencies — or, as Kennedy has suggested, purge swaths of their workforce — could be announced within days.
  • That's sending shivers through segments of the public health community. CDC director Mandy Cohen publicly warned yesterday about the threat of curtailing vaccination efforts.
  • FDA commissioner Robert Califf likewise sounded alarms at a cancer conference.

🔭 Zoom out: The movement taps into frustration with corporate influences in the U.S. medical system and what it claims is an overriding public health focus on infectious diseases.

  • Kennedy and a cadre of influencers and entrepreneurs are calling for outlawing food dyes and additives that aren't allowed abroad.
  • He wants to devote half of the NIH budget to researching alternative cures. And he's pressing for more transparency and data on vaccines.

Keep reading.

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Former House Republican says Gaetz nomination is ‘a bridge too far’

Former Republican Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania suggested that Rep. Matt Gaetz’s (R-Fla.) nomination by President-elect Trump to serve as attorney general would be withdrawn.

https://www.newsbreak.com/news/3677316093807-former-house-republican-says-gaetz-nomination-is-a-bridge-too-far?

Trump taps RFK Jr. for top health job

President-elect Trump said he'll nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be Health and Human Services secretary — putting the prominent vaccine skeptic in charge of the FDA, the CDC and almost 25% of the federal budget.

  • Why it matters: It's yet another highly controversial nomination. Republicans are still wrapping their minds around Trump's decisions to nominate Matt Gaetz for attorney general and Tulsi Gabbard to lead the intelligence community.
mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.axios.com%

☀️ Context: RFK Jr. has been vocally anti-vaccine. He accused the FDA of "aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can't be patented by Pharma."

  • He has said "entire departments" of the FDA "have to go."

Trump promised before the election to let RFK Jr. "go wild" on federal health agencies. Some people close to the president-elect had said that would likely mean an advisory role, but Trump decided to go further.

  • Kennedy would need to be confirmed by the Senate — which could be a tough sell, but Republicans will have to pick their battles.

Go deeper: What a Trump-empowered RFK Jr. could do on health care

Mike Pence Defies Trump, Comes Out Against RFK Jr. in Bombshell Statement: 'I Respectfully Urge Senate Republicans to Reject This Nomination'

Former Vice President Mike Pence has come out against Donald Trump's pick of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to serve for the Department of Health and Human Services, and is urging Republicans to "reject his nomination."

https://www.latintimes.com/mike-pence-defies-trump-comes-out-against-rfk-jr-bombshell-statement-i-respectfully-urge-566037

ps:I'm pretty sure he wont be letting people know that he is pro abortion anytime soon, I'd be more concerned about his conspiracy theories than anything else!!

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Trump's anti-DEI brigade
 
Illustration of a very large Trump chess piece crashing down on a regular sized board.
 

Photo illustration: Maura Losch/Axios. Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

 

President-elect Trump's Cabinet picks show he's moving swiftly to implement the anti-trans, anti-DEI and anti-social justice agenda that underpinned his campaign, Axios' Zachary Basu and Erin Doherty write.

  • Why it matters: In the eyes of many Republicans, Trump's decisive election victory vindicated their hostility toward nebulous "woke" ideologies. In practice, their plans could mean purging the federal government of policies aimed at ensuring fairness and reversing historical inequities.

Trump's opening wave of Cabinet nominees includes Pete Hegseth for SecDef, Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence and Matt Gaetz for attorney general. All have blasted DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) policies as racially divisive.

  • Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy — two of the most prominent critics of what they call "the woke mind virus" — have been tasked with "slashing and burning" federal spending from outside the government.

🖼️ The big picture: "Woke" was a term popularized after the 2020 murder of George Floyd to describe plans to attack systemic racism with policies that encouraged cultural awareness and understanding.

  • But conservatives have recast the term as a liberal threat to gender norms and what they consider traditional values.
  • In recent years, Republicans in Congress and in red states have waged a legislative "war on woke" by targeting trans rights, racial diversity policies in academia, and environmental, social and governance (ESG) principles in business.
  • Now, with control of the White House and both branches of Congress in 2025, Trump and the GOP have their sights trained on auditing and overhauling three agencies in particular: the Pentagon, the Justice Department and the Department of Education.

What to watch: Democrats are still licking their wounds from an election in which many believe a backlash to DEI policies — especially on transgender people's rights, the focus of repeated GOP campaign ads — harmed them with swing voters.

  • While the party debates how to move forward, activists are urging them to focus on resisting the Trump agenda.

Keep reading.

 

💉 Charted: RFK effect
 
A line chart that illustrates the daily stock price changes of Moderna, Novavax, and BioNTech from Oct. 15 to Nov. 14, 2024. Notably, Moderna
Data: Yahoo Finance. Chart: Axios Visuals

Vaccine company stocks fell sharply yesterday on the news that Trump would nominate RFK Jr. as secretary of HHS.

  • Moderna, BioNTech and Novavax fell 5.6%, 7.1% and 7.2%, respectively, Axios Closer co-author Nathan Bomey reports.
  • All three companies get significant revenue from COVID vaccines.

🌴 NEW PICKS ... President-elect Trump told reporters last night that today he will name North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, one of his runners-up for VP, to head the Interior Department.

⚖️ Rewarding his defenders: Trump last evening chose Todd Blanche, an attorney who led the legal team that defended him at his hush money criminal trial, as deputy A.G., the second-highest ranking Justice Department official.

  • Emil Bove, an ex-federal prosecutor, will be the principal associate deputy attorney general, and acting deputy attorney general until Blanche is confirmed.
  • John Sauer, who successfully argued his presidential immunity case before the Supreme Court, was named solicitor general — who represents the administration before the Supreme Court.

Quick bios on 21 Trump picks so far: 10 Cabinet nominees ... 8 White House staff members ... 2 ambassadors (UN, Israel) ... 1 envoy (Middle East).

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World reacts to horrible Elon Musk news

"Bro bought an entire presidency and is about to fumble it."

https://nextimpulsesports.com/politics/elon-musk-donald-trump-patience/

ps:Wow shorter than must thought it would take!!

 

Trump's Cabinet

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his secretary of Health and Human Services, the latest in a series of controversial Cabinet picks. Analysts say that Trump's decision to put RFK Jr. in charge of the health of 350 million Americans, despite his stances on vaccines that contradict the science-based research of most medical experts, is likely to ignite a new debate about the real-world implications of a second Trump term. If, for instance, Kennedy's advice led to a lowering of the penetration of vaccines in the US population, a significant number of lives could be at risk. Trump also selected North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum to run the Department of the Interior and said his criminal defense attorney Todd Blanche will be the No. 2 lawyer at the Department of Justice.

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Trump’s pick of Rubio as America’s top diplomat could reshape US policy in Latin America

MIAMI (AP) — Growing up in Miami among Cuban exiles who fled Fidel Castro’s revolution, Sen. Marco Rubio developed a deep hatred of communism. Now as President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for America’s top diplomat, he’s set to bring that same ideological ammunition to reshaping U.S. policy in Latin America.

https://apnews.com/article/marco-rubio-trump-latin-america-secretary-of-state-87aff0ce93f638fb69e30b067ecd84fb?

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The wrecking-ball theory
 
Illustration of a wrecking ball cracking as it hits a line of marble columns
 

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

 

Elon Musk has persuaded President-elect Trump that government has grown so big, bloated, slow and sclerotic ... only a wrecking ball can fix it.

  • Soon, that ball will slam into hard reality: Politicians like to giveth, not taketh away, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write in a "Behind the Curtain" column.

Why it matters: Trump is more fixated on a "deep state" blocking his ambitions, than cost savings, advisers tell us. But he has bought into the Musk concept of using AI and lean-business thinking to try to dramatically shrink a government he helped grow, they say.

🧱 The wrecking-ball theory holds that only a massive shock to the system will break a lifetime of build-up.

  • Musk wants to be Trump's wrecking ball. Musk has vowed to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget — about 30% of annual government spending. But as this column will show you, that may be harder than Musk's signature mission of planting human life on Mars.

How it works: Trump announced this week that Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, a Trump primary opponent, will head a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE — like the cryptocurrency).

  • Sources tell us Musk wants to use AI and crowd-sourcing to hunt for waste, fraud and abuse. But DOGE isn't actually a government department: We're told Musk and Ramaswamy plan to set up a nongovernmental entity to try to pull off the entrepreneurial approach to government that Trump envisions.
  • Trump aides are looking for ways the White House could bypass Congress and unilaterally adopt DOGE proposals, which "could trigger a constitutional showdown over a bedrock aspect of the federal government, the power of the purse," The Washington Post's Jeff Stein reports.

🔎 Behind the scenes: We're told Musk has been free-associating with Trump at Mar-a-Lago at just how deep the fat in the federal workforce runs. (Remember, this is the guy who vowed to cut 80% of Twitter employees.)

  • DOGE already has its own X handle, with 1.5 million followers. A DOGE tweet seeks "super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting. ... Elon & Vivek will review the top 1% of applicants."

The big picture: Talk to anyone in government, and they'll bemoan how process, habit, special interests and innate human fear of change have left us with a wildly inefficient bureaucracy.

  • In an era of AI, a race for space and growingly complex cyber fears, the inefficiencies become threats.

But changing it is so hard that both parties stopped trying years ago. During the campaign, Trump and Vice President Harris didn't even pretend they wanted to shrink it, if you take their policy proposals seriously.

  • Mandatory spending programs — Social Security Medicare, Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — are governed by laws laying out formulas for how benefits are paid, Axios chief economic correspondent Neil Irwin pointed out to us.
  • Legally, Elon can't just stop cutting checks. Trump would have to get changes through Congress in which he is going to have only a modest majority in the Senate and a minuscule majority in the House.
  • Plus Trump, attentive to his huge base of older voters, opposes entitlement reform.

💡 So DOGE will have few viable targets. The biggest will be so-called "nondefense discretionary" programs — money Congress approves annually for programs not mandated by existing laws, including Social Security, Mike and Jim write.

  • Chris Krueger, a Washington expert for TD Cowen, warns lobbyists: "This will require attention & focus — and compete with the Appropriations Committees. Every budgetary sacred cow will now likely hire an additional lobbyist."
  • Even on the discretionary side, Congress has the power of the purse. Each of the agencies and functions that survive year after year have important constituencies — many of them part of the Trump coalition. Farm interests won't be too happy if you slash the USDA, and its many subsidies, for example.

Column continues below.

🎯 Part 2: DOGE targets

Stare at the budget numbers and you see how little room Musk has to maneuver, Jim and Mike write.

  • In fiscal year 2023, the federal government spent just over $6 trillion, equating to $18,406 per person.
  • This spending was 38% higher than the revenue collected, resulting in a once-unfathomable $1.7 trillion deficit. The budget covers the pay for roughly 5 million federal employees, including civilian jobs, military personnel and postal workers.
  • The easiest money to cut is the discretionary spending we mentioned above. But it's less than 30% of the total budget — and half of it goes to defense, which members of Congress would rush to protect.

💰 Lots of people over the years have identified absurd spending or bureaucratic walls — but presidents and Congress simply let them stand. AI might help. But reality is the biggest obstacle. The vast majority of spending goes to:

  1. Social Security: This popular program eats up 20-25% of total federal spending. It supports retirees, disabled individuals, and survivors. Trump has promised to never cut it. In fact, he wants to eliminate taxes on benefits, which would increase the deficit.
  2. Health care: Think Medicare (for seniors) and Medicaid (for low-income individuals). This is another 25% of the budget. Trump has promised to protect Medicare and a lot of his working-class base benefits from these programs.
  3. Defense: The Defense Department and related military spending constitute about 13-15% of the federal budget. Republicans typically want more defense spending, not less. And it's hard to see the shift to space-based warfare costing less.
  4. Interest on the national debt: This one sucks the most for America because you get nothing in return. Interest payments are growing rapidly, now around 8-10% of federal spending. The only way to save money here is to radically cut the debt. Trump's agenda does the opposite.
  5. Safety-net programs: Programs like food benefits (SNAP), unemployment insurance and housing assistance collectively make up about 10%. Trump won with the support of people who get these benefits, so cuts could be a hard sell.

💼 Case in point: The expense for entitlement programs goes almost entirely to the benefits themselves, not any administrative bloat involved in issuing checks. For example, the administrative cost of Social Security is only about 0.5% of outlays, $7.2 billion last year, Neil Irwin points out.

  • So even if somehow you magically cut that in half, you've only cut $3.6 billion in spending — trivial in the context of the federal budget.
  • And if that streamlining resulted in even a few seniors not getting their monthly benefits, there'd be holy hell to pay politically.

What to watch: The aspiration of trillions of dollars of savings will run headlong into the unspoken governing theory of both parties: It's easier and more popular to give than to take away.

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🎤 Trump's voice

Karoline Leavitt, a New Hampshire native, will be the new White House press secretary in the Trump administration. At 27, she'll be the youngest ever person in the job.

Leavitt was the Trump campaign's national press secretary, and was assistant press secretary in the Trump White House.

  • Trump's announcement says: "Karoline is smart, tough, and has proven to be a highly effective communicator. I have the utmost confidence she will excel at the podium."
📈 Musk's biz boom
 
Photo illustration of Elon Musk stylized as a comic book character
 

Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photo: Getty Images

 

Elon Musk's businesses — with one key exception — are ballooning in value.

  • Why it matters: Musk's newfound alliance with President-elect Trump is likely giving investors confidence that the government won't get in the way of the growth ambitions of his business empire, Axios' Nathan Bomey writes.

Musk's AI startup xAI, maker of the chatbot Grok, is raising up to $6 billion at a $50 billion valuation in a fund-raise that kicked off before the election.

  • Musk's SpaceX, meanwhile, is prepping a tender offer that would value the rocket company at more than $250 billion, up from $210 billion earlier this year, the Financial Times reported.

The public markets have been kind:

  • Tesla stock has been on a roll since Trump was reelected, jumping more than 25% since closing at $251.44 on Nov. 5, adding around $225 billion of market value.

X is a lone exception. Since Musk bought it two years ago, one existing investor, Fidelity, has marked its value down by 79% amid an advertiser exodus.

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Trump names fossil fuel executive Chris Wright as energy secretary

PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump has selected Chris Wright, a campaign donor and fossil fuel executive, to serve as energy secretary in his upcoming, second administration.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-2024-election-energy-secretary-d546f5f81d7b2347b49905be924dfcd7?

Here’s how Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has promised to remake the nation’s top health agencies

WASHINGTON (AP) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist and environmentalist, for years gained a loyal and fierce following with his biting condemnations of how the nation’s public health agencies do business.

https://apnews.com/article/robert-r-kennedy-rfk-vaccines-hhs-food-trump-0500f67ef53ed6862583dace587b3899?

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🥊 Clash at Mar-a-Lago

Inside Mar-a-Lago, tension has erupted between Elon Musk and a longtime Trump adviser, who have clashed over Cabinet appointments, Axios' Sophia Cai reports.

  • Why it matters: The friction between Musk and Boris Epshteyn — a powerful adviser who has pushed Cabinet picks that include Matt Gaetz for attorney general — surfaced in public last week.

Musk has questioned whether Epshteyn has had too much sway in Trump's selections, especially his top Justice Department picks and the White House counsel, three people familiar with the conversations told Axios.

  • Epshteyn has bristled at Musk's questioning the qualifications of Epshteyn's favored candidates, two of the sources said.

👀 Zoom in: 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," 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.

🖼️ The big picture: Epshteyn, who coordinated the legal defense in Trump's criminal cases, was a big influence in Trump presidential appointments last week.

  • Those included Gaetz as attorney general and Bill McGinley as White House counsel. Trump's criminal lawyers, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, were appointed to top Justice Department posts.

Epshteyn referred Axios to Trump's transition team for comment. The transition team did not comment. Musk didn't respond to a request for comment.

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RFK Jr. Talks About Public Health, but He’s Joining an Administration That’ll Make Us Sicker Than Ever

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made health policy the cornerstone of his failed presidential campaign, critiquing America’s health care and public health systems with bold, often controversial proposals. 

https://theintercept.com/2024/11/14/rfk-jr-health-human-services-water-air-project-2025/?

Matt Gaetz Is Barely a Lawyer

Trump’s pick for attorney general shows that loyalty is the only qualification that matters.

https://theintercept.com/2024/11/15/matt-gaetz-attorney-general-lawyer/?

Should women be allowed to fight on the front lines? Trump’s defense pick reignites the debate

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has reignited a debate that many thought had been long settled: Should women be allowed to serve their country by fighting on the front lines?

https://apnews.com/article/military-women-defense-hegseth-combat-916d50a7b465ccfea1aeb13bb91064b3?

🚨 Trump's Gaetz squeeze

President-elect Trump is making it clear to GOP senators that he's prepared to go scorched earth for Rep. Matt Gaetz.

Why it matters: Trump has been calling individual Senate Republicans, telling them only Gaetz would have his back as attorney general. We scooped the calls this afternoon.

  • "He clearly wants Matt Gaetz," said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who received a call from Trump.
  • "He believes Matt Gaetz is the one person who will have the fearlessness and ferociousness, really, to do what needs doing at the Department of Justice."

The Trump calls put more pressure on Sen. John Thune, who can only afford to give away three GOP votes if he wants to confirm Trump nominees as GOP leader next year.

  • "This isn't a fake nomination — expect Trump to use every lever to get Gaetz across the finish line," a Trump adviser told us.

Zoom in: Look for Gaetz to fight back against an Ethics report like "Trump fought the Steele dossier," a source close to Gaetz told us.

  • The House Ethics Committee meets Wednesday for a possible vote on releasing a report on Gaetz. Since June, it's been looking into a variety of allegations against Gaetz, all of which he has denied.
  • The Ethics Committee says it's ready to ignore Speaker Mike Johnson, who publicly called to suppress the report.
  • "I don't see it having an impact on what we as a committee ultimately decide," Ethics Committee chair Michael Guest told Politico.

The bottom line: House lawmakers expect the report to go public either way.

  • If Ethics buries a report, these lawmakers say it will likely leak to the press.

— Juliegrace Brufke and Hans Nichols

️ Trump vs. McConnell

Speaking of Matt Gaetz: The possibility of Trump vs. McConnell fights in 2025 is lighting up the Senate before Thune is even in his new office.

Why it matters: Outgoing GOP leader Mitch McConnell has said he will feel "liberated" when he is no longer a "heat shield for his members," according to his biographer Michael Tackett of the recently released "The Price of Power."

  • Thune promised to consider the idea of recess appointments before winning his majority leader election.
  • But McConnell signaled to a private group over the weekend that he'll stand in Trump's way on recess appointments, as we've confirmed. The comments were first reported by The New Yorker's Jane Mayer.
  • When reporters asked him today about his weekend comments, McConnell retorted that it was "too early for interviews in the hall."

🔎 Trump allies expect McConnell to be a wild card vote on controversial nominees and are resigned to having limited leverage on him, GOP sources familiar told us.

  • 🔥 Sources expect McConnell to be more outspoken about the issues he cares about, after years of keeping his cards close to the vest.
  • McConnell, 82, is up for reelection in 2026 but isn't broadly expected to run again.

The bottom line: McConnell plans to fight back against the growing influence of isolationist thinking in the GOP.

  • "I'm going to make John McCain sound like a dove," McConnell told Tackett.

— Stef Kight

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🤖 On AI policy, two Elons
 
Animated photo illustration of different faces of Elon Musk forming the dot at the bottom of a question mark.
 

Photo illustration: Aïda Amer. Photos: Getty Images

 

Elon Musk is a wild card in the tech industry's frantic effort to game out where a Trump-dominated Washington will come down on AI regulation, Axios' Scott Rosenberg writes.

  • Why it matters: Musk, who has been at Trump's side since election night, has two very different personas when it comes to AI regulation. No one knows which of them will be whispering in Trump's ear.

⛈ 1. Musk has been obsessed with AI doomsday scenarios for at least a decade.

  • He co-founded OpenAI in 2015, and provided initial cash for the nonprofit, in the name of protecting the world from runaway super-intelligence.
  • In 2014, he told MIT students that pursuing AI without adequate safeguards was like "summoning a demon."

🦾 2. On the other hand, Musk has also launched a crusade against what he calls "woke" AI.

  • In the name of freedom of speech, he built his new AI startup, xAI, around a commitment to abandoning guardrails that deter hate speech and misinformation.
  • Musk's feud with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, rooted in a fight for control over the nonprofit's early development, now centers on Musk's complaint that OpenAI's models have a built-in liberal bias and stifle conservative views.

️ Friction point: Advocates for regulating AI more — and for regulating it even less — are both counting on Musk to side with them.

Keep reading.

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Trump picks Lutnick to be Commerce secretary

Donald Trump announced Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick as his pick for secretary of the Department of Commerce on Tuesday, selecting his transition co-chair for a key role in an administration that the president-elect has promised will enact sweeping tariffs.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/19/politics/howard-lutnick-commerce-secretary/index.html?

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Donald Trump is Already Looking to Gut Medicaid

Now that Donald Trump will be the next president , Republicans are eyeing overhauls to safety net programs like Medicaid and food stamps.

https://www.newsbreak.com/news/3679802019051-donald-trump-is-already-looking-to-gut-medicaid?

ps:Take from the poor and give to the rich!!

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Trump picks Dr. Oz to run Medicare and Medicaid, Linda McMahon for Education, Lutnick for Commerce

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday tapped billionaire professional wrestling mogul Linda McMahon to be secretary of the Education Department, tasked with overseeing an agency Trump has promised to dismantle. He also selected Dr. Mehmet Oz, a former television talk show host and heart surgeon, to head the agency that oversees health insurance programs for millions of older, poor and disabled Americans, and named Wall Street executive Howard Lutnick to lead the Commerce Department.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-commerce-lutnick-elections-transition-cabinet-79cdda378e2affb85722323160306b30?

ps:Lets just make a joke of the Government!! How did Rome fall? From the inside!! Looks like we're repeating history, we haven't learned a thing!!!!!

Someone accessed files said to contain damaging info about Trump AG-nominee Gaetz, lawyer says

WASHINGTON (AP) — An unauthorized person gained access to a file containing confidential testimony from women who have made allegations about former Rep. Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump’s pick to become the next attorney general, a lawyer said Tuesday.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-attorney-general-matt-gaetz-justice-department-dca401813d9b84638d250f273a2d3942?

ps:Another joke!!

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Roadblocks to mass deportation
 
Illustration of a Trump yard sign with barbed wire on top.
 

Photo illustration: Maura Losch/Axios. Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images

 

President-elect Trump's plans for mass deportations will likely run into several procedural roadblocks, Axios' Russell Contreras reports.

  • Trump has said he wants to quickly remove all undocumented immigrants from the U.S., and he'll use the military to do it.
  • That's roughly 11 million people.

🔎 How it works: High-profile raids will likely capture some number of undocumented workers and could have a chilling effect that prompts others not to show up at their jobs.

  • But turf wars, local resistance and logical staffing realities would make it impossible to round up 11 million people, experts said.
  • The administration will also need to build new temporary detention centers to hold people who are being deported.
  • Detainees will have a right to due process before removal, and there's already a backlog of 3.7 million people waiting for hearings right now.

💰 All told, the mass deportations Trump has described could cost $150 billion to $350 billion, immigration experts said.

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Trump Picks Oz, Champion Of Medicare Privatization

New Jersey TV doctor Mehmet Oz has decided to stake his Pennsylvania Senate campaign on vilifying legislation that would help Americans afford to visit a doctor when they get sick. At the same time, Oz is pitching a health care initiative that could force millions of seniors off traditional Medicare and into private health insurance plans cited by government regulators for wrongly denying medical claims.

https://www.levernews.com/dr-oz-can-now-pull-off-his-medicare-privatization-scheme-2/?

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Trump's messy coalition
 
Illustration of a long conference table featuring a Trump baseball cap, a MAGA hat, papers, folders with the Republican logo, an American flag, and a glass of milk
 

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

 

President-elect Trump's Cabinet increasingly resembles a European-style coalition government, staffed with a dizzying array of ideological rivals united — for now — by a grand MAGA vision.

  • The incoming administration has a little something for everyone: isolationists and hawks, populists and bankers — even a couple of lifelong Democrats who ran for president against Trump, Axios' Zachary Basu writes.

😲 The big picture: Trump's picks suggest at least three factions in the new Republican coalition, with enough support to warrant representation in his administration.

1. "America First" nationalists: These are the true believers tasked with Trump's highest-priority portfolios.

  • They include Attorney General nominee Matt Gaetz, Pentagon nominee Pete Hegseth, border czar Tom Homan and Stephen Miller, the border policy adviser who's incoming White House deputy chief of staff for policy.
  • At 9 p.m. ET last night, Trump named transition co-chair Linda McMahon to head the Education Department, which he says he plans to dismantle. McMahon, co-founder and former CEO of WWE, headed the Small Business Administration in Trump's first term. Go deeper.

2. Establishment conservatives: The dominant forces in Trump's first Cabinet have been weakened, but not fully exiled.

  • They're especially strong in foreign policy, with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) for secretary of State, Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) for national security adviser and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) for UN ambassador.

3. Dissident Democrats: The newest members of MAGA are among the most powerful, having endeared themselves to Trump's base as anti-establishment crusaders. They're also most likely to cause cracks in the coalition.

  • Elon Musk has already clashed with at least one Trump adviser over Cabinet picks. RFK Jr.'s anti-pharma vision is at odds with several corners of the GOP. And Tulsi Gabbard has disparaged Republican hawks, including Rubio, as "warmongers."

Keep reading.

💰 Scoop: New twist for Treasury
 
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Screenshot: Fox News (Hat tip: Angrej Singh)

President-elect Trump is looking more seriously at Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) for Treasury secretary — giving Trump three serious options for one of the few roles where he's taking his time, transition sources tell me.

  • Hagerty, a former private-equity investor who was Trump's ambassador to Japan, is one of three apparent finalists, along with former Fed governor Kevin Warsh and Apollo CEO Marc Rowan.

Why it matters: Hagerty, 65, has credibility with Wall Street leaders, the markets, foreign leaders and Congress. And he owes his political career to Trump.

  • "Respected, loyal and great on TV — the total Trump package," a top Republican source said.

State of play: I'm told Trump enjoyed spending time with Hagerty at Mar-a-Lago this week. The senator was with Trump and Elon Musk in South Texas yesterday as SpaceX launched a Starship rocket.

  • Trump will meet Warsh and Rowan at Mar-a-Lago this week.

Howard Lutnick, Trump's transition co-chair, wanted Treasury but yesterday was named Commerce Secretary.

  • Scott Bessent, a hedge-fund manager who was another finalist for Treasury, looks to be in a derby for the consolation prize of director of Trump's National Economic Council.
  • Another top candidate is Robert Lighthizer, who was U.S. trade representative in Trump's first term.

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Health experts' reckoning
 
Illustration of a surgical mask made from an American flag.
 

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

 

Simmering frustration over COVID precautions helped return President-elect Trump to the White House — and some public health experts fear the public's trust in science has been irreparably damaged.

  • Some experts now say they took the wrong tone when trying to defend safety measures like masks or build confidence in the vaccines, The Wall Street Journal reports in a deep dive into the pandemic's long-lasting political impact.

🔇 "Everybody has been tempted by the slam dunk," said Jessica Malaty Rivera, an epidemiologist who used her large Instagram following partly to dismiss unproven criticisms of masks and vaccines.

  • "It's not an effective way to communicate science. It's just not," she told the WSJ.
  • She and others have been toning down their use of the word "misinformation," believing it makes potentially persuadable people feel like they're being insulted.

💉 Several Trump voters told the WSJ they were drawn to either Trump — or to RFK Jr., and then to Trump — because of their disdain for masks, school closures and pressure to get vaccinated, which fueled broader antipathy toward health agencies overall.

  • And with RFK Jr. now poised to run those agencies, the experts who most vocally dismissed his unsupported claims about vaccines, food additives and other health issues say their pandemic-era way of defending scientific consensus simply won't cut it.

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Trump chooses former acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker as NATO ambassador

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump said Wednesday that he has chosen former acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker to serve as U.S. ambassador to NATO, the bedrock Western alliance that the president-elect has expressed skepticism about for years.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-whitaker-transition-appointment-nato-attorney-general-a09b1214770b86aff85d5ecffaf63a52?

Lawmakers are concerned about background checks of Trump’s Cabinet picks as red flags surface

WASHINGTON (AP) — As senators prepare to consider President-elect Donald Trump’s picks for his Cabinet, they may be doing so without a well-established staple of the confirmation process: an FBI background check.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-fbi-gaetz-congress-background-vetting-cabinet-ac9afcd41d598a62ae34442ecf96a652?

What to know about Matthew Whitaker, Trump’s pick to be America’s ambassador to NATO

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump has tapped former acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker as U.S. ambassador to NATO — set to make him the nation’s representative to a bedrock Western alliance that the president-elect has repeatedly relished criticizing.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-matthew-whitaker-nato-ambassador-foreign-policy-173c814ab755ee39d58e7023ff8242a5?

Police report reveals new details from sexual assault allegation against Trump’s defense secretary nominee

A California woman told police that Trump Cabinet pick Pete Hegseth physically blocked her from leaving a hotel room, took her phone, and then sexually assaulted her even though she “remembered saying ‘no’ a lot,” a police report obtained by CNN shows.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/21/politics/pete-hegseth-police-report-defense-secretary-trump/index.html?

Hegseth police report released

A woman told police she was sexually assaulted in 2017 by Pete Hegseth after he took her phone, blocked the door to a California hotel room and refused to let her leave, according to 22 pages of graphic investigative reports made public last night.

  • Hegseth, a former Fox News personality who is President-elect Trump's nominee to be Defense secretary, told police at the time that the encounter was consensual, and he denied any wrongdoing, AP reports.

Investigators were alerted to the alleged assault by a nurse who called them after a patient requested a sexual assault exam, the report says.

  • The patient told medical personnel something may have been slipped into her drink.

Hegseth's attorney has said a payment was made to the woman as part of a confidential settlement because Hegseth was concerned she was prepared to file a lawsuit that could have resulted in him being fired from Fox News.

  • A spokeswoman for the Trump transition said the "report corroborates what Mr. Hegseth's attorneys have said all along: the incident was fully investigated and no charges were filed because police found the allegations to be false."

More details.

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Gaetz withdraws from attorney general consideration after Trump told him he didn’t have the votes in the Senate

When Vice President-elect JD Vance and Matt Gaetz left the Capitol Hill room where they’d spent Wednesday trying to convince GOP senators to confirm the former Florida congressman as attorney general, Vance told reporters those meetings “went great.”

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/21/politics/matt-gaetz-withdrawing-attorney-general/index.html?

Trump chooses loyalist Pam Bondi for attorney general pick after Matt Gaetz withdraws

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump said Thursday he will nominate former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to lead the Justice Department, turning to a longtime ally after his first choice, Matt Gaetz, withdrew his name from consideration amid scrutiny over sex trafficking allegations.

https://apnews.com/article/gaetz-trump-fbi-justice-department-248b46ba0c882dd46d661568e8bd3bd7?

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What Pete Hegseth’s Nomination Is Really About

Donald Trump’s decision to tap Pete Hegseth for his Cabinet is one of his nominations that some are reading as pure provocation. Aside from being a veteran, Hegseth has little qualification to lead the Department of Defense. He’s a Fox News host who has written a screed against DEI in the military. He has faced an allegation of sexual assault, which he denies, but the Trump team is not balking. “We look forward to his confirmation,” Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesperson, said in reply to news reports about the allegation. At another time in our history, many lines in Hegseth’s latest book alone might have disqualified him on the grounds of being too juvenile. In the introduction of The War on Warriors, he criticizes the “so-called elites directing the military today”: “Sometime soon, a real conflict will break out, and red-blooded American men will have to save their elite candy-asses.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2024/11/trump-military-pete-hegseth-tulsi-gabbard-cabinet/680725/

ps:That's the way to make a choice!!

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📲 Trump's whip count

Trump was eager to jaw GOP senators into supporting Matt Gaetz's nomination, as we scooped earlier this week. Today, he used that intel to tell Gaetz to drop out.

  • 🛑 "You don't have the votes," Trump told Gaetz, as The Bulwark first reported and we have confirmed.
  • Trump didn't wait long. He quickly named former Florida AG Pam Bondi as his next U.S. attorney general nominee.

Why it matters: Republicans were bracing for an institutional showdown over recess appointments, or the Senate GOP voting down its own president's nominee. But Trump pulled the plug on Gaetz after eight days.

  • His rapid exit startled GOP senators who'd heard the former lawmaker out this week.

"I know they felt very optimistic yesterday evening," Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told us today. He was one of several who met with Gaetz yesterday.

  • Gaetz's only ask during the meetings was for a Judiciary Committee hearing, according to a person familiar with the matter.
  • Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) said bluntly "there was no path" for Gaetz, but he was "surprised it happened this quick."

The bottom line: Gaetz understood too many Senate Republicans were likely to stand in his way, a source familiar told us.

  • That list included Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Sen.-elect John Curtis (R-Utah), the New York Times reported.
  • Incoming Senate GOP leader John Thune can only lose three Republicans while still confirming Trump nominees.

— Stef Kight, Juliegrace Brufke and Hans Nichols

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Chaos reigns supreme
 
Photo illustration of President-elect Donald Trump's tie in a knot.
 

Photo illustration: Lindsey Bailey/Axios. Photo: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

 

President-elect Trump has enjoyed — and exploited — an aura of invincibility since Election Day that few Republicans have been willing to challenge publicly.

  • The bubble has finally popped, Axios' Zachary Basu writes.

👎 For an otherwise pliant group of Senate Republicans, former Rep. Matt Gaetz's nomination as attorney general was a bridge too far.

  • There are scores of MAGA loyalists who could have sailed through Senate confirmation — plenty of whom were on the shortlist compiled by Trump's transition team.
  • Trump ultimately went that route, announcing last night that his new AG pick is former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.
  • But only after a damaging, chaotic whirlwind.

🌪️ The chaos isn't likely to relent, even after Trump is sworn in and has his Cabinet in place.

  • Trump's first term saw record levels of staff turnover: National Security Adviser Michael Flynn resigned 23 days in. Trump routinely fired top officials via tweet over the next four years.
  • He frequently engaged in Twitter diplomacy — threatening North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un with nuclear war at one point — and made news virtually every time he stepped in front of a microphone.

💥 The bottom line: The Trump who won 312 electoral votes a few weeks ago is the same Trump who exhausted many Americans with nonstop political drama from 2017 to 2021.

  • He may be more prepared, focused and surrounded by loyalists this time around. But chaos will always be part and parcel of the Trump experience.
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Photo: Nathan Howard/Reuters

Above: Defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth leaves a meeting on Capitol Hill yesterday. "As Gaetz withdraws, GOP warms to Hegseth," today's print Washington Post lead story says:

"Republican senators suggested that Hegseth — unlike Gaetz — would be a natural fit to implement Trump's national security vision, along with Trump's selection of Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Florida) as national security adviser and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) as secretary of state."

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