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      Trump cabinet criticized as hodgepodge team unified only by ‘absolute fealty’ to him

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      During Donald Trump’s first administration, his vice-president became the target of an angry mob amid calls for him to be hanged. His top diplomat was fired via Twitter and branded “dumb as a rock”. His first attorney general was given his marching orders and called “very weak” and “disgraceful”.Despite it all, Trump has had no trouble recruiting a team eager to serve when he returns to the White House in January, even if his initial pick for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, was forced to back out amid allegations of sexual misconduct.Trump’s cabinet for his second term is nearly complete just three weeks after his stunning election victory over Kamala Harris. To his Maga (Make America great again) followers it is a team of all the talents, poised to enforce an agenda of mass deportations, gutting the federal bureaucracy and “America first” isolationism.To critics with memories of Trump’s first cabinet, however, it is an ideological hodgepodge glued together only by unquestioning fealty to the incoming 78-year-old commander-in-chief. Some have compared it to the gathering of exotic aliens in the Star Wars cantina. Others predict they will soon be fighting like rats in a sack as different factions compete for Trump’s attention.“The same thing that happened last time will happen this time,” said Rick Wilson, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group. “He cannot resist chaos. It is his drug. He will eventually start doing what he always does and turn on different people and start sandbagging his own choices for these various jobs.“It’s that pattern he has. He comes out one day and says, ‘I love so and so,’ and then the next he’s talking to his friends saying, ‘Hey, you think Tillerson’s doing a good job or is he screwing me over?’ Those things are patterns we’ve seen in Trump’s personal life, his business life and his prior administration. An 80-year-old man is not going to be a changed person.”Eight years ago, Trump arrived in Washington as a political neophyte in need of a helping hand. He appointed a cabinet that included traditional conservatives of whom he knew little. This time, he returns as a former president who has transformed the Republican party and prioritises unwavering loyalty and adherence to his agenda over qualifications and experience.This was most obvious sign of this was the selection of Gaetz for attorney general, a position key to Trump’s plans to deport undocumented immigrants, pardon January 6 rioters and seek retribution against those who prosecuted him over the past four years. Gaetz’s replacement, Pam Bondi, is a longtime ally who declared after Trump was criminally charged that the “investigators will be investigated”.View image in fullscreenThere was a similar motivation behind the choice of Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host, for defence secretary despite him having no track record in government. Hegseth fits with a drive to purge perceived “woke” policies from the military. He has denied allegations made in a police report that he sexually assaulted a woman in 2017 at a conference in California.Trump’s selections are sending mixed economic signals. The nomination of the Wall Street billionaire Scott Bessent to head the treasury implies an attempt to reassure markets (it is also notable because Bessent used to work for George Soros, the target of countless rightwing conspiracy theories). But Howard Lutnick, nominated for commerce secretary, has praised the president-elect’s proposed use of tariffs. Vice-president-elect JD Vance is also among those pushing a more protectionist agenda on trade.And Trump’s pick of Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a congresswoman from Oregon, as labor secretary could be one of the rare selections that draws bipartisan support. She is considered one of the most union-friendly Republicans in Congress, and her selection was viewed as a way for Trump to reward union members who voted for him.On foreign policy, Trump made a relatively conventional choice in Marco Rubio for secretary of state. The Florida senator has advocated in the past for a muscular foreign policy with respect to foes including China, Iran and Cuba. But the president-elect also intends to put Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democrat who has previously made statements sympathetic to Russia, as director of national intelligence.Other picks include Brooke Rollins, president of the America First Policy Institute thinktank, as agriculture secretary; Doug Burgum, a wealthy former software company executive, as interior secretary; and Linda McMahon, former chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment, as education secretary – overseeing an agency that Trump pledged to eliminate.Then there is Robert Kennedy Jr, an anti-vaccine activist and sceptic of established science. Kennedy’s career as an environmental lawyer could put him at odds with Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” philosophy and figures such as Lee Zeldin, set to lead the Environmental Protection Agency with a mandate to slash environmental regulation. Kennedy has also been condemned by Mike Pence, the former vice-president, and other social conservatives for supporting abortion rights.Outside the cabinet, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s “Department of Government Efficiency”, while lacking official authority, signals a strong push for drastic budget cuts and deregulation. And despite campaign trail denials, Trump has embraced Project 2025, a controversial plan from the Heritage Foundation thinktank, by appointing figures such as Russell Vought as director of the Office of Management and Budget.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe person who will have to make sense of it all is Susie Wiles, a longtime Florida political operative who will become the first woman to serve as White House chief of staff. She will hope to avoid the fate of chiefs of staff who failed to last the course of Trump’s first term as, like a sports coach, she seeks to make disparate players gel into a cohesive whole.In an analysis for the New York Times, David Sanger, who has covered five US presidents, identified “a revenge team”, “a calm-the-markets team” and “a government shrinkage team”, commenting: “How these missions will mesh and where they will collide is one of the biggest unknowns of the incoming administration.”But others argue that the cabinet’s range of experiences and worldviews will pale into insignificance when set against their devotion to the Trump cult. Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist, said: “Regardless of whatever individual ideological leanings these people have had at varying points in their adult lives, it’s largely irrelevant because the only litmus test we have seen put forward is absolute fealty to Donald Trump.“As we have seen in the Republican party overall, absolute fealty to Donald Trump overshadows any ideological belief. We could take almost every issue that used to be a part of the Republican party and show how the party has moved to a diametrically opposite position. This is not a party governed by ideology any more. It is governed by personality. It is governed by loyalty to Donald Trump.”Bardella, a former Republican congressional aide, added: “They’re all going to get in a room and they’re just going to go: ‘Here’s what we think. What do you think, boss? Oh, OK, well, that’s what we’re all going to do.’ The idea that there’s going to be ideologically rooted debate, vigorous debate happening in the Trump administration is absurd. It’s laughable.”Notably, Trump’s cabinet is more diverse than in his first term, although it again has only three people of colour in secretary positions. Rubio would be the first Latino to serve as America’s top diplomat; Bessent could become the first openly gay Republican cabinet member confirmed by the Senate; Gabbard would be the first director of national intelligence from the Pacific Islander community.But seasoned Trump watchers detect no method in the madness and suspect that the former reality TV star will once again act on impulse and thrive on conflict. Chris Whipple, the author of The Gatekeepers, a book about White House chiefs of staff, said: “I don’t think there’s any evidence that Trump has learned anything about governing since his first term.“There’s a lot of wishful thinking among a lot of commentators that OK, he’s had four years in office, he learned a lot, he’s had all this time to plan with Project 2025 and the America First Policy Institute and he’s got his act together. I just don’t think that’s true. I don’t see any evidence that there’s any sort of plan here other than ‘this guy looks good for that job, and Robert F Kennedy Jr has got a cool last name’.” More

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      Trump cabinet picks shaped by new power centers in his orbit

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      Donald Trump’s picks for the incoming administration are being shaped by a combination of different power centers including one-man influences like top Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn and combined groups led by chief of staff Susie Wiles and vice-president-elect JD Vance.The president-elect appears to have settled on a number of cabinet nominees himself without being aggressively pushed by advisers, including Pete Hegseth for defense secretary, Marco Rubio for secretary of state and Russ Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget.But for other cabinet roles or major White House positions for which Trump did not have a clear preference or a frontrunner in mind, a handful of individuals with outsized influence have come to dominate the decision-making in meetings and interviews being held at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.There are still factions, according to half a dozen people involved in transition planning, though they have been nowhere near as concrete as they were in 2017, when there were clear demarcations between Trump’s family, the Republican National Committee, establishment Republicans and people allied with Trump’s strategist Steve Bannon.And in recent months, the previously distinct camp informally led by Wiles, who has had influence over West Wing picks and some cabinet roles, and the other camp led by Vance have combined and engulfed the wider Trump orbit, the people said.“It’s ever-shifting sands of allegiance. The people who you think are your friends may not be the case in 24 hours. We’re all friends but none of us are friends,” said one person adjacent to the Trump team.Although there are people in Trump’s orbit who disagree with Epshteyn, there is universal acknowledgment that he has had significant influence in the first weeks of the presidential transition, a reflection of Trump’s appreciation for his help in coordinating the defeat of the criminal cases against him.When Trump floated the idea of having the congressman Matt Gaetz for attorney general, Epshteyn was supportive of him during a round-trip flight from Palm Beach, Florida, to Washington when the president-elect announced he was nominating Gaetz.View image in fullscreenAfter the Gaetz nomination sank in the face of holdout Senate Republicans refusing to confirm him over sexual misconduct allegations, Trump nominated as a replacement former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi – who has been friendly over the years with Epshteyn.Epshteyn has also played key roles in finalizing the leadership at the justice department, recommending that Trump keep his personal lawyers in key jobs: Todd Blanche for deputy attorney general, Emil Bove for the principal deputy position and John Sauer for solicitor general.One through-line about those lawyers was that they were successful in delaying until after the election the federal criminal cases against Trump, which were dismissed on Monday. But the other was that they were all recruited by Epshteyn.Epshteyn, whose physically imposing presence is regularly fitted into a navy three-piece suit, has flexed his power away from the department as well, recommending Bill McGinley to be the next White House counsel.Epshteyn has told associates that the choices are for Trump to make. Some of the picks he has suggested have been names endorsed by other allies or people who have appeared on his longtime friends Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast.From the outside, Bannon pushed for McGinley to be White House counsel and may yet get another victory if Trump picks Kash Patel, a regular guest on War Room, for the FBI director or the deputy FBI director roles for which he remains in the running, the Guardian has reported.Bannon lobbied for Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget and, in a particularly audacious play, managed to get Sebastian Gorka, the deeply polarizing national security aide from the first Trump administration, into the incoming team as the senior counter-terrorism director.He also played an instrumental role in bringing Scott Bessent to the fore, according to a person directly familiar with the matter. Bannon made the first introduction to Trump years ago, while his allies have advocated for him at Mar-a-Lago and pushed his agenda.View image in fullscreenBut a main power center for cabinet picks is widely seen to rest with JD Vance’s crew, which pushed for Bessent to be named as treasury secretary and Brendan Carr to lead the Federal Communications Commission, among others.The Vance crew is informally said to involve Trump’s eldest son, Don Jr – who pushed for Vance to be his father’s running mate – and Don Jr’s close advisers including Arthur Schwartz and Andrew Surabian, as well as former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.In addition to being seen as getting Bessent the nod when Trump still had his doubts, the Vance crew have earned additional juice with Trump in probably securing enough Republican votes for Hegseth to be confirmed as defense secretary, despite another set of sexual misconduct allegations.For West Wing picks, the incoming White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, has extended her personal influence with Trump. Wiles has mostly been able to get the staff of her choosing without having to fight against competing interests.Wiles’s top aides have landed in deputy chief of staff roles, including James Blair for legislative policy, Taylor Budowich for presidential personnel and Steven Cheung as communications director – although the factions are amorphous and Budowich and Cheung are also close to the Vance crew.Then there are individuals – relative newcomers to the Trump orbit – who have been in transition meetings at Mar-a-Lago as a result of their unique situations: Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and Howard Lutnick, the chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, who is also the co-chair of the Trump transition team.By weighing in on major cabinet picks, Musk has gotten on the nerves of some Trump loyalists, including Epshteyn, who have complained that the billionaire knows little of the Trump agenda they are trying to bring about and has little idea about who would be best placed to enact it.Lutnick has retained his authority through his transition co-chair role, although he recently engaged in some accidental self-sabotage by pushing too hard to be treasury secretary and appeared to have been caught in a leak investigation over the nominee for secretary of agriculture.Trump was irritated by Musk’s post on X pushing Lutnick for treasury secretary, which gave an opening for his main rival Bessent to secure the job instead. Still, Lutnick has continued to be close to Trump and last week was named commerce secretary.Musk, who is staying off-site in Palm Beach, has become more judicious with his interactions with Trump since that episode and after he secured himself his own role to lead the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency”. More

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      Project 2025: the Trump picks with ties to ultra-rightwing policy manifesto

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      On the campaign trail, Donald Trump repeatedly disavowed Project 2025, saying he had “nothing to do” with the blueprint for a conservative presidency and didn’t know the people behind it. But as he starts to assemble his cabinet and White House staff, it seems likely he’ll get to know the people involved very well soon.Trump’s attempts to disavow the project before winning re-election seemed improbable, given that it was written by various members of his first administration and aligned on policy goals with his own proposed second term agenda.His transition team claimed it would not hire any people associated with Project 2025 because it was “radioactive”.But, in his selections for key roles, he has already tapped people with direct ties to the rightwing manifesto.Brendan CarrView image in fullscreenTrump’s nominee to chair the Federal Communications Commission wrote the chapter on the FCC in Project 2025. In the chapter, Carr advocates for “reining in big tech”, in part by limiting the immunity tech platforms have from content posted by third parties. He specifically mentions abuses by Google, Meta and YouTube as examples of platforms requiring such reining in.Tom HomanView image in fullscreenHoman, chosen as Trump’s “border czar”, is listed as a contributor to Project 2025, though his name is not listed on any specific chapter or policy ideas.He also worked as a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He penned op-eds, promoted by Heritage, that attacked the Biden administration over immigration and panned the bipartisan immigration deal. He wrote in one op-ed that “race-baiting Democrats” had called him names when he led Ice.Mike HuckabeeView image in fullscreenMike Huckabee, named by Trump to be his ambassador to Israel, interviewed the Heritage president and Project 2025 architect, Kevin Roberts, on his show in October 2024 as part of an effort to counter the negative press about the project.Karoline Leavitt View image in fullscreenThe incoming White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, appeared in training videos for Project 2025. In addition to the policy manifesto, the project’s four pillars involved amassing a database of potential employees and creating a training program for conservatives who wanted positions in a rightwing presidency. In a video called “The Art of Professionalism”, obtained by ProPublica and Documented, Leavitt talks about her advice for people who would serve as staff. While she was the national press secretary for Trump’s campaign, she claimed the project had nothing to do with Trump. She also appears in a promotional video for the project.Stephen MillerView image in fullscreenStephen Miller will be back in the White House, this time as deputy chief of staff for policy. He is the president of the America First Legal Foundation, a legal attack dog non-profit for rightwing causes.America First Legal was listed as a supporter of Project 2025 and appeared as a member of the project’s advisory board, though the group then asked to be removed from it. Miller also appeared in a promotional video for the project, which is still posted on the project’s website.John RatcliffeView image in fullscreenRatcliffe, offered the role of CIA director by Trump, was a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, where he was tasked with chairing a project to hold China accountable for Covid-19 and “helping Project 2025 build out policy recommendations for intelligence reform in the next presidential administration”, according to the Heritage website.Ratcliffe is listed as a contributor to Project 2025. He also is interviewed for the project, and excerpts of the interview went into a chapter on the intelligence community. In the chapter, Ratcliffe is quoted multiple times, on issues such as making sure the intelligence community is accountable to the director of national intelligence and on countering China.“I had an $85bn combined annual budget for both the national intelligence program and military intelligence program,” he is quoted in Project 2025. “My perspective was, ‘Whatever we’re spending on countering China, it isn’t enough.’”JD VanceView image in fullscreenTrump’s vice-president has close ties with Roberts, the Heritage president. Vance wrote the foreword for Roberts’ book, which was released after the election.Roberts “is somebody I rely on a lot who has very good advice, very good political instincts”, Vance told news outlet Notus in January 2024. In the foreword, Vance praises Roberts’ ideas and boldness, saying the book advances a “fundamentally Christian view of culture and economics” and a “surprising – even jarring” path forward for conservatives. More

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      Vance pleads with US senators to back Matt Gaetz as Trump’s attorney general

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      JD Vance has said Donald Trump “deserves a cabinet that is loyal” as he pleaded with senators on Wednesday to support the incoming president’s most controversial nominee, the former representative Matt Gaetz, who faces allegations of sexual misconduct and doubts over his qualifications to be attorney general.Vance, the vice-president-elect and Republican senator for Ohio, met up with Gaetz on Capitol Hill as the House of Representatives’ ethics committee convened to decide whether to release a report that could make or break his chances of confirmation in Senate hearings.The pair also met a procession of Republican senators in the Strom Thurmond Room in the Capitol rotunda as Vance took on the role of selling Trump’s case to fellow senators that Gaetz is a fit and proper person to be America’s top law enforcement official.Amid mounting scepticism, including among some Republican lawmakers, Vance made the case on social media beforehand, telling senators that they owed Trump their support regardless of their reservations about Gaetz.“Donald J Trump just won a major electoral victory. His coattails turned a 49-51 senate to a 53-47 senate,” he wrote.“He deserves a cabinet that is loyal to the agenda he was elected to implement.”The post amounted to a boldfaced effort to cast the Republicans’ newly acquired Senate majority as attributable to the political smarts of Trump, who endorsed several GOP candidates who subsequently went on to unseat vulnerable sitting Democrats.Despite a GOP Senate majority that would normally ensure nominees a safe passage through hearings, hostility toward Gaetz among Republican senators is wide enough to deny him confirmation unless enough of them can be persuaded to change their minds.While some Republican senators are wary of facing a backlash from Trump if they resist Gaetz, others are believed to by buoyed up by the fact that they have just been elected to six-year terms, and so cannot face a primary challenge in the near term.Trump nominated Gaetz, a far-right representative from Florida, as his attorney general after being persuaded that he would purge the Department of Justice and the FBI, against whom the president-elect has vowed retribution as payback for criminal prosecutions they pressed against him.But Gaetz is a controversial choice among senators and fellow congressmembers because of his hardline political views, abrasive character and the fact that he himself has been subjected to an FBI investigation, over sex-trafficking allegations.The inquiry was dropped, but the House of Representatives’ ethics committee conducted its own investigation into the allegations, which included suspicions of him having had sex with a 17-year-old and taking illegal drugs.The committee had been due to publish its report last week but Gaetz threw that into suspension by resigning his seat after Trump nominated him.Vance has been given the task of shepherding at least one of Trump’s other controversial picks, Pete Hegseth as defence secretary, through the Senate. Hegseth, until recently a host on Fox News, also faces a difficult Senate passage over misgivings that he has no qualifying experience to run the Pentagon and previously faced a police investigation over a sexual assault allegation.Following several other questionable picks, Trump has in the past 24 hours nominated Linda McMahon – who gained prominence running World Wrestling Entertainment – as secretary of the Department of Education, which he has vowed to abolish. McMahon, a former head of the Small Business Administration in Trump’s first presidency, has no prior experience running educational institutions or departments.The president-elect also chose Mehmet Oz, a television celebrity, to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which oversees health insurance for 155 million people.Oz, who has a reputation for pushing theories unsupported by scientific evidence and has no experience in running a government department, has been tasked by Trump to “cut waste and fraud within our Country’s most expensive Government Agency”. More

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      Trump loyalist Kash Patel in contention to be named FBI director

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      Donald Trump is keeping his controversial adviser Kash Patel in the running to be the next FBI director, according to two people familiar with the matter, as the transition team conducted interviews for the role on Monday night at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago club.The existence of the interviews, made public in a since-deleted post by the vice president-elect JD Vance, underscored the intent to fire the current FBI director, Christopher Wray, years before his current term is up.Vance revealed that he and Trump had been interviewing finalists for FBI director in a post responding to criticism he received for missing a Senate vote last night that confirmed one of Joe Biden’s nominees for the US court of appeals for the 11th circuit.“When this 11th circuit vote happened, I was meeting President Trump to interview multiple positions for our government, including for FBI director,” Vance wrote.Trump has a special interest in the FBI, having fired James Comey as director in 2017 over his refusal to close the investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, and then complaining about perceived disloyalty from Wray.Patel’s continued position as a top candidate for the role makes clear Trump’s determination to install loyalists in key national security and law enforcement positions, as well as the support Patel has built up among key Trump allies.The push for Patel – who has frequently railed against the “deep state” – has come from some of the longest-serving Trump advisers, notably those close to former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, a faction that got Trump’s personal lawyers picked for top justice department roles.That faction has also suggested to Trump in recent days that if Patel gets passed over for the director role, he should be given the deputy FBI director position, one of the people said – a powerful job that helps run the bureau day to day and is crucially not subject to Senate confirmation.Patel has made inroads with Trump by repeatedly demonstrating his loyalty over several years and articulating plans to restructure the FBI, including by dismantling the firewall between the White House and the bureau.During the criminal investigation into Trump’s retention of classified documents, for instance, Patel refused to testify against Trump before a federal grand jury in Washington and asserted his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination.Patel ultimately testified only after he was forced to, when the then chief US district judge Beryl Howell allowed the justice department to confer limited immunity from prosecution to him to overcome his fifth amendment claim.But Patel also has multiple detractors among other Trump advisers who came from the presidential campaign and carry outsize influence. That group is said to prefer former House intelligence committee chair Mike Rogers, who left Congress in 2015.Rogers is generally seen as a more establishment pick who has experience dealing with intelligence agencies, one of his allies said. But Trump has also suggested to advisers he is less interested in Rogers than Patel, the person said.Still, Trump has increasingly paid little attention to whether a nominee is likely to be confirmed by the Senate, evidenced by his move to pick Matt Gaetz for attorney general and Pete Hegseth for defense secretary despite both being dogged by allegations of sexual misconduct.Patel rose to notoriety in 2018 when he served as an aide to Devin Nunes, who was the top Republican on the House intelligence committee, and became involved in attempts by the White House to discredit the Russia investigation.He then went to work for the Trump administration in 2019 on the national security council, before becoming chief of staff to the defense secretary in the final months of the presidency.In 2020, when Trump weighed firing the then CIA director Gina Haspel, he floated Patel as a potential replacement. Patel was also briefly considered to become the deputy FBI director in the waning months of the presidency but was talked out of the appointment. More

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      Trump taps Dr Oz to work with RFK Jr in health role and discourages Republicans from confirming Biden judge picks – live

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      President-elect Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he has nominated Dr Mehmet Oz to serve as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator.“America is facing a healthcare Crisis, and there may be no Physician more qualified and capable than Dr. Oz to Make America Healthy Again” Trump said in a statement.Trump added: “He is an eminent Physician, Heart Surgeon, Inventor, and World-Class Communicator, who has been at the forefront of healthy living for decades. Dr. Oz will work closely with Robert F Kennedy Jr. to take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake.”Oz ran an unsuccessful campaign for senator in Pennsylvania in 2022.Donald Trump has joined Elon Musk for the sixth test of SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket from Texas.Trump’s attendance underscores his increasingly close friendship with Musk, whom he has tapped to co-lead a new Department of Government Efficiency with the former Republican presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy.Follow the Guardian’s SpaceX launch liveblog here:Dr Oz has built a long career promoting health misinformation. During his unsuccessful campaign for senator of Pennsylvania, doctors and researchers called for him to be stripped of his medical credentials over his promotion of unproven treatments, including touting the use of hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug, to treat Covid-19 without scientific evidence.Timothy Caulfield, the Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy at the University of Alberta, wrote in the Scientific American:
      Despite facing mounting criticism for his embrace of harmful pseudoscience and the provision of evidence-free health advice, Oz remains connected to Columbia University’s medical school and is a licensed physician. In 2014, he was called in front of the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection over misleading statements he made on his popular television show, the Dr. Oz Show. During the hearing one senator went so far as to tell “America’s Doctor” (anointed thus by Oprah) that “the scientific community is almost monolithic against you.”
      And while Oz has not been officially sanctioned by a regulatory body—the Federal Trade Commission, for example, has gone after fraudsters who have appeared on his show, but the agency hasn’t taken direct action against him—that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be disciplined.
      His affiliation with Columbia and the fact he still has a license seems especially baffling at a time when the spread of health misinformation has been recognized as one of this era’s most challenging health policy issues. Given all that he has done to promote science-free medicine, how has Oz’s licence not been revoked?
      In his announcement naming Dr Mehmet Oz as his nominee to lead the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services, Donald Trump has also suggested that these massive health programs that serve 12.5 million people could see steep cuts.Oz “will also cut waste and fraud within our Country’s most expensive Government Agency, which is a third of our Nation’s Healthcare spend, and a quarter of our entire National Budget,” Trump said in his announcement.Republicans have been pushing to further privatize Medicare, a program for elderly people and some people with disabilities, despite complaints from patients and providers that the existing privatized Medicare Advantage program costs taxpayers more, and provides worse care.President-elect Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he has nominated Dr Mehmet Oz to serve as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator.“America is facing a healthcare Crisis, and there may be no Physician more qualified and capable than Dr. Oz to Make America Healthy Again” Trump said in a statement.Trump added: “He is an eminent Physician, Heart Surgeon, Inventor, and World-Class Communicator, who has been at the forefront of healthy living for decades. Dr. Oz will work closely with Robert F Kennedy Jr. to take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake.”Oz ran an unsuccessful campaign for senator in Pennsylvania in 2022.President-elect Donald Trump is urging Republican senators to stop the confirmation of judges before he takes office in January.“The Democrats are trying to stack the Courts with Radical Left Judges on their way out the door” Trump wrote in a social media post on Tuesday. “Republican Senators need to Show Up and Hold the Line – No more Judges confirmed before Inauguration Day!”.This comes as Senate Democrats held a late-night vote on Monday to confirm Joe Biden’s nominees to the federal judiciary.Meanwhile, Joe Biden is at the G20 leaders summit in Rio de Janeiro and finally appeared in the leaders’ photo after missing the first one.US officials previously stated that “logistical issues” were to blame for why the president missed out on the first group shot on Monday. Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni also missed the first group photo.But today, they had a reshoot, and this time Biden was given a spot near the middle of the front row of the assembled world leaders.Here are some of the photos:Donald Trump has confirmed that he is on his way to Texas for a SpaceX rocket launch, scheduled for later today.“I’m heading to the Great State of Texas to watch the launch of the largest object ever to be elevated, not only to Space, but simply by lifting off the ground” Trump said in a social media post.He added: “Good luck to Elon Musk and the Great Patriots involved in this incredible project!”Vice president-elect JD Vance said that he and Donald Trump were interviewing candidates for the FBI director position on Monday evening.In a post on social media, Vance said that he was meeting with Trump to interview multiple positions for their government on Monday evening, including the role of FBI director.The post came in response to criticism regarding his absence from a Senate vote on Monday night to confirm nominees for the federal judiciary.“When this 11th Circuit vote happened, I was meeting with President Trump to interview multiple positions for our government, including for FBI Director” Vance said. “I tend to think it’s more important to get an FBI director who will dismantle the deep state than it is for Republicans to lose a vote 49-46 rather than 49-45. But that’s just me.”Donald Trump has officially chosen Howard Lutnick, the president-elect’s transition co-chair, to serve as commerce secretary for his second administration.Lutnick, who has been a longtime friend of Trump, is the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald.In a post on Truth Social, the former president wrote that he was “thrilled” to announce Lutnick as his commerce secretary. He stated that Lutnick will “lead our Tariff and Trade agenda” and will also have direct responsibility for the office of the US trade representative.In his role as co-chair of the Trump-Vance transition team, Trump said that Lutnick “created the most sophisticated process and system to assist us in creating the greatest Administration America has ever seen”.The statement also describes Lutnick as having been a “dynamic force on Wall Street for more than 30 years”.Vice president-elect JD Vance is said to be arranging meetings this week on Capitol Hill between some of Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees and Republican senators who will be involved with the confirmation process. According to CNN, Vance is expected attend some of the meetings too, including those with former representative Matt Gaetz, who Trump has selected as his nominee for attorney general, and former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, whom Trump has selected as the head of the Department of Defense.Louisiana Republican Senator John Kennedy also told CNN that he plans to meet with Gaetz and Vance on Wednesday.A spokesperson for the Trump-Vance Transition said in a statement to the network that Gaetz and Hegseth, as well as Representatives Doug Collins and Elise Stefanik, will “begin their meetings this week with additional Hill visits to continue after the Thanksgiving recess”.Collins has been chosen by Trump to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs while Stefanik has been selected to be the US ambassador to the United Nations. More

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      Line up to kiss the ring! How to join the brownnosers sucking up to Trump | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Let the humiliation Olympics begin. As Donald Trump readies himself for his revenge tour, world leaders and business moguls are falling over themselves to show the incoming president how much they admire him. Even if it means making an embarrassment of themselves in the process.While it’s only natural for the rich and powerful to try to ingratiate themselves with the incoming president of the United States, the extent to which people are lining up to kiss the ring is remarkable. This isn’t just diplomacy as usual: it speaks to Trump’s unapologetically transactional politics. He has made it very clear that loyalty will be richly rewarded and promised to ruthlessly pursue his enemies. As a result, we appear to have entered into a golden age of brown-nosing.Step one in transforming yourself into Trump’s lapdog: delete any previous criticism of the former president that you may have ill-advisedly put out back when you still had a spine. See, for example, Australia’s ambassador to the US, the former prime minister Kevin Rudd, who appears to have stayed up all night recently hitting the delete button on Twitter.“[Trump is] the most destructive president in history,” Rudd declared on Twitter, now X, in 2020, for example. “He drags America and democracy through the mud.”That tweet, along with others critical of the former president, has now been wiped clean. In a statement posted on his personal website last week, Rudd explained he had made those remarks back when he was a political commentator and deleted them to “eliminate the possibility of such comments being misconstrued as reflecting his positions as Ambassador”.A more honest explanation might be that Rudd is terrified Trump will come up with a nasty nickname for him (Rudd the dud?) and impose enormous tariffs on Australia as payback.You can press the delete button as much as you like, but the internet has a very long memory. So, if you can’t completely delete your way into Trump’s good books the next step is to deny and defuse. Technically, you may have made some nasty comments about Trump in the past but you didn’t mean them and, anyway, you’ve seen the light now.This appears to be how the British foreign secretary, David Lammy, is dealing with the fact that, during his days as a backbench MP, he described Trump as a “tyrant” and “a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath”. Lammy has also called Trump “deluded, dishonest, xenophobic, narcissistic” and “no friend of Britain”.Seems pretty unambiguous. According to Lammy, we should forget all that because it is “old news”. In an interview with the BBC, Lammy added that he’d made those comments when he was a silly backbencher and he knows better now. “[W]hat you say as a backbencher and what you do wearing the real duty of public office are two different things,” Lammy explained. “And I am foreign secretary. There are things I know now that I didn’t know back then.”What exactly does the older and wiser Lammy now know? Perhaps that he really likes having power and doesn’t want anything as silly as having consistent morals to jeopardize it?To be fair, it seems that a lot of people are now finding out a lot of important facts about Trump that they didn’t know before because JD Vance has also made good use of Lammy’s “older and wiser” defence. In the lead-up to the 2016 election, Vance called Trump an “idiot” who was “unfit for our nation’s highest office”. He also characterized the man who would become his boss as “America’s Hitler”. The incoming vice-president has of course, now realised that he was “wrong about Donald Trump”.And he is in powerful company: you would struggle to find a titan of industry who hasn’t criticized Trump in the past and who isn’t rapidly backtracking now. The Apple CEO, Tim Cook; the Google CEO, Sundar Pichai; the Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella; and the former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos are among the high-profile business figures who have radically changed their tune when it comes to Trump.The Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has also undergone a Trumpian metamorphosis. He once accused Trump of inciting violence and undermining the law; now he is lining up with the rest of the tech bros to gush about how excited he is to work with the Trump administration. Does Zuck always fawn over incoming presidents? No, he doesn’t. As Popular Information has noted: “Zuckerberg offered no congratulatory message at all to Biden after his 2020 victory.”More broadly, Zuckerberg, who has been busy drastically revamping his wardrobe and public image, seems to have decided that Trump is a figure to admire and emulate. He called Trump a “badass” in July, after the former president survived an assassination attempt. Then, during a recent conference, Zuckerberg said the biggest mistake of his career was apologizing too much. Trump, after all, has proved you can get away with anything; that power puts you above the law.Weaseling your way into Trump’s good books may be humiliating but it comes with a big payday: the president-elect is already busy doling out favours to friends. Elon Musk, for example, who spent over $100m getting Trump elected has been tapped to lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency. This allows Musk, whose companies have received more than $15.4bn in government contracts, to be a lot more efficient about rerouting public funds into his private purse.Meanwhile Trump is assembling his cabinet, and it is has become apparent that the most important qualification for office is a history of saying nice things about the president-elect. Pete Hegseth, for example, a Fox News personality and military veteran with no meaningful foreign policy experience has been picked to be secretary of defense. The New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who stood by Trump when he faced impeachment and became one of his staunchest cheerleaders, is being rewarded for her sycophancy with a gig as ambassador to the United Nations. Like Hegseth, she also has no meaningful foreign policy experience but she will support Israel and Trump no matter what they do, which is all that matters.The South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem, will reportedly lead the Department of Homeland Security. She doesn’t have a huge amount of experience in this area, nor does she represent a border state, but she does have a lot of experience in trying to curry favour with Trump. Noem, who is famous for once shooting her family dog, has echoed Trump’s hardline immigration rhetoric and plied the president with gifts. In 2020, the New York Times reported that Noem welcomed Trump to her corner of the country with a “a four-foot replica of Mount Rushmore” that included his face on it. Noem also moderated the famous campaign town hall in Pennsylvania where Trump stopped taking questions and, instead, danced (along with Noem) to his favourite songs.Then there’s “Little Marco”. Trump levelled some very personal attacks against Marco Rubio and the senator responded in kind back in 2016. Since then, however, Rubio has fallen into line and groveled at Trump’s feet enough that it seems he’s being forgiven for mocking the size of Trump’s hands and saying “he’s gonna make America orange”. Rubio is reportedly being considered for secretary of state.So there you go: we are officially a quid pro quo economy now. It’s no wonder that Trump’s former critics are all suddenly reinventing themselves and tech bros are lining up to say how “excited’ they are to work with the Trump administration. What’s a little bit of brown-nosing, when you’re rewarded with a giant pot of gold? More

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      Trump announces Matt Gaetz as attorney general and Tulsi Gabbard for top intelligence post – US politics live

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      Donald Trump has chosen Matt Gaetz, of his most prominent defenders in Congress, to serve as attorney general.The appointment could put Gaetz in charge of Trump’s promised effort to retaliate against his political opponents, including officials who served in his previous administration but have since repudiated him. Trump announced the nomination, which must be confirmed by the Senate, on Truth Social:
      It is my Great Honor to announce that Congressman Matt Gaetz, of Florida, is hereby nominated to be The Attorney General of the United States. Matt is a deeply gifted and tenacious attorney, trained at the William & Mary College of Law, who has distinguished himself in Congress through his focus on achieving desperately needed reform at the Department of Justice. Few issues in America are more important than ending the partisan Weaponization of our Justice System. Matt will end Weaponized Government, protect our Borders, dismantle Criminal Organizations and restore Americans’ badly-shattered Faith and Confidence in the Justice Department. On the House Judiciary Committee, which performs oversight of DOJ, Matt played a key role in defeating the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, and exposing alarming and systemic Government Corruption and Weaponization. He is a Champion for the Constitution and the Rule of Law…
      Gaetz, a congressman representing a very conservative district in the Florida panhandle, became known nationally last year when he was a key player in the putsch that ousted Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House.Susan Collins, the moderate Republican senator of Maine told reporters she was “shocked” but the Matt Gaetz nomination.“I was shocked by the announcement — that shows why the advise-and-consent process is so important,” Collins said. “I’m sure that there will be a lot of questions raised at his hearing.”Matt Gaetz has been one of the most loyal backers of Donald Trump in the capitol, supporting Trump’s attempts to deny the results of the 2020 election. He voted with about 150 Republicans to overturn the results of the 2020 election.Along with members of the far-right group the Proud Boys, he took part in protests against the result of a Senate race in Florida.He also evoked language adopted by the Proud Boys at Trump’s hush money trial earlier this year, posting on social media: “Standing back, and standing by, Mr. President” along with a photo of him with Trump and other congressional Republicans.Hill reporters are gathering shocked and evasive responses from Republicans reacting to the Gaetz nomination.Senator Chuck Grassley stopped talking to reporters when asked for his reaction.House Appropriations chair Tom Cole avoided responding as well: “I know nothing about it.”Senator Ron Johnson: “The president gets to pick his nominees.”Matt Gaetz, the Florida congressman who Donald Trump just nominated to be his attorney general, has for years faced allegations of sexual misconduct.Last year, Gaetz said the justice department had closed an investigation that began after allegations emerged of the congressman having sex with a 17-year-old girl and paying for her travel. The House ethics committee earlier this year announced that it was beginning its own inquiry into whether Gaetz “engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts, dispensed special privileges and favours to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct”.That investigation has not yet been publicly concluded. Here’s more about it:Since he first arrived in Congress in 2017, just days before Donald Trump took office, Matt Gaetz has been one of his most vocal advocates on Capitol Hill.Now, Gaetz may lead the justice department, and ensure that prosecutorial decisions, which are normally made independently by the attorney general, are to Trump’s benefit.From a profile of Gaetz the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino published last year, shortly after he led the successful effort to oust fellow Republican Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House:
      “Florida Man. Built for Battle,” reads Gaetz’s bio on X, formerly Twitter.
      Gaetz followed his father into politics more than two decades ago. After serving in the Florida statehouse, Gaetz was elected in 2016 to represent a ruby-red chunk of the Florida panhandle.
      Since his arrival in Washington, the pompadoured lawmaker has built a political brand as a far-right provocateur, courting controversy seemingly as a matter of course.
      Like Donald Trump, to whom he is fiercely loyal, Gaetz is more interested in sparring with political foes than in the dry business of governance, according to his critics. On Capitol Hill, he has repeatedly disrupted House proceedings, including once barging into a secure facility where Democrats were holding a deposition hearing.
      In 2018, he was condemned for inviting a Holocaust denier to Trump’s State of the Union address. A year later, he hired a speechwriter who had been fired by the Trump White House after speaking at a conference that attracts white nationalists.
      Months after the January 6 attack on the Capitol, Gaetz embarked on an “America First” tour with Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Georgia congresswoman, in which they amplified the former president’s false claims of fraud in the 2020 election. He also continued to attack Republicans critical of Trump, using language that reportedly alarmed McCarthy, who feared the lawmakers’ words could incite violence.
      Donald Trump has chosen Matt Gaetz, of his most prominent defenders in Congress, to serve as attorney general.The appointment could put Gaetz in charge of Trump’s promised effort to retaliate against his political opponents, including officials who served in his previous administration but have since repudiated him. Trump announced the nomination, which must be confirmed by the Senate, on Truth Social:
      It is my Great Honor to announce that Congressman Matt Gaetz, of Florida, is hereby nominated to be The Attorney General of the United States. Matt is a deeply gifted and tenacious attorney, trained at the William & Mary College of Law, who has distinguished himself in Congress through his focus on achieving desperately needed reform at the Department of Justice. Few issues in America are more important than ending the partisan Weaponization of our Justice System. Matt will end Weaponized Government, protect our Borders, dismantle Criminal Organizations and restore Americans’ badly-shattered Faith and Confidence in the Justice Department. On the House Judiciary Committee, which performs oversight of DOJ, Matt played a key role in defeating the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, and exposing alarming and systemic Government Corruption and Weaponization. He is a Champion for the Constitution and the Rule of Law…
      Gaetz, a congressman representing a very conservative district in the Florida panhandle, became known nationally last year when he was a key player in the putsch that ousted Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House.The Senate confirms nominees for director of national intelligence, a cabinet-level position created after 9/11 to oversee the intelligence community and liaise directly with the president.There is reason to think that Tulsi Gabbard might raise a few eyebrows in the Senate, even when it is controlled by Trump-aligned Republicans, as it will be from January.As a congresswoman from Hawaii, Gabbard visited Syria, met with its president Bashar al-Assad, and expressed skepticism about well-documented atrocities attributed to his forces during the country’s civil war. More recently, she has spent time attacking Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It’s all a turnabout from her days in Democratic politics, when she vyed unsuccessfully for the party’s presidential nomination in 2020 and backed Bernie Sanders’ candidacy four years prior. Here’s more about how her views have shifted dramatically:Donald Trump has named former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard as his nominee for director of national intelligence. Gabbard is another loyalist who frequently joined Trump at campaign events.Here’s what he had to say in announcing in picking Gabbard, who represented Hawaii from 2013 to 2021, and endorsed Trump after leaving the Democratic party:
      I am pleased to announce that former Congresswoman, Lieutenant Colonel Tulsi Gabbard, will serve as Director of National Intelligence (DNI). For over two decades, Tulsi has fought for our Country and the Freedoms of all Americans. As a former Candidate for the Democrat Presidential Nomination, she has broad support in both Parties – She is now a proud Republican! I know Tulsi will bring the fearless spirit that has defined her illustrious career to our Intelligence Community, championing our Constitutional Rights, and securing Peace through Strength. Tulsi will make us all proud!
      Donald Trump has just officially named Florida senator Marco Rubio as his nominee for secretary of state.News of the choice filtered out over the past day or so, but Trump had not made it official, until now. Here’s what he said:
      It is my Great Honor to announce that Senator Marco Rubio, of Florida, is hereby nominated to be The United States Secretary of State. Marco is a Highly Respected Leader, and a very powerful Voice for Freedom. He will be a strong Advocate for our Nation, a true friend to our Allies, and a fearless Warrior who will never back down to our adversaries. I look forward to working with Marco to Make America, and the World, Safe and Great Again!
      Joe Biden’s meeting with Donald Trump was attended by Susie Wiles, who the president-elect recently announced would serve as his White House chief of staff.Wiles, who co-managed Trump’s campaign, will be the first woman to hold role. Biden’s chief of staff, Jeff Zients, also attended.While Donald Trump appears to have mostly stayed out of the race for Senate Republican leader, the Maga hardcore were rooting for Florida senator Rick Scott.He unsuccessfully challenged Mitch McConnell for the leadership post two years ago, and his bid this year was similarly unsuccessful. In a statement released after John Thune won the race, Scott said:
      I may have lost the vote, but I am optimistic. I ran for leader with one mission: to fundamentally change how the Senate operates and upend the status quo so we can actually start representing the voters who put us here. When I announced, I said that we are in a moment where we need dramatic change. The voters confirmed that last week when they elected President Trump and Republicans took the majority in both chambers of Congress with a clear mandate.
      …
      While it isn’t the result we hoped for, I will do everything possible to make sure John Thune is successful in accomplishing President Trump’s agenda.
      When asked about comments made by Trump’s new pick for secretary of defense, Fox and Friends co-host Pete Hegseth, that “we should not have women in combat roles”, Jean-Pierre spoke to the “importance of gender equality, of women in the workforce”.She said the Biden administration does not agree with those views.Biden “looked forward to the conversation and appreciated the conversation,” Jean-Pierre said, adding that the two met for nearly two hours.“I think the length of the meeting tells you they had an in-depth conversation on an array of issues.”A reporter asked Jean-Pierre if there were any conversations between Biden and Trump about not accepting the results of the 2020 election, but she said it was now about “moving forward”.“There was an election last week and the American people spoke.” More