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      Matt Gaetz, a Bomb-Thrower for the Justice Department

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      President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be attorney general has set a new bar for in-your-face nominations.In selecting Representative Matt Gaetz to be his attorney general, President-elect Donald J. Trump has chosen an undisguised attack dog to preside over the Department of Justice.Mr. Gaetz, 42, a Florida Republican and an unswerving loyalist to Mr. Trump, has a history that under conventional circumstances would make his confirmation prospects appear insurmountable.He was investigated by the Justice Department on suspicion of child sex trafficking. This year, after the government case was shuttered, the House Committee on Ethics opened its own inquiry into the matter, which effectively ended on Wednesday night after Mr. Gaetz resigned from his seat. Mr. Gaetz has also been accused of showing photos of nude women to colleagues on the House floor and of seeking a pardon from the previous Trump White House. He has denied each of these allegations.Mr. Gaetz is also an avowed enemy of virtually every top Republican not named Trump. He led the charge last year to oust one Republican leader, Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and this year openly celebrated the resignations of two others — Senator Mitch McConnell, who announced he would be retiring as minority leader, and Ronna McDaniel, who stepped down as chairwoman of the Republican Party National Committee.“We’ve now 86’d: McCarthy, McDaniel, McConnell,” Mr. Gaetz exulted on the social media platform X in March.“I am not some ‘Lord of the Flies’ nihilist,” Mr. Gaetz insisted to The New York Times in January 2023, just after he had relinquished his five-day blockade of Mr. McCarthy’s eventually successful quest to be speaker. But nine months later, Mr. Gaetz helped pushed Mr. McCarthy out of the job for good.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Picks Kristi Noem for Homeland Security Secretary

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump selected Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota on Tuesday to run the Homeland Security Department, a critical position in charge of the nation’s immigration system.Mr. Trump has made an immigration crackdown a central element of his administration’s promises, with pledges to not only more aggressively police the border but to also carry out a wide-scale deportation operation throughout the country.Ms. Noem will play a crucial role in helping Mr. Trump deliver on those promises as she will be in charge of agencies that enforce immigration laws, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.In a statement on social media, Mr. Trump called Ms. Noem “very strong on Border Security,” noting that she sent National Guard troops to the Texas-Mexico border as governor. Ms. Noem, in her own social media statement, pledged to “secure the border and restore safety to American communities so families will again have the opportunity to pursue the American Dream.”If she is confirmed by the Senate, Ms. Noem will lead an agency that oversees entities including the Coast Guard and the Secret Service, which has weathered criticism over two attempts on Mr. Trump’s life during the presidential campaign.History suggests it will be challenging to keep Mr. Trump satisfied: During his first term, Mr. Trump cycled through six homeland security leaders.During her time as governor, Ms. Noem has made immigration a key talking point. She has been a fierce critic of the Biden administration’s immigration policies.“Biden’s open border policies are facilitating illegal border crossings,” she said in a post on X earlier this year. “This invasion must end. The federal government has to stop violating federal law. And we need to go back to President Trump’s successful immigration policies immediately.”Ms. Noem has taken action on immigration enforcement as well: In line with other Republican state leaders, she sent National Guard troops in 2023 to help Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas police the border.“The border crisis is growing worse under President Biden’s willful inaction,” she said in a statement in 2023. “Across the country, crime rates, drug overdoses, and human trafficking have all skyrocketed because our border remains a warzone.” In 2021, as the Biden administration struggled to deal with an influx of migrants at the border, Ms. Noem said repeatedly that she would refuse entry to anyone who was not authorized to be in the country.“My message to illegal immigrants is — Call me when you’re an American. In the meantime, South Dakota will not be accepting any relocation of illegal immigrants from President Biden,” she said on Facebook in April 2021.Ms. Noem became a subject of controversy when she revealed in a memoir that she shot and killed a family dog she was training because it was “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with.” More

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      So … How Does the Electoral College Work, Again?

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      It’s weird. It’s confusing. It’s how we elect the president.This article is part of A Kid’s Guide to the Election, a collection of stories about the 2024 presidential election for readers ages 8 to 14, written and produced by The New York Times for Kids. This section is published in The Times’s print edition on the last Sunday of every month.Every four years, there’s one thing everybody is talking about: the Electoral College. It’s not a school, despite what it sounds like. It’s the unique way that the United States elects its presidents. And if we’re honest, it’s pretty confusing. Here’s a breakdown of how that process works.When your school elects a class president, the math is simple: The kid who gets the most votes wins. The presidential election is more complicated. When people cast their ballots, their votes won’t go straight to Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. Instead, they go through the Electoral College, a system in which people who represent different states elect the president.So what is the Electoral College, specifically? It’s a group of hundreds of people called electors who speak for voters in their state. They are usually people involved with politics, like activists or volunteers. You can sort of think of them like team captains who speak for their fellow Pennsylvanians, Coloradans, Wisconsinites and so on. Each state has a different number of electors, and each elector gets one electoral vote.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      First Jan. 6 Rioter to Enter Capitol Gets More Than 4 Years in Prison

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      Michael Sparks, 47, was the first rioter to breach the Capitol and among the first to be confronted by the U.S. Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman.The first rioter to breach the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced Tuesday to more than four years in prison, federal prosecutors announced.In March, a federal jury found Michael Sparks, 47, of Elizabethtown, Ky., guilty on felony charges of obstructing an official proceeding and civil disorder and several misdemeanor charges for being on the premises of the Capitol building on Jan. 6.On Tuesday, Judge Timothy J. Kelly of U.S. District Court in Washington sentenced him to 53 months in prison and ordered him to pay a $2,000 fine. Mr. Sparks will be on supervised release for three years after his prison term ends, prosecutors said.Video footage presented in court showed that Mr. Sparks entering the Capitol building at 2:13 p.m. on Jan. 6 through a window near a door leading into the Senate Wing that rioters had smashed with a police shield.Mr. Sparks was among the initial group of rioters who were confronted by Eugene Goodman, a Capitol Police officer, who helped hold off the mob from reaching members of Congress.The rioters chased Mr. Goodman up a flight of stairs as they demanded to know where Congress was certifying the results of the election, prosecutors said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Hawks American Flag Pins with His Name in Gold Splashed Across Them

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      Donald J. Trump’s campaign is billing it as a must-have fashion accessory for his supporters: an American flag lapel pin with the former president’s name scrawled in gold block letters across it — in all caps.The pins were available starting Thursday for a $50 donation to the Trump campaign, the latest merchandising gambit from a candidate who has hawked a plethora of products over the decades, most recently Bibles and Trump sneakers.A donation page for the pins declared that Mr. Trump’s political opponents had rendered him a convicted felon and asked supporters if he could count on their support.His latest marketing pitch is further testing the norms of flag etiquette and drawing fresh scrutiny from critics.It’s not only the flag flap surrounding Mr. Trump, whose birthday, June 14, happens to fall on Flag Day. Some election deniers have flown the flag upside-down, a historical symbol of distress, to protest Mr. Trump’s 2020 election defeat. An inverted flag appeared at the home of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., a display that he attributed to his wife.Alterations to the flag are forbidden under the U.S. Flag Code, which was created in the 1920s by a group of patriotic and civic groups that included the American Legion and adopted as law by Congress in 1942.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Paleoconservative or Moderate? Questions for Staffing the Next G.O.P. White House.

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      The Heritage Foundation asks applicants for a future Republican administration a series of questions about their ideology, showing the extent to which “America First” has shaped the modern G.O.P.An influential conservative group is using a questionnaire to test the ideology of potential recruits for the next Republican presidential administration — and the questions reveal the extent to which former President Donald J. Trump has transformed the conservative movement in his image.The questionnaire by the group, the Heritage Foundation, includes questions that suggest it is screening for applicants who want to embrace tariffs, reduce America’s military footprint overseas and remove executive branch officials who obstruct the president’s agenda. The job-application questionnaire was first reported by Axios.Candidates are asked whether they agree or disagree with the statement that “the president should be able to advance his/her agenda through the bureaucracy without hinderance from unelected federal officials.”Mr. Trump and his allies have promised to “demolish the deep state” and increase presidential power over every part of the federal government that currently operates with any degree of independence from White House political control.A Questionnaire for Applicants to the Next Conservative White HouseThe Heritage Foundation, which has been staffing Republican administrations since the Reagan era, has a list of questions for job applicants that shows how Donald Trump has transformed the party.Read DocumentHeritage, the most powerful think tank on the right, has been staffing Republican administrations since the Reagan era and is leading a $22 million presidential transition operation called Project 2025 to develop policies and personnel for the next conservative government.As a nonprofit group, Heritage cannot endorse political candidates, but its vast personnel recruitment project — a collaboration by more than 80 conservative groups — is being driven by former senior Trump administration officials who remain close to the former president. Heritage’s work will most likely end up in the hands of whomever the Republican Party nominates as its presidential candidate next year.Much of the Heritage questionnaire is unremarkable. It quizzes candidates on their political philosophy and on private school vouchers and other standard-issue Republican policies. But in subtle ways, the questionnaire shows the extent to which Mr. Trump’s “America First” ideology has infused the Republican Party. Those changes are most pronounced in the wording of the questions that relate to foreign policy and trade.(The questionnaire inquires about the applicant’s political philosophy, providing a number of possible selections such as Traditional Conservative, Libertarian, Paleoconservative and Moderate.)Heritage used to promote American leadership around the world and a hawkish foreign policy in line with the views espoused by Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.But under the leadership of its president, Kevin Roberts, Heritage has in recent years argued that American tax dollars could more usefully be spent at home than in supporting Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s invasion. And in another departure from the pre-Trump Republican orthodoxy, Heritage has expressed openness to cutting the military budget.In that vein, the Heritage questionnaire asks potential recruits whether they agree or disagree that “the U.S. should scale back its strong military presence overseas.”Once a promoter of free trade — and still internally divided on the subject — Heritage now asks recruits for the next Republican administration whether they agree that “the U.S. should impose tariffs with the goal of bringing back manufacturing jobs, even if these tariffs result in higher consumer prices.”Heritage’s shift toward an “America First” ideology has opened up rifts within the conservative movement and has caused tensions inside the organization. Several foreign policy analysts left Heritage disillusioned by the changes afoot there.In a statement to The New York Times, Heritage’s president, Mr. Roberts, said that “the radical left has lapped the political right when it comes to preparing men and women to serve in presidential administrations.”“Project 2025,” he added, “is committed to recruiting and training a deep bench of patriotic Americans who are ready to serve their country on day one of the next administration.” More

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      How Trump and His Allies Plan to Wield Power in 2025

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      Donald J. Trump and his allies are already laying the groundwork for a possible second Trump presidency, forging plans for an even more extreme agenda than his first term.Former President Donald J. Trump declared in the first rally of his 2024 presidential campaign: “I am your retribution.” He later vowed to use the Justice Department to go after his political adversaries, starting with President Biden and his family.Beneath these public threats is a series of plans by Mr. Trump and his allies that would upend core elements of American governance, democracy, foreign policy and the rule of law if he regained the White House.Some of these themes trace back to the final period of Mr. Trump’s term in office. By that stage, his key advisers had learned how to more effectively wield power and Mr. Trump had fired officials who resisted some of his impulses and replaced them with loyalists. Then he lost the 2020 election and was cast out of power.Since leaving office, Mr. Trump’s advisers and allies at a network of well-funded groups have advanced policies, created lists of potential personnel and started shaping new legal scaffolding — laying the groundwork for a second Trump presidency they hope will commence on Jan. 20, 2025.In a vague statement, two top officials on Mr. Trump’s campaign have sought to distance his campaign team from some of the plans being developed by Mr. Trump’s outside allies, groups led by former senior Trump administration officials who remain in direct contact with him. The statement called news reports about the campaign’s personnel and policy intentions “purely speculative and theoretical.”The plans described here generally derive from what Mr. Trump has trumpeted on the campaign trail, what has appeared on his campaign website and interviews with Trump advisers, including one who spoke with The New York Times at the request of the campaign.Trump wants to use the Justice Department to take vengeance on his political adversaries.If he wins another term, Mr. Trump has said he would use the Justice Department to have his adversaries investigated and charged with crimes, including saying in June that he would appoint “a real special prosecutor to go after” President Biden and his family. He later declared in an interview with Univision that he could, if someone challenged him politically, have that person indicted.Allies of Mr. Trump have also been developing an intellectual blueprint to cast aside the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department investigatory independence from White House political direction.Foreshadowing such a move, Mr. Trump had already violated norms in his 2016 campaign by promising to “lock up” his opponent, Hillary Clinton, over her use of a private email server. While president, he repeatedly told aides he wanted the Justice Department to indict his political enemies, including officials he had fired such as James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director. The Justice Department opened various such investigations but did not bring charges — infuriating Mr. Trump and leading to a split in 2020 with his attorney general, William P. Barr.He intends to carry out an extreme immigration crackdown.Mr. Trump is planning an assault on immigration on a scale unseen in modern American history. Millions of undocumented immigrants would be barred from the country or uprooted from it years or even decades after settling here.Bolstered by agents reassigned from other federal law enforcement agencies and state police and the National Guard, officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement would carry out sweeping raids aimed at deporting millions of people each year. Military funds would be used to erect sprawling camps to hold undocumented detainees. A public-health emergency law would be invoked to shut down asylum requests by people arriving at the border. And the government would try to end birthright citizenship for babies born on U.S. soil to undocumented parents.Trump has plans to use U.S. military force closer to home.While in office, Mr. Trump mused about using the military to attack drug cartels in Mexico, an idea that would violate international law unless Mexico consented. That idea has since taken on broader Republican backing, and Mr. Trump intends to make the idea a reality if he returns to the Oval Office.While the Posse Comitatus Act generally makes it illegal to use federal troops for domestic law enforcement purposes, another law called the Insurrection Act creates an exception. Mr. Trump wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act to use troops to crack down on protesters after the 2020 police killing of George Floyd, but was thwarted, and the idea remains salient among his advisers. Among other things, his top immigration adviser has said they would invoke the Insurrection Act at the southern border to use soldiers to intercept and detain undocumented migrants.Trump and his allies want greater control over the federal bureaucracy and work force.Mr. Trump and his backers want to increase presidential power over federal agencies, centralizing greater control over the entire machinery of government in the White House.They have adopted a maximalist version of the so-called unitary executive theory, which says the president can directly command the entire federal bureaucracy and that it is unconstitutional for Congress to create pockets of independent decision-making authority.As part of that plan, Mr. Trump also intends to revive an effort from the end of his presidency to alter civil-service rules that protect career government professionals, enabling him to fire tens of thousands of federal workers and replace them with loyalists. After Congress failed to enact legislation to block such a change, the Biden administration is developing a regulation to essentially Trump-proof the federal work force. However, since that is merely an executive action, the next Republican president could simply undo it the same way.Trump allies want lawyers who will not restrain him.Politically appointed lawyers sometimes frustrated Mr. Trump’s desires by raising legal objections to his and his top advisers’ ideas. This dynamic has led to a quiet split on the right, as Trump loyalists have come to view the typical Federalist Society lawyer — essentially a mainstream Republican conservative — with disdain.In a potential new term, Mr. Trump’s allies are planning to systematically install more aggressive and ideologically aligned legal gatekeepers who will be more likely to bless contentious actions. Mr. Trump and his 2024 campaign declined to answer a series of detailed questions about what limits, if any, he would recognize on his powers across a range of war, secrecy and law enforcement matters — many raised by his first term — in a New York Times 2024 presidential candidate survey. More

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      Trump Campaign Officials Try to Play Down Contentious 2025 Plans

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      But many aspects of those blueprints are based on Donald Trump’s own words, his campaign website and an adviser whom the campaign asked to speak.Two top officials on former President Donald J. Trump’s 2024 campaign on Monday sought to distance his campaign team from news reports about plans for what he would do if voters return him to the White House.Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, who are effectively Mr. Trump’s campaign managers, issued a joint statement after a spate of articles, many in The New York Times, about plans for 2025 developed by the campaign itself, and trumpeted on the trail by Mr. Trump, as well as efforts by outside groups led by former senior Trump administration officials who remain in direct contact with him.Ms. Wiles and Mr. LaCivita focused their frustration on outside groups, which they did not name, that have devoted considerable resources to preparing lists of personnel and developing policies to serve the next right-wing administration.“The efforts by various nonprofit groups are certainly appreciated and can be enormously helpful. However, none of these groups or individuals speak for President Trump or his campaign,” they wrote, calling reports about their personnel and policy intentions “purely speculative and theoretical” and “merely suggestions.”Mr. Trump’s team has sought to portray him as the most substantive candidate on policy in the Republican Party. But according to several people with knowledge of the internal discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations, Mr. Trump’s campaign advisers have grown enraged at what they perceive alternately as credit-taking by the groups, and headlines that could be problematic for more moderate voters in a general election.The statement noticeably stopped short of disavowing the groups and seemed merely intended to discourage them from speaking to the press.One challenge for the Trump team is that the most incendiary rhetoric and proposals have come from Mr. Trump’s own mouth.For instance, an article in The Times in June explored Mr. Trump’s plans to use the Justice Department to take vengeance on political adversaries by ordering investigations and prosecutions of them, eradicating the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department investigative independence from White House political control.Mr. Trump himself said in June: “I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family.”The Times recently published an extensive article on Mr. Trump’s immigration plans for a second term. He has promised what he called “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history” and has used increasingly toxic language to describe immigrants, including saying that they are “poisoning the blood of our country.”The Times article detailed plans for an immigration crackdown in part based on a lengthy interview with Stephen Miller, the architect of the Trump White House immigration policy. The Trump campaign, after being approached by Times reporters about Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda, had asked Mr. Miller to speak with them.President Biden’s 2024 campaign pounced on the article concerning immigration — which described plans for mass detention camps, among other things — saying that Mr. Trump had “extreme, racist, cruel policies” that were “meant to stoke fear and divide us.”Other Times articles have focused on plans being fleshed out by close allies of Mr. Trump who occupied senior roles in his White House and are likely to return to power if he is elected.Those plans include efforts to increase White House control over the federal bureaucracy that are being developed, among others, by Russell T. Vought, who was Mr. Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget.But as The Times noted, Mr. Vought’s plans dovetailed with statements Mr. Trump himself made in a video his campaign published on its website, including vowing to bring independent regulatory agencies “under presidential authority.”The Times series has also examined plans by Trump allies to recruit more aggressive lawyers seen as likely to bless extreme policies. Mr. Trump fired the top lawyer at the Department of Homeland Security in 2019 after disputes over White House immigration policies and has blasted key lawyers from his administration who raised objections to his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.The statement from Ms. Wiles and Mr. LaCivita on Monday said that, “all 2024 campaign policy announcements will be made by President Trump or members of his campaign team. Policy recommendations from external allies are just that — recommendations.” More