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      Anti-opioid groups are ‘optimistic’ about Trump’s tariffs. Will the move help tackle the fentanyl crisis?

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      Anti-opioid campaigners in the US have welcomed Donald Trump’s threat to hit Mexico, China and Canada with increased trade tariffs if they do not curb the smuggling of the powerful drug driving the US opioid epidemic.Families and doctors grappling with a crisis that has claimed about 900,000 lives say the move may signal that a second Trump administration will finally get serious about tackling the flow of fentanyl into the US. But they also warn that much more needs to be done to reduce demand for opioids and to rein in the power of the pharmaceutical industry which created the epidemic.Trump said last week that he will issue an executive order on his return to the US presidency next month imposing a 25% tariff on goods from Mexico and Canada until their governments clamp down on the smuggling of fentanyl and other drugs into the US, and on people crossing the northern and southern borders illegally.The president-elect also said he will impose a 10% additional tariff on imports from China as the leading manufacturer of the precursor chemicals used by drug cartels to manufacture fentanyl, a highly potent synthetic opioid that is now the single largest cause of drug overdose deaths in the US.Ed Bisch, who lost his 18-year-old son Eddie to a prescription opioid overdose in 2001, said that tariffs are a sign that Trump “means business”.“I’m optimistic that the threat of substantial tariffs will lead to major cooperation in reducing the fentanyl poisoning of America,” he said.Bisch and other campaigners also say that some of Trump’s cabinet choices may signal a greater engagement with the crisis by the next administration, particularly as Robert F Kennedy Jr, who is nominated as health secretary, was a heroin user and the vice-president-elect, JD Vance, wrote a bestselling book, Hillbilly Elegy, about growing up in a household and region hit by drug addiction.Trump campaigned in 2016 and again this year on commitments to tackle the opioid epidemic which has devastated regions of America in ways that are often unseen in other parts. The crisis dragged entire communities deeper into poverty, drove up crime and greater dependency on welfare, and tore families apart.Millions of children have been raised by their grandparents because the intervening generation was imprisoned, dead or in no condition to parent. In West Virginia, the state worst hit by the epidemic, nearly half of all grandparents are raising their grandchildren.The opioid crisis has also played an important part in undermining public confidence in government institutions and medical practice in parts of the US because the epidemic grew out of the pharmaceutical industry pushing the wide prescribing of narcotic pain killers from which drug makers made billions of dollars with the complicity of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The epidemic then evolved as illegal supplies of heroin and then fentanyl drove up the death toll.But critics say Trump failed to follow through on his campaign promises in 2016 and his next administration will be a test of how really committed is he is on the issue in the face of what is likely to be major pushback from the drug industry.As president in 2017, Trump declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency.“No part of our society, not young or old, rich or poor, urban or rural has been spared this plague,” he said at the time.But two years later, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) criticised the Trump administration for a lack of coordination of efforts and failing to fulfill a legal requirement to issue a national drug control strategy.Robert Kent, who served as general counsel for the White House office of national drug control policy under Joe Biden, credits Trump with declaring the epidemic an emergency and establishing an opioid commission that issued guidelines on how to combat the crisis.“In Trump’s first term, he was the one who declared an opioid public health emergency, which is still in effect. The problem was there were no concrete actions taken specifically as a result. He didn’t put significant new resources into it,” he said.Kent said that the Biden administration put a greater emphasis on “harm reduction” such as the provision of overdose antidotes and test strips allowing drug users to detect fentanyl. But he fears those may be in danger from Republicans who see such measures as enabling drug use.Andrew Kolodny, director of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing and one of the first doctors to raise the alarm about the dangers of mass prescribing prescription painkillers, said harm reduction was necessary but did not get to the root causes of the epidemic.“It’s not hard for Trump to do better than Biden did on opioids. There were some good things that came out of the Biden administration. It was nice to see the federal government move more in a direction of harm reduction. But beyond that there wasn’t really that much done so by Biden,” he said.“When Biden ran for office, he put out a platform on how he would address the opioid crisis if he was president, and it was an excellent platform. But he never really implemented the plan.”Kolodny said that if Trump wants to have a significant impact in reducing opioid addiction he needs to create cheaper and easier access to treatment.“The vast majority of people with opioid use disorder actually want help for it. The reason they keep using fentanyl is that it’s much easier to get fentanyl and cheaper to get fentanyl than it is to get yourself onto buprenorphine or methadone treatment or find a doctor or programme that will very quickly enroll you in treatment when you ask for it,” he said.Researchers are still trying to decipher a drop in overdose deaths in the US last year. They believe better treatment and prevention are playing a part. The Drug Enforcement Administration said earlier this month that the amount of fentanyl found laced into other drugs had dropped and that they were therefore less potent and dangerous. The DEA head, Anne Milgram, attributed that to the Biden administration’s targeting of Mexican cartels and their supply chains.But Kent is cautious.“There’s a lot of people running around because we’ve seen a slight reduction in overdose deaths feeling like that’s mission accomplished when we’re only losing 93,000 people versus 111,000 a year. I would never define that as success in my world. Even within those numbers, underserved communities are being higher impacted at this point. In Black and brown communities the numbers are going up while the other numbers are going down. So there’s work to be done,” he said.Kent said he agrees with the need for an increased focus on the border.“We need to increase the number of staff at the border, just for a whole bunch of reasons, including illicit drugs coming across. There needs to be an investment in screening technology. And there needs to be a continued effort with China, trying to convince China to work with its chemical companies to stop selling the chemical precursors to the Mexican cartels so they can create the fentanyl,” he said.Bisch and others whose lives have been hit by the opioid epidemic are also keen to see broader reform of a system that enabled the drug companies to push mass prescription of opioids on the public in ways not permitted in other countries.Bisch supports Trump’s nomination for attorney general, Pam Bondi, who as Florida’s attorney general cracked down on doctors and “pill mills” churning out opioid prescriptions to anyone who would pay. In 2010, Florida dispensed more opioid prescriptions than every other US state combined as people travelled from across the country to buy the painkillers in bulk. Bisch wants to see Bondi use federal laws to prosecute the drug company executives who made false claims about the safety of prescription opioids in order to get them approved.He also backs Trump’s nomination of Kennedy, who has accused the FDA of putting the financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry ahead of people’s health by effectively encouraging the prescribing of too many drugs and the selection of Marty Makary to head the FDA. Makary has said doctors in the US prescribe too many medications compared with the rest of the world.“The best way to lower drug costs in the US is to stop taking drugs we don’t need,” he told the US Senate in September.In nominating Makary, Trump said the “FDA has lost the trust of Americans and lost sight of its primary goal as a regulator”. He said Makary and Kennedy would work together to “properly evaluate harmful chemicals poisoning our nation’s food supply and drugs”.Bondi is expected to have a relatively easy path to approval by the US Senate. But Kennedy and Makary may face a more difficult time. Kennedy, in particular, will face scrutiny over his rejection of vaccines. But Kolodny said they will also be up against the pharmaceutical industry.“I’ll actually be shocked if Kennedy gets confirmed and if Makary gets confirmed for FDA commissioner because big pharma doesn’t want them, and big pharma has a lot of muscle on Capitol Hill,” he said. More

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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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      ‘The science of fluoride is starting to evolve’: behind the risks and benefits of the mineral

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      A national conversation about fluoride’s health benefits exploded this fall after a federal toxicology report, court ruling and independent scientific review all called for updated risk-benefit analysis.Fluoride, a naturally occurring mineral in some regions, has been added to community water supplies since the mid-20th century when studies found exposure dramatically reduced tooth decay.The controversy, heightened by description of the mineral as “industrial waste” by Robert F Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump’s pick to lead the US health department, highlights questions some towns are now wrestling with: should the mineral’s well-established protective effects against tooth decay be prioritized lest Americans, and especially children, be subject to unnecessary pain and shame from an unhealthy smile? Or should the possibility of neurodevelopment effects be prioritized, even as studies continue?“Fluoride is the perfect example of helping people without them even having to do anything,” said Dr Sreenivas Koka, the former dean of the University of Mississippi Medical Center’s school of dentistry. The state is a “dental desert”, where there is only one dentist for every 2,120 residents. “Fluoride in the water – all you have to do is drink water and you’ll get the benefit.”Fluoride is added to about 72% of community water supplies in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC again endorsed the practice in a scientific statement this May, saying it found no “convincing scientific evidence linking community water fluoridation with any potential adverse health effect or systemic disorder such as an increased risk for cancer, Down syndrome, heart disease, osteoporosis and bone fracture, immune disorders, low intelligence, renal disorders, Alzheimer disease, or allergic reactions”.Still, controversy over water fluoridation recently made headlines after two high-profile reports and a federal court ruling. The US National Toxicology Program set off a firestorm in August when it published a systematic review that found with “moderate confidence” that children exposed to fluoride levels twice those recommended for drinking water (1.5mg per liter versus the recommended 0.7mg per liter) “are consistently associated with lower IQ in children”.Then, in October, a new Cochrane Review lowered the estimated impact of fluoride, citing the widespread use of fluoride in toothpaste beginning in 1975.“Studies conducted in 1975 or earlier showed a clear and important effect on prevention of tooth decay in children,” Cochrane Review researchers wrote. “However, due to the increased availability of fluoride in toothpaste since 1975, it is unlikely that we will see this effect in all populations today.”The public debate comes as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s largest publicly funded research agency, is both a key funder of research advancing society’s understanding of fluoride’s non-dental health effects and an agency squarely in Trump’s crosshairs.The agency is one of the top targets for cuts and restructuring. Paradoxically, that could mean that critics such as Kennedy cut research on fluoride, even as the NIH funds research into potential detriments. The incoming administration has not made proposals on how to improve oral health in the US.Fluoride’s health benefits were investigated in the early 20th century, when a Colorado Springs dentist questioned why town residents had brown, mottled and decay-resistant teeth – now known as fluorosis.It was later found that fluoride naturally occurred at high levels in Colorado Springs, causing the cosmetic defects. Its decay-resistant properties were confirmed in a landmark 1945 study in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which found children in Grand Rapids were 60% less likely to develop dental caries (better known as cavities) with fluoride added to water.By 1999, the CDC hailed water fluoridation as one of public health’s greatest victories, alongside seat belts and vaccination. That view was buttressed by a 2015 Cochrane Review, considered the gold standard, that found fluoridating water at 0.7mg per liter led to a nearly 26% reduction in tooth decay, a figure still cited by the American Dental Association (ADA) and American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) today.The need for preventive oral health solutions is profound in the US – more than 68 million people lack dental insurance and about one in four adults said in a survey they have avoided the dentist because of cost.In addition, school children lose an estimated average of 34m school hours each year due to unexpected dental visits; 2 million Americans visit the emergency room each year because of tooth pain; half a million travel abroad for cheaper care and one in five American seniors lack a single natural tooth. Lack of dental access is so common in some areas, doctors in prison frequently have patients who have never seen one.“One of the things I routinely ask young people in juvenile jail is: ‘Do you have a doctor? Do you have a dentist?’” said Dr Fred Rottnek, former medical director of St Louis county jails in Missouri and now a professor of community medicine at Saint Louis University School of Medicine. “A lot of them have never reported going to the dentist.”Modern inquiry into fluoride’s non-dental health effects began to pick up pace in 2015, when the National Toxicology Program (NTP) requested a systematic review on fluoride’s impact on neurodevelopment. By 2019, toxicology researcher Bruce Lanphear, of Simon Fraser University in Canada, co-authored a study finding fluoride exposure was associated with decreased IQ, which would later be incorporated into the NTP’s systematic review.“That gives you an indication that the science of fluoride is starting to evolve – it wasn’t set in stone 70 years ago,” he said.Lanphear, and a small group of like-minded toxicology researchers, argue now is the time for us to “pause and have an independent scientific committee look at all this new evidence” as “we have a lot of new science specifically about fluoride and the developing brain,” he said.Critics were buttressed again when a federal court ruled in September that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) needed to evaluate fluoride under the Toxic Substances Control Act.But physicians, dentists and mainstream professional associations from the American Dental Association to the American Academy of Pediatrics stand by recommendations for fluoridated water.While some towns step away from fluoride, communities such as Buffalo, New York, are restarting programs.“This is a shame if we don’t take advantage of what we know from the science,” said Koka about the preventive effects of fluoride. “Are there challenges to doing it right? Yes, but should they be so strong they overcome trying at all? That’s a tragedy.”The CDC has also refined guidance about fluoridation in recent years. In 2015, its water fluoridation recommendations went down to 0.7mg per liter of water, from 0.7 to 1.0mg per liter dependent on climate. Later, the CDC issued a 2019 report that advised parents of children younger than two to speak with their dentist about fluoridated toothpaste, and reminded parents of children younger than three to use only a “grain of rice”-sized “smear”.As critics argue that federal agencies’ recommendation lag behind, the US government’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) has become one of the chief funders of research into fluoride’s potential impacts on IQ.“Getting funding from the NIH shows they are interested in this important question,” said Christine Till, an assistant professor at York University in Canada and a co-investigator with Lanphear, whose grant studying tooth dentin and neurodevelopment in Canada was funded by the NIH, but turned down by the Canadian government.Others, such as Ashley Malin, epidemiology professor at University of Florida, and Dana Goin, assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia University, have also received NIH funding to research fluoride’s non-dental health effects. Malin is studying fluoride’s impact on children’s sleep and Goin is investigating reproductive health effects.“There is a lot of ongoing work in this area, particularly in the US,” said Goin. “Hopefully, the results from these studies will help determine whether EPA drinking water regulations and CDC recommendations for water fluoridation are adequately balancing improvements in dental health from fluoridation versus any potential negative effects.”Goin’s current funding builds on her previous work, which found water fluoridation was not associated with small-for-gestational age or preterm births. She is now exploring whether fluoride is associated with gestational diabetes.Malin added that it’s a sign of “progress” that the studies can be discussed: “Over a decade ago, to even ask the question of whether optimally fluoridated, or the concentration in drinking water, could be impacting neurodevelopment was quite controversial.” More

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      Trump’s White House is filling with alleged sexual abusers … led by him

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      Donald Trump was found civilly liable last year for the defamation and sexual abuse of the writer E Jean Carroll – just one of the more than 27 women who have accused him of sexual misconduct. In January 2025, he will again be president of the United States – the first to take office with a court-adjudicated history of sex crimes.And it seems he’s eager to pack the White House with people just like him.Four of president-elect Trump’s cabinet-level nominees have faced serious allegations of sexual misconduct, ranging from workplace sexual harassment to assault, and a fifth is embroiled in a sexual abuse-related lawsuit.As Americans brace themselves for Trump 2.0, it’s time to be clear-eyed about the Maga machine: a history of alleged sexual criminality isn’t a bug, it’s a central part of the hardware; an organizing principle that clarifies how Trump and those like him view their power and how they intend to wield it.Trump’s first choice for attorney general, the former representative Matt Gaetz, was concurrently under investigation by the Department of Justice and the House ethics committee for allegedly violating federal sex-trafficking laws and statutory rape. The disgraced representative also reportedly bragged about his sexual conquests and showed nude photos of women to his fellow lawmakers. On Thursday afternoon, Gaetz announced he would be withdrawing his name from consideration to avoid being a “distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition”, just hours before CNN published a report about a second alleged sexual encounter between Gaetz and a 17-year-old. (The age of consent in Florida is 18.)Gaetz’s withdrawal provided a brief moment of relief. But, still, Trump’s would-be cabinet is filled with alleged criminals, all of whom the president-elect has vociferously defended, and all of whom deny wrongdoing.Elon Musk, whom Trump has tapped for the made-up position of “efficiency czar”, reportedly exposed his penis to a SpaceX flight attendant in 2016 and offered to buy her a horse in exchange for sex. Musk’s company SpaceX paid her $250,000 in 2018 to settle the sexual misconduct claim. He was also sued this year by eight former SpaceX employees, who alleged that the CEO treated “women as sexual objects to be evaluated on their bra size, bombarding the workplace with lewd sexual banter”.Then there’s the nominee for secretary of defense, the Fox News host Pete Hegseth, who was accused of sexually assaulting a staff member of the California Federation of Republican Women in 2017.In the police report that was filed at the time, and which was obtained by the New York Times, the unnamed woman told law enforcement that Hegseth had taken her phone and blocked her exit from his hotel room before assaulting her. Though Hegseth was never charged with a crime, he did enter into a nondisclosure agreement with the woman, which included a financial settlement.Robert F Kennedy Jr was accused of sexually assaulting Eliza Cooney, a former family babysitter, in the late 90s. Trump now wants him to run the Department of Health and Human Services.Finally, Trump’s pick for secretary of education, Linda McMahon, was recently named in a lawsuit alleging that she and her husband, Vince McMahon, failed to stop an employee from sexually abusing children in the 1980s and 90s, when the McMahons were running World Wrestling Entertainment. (An attorney for McMahon told CNN that the lawsuit is “filled with scurrilous lies.”)These picks feel comically brazen, like shots fired directly at the #MeToo movement, which erupted in the wake of Trump’s election in 2016. It’s not a stretch to imagine that Trump, a man who has threatened to sue every one of his accusers and has openly bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy” without their consent, is attempting to exact revenge on a movement designed to use the collective to force consequences for a handful of powerful predators.#MeToo was just one piece of a slate of shifting gender norms over the last decade. Now, we’re living in the middle of a backlash.Roe v Wade has fallen, a known sexual abuser is re-entering the Oval Office, and the very online far right has found a new slogan: “Your body, my choice.”In Susan Faludi’s 1991 book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women,she writes that these moments of backlash are not random. They are “preemptive strikes”, which “have always been triggered by the perception – accurate or not – that women are making great strides”.The perception that women were gaining status at the expense of men’s, combined with the real ways in which many men in this country are struggling economically, socially and mentally, has seemingly helped fuel the Trump campaign.Trump sneered at “childless cat ladies”, courted Joe Rogan listeners and crypto-bros, and trotted out Hulk Hogan to perform hyper-macho drag at the Republican national convention. The campaign deployed far-right influencers to wax poetic on X – which Musk owns – about the dangers of “toxic femininity” and mock the peeing habits of men who supported Kamala Harris.On election day, Trump senior adviser and noted white nationalist Stephen Miller tweeted a very particular plea: “Get every man you know to the polls.” After Trump’s win, the far right were out in full force celebrating what they clearly perceived not just as a win for their preferred political leader, but for their gender as a whole; they flooded X and TikTok with the phrases “your body, my choice” and “get back in the kitchen” and crafted supercuts of liberal women crying.Perhaps what Trump is counting on is that people who oppose the draconian agenda of his administration will be so exhausted by the piling horrors that they’ll get overwhelmed and give up – that all of the allegations will blend together and the backlash will become the norm. And yet, we know where a backlash brews, so does a resistance to it. More

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      RFK Jr sexual assault accuser says she chose to speak out after Super Bowl ad

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      A woman who publicly accused Robert F Kennedy Jr of sexual assault when she worked for him as a babysitter said she was motivated to do so when he released a campaign ad based on a famous advertisement for his uncle, President John F Kennedy.“I literally was just watching the Super Bowl and saw the ad and thought, ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me,’” Eliza Cooney told USA Today.Released when Kennedy was running for president as an independent, the ad attracted criticism from members of the famous Democratic political family. Kennedy Jr apologized – but kept the ad online.Nine months later, after dropping out of the presidential race and backing Donald Trump, Kennedy is Trump’s nominee for US health secretary.A hugely controversial choice given his promotion of vaccine conspiracy theories and other disputed health claims, Kennedy is also one of a number of Trump cabinet picks to be accused of sexual misconduct.Cooney initially told Vanity Fair about how she went to work for Kennedy in 1998, when she was 23 and he was a 45-year-old environmental attorney. Describing a series of unwanted advances, she said Kennedy ultimately “came up behind her … and began groping her, putting his hands on her hips and sliding them up along her rib cage and breasts”, before being interrupted by someone walking into the room.When Kennedy was asked about Cooney’s allegations, he told the BreakingPoints podcast he was “not a church boy … I have so many skeletons in my closet”, but refused to comment further.In the USA Today interview published on Wednesday, Cooney said: “I know that there are hard-working people who don’t have skeletons in their closet. And I wish we were electing people with fewer skeletons in their closet.”In July, it was widely reported that Kennedy sent a text to Cooney after the Vanity Fair story was published.He wrote: “I read your description of an episode in which I touched you in an unwanted manner. I have no memory of this incident but I apologize sincerely for anything I ever did that made you feel uncomfortable or anything I did or said that offended you or hurt your feelings. I never intended you any harm. If I hurt you, it was inadvertent. I feel badly for doing so.”Cooney told USA Today: “I don’t know if it’s an apology if you say, ‘I don’t remember.’ In the context of all his public appearances, it seemed a little bit – it didn’t match. It was like a throwaway.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUSA Today said it had contacted a lawyer for a Kennedy non-profit and Trump’s transition team for comment.Perhaps busy dealing with allegations of sexual misconduct against Pete Hegseth, the nominee for defense secretary, and Matt Gaetz, then the nominee for attorney general, the Trump transition did not immediately respond. The next day, Gaetz withdrew from consideration for a cabinet post.Cooney said she was not speaking out about Kennedy “to try to stall his nomination or upend the confirmation”, but was “just doing it for the public record”, having first told people of the alleged assault during the #MeToo movement, beginning in 2017, when many women named their sexual abusers.Saying that for a long time she “brushed this off a little bit”, seeing sexual assault as “just the price of doing business”, Cooney added: “It’s remarkable that it’s as prevalent as it is. And I just wonder – have we made any progress? This is like a rewind.” More

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      Hear me out: RFK could be a transformational health secretary | Neil Barsky

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      Among the cast of characters poised to join the Trump administration, no one is as exasperating, polarizing or potentially dangerous as Robert F Kennedy Jr. But in a twist that is emblematic of our times, no single nominee has the potential to do as much good for the American people.Bear with me. RFK Jr has been rightly pilloried for promoting a litany of theories linking vaccines with autism, chemicals in the water supply to gender identity, how people contract Aids and saying the Covid-19 vaccine, which in fact stemmed the deadliest pandemic of our lifetimes, was itself “the deadliest vaccine ever made”. He claimed Covid-19 was meant to target certain ethnic groups, Black people and Caucasians, while sparing Asians and Jewish people.In normal times, these notions would be disqualifying. Spouting unfounded scientific claims is corrosive to a functioning democracy. It weakens the bonds of trust in our public institutions, and feeds the rightwing narrative that all government is illegitimate. This is why, writing in the Guardian this September, I dismissed the prospect of RFK Jr, saying his “anti-vaccine work is more likely to make America have measles again”.But these are not normal times. RFK Jr is Donald Trump’s pick to run our country’s health and human services department. He will have a massive impact on our broken, expensive and largely ineffectual delivery of healthcare services. How shall we deal with this?On one hand, RFK Jr’s anti-vaccine views are beyond the pale. To obtain Senate approval, I think he will have to repudiate the unproven assertion that the Covid-19 vaccine was harmful, and embrace the scientific reality that vaccines for measles, smallpox, coronavirus and other contagious diseases are in fact modern medical miracles that spared the lives hundreds of millions of people. And here is where I will part company with many of my Trump-fighting friends: should RFK Jr be able to abandon his numerous conspiracy theories about vaccines, he can be the most transformative health secretary in our country’s history.This is because RFK Jr has articulated what our Democratic and Republican leaders have largely ignored: our healthcare system is a national disgrace hiding in plain sight. He recognizes the inordinate control the pharmaceutical and food industries over healthcare policy, and the revolving door that exists among congressional staffers, pharmaceutical lobbyists and corporate executives. In testimony during hearings chaired by the Republican senator Ron Johnson this past September, Kennedy offered a lucid analysis of what is making America metabolically sick; he railed against big pharma and big food, and drew links between the damage done by ultraprocessed foods such as seed oils and sugars to our health, as well as the efforts of the food industry to come up with chemicals that make these foods addictive.He advocates banning pharmaceutical advertising on television, and wants to clamp down on the corporate ties to federal agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration and National Institute of Health. (To my knowledge, he has not spoken out against the egregious cost of life-saving drugs or unequal access to medical treatment, but hopefully he will get around to that as well.)We spend $4tn on healthcare annually, and lead the world in spending more than $12,000 per person, 50% more than Switzerland, which is the second biggest spender per capita. American doctors dominate the Nobel prizes for medicine, and our medical schools are considered the best in the world. Yet we appear incapable of stemming the epidemic of chronic diseases. A staggering 73% of us are obese or overweight and more than 38 million people suffer from diabetes.This issue hits home for me, as I was diagnosed with severe type 2 diabetes in 2021, and – after receiving terrible medical advice to rely on insulin and metformin – reversed my condition by adopting a diet low in carbohydrates. This year, I published a “follow the money” series for the Guardian, Death By Diabetes, in which I highlighted the heavy influence of big pharma and big food on the American Diabetes Association (ADA). The ADA is a so-called patient advocacy group that sets the standard of care for diabetes treatment in this country, and yet it accepts money from food companies such as the makers of Splenda and Idaho potatoes – two products which have been found to increase people’s risk of getting diabetes.I subsequently wrote about amputations, and the reality that African Americans with diabetes are four times more likely to endure that grim procedure than white people. I view nutrition and metabolic health as a matter of racial and economic equity. I am clear-eyed, I think, of the serious risks to public health that RFK Jr’s unfounded anti-vaccine views pose. But so long as we still have a voice and can find a drop of hope in these terrible times, I think we should try to tilt policy toward the public good where we can. To that end, here is the game plan I believe RFK Jr should pursue.

      Lose the conspiracies and stick to the science. RFK Jr is right, and there is more than ample research to focus on the deleterious impact of sugars and seed oils. Following the money has always been a valuable strategy. Let’s start there.

      Lean on the vast ecosystem of committed researchers, clinicians and writers who have devoted their career to promoting metabolic health, even while knowing they would forfeit access to government and pharmaceutical grants. Many of these mavericks come from top medical schools, but they are a decided minority on their faculties. They include clinicians such as Georgia Ede, Mariela Glandt, Tony Hampton, Eric Westman, scientists such as Benjamin Bikman, Ravi Kampala, Cate Shanahan, and writers such as Gary Taubes, Nina Teicholz and Casey Means. These are heroic people who, in getting to know them and reading their work, I have found to be intellectually honest health practitioners.

      Appoint a diabetes czar to come up with proposals to once and for all fix this deadly and utterly reversible disease. I choose this particularly chronic ailment because it is ubiquitous, ruinously expensive, a disease that disproportionately afflicts the poor, is closely connected to our obesity epidemic, and utterly reversible through diet. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could finally reverse type 2 diabetes in our lifetime?

      Increase federal funding of nutrition studies. The FDA and NIH historically have tilted the research scales in favor of studies that might produce the next blockbuster drug. In reality, we still do not understand why we get fat and why we have seen an increase in chronic (non-contagious) diseases such as diabetes, Alzheimer’s and Crohn’s.

      Severely regulate the ability of cereal companies to market their sugary wares to children, and the ability of pharmaceutical companies to barrage the rest of us with advertisements. Will a Republican-controlled Congress allow for more government regulation – even if it saves lives?
      RFK Jr’s ascent represents a tricky issue for people like myself who strongly supported the election of Kamala Harris. Healthcare is far from the only issue I am committed to, and I am disgusted by the Trump administration’s plans to deport millions of undocumented people, its attack on democratic institutions, and possible abandonment of Ukraine and the Nato alliance. While I disagreed with Liz Cheney about many, if not most, issues, I also embraced her apostasy when it came to the election – I adhere to the approach of not interrupting people you disagree with while they are doing the right thing.After writing something unkind about RFK Jr in the days leading up to the election, I received a private note from Jan Baszucki, a prominent metabolic health advocate I have come to admire over the past year. “With all due respect,” she wrote. “I am a big fan of your reporting on type 2 diabetes. But your comments about RFK Jr … are not helpful to the cause of metabolic health, which is only on the national agenda because he put it there.”Leading up to the election, I believed RFK Jr was fair game. I was, and remain, particularly concerned that his fringe ideas about vaccines and poisons would get conflated with his excellent perspective on metabolic health, and hurt the cause. Now I think we should be constructive where we can advance the public good.The larger question hanging over RFK Jr’s term as HHS secretary is whether Donald Trump will back him up when he takes on the pharmaceutical and food industries. The US’s health is not an issue the president-elect has evinced an interest in in the past. And his embrace of corporate executives such as Tesla’s Elon Musk suggests crony capitalism could be the dominant theme of the second Trump administration. But if we know anything about what makes Trump tick, we know that he responds to positive reinforcement.After all, it was the criminal justice advocates such as Van Jones and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner who coaxed him into supporting the First Step Act, a significant piece of criminal justice reform (and one which Trump now forswears). As founder of the Marshall Project, the non-profit journalism organization that covers the US criminal justice system, I believe criminal justice reform should also be a matter of national urgency, yet at the time, I was ambivalent about efforts to work with the administration. In retrospect, whatever harm Trump might have otherwise inflicted, I would say we are a better country for the First Step Act.We are in a similar dilemma with respect to healthcare today: the system is ruinously expensive and inhumane. If there is someone in the administration who wants to make things better, let’s not interrupt him.

      Neil Barsky, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and investment manager, is the founder of the Marshall Project More

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      in Elections

      Trump’s cabinet picks are agents of his contempt, rage and vengeance | Sidney Blumenthal

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      “Shock” suddenly became the most commonly uttered word in habitually nonplussed Washington DC. After Donald Trump had attempted to subvert the certification of a presidential election, incited a mob, absconded with national security secrets, was convicted as a felon, and waged his Nazi-esque “poison in the blood” campaign, his brazen cabinet appointments are so mind-boggling that even hard-bitten cynics gasp.Sheer hypocrisy would have drawn a yawn. But Trump’s cabinet selections would have startled even the character of Captain Louis Renault in Casablanca, who feigned surprise at discovering gambling in the backroom of Rick’s Café before pocketing his winnings: “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!”If Russia occupied the United States, it would not impose a collaborationist regime of such hare-brained incompetents. Kleptocrats would be expected as commissars, but not patent lunatics. Hitler, for his part, murdered the Nazi radicals in the Night of the Long Knives to solidify his rule over the conservative establishment.Trump declared he would be a dictator on “day one”. But before day one, he has decided to empower some of the most fringe characters floating around his Maga movement. The outrageousness of his nominees is intended above all to force the subjugation of those remaining Republicans who insist on their independence. He has posed a battle royale with the Republican Senate to determine whether it will buckle under his mafia test to recess-appoint his madcap cabinet. He wants to break the Senate and crush it under his heel as his first act. Humiliation is the essence of his idea of power.Trump’s cabinet appointments are agents of his contempt, rage and vengeance. The motive for naming his quack nominees is located in his resentments from his sordid first term for which he pledged retribution. He sees the US government in its totality as a bastion of his “enemies within”. He intends to shatter every department and agency, root out expertise that might contradict his whims, demolish the balancing power of the Congress that could inhibit him, and trample the law that might stand in his way.Wrecking the government is not only Trump’s technique for gaining submission and compliance, but is his ultimate purpose. He will achieve vindication by tearing down anything he feels was used to restrain his destructive impulses or tried to hold him accountable for his past crimes, whether it is the military, the justice system or science itself.Before the election, Trump developed two elaborate plans, one if he lost and the other if he won. In either case, he would attack the federal government. He had learned lessons from the failure of his January 6 coup. His preparation throughout 2024 to declare the election stolen and force a constitutional crisis was the underside of his campaign.In advance, he organized an extensive network of lawyers and political operatives to deny he lost, refuse to certify the election in districts and states to the point of preventing an electoral college majority, and throw the election to the House of Representatives, where the Republicans held the margin from control of state legislatures to cast 26 states for him.In March, Trump ousted the chair of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, because she would not divert the committee’s resources into an election-denial operation and fund his legal expenses. He inserted his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as the new head. She fired 60 staffers, but named Christina Bobb, a former far-right One America Network TV presenter, who was a key cheerleader of the fake elector scheme in 2020, as senior counsel of its election integrity unit. In April, she was indicted along with 17 other Arizona Republicans for fraud, forgery and conspiracy. Trump was named “Unindicted Co-Conspirator No 1”. Bobb’s indictment only elevated her standing as a Trump loyalist.A week after Trump’s election, he appointed the outside counsel for Bobb’s effort, William McGinley, Trump’s cabinet secretary in his first term, as his new White House counsel. In Trump’s first term, his White House legal counsel, Don McGahn, had resisted his pressure to provide him with cause to fire Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, and his successor, Pat Cipollone, objected to Trump’s schemes to overturn the 2020 election results. Trump at last has an in-house lawyer to tell him how to do what he wants.Joe Biden welcomed Trump to the Oval Office on 13 November in a show that the transfer of power was peaceful. Biden’s message was to re-establish a constitutional standard, contrasting with Trump’s graceless refusal to meet with him after January 6. But the atmosphere of normalization was illusory. Biden acted as though by his example regular order could have a chance of restoration. His gesture was nostalgic.Minutes after Trump left Biden’s presence, he announced his nomination of Matt Gaetz to be attorney general. Ding, dong. The clock struck 13, again and again.But Trump had given fair warning.Trump rolled out his team of travesties in the spirit he had promised. “Well, revenge does take time. I will say that. And sometimes revenge can be justified,” Trump said in June on Dr Phil’s Fox News show. When Fox News host Sean Hannity followed up, trying to prod Trump into softening his threats, Trump rejected the opportunity. “When this election is over, based on what they’ve done, I would have every right to go after them,” he said.Trump’s plan upon winning, now unfolding, is to launch a full-scale assault on the federal government from the top down. He has no need to smash into the Capitol with the Proud Boys, whom he has promised to pardon as “hostages”.Certain common characteristics run through his cabinet of curiosities and horrors to mark them collectively unique among any cabinet of any president – alleged sexual misconduct and abuse, drug addiction, megalomania, authoritarianism, cultism, paranoia, white supremacy, antisemitism and grifting. Some nominees meet all these qualifications, others only two, three or four. For a few, it’s just plain and simple self-aggrandizing corruption.Each of Trump’s appointees is there to savage a target on Trump’s hitlist. When he came to Washington he was a relative blank slate, despite hauling a baggage train of scandal from New York. Back then, Trump blithely spoke of getting away with shooting someone on Fifth Avenue. Now, it’s Pennsylvania Avenue, where six people died as a result of January 6. Trump has been in the business of making enemies of anyone trying to enforce the law. The federal cases against him will be dropped to follow the ruling of the US supreme court that he has absolute immunity for “official actions”. Liberated from accountability, Trump is building his government on revenge.Quite apart from his appointees’ dearth of managerial experience and competence, they represent the antithesis of the core mission of the departments and agencies they have been named to oversee. They are not being appointed to run them efficiently, but to rule and ruin.The greatest influence in public life exercised by Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host and former national guard officer before Trump named him as secretary of defense, was in 2019 when he privately lobbied Trump and publicly advocated on Fox for pardons for three military officers convicted of war crimes, which Trump granted.Hegseth has denounced women in the military; they make up 17.5% of active duty personnel and more than 20% of reserves. He has called for the firing of the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Charles Q Brown Jr, who is Black, saying that any general “involved in any of the DEI, woke shit has got to go”.Hegseth was one of 12 national guard members who were removed from Biden’s guard detail at his 2021 inauguration after he was deemed “an inside threat”. Hegseth’s body is covered with tattoos – a Jerusalem cross, a symbol of the First Crusade, inked across his chest, and the crusader slogan “Deus Vult” (“God wills it”) on his arm among other crusader markings. This iconography has become popular with far-right Christian nationalists and white supremacists. The Deus Vult cross flag was carried by insurrectionists at the Capitol on January 6. When the tattoos were spotted by his national guard master sergeant, who wrote of the “disturbing” symbols to the commanding general of Washington, Hegseth was kept far from Biden.The Associated Press first reported the story of Hegseth’s exclusion from proximity near the president. JD Vance attacked the news organization, tweeting: “disgusting anti-Christian bigotry from the AP”.In 2017, Hegseth was the subject of a police investigation for rape in Monterey, California. His second wife had divorced him in September for his affair with a Fox News producer whom he had impregnated. She would give birth to a daughter in August. In October, Hegseth attended a meeting of the California Federation of Republican Women, drank at the hotel bar in the evening, and, visibly intoxicated, was assisted to his room by a female member of the group, who attended the event with her two young children and husband. Something happened. She was bruised. Hegseth claimed they had consensual sex. The police did not press charges.According to a memo given to the Washington Post by a friend of the accuser, also present at the meeting as a participant, the alleged victim and her husband hired a lawyer “to ensure Hegseth didn’t get off without punishment”. Hegseth wound up paying her an unspecified sum of money in exchange for a non-disclosure agreement.Revelations of Hegseth’s alleged behavior have not elicited censure from Trump, but expressions of sympathetic support for the would-be #MeToo victim. “Mr Hegseth has vigorously denied any and all accusations, and no charges were filed,” stated the Trump transition response. Hegseth’s lawyer attacked the woman: “She was the aggressor. She was sober, he was drunk. She took advantage of him.”Hegseth appears to Trump as the ideal man to purge the military. Trump’s transition team has drafted an executive order for a “warrior board” to remove any general or admiral “lacking in requisite leadership qualities”. Trump complained to his chief of staff Gen John Kelly that he wanted “my generals” to be more like “Hitler’s generals”.Hegseth would be his enforcer of politicizing the military so that it never questioned any illegal behavior, like violating the War Crimes Act, or refusing an order to open fire on American protesters. “Can’t you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?” Trump said to Gen Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs, in the presence of the secretary of defense, Mark Esper, about demonstrators after George Floyd’s murder in 2020. Hegseth would not be the defense secretary to advise Trump against invoking the Insurrection Act to impose martial law as Mike Flynn, his disgraced former national security adviser, suggested to him shortly before January 6.Tulsi Gabbard, the former congresswoman nominated to be the director of national intelligence, who flipped seamlessly from far left to far right, has been steady as a rote pro-Russian propagandist, hailed on Russian state media as “our girlfriend”, and has been identified with a secretive Hare Krishna-affiliated sect called the Science of Identity Foundation that mixes vegetarianism, homophobia and Islamophobia.Gabbard is there to wreak havoc on Trump’s phantom nemesis, the “deep state”. His first director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, a former Republican senator from Indiana, closely observed Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin, which he told Bob Woodward was “so strange”, “so subservient”. “Is this blackmail?” Coats wondered.Trump recalls that his first impeachment was the result of a whistleblower complaint from an analyst from the office of the director of national intelligence, who filed a memo about a phone call Trump had with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in which he sought to coerce him into manufacturing political dirt about Biden in exchange for defensive Javelin missiles already approved by the Congress. “I would like you to do us a favor,” said Trump in what he insisted was a “perfect phone call”.Trump was furious at the exposure of his blackmail. “I want to know who’s the person who gave the whistle-blower the information because that’s close to a spy,” he said. “You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart with spies and treason, right?” Now he will send Gabbard to terminate the “spies” of the “deep state”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRobert F Kennedy Jr, nominated as secretary of health and human services, is an opponent of the scientific method for which he reflexively substitutes a priori conspiracy theories. He has grifted millions on bogus claims that vaccines cause autism. “There is no vaccine that is safe and effective,” he said. A decades-long heroin addict and self-confessed sex addict, he has a family who has tried to lift him out of his turmoil, staging interventions for years to have him professionally treated for his psychological troubles, but have been reduced to despair. He claims that his family members have succumbed to “hypnosis”.During the campaign, a family babysitter emerged to accuse Kennedy of numerous sexual assaults. He claimed he had “no memory of this incident but I apologize sincerely”. He said in an interview: “I’m not a church boy.” Meanwhile, he was reportedly involved in an affair with Olivia Nuzzi, a writer for New York Magazine, which cost her her fiance and job. Three other women stepped forward to claim they had sexual affairs with him after meeting him through his anti-vaccine group, the Children’s Health Defense, and at the same time he was involved with Nuzzi, which he denied.But RFK Jr, is promoted by Tucker Carlson and his trailing entourage of lost boys, Don Jr and JD Vance. Carlson and Don Jr persuaded Bobby to drop his third-party candidacy and to endorse Trump. On 31 October, at a rally in Glendale, Arizona, Carlson interviewed Trump and asked him pointedly whether he would appoint Bobby. On 1 November, RFK Jr appeared on the Tucker Carlson Live Tour, where he told a rapturous crowd that in answer to his prayers for the fulfillment of his personal destiny: “God sent me Donald Trump.”Before the election, Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal editorial page confidently informed its readers that Trump’s bizarre statements and inclinations were not to be taken seriously, and that in any event would be blocked by “checks and balances”. After Trump was elected, the Journal has been stunned by the nominations of Gaetz and RFK Jr. “Good luck making sense of this nomination,” it editorialized about Bobby. “Matt Gaetz is a bad choice for attorney general,” ran another thundering piece. Murdoch is out in the cold. The TV host he fired, Tucker Carlson, is the kingmaker.In naming RFK Jr, Trump is reacting to his conflicts during the Covid-19 pandemic, when he wished to ignore it, dismissed mask-wearing and suggested injecting Clorox. He despised the scientists who told him his ideas would not work. He hated his chief medical adviser, Dr Anthony Fauci, and coronavirus response coordinator, Dr Deborah Birx – “all these idiots”, said Trump.Trump also fired Dr Rick Bright, the director of the Center for the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority in charge of vaccine development, for refusing to approve the use of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19, which Bright protested was one of several “potentially dangerous drugs promoted by those with political connections”. Bright testified in May 2020 before Congress that the Trump administration had “no master plan”, that the country faced “the darkest winter in our history” and that in the absence of national leadership, “our window of opportunity is closing.”Trump has not appointed RFK Jr for his famous name, though he must receive gratification from possessing for himself this piece of the Kennedy legacy, however tarnished. Bobby Kennedy Jr is there because he says that he will fire 600 experts at the National Institutes of Health, the foremost medical research center in the world – “all these idiots”. And Tucker Carlson vouches for him.The tangled resentments of Trump’s appointees are cardinal virtues, especially when they overlap with his own grievances. Trump, the adjudicated rapist, credibly accused by dozens of women of sexual assault, whom the sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein called his “closest friend for 10 years”, identifies with Matt Gaetz fending off investigations of his alleged sex crimes. After Trump confided in Reince Priebus, his first chief of staff, that he would pick Gaetz, Priebus concluded: “So, he [Trump] feels like he has gone to hell and back 10 times. So, this is also a big middle finger to the DoJ and the FBI.”At the end of the first Trump administration, Gaetz desperately sought to secure an all-purpose pardon to cover him from the then ongoing federal inquiry into alleged sex trafficking of minors to his alleged participation as a co-conspirator in Trump’s coup. He approached, among others, the deputy White House legal counsel, Eric Herschmann, who testified before the January 6 committee. “The pardon that he was discussing, requesting was as broad as you could describe,” he stated. “From beginning – I remember he said, from the beginning of time up until today for any and all things. He had mentioned Nixon, and I said Nixon’s pardon was never nearly that broad.”In October 2023, Congressman Gaetz provoked the removal of Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House. “I’ll give you the truth why I’m not speaker,” McCarthy said. “It’s because one person, a member of Congress, wanted me to stop an ethics complaint because he slept with a 17-year-old.”On 13 November, Trump named Gaetz attorney general. The next day, Gaetz resigned from Congress. The day following that, the House ethics committee report on Gaetz’s alleged sex crimes was scheduled to be released. But because Gaetz is no longer a member of the House, Speaker Mike Johnson, serving as Trump’s handyman, “strongly requested” that it would violate House rules to make the report public despite precedents to the contrary. He warned it would “open a Pandora’s box”, presumably of other dark secrets about Gaetz and perhaps other nominees.Democratic and Republican senators on the judiciary committee that will hold confirmation hearings have asked for the report. It remains bottled up.Trump does not attempt to hide his intention to “dismantle government bureaucracy” and “send shockwaves through the system”, as he tweeted in his appointment of “the Great Elon Musk” and Vivek Ramaswamy (no “Great” preceding his name), assigned to rampage through the entire government as a “Department of Government Efficiency”. Musk has a long history of conflicts with government regulatory agencies and outstanding unresolved investigations, including a Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry into inside stock trading. Musk’s commission is transparently a case of self-interest.“Doge”, as it is called, after “dogecoin”, a cryptocurrency that Musk has been hawking, is not at all a department, which would require FBI background checks. Musk orbits on a cocktail of LSD, cocaine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms, “often at private parties around the world, where attendees sign nondisclosure agreements or give up their phones to enter”, according to people who spoke to the Wall Street Journal. He speaks privately to Vladimir Putin. During the campaign, he turned Twitter/X into a cesspool of disinformation, a good deal of his own fabrication and streams of it from Russian troll farms. Inexplicably, he continues to hold a security clearance as a government contractor that has not been suspended under review during the Biden administration.Ramaswamy, a venture capitalist and libertarian ideologue who ran for the Republican nomination for president on a platform of abolishing numerous federal agencies from the IRS to the FBI, is completely inexperienced in government affairs, which he has been tasked to reform. He has made confusing, possibly conspiratorial claims about 9/11 and suggested that January 6 was “an inside job”. During his campaign, he stated that his goal was to fire 75% of the federal workforce in short order. Merely a charlatan and a demagogue, Ramaswamy does not stand out as especially peculiar among the wholly unqualified Trump nominees.Trump’s appointment of Doug Burgum, the billionaire governor of North Dakota, as secretary of the interior and “energy czar”, fits the profile of old-fashioned plunder. In April, Burgum gathered oil and gas executives at Mar-a-Lago, where Trump flagrantly asked for $1bn in campaign contributions in exchange for tax breaks and favorable policies.Harold G Hamm, chair of Continental Resources, an independent oil company, who is an investor in a proposed $5.2bn pipeline in North Dakota, helped Burgum organize the meeting. Burgum’s family holds land that profits from Hamm’s business. “Obviously it’s no secret that I helped gather the industry up, oil and gas producers and the entire industry,” Hamm said. He handed Trump a list of more than 100 policies he wanted implemented. “I couldn’t be more thrilled by president-elect Donald Trump’s victory,” Hamm remarked. Then, Trump named as secretary of energy a fracking equipment company executive, Chris Wright, who has declared: “There is no climate crisis.”The volatile elements of petroleum, public lands and leasing deals evoke a scenario from a century ago, of a cabinet appointed by a president who promised to restore the country to its greatness in a “return to normalcy”. During the Warren G Harding presidency, the secretary of the interior, Albert B Fall, accepted kickbacks from oil companies in granting oil leases and became the first cabinet member to be sentenced to prison. It was the worst cabinet scandal in history. Make Teapot Dome Again.Trump seeks to install his cabinet by circumventing the Senate. He insists that the Republican leadership forgo its constitutional duty to advise and consent and instead allow his picks to assume their positions as recess appointments. Trump is also blocking the FBI from conducting background checks. His cabinet nominations have become his instrument for intimidation. He intends to sweep aside checks and balances for one-man rule.The appointment of Senator Marco Rubio of Florida as secretary of state illustrates the kind of behavior Trump wishes to encourage among Republican senators. During the 2016 Republican primaries, Rubio derided Trump for his “small hands”, a signifier for his genitals. “You know what they say about men with small hands?” Rubio jibed.But after Trump was convicted of 34 felonies in New York for paying hush money to an adult film actorto influence the 2016 election, Rubio leaped to blame Biden falsely for Trump’s prosecution. Rubio tweeted: “Our current President is a demented man propped up by wicked & deranged people willing to destroy our country to remain in power.” He added, with flaming emojis: “It’s time to fight [fire] with [fire].”Subservience has now received its reward. Rubio, “Little Marco”, the most conventional of Trump’s cabinet choices, is an example to them all.

      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth More

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      in US Politics

      Trump’s cabinet and White House picks – so far

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      Donald Trump, the former US president set to return to the White House in January for a second term, has begun making selections for his administration, opting for those who have displayed loyalty over those with deep experience.Trump has tasked Howard Lutnick, a longtime friend and pick for commerce secretary, with recruiting officials who will deliver, rather than dilute, his agenda. During his first term, several of Trump’s key appointees tried to convince Trump out of his more extreme plans.Confirmed offer of a roleHoward LutnickRole offered: commerce secretaryRequires Senate confirmation? yesView image in fullscreenTrump nominated Howard Lutnick, co-chair of Trump’s transition team, to be his commerce secretary. Lutnick has uniformly praised the president-elect’s economic policies, including his use of tariffs, and has been praised by Elon Musk as someone who “will actually enact change”.In a statement, Trump said Lutnick would “lead our Tariff and Trade agenda”, and also have “direct responsibility” for the Office of the United States Trade Representative, which negotiates trade deals.Dr Mehmet OzRole offered: Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administratorRequires Senate confirmation? noTrump announced that he has tapped 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 that Oz will work closely with Robert F Kennedy Jr, his pick for secretary of health and human services, to take on the “illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake”.Chris WrightRole offered: energy secretaryRequires Senate confirmation? yesView image in fullscreenTrump announced Chris Wright, an oil and gas industry executive and a staunch defender of fossil fuel use, to lead the US Department of Energy.Wright, the founder and CEO of an oilfield services firm, has no political experience and is expected to support Trump’s plan to maximize production of oil and gas. Wright has denied the climate emergency, saying: “There is no climate crisis.”The Department of Energy handles US energy diplomacy, administers the Strategic Petroleum Reserve – which Trump has said he wants to replenish – and runs grant and loan programs to advance energy technologies. It also oversees the ageing US nuclear weapons complex, nuclear energy waste disposal and 17 national labs.Doug CollinsRole offered: veterans affairs secretaryRequires Senate confirmation? yesView image in fullscreenTrump named the former Georgia congressman Doug Collins as secretary of veterans affairs. Collins, a lawyer and veteran who served in Iraq, defended Trump in his first impeachment trial.Sean DuffyRole offered: secretary of transportationRequires Senate confirmation? yesView image in fullscreenTrump named Sean Duffy, a former Republican congressman and co-host on Fox Business, to serve as the secretary of transportation.“He will prioritize Excellence, Competence, Competitiveness and Beauty when rebuilding America’s highways, tunnels, bridges and airports,” Trump said in a statement. If confirmed, Duffy would oversee aviation, automotive, rail, transit and other transportation policies at the department with about a $110bn budget.Karoline LeavittRole offered: White House press secretaryRequires Senate confirmation? noView image in fullscreenTrump named Karoline Leavitt, a 27-year-old firebrand from his inner circle, as his White House press secretary. Leavitt, who will be the youngest person ever to hold the position, has been seen as a staunch and camera-ready advocate for Trump.Will ScharfRole offered: White House staff secretaryRequires Senate confirmation? noView image in fullscreenTrump announced that he had picked one of his personal attorneys, Will Scharf, to serve as his White House staff secretary. Scharf is a former federal prosecutor who was a member of Trump’s legal team in his successful attempt to get broad immunity from prosecution from the supreme court.Bill McGinleyRole offered: White House counselRequires Senate confirmation? noView image in fullscreenBill McGinley served as cabinet secretary during Trump’s first term and acted as legal counsel for the Republican National Committee during the election campaign.Sergio GorRole offered: assistant to the president and director of personnelRequires Senate confirmation? noTrump appointed his top ally Sergio Gor as assistant to the president and director of the presidential personnel office. Gor previously led the pro-Trump Super Pac Right for America.Doug BurgumRole offered: interior secretaryRequires Senate confirmation? yesView image in fullscreenTrump has announced Doug Burgum, governor of North Dakota, as his pick for secretary of the interior. “He’s going to head the Department of Interior, and it’s going to be fantastic,” Trump said on 14 November at a gala at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort.In 2023, Burgum ran a short-lived campaign for the Republican nomination for president. He went on to become a highly visible, prolific Trump surrogate and advised Trump on energy policy.Steven CheungRole offered: communications directorRequires Senate confirmation? noView image in fullscreenTrump announced Steven Cheung, the principal spokesperson on his re-election campaign, as his communications director. Cheung was Trump’s primary vessel to mainstream media outlets, frequently defending the president-elect and remaining close to his side at campaign events and rallies.Cheung previously worked in communications for the Ultimate Fighting Championship.Tulsi GabbardRole offered: national intelligence directorRequires Senate confirmation? yesView image in fullscreenTrump announced Tulsi Gabbard as his nominee for director of national intelligence. Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman and Iraq war veteran, ran for president in 2020 and then left the party in 2022. She campaigned for and endorsed Trump in 2024. In a statement announcing her appointment in his administration, Trump praised Gabbard for fighting “for our country and the freedoms of all Americans”.Matt GaetzRole offered: attorney generalRequires Senate confirmation? yesView image in fullscreenTrump nominated Matt Gaetz, a hard-right Republican congressman from Florida, for attorney general.Gaetz, a Trump loyalist, was elected in 2016 to represent a red chunk of the Florida panhandle. Since his arrival in Washington, he’s developed a reputation as a far-right provocateur, courting controversy seemingly as a matter of course. In 2023, he led the charge to oust Kevin McCarthy as the Republican speaker.Pete HegsethRole offered: secretary of defenseRequires Senate confirmation? yesView image in fullscreenDonald Trump said on Tuesday that he is nominating the Fox News host and army veteran Pete Hegseth to be defense secretary. Hegseth is an army national guard officer and former executive director of advocacy groups including Concerned Veterans for America and Vets for Freedom.Tom HomanRole offered: ‘border czar’Requires Senate confirmation? noView image in fullscreenTrump has said Tom Homan will be the “border czar” in his administration, taking charge of the country’s “southern border, the northern border, all maritime, and aviation security”. Homan will be in charge of the promised mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. He served for a year and a half in Trump’s first administration as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).Homan is both a Project 2025 author and Heritage Foundation fellow. At a panel in July, Homan said if Trump were re-elected he would “run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen”.Mike HuckabeeRole offered: US ambassador to IsraelRequires Senate confirmation? yesView image in fullscreenTrump announced Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, as his ambassador to Israel. A failed Trump challenger who ran against him for the Republican nomination in 2016, Huckabee is a staunch defender of Israel.In 2018, he said he dreamed of building a “holiday home” in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.Trump said in a statement on Tuesday that Huckabee “loves Israel, and the people of Israel” and will work to bring peace in the region.Huckabee is the father of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who served as press secretary in Trump’s first administration and is the current Arkansas governor.Robert F Kennedy JrRole offered: secretary of health and human servicesRequires Senate confirmation? yesView image in fullscreenTrump has named Robert F Kennedy Jr, the scion of the Democratic Kennedy family and failed independent presidential candidate, his secretary of health and human services. In a statement, Trump said Kennedy would protect Americans from “harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceutical products, and food additives” that have caused a health crisis.Previously, Trump has said he would let Kennedy “do what he wants” with women’s healthcare and “go wild” on food and medicines.Stephen MillerRole offered: deputy chief of staff for policyRequires Senate confirmation? noView image in fullscreenStephen Miller is an immigration hardliner who served as a senior policy adviser in the early part of Trump’s first term. He was the chief architect of the Muslim travel ban and is the founder of America First Legal, a group described by him as the right’s “long-awaited answer” to the American Civil Liberties Union. It is expected he will take on an expanded role in Trump’s second term and help carry out the former president’s mass deportation plan.Elon Musk and Vivek RamaswamyRoles offered: heads of Department of Government EfficiencyRequires Senate confirmation? noView image in fullscreenDonald Trump continued to fill his administration by naming SpaceX and Tesla CEO Musk and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to head up a new “Department of Government Efficiency”. In a statement, Trump said that these appointments “will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people”.Kristi NoemRole offered: homeland security secretaryRequires Senate confirmation? yesView image in fullscreenTrump has selected South Dakota’s governor, Kristi Noem– a staunch ally who has little experience on the national security stage– to serve as the next secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Noem was once under consideration for Trump’s vice-president, but saw her chances evaporate amid backlash to the revelation in her memoir that she shot to death an “untrainable” dog that she “hated” on her family farm. She is currently serving her second four-year term as governor.In the role, Noem would oversee everything from border protection and immigration to disaster response and the US Secret Service.John Ratcliffe Role offered: CIA directorRequires Senate confirmation? yesView image in fullscreenJohn Ratcliffe is another loyalist chosen for a key administration role. He served as director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term after being confirmed by the Senate on his second try following concerns over his experience. In a statement, Trump praised the former Texas congressman’s role in the Hunter Biden laptop saga.Marco RubioRole offered: secretary of stateRequires Senate confirmation? yesView image in fullscreenTrump named Senator Marco Rubio of Florida as his nominee for secretary of state. If confirmed, he would be the first Latino to serve as America’s top diplomat.In a statement, Trump said Rubio would be “strong Advocate for our Nation” and “fearless Warrior”.Rubio, a failed challenger to Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, was rumored to be one of the leading contenders for Trump’s vice-presidential pick before JD Vance was announced. He also help Trump prepare for his 2020 debate with Joe Biden and has served as an informal foreign policy adviser.Rubio is a top China hawk in the Senate. Most notably, he called on the treasury department in 2019 to launch a national security review of popular Chinese social media app TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly. As the top Republican on the Senate intelligence committee, he demanded that the Biden administration block all sales to Huawei earlier this year after the sanctioned Chinese tech company released a new laptop powered by an Intel AI processor chip.Elise StefanikRole offered: UN ambassadorRequires Senate confirmation? yesView image in fullscreenTrump has selected the New York representative Elise Stefanik to be the ambassador to the UN. A Trump loyalist who was floated as possible pick for his vice-president, Stefanik is the highest-ranking woman in the Republican conference in the House of Representatives.Mike WaltzRole offered: national security adviserRequires Senate confirmation? noView image in fullscreenA former US army green beret who now serves as a congressman for Florida, Michael Waltz has solidified his reputation as a leading advocate for a tougher stance on China within the House of Representatives. He played a leading role in sponsoring legislation aimed at reducing the US’s dependence on minerals sourced from China. Waltz is known to have a solid friendship with Trump and has also voiced support for US assistance to Ukraine, while concurrently pushing for greater oversight of American taxpayer funds allocated to support Kyiv’s defense efforts. Trump is reportedly due to choose him for national security adviser.Susie WilesRole offered: chief of staffRequires Senate confirmation? noView image in fullscreenTrump has named Susie Wiles as his White House chief of staff, the first woman to hold the influential role. She was previously the campaign manager for his victorious bid for re-election. Although her political views remain somewhat ambiguous, she is seen as having led a successful and streamlined presidential race. Supporters believe she could introduce a level of organization and discipline that was frequently absent throughout Trump’s first term, marked by a series of changes in the chief of staff role.Steven WitkoffRole offered: Middle East envoyRequires Senate confirmation? noView image in fullscreenSteven Witkoff, a New York City-based real-estate executive and longtime friend of Trump, was chosen to serve as Middle East envoy.In a statement announcing his pick, Trump said Witkoff would be a “voice for peace”. Witkoff has longstanding ties to Trump and the Trump Organization, serving as a major donor and adviser. He testified as an expert witness in the New York attorney general’s case against the Trump family and its namesake business.Lee ZeldinRole offered: Environmental Protection Agency administratorRequires Senate confirmation? yesView image in fullscreenTrump announced that the former New York congressman Lee Zeldin will be selected to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. Zeldin told the New York Post that as EPA head, he will work to “restore American energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs” while cutting the “red tape” that is “holding back American workers”. Trump promised to ensure “fair and swift deregulatory decisions” to allow the US to “grow in a healthy and well-structured way”. Staffers at the EPA fear their mandate to fight air pollution and the climate crisis will be undercut by the incoming Republican administration.Expected offer of a roleScott BessentPotential role: unspecifiedView image in fullscreenA key economic adviser to Trump and ally of JD Vance, Scott Bessent, the manager of the Key Square macro hedge fund, is seen as a possible cabinet contender. The Wall Street investor and a prominent Trump fundraiser has praised Trump’s use of tariffs as a negotiating tool.Ben CarsonPotential role: secretary of housing and urban developmentRequires Senate confirmation? yesView image in fullscreenA retired neurosurgeon and former US housing secretary, Ben Carson has pushed for a national abortion ban – a posture at odds with most Americans and even Donald Trump himself. During his 2016 campaign he ran into controversy when he likened abortion to slavery and said he wanted to see the end of Roe v Wade. When the supreme court reversed its decision in the Dobbs case, he called it “a crucial correction”. Carson could be nominated by Trump as housing and urban development secretary.Richard GrenellPotential role: unspecifiedView image in fullscreenRichard Grenell, an ex-Fox News contributor who is among Trump’s closest foreign policy advisers, is probably in the running for top foreign policy and national security posts. A former US ambassador to Germany and vocal backer of Trump’s “America first” credo on the international stage in his first term, he has advocated for setting up an autonomous zone in eastern Ukraine to end the war there, a position Kyiv considers unacceptable.Robert LighthizerPotential role: trade or commerce secretaryRequires Senate confirmation? yesView image in fullscreenRobert Lighthizer was Donald Trump’s most senior trade official. He is a firm believer in tariffs and was one of the leading figures in Trump’s trade war with China. Described by Trump as “the greatest United States trade representative in American history”, Lighthizer is almost certain to be back in the new cabinet. Though Bessent and the billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson probably have a better shot at becoming treasury secretary, Lighthizer has a few outside chances: he might be able to reprise his old role as US trade representative or become the new commerce secretary.Brooke RollinsPotential role: unspecifiedView image in fullscreenA former domestic policy adviser in the White House, Brooke Rollins has a close personal relationship with Trump. Considered by many to be one of Trump’s more moderate advisers, she backed the former president’s first-term criminal justice reforms that lessened prison sentences for some relatively minor offenses.Not selected for Trump administrationTom CottonPotential role: secretary of defenseRequires Senate confirmation? yesView image in fullscreenThe far-right Republican senator from Arkansas emerged as a dark-horse contender to be Trump’s running mate in the final weeks of the vice-presidential selection process. In a notorious 2020 New York Times op-ed headlined “Send in the Troops”, Tom Cotton likened Black Lives Matter protests to a rebellion and urged the government to deploy the US military against demonstrators by invoking the Insurrection Act. He is well-liked among Trump donors and also seen as a contender for secretary of defense.Cotton has said he won’t take a role.Donald Trump JrView image in fullscreenDonald Trump Jr was active behind the scenes of his father’s re-election bid, reportedly advocating for his friend JD Vance as running mate. Trump Jr said he has decided to join a venture capital firm, 1789 Capital, which bills itself as an “anti-ESG” firm.Trump’s eldest son has built a loyal following in the Maga universe via his Triggered podcast and has taken a role, along with his brother Eric Trump, in the transition process to establish a new administration.Includes reporting by Reuters More