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      Mike Pence urges Senate Republicans to reject RFK Jr for US health secretary

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      Mike Pence, the former vice-president, urged Senate Republicans on Friday to reject Donald Trump’s choice of Robert F Kennedy Jr as health secretary – although he cited Kennedy’s support for abortion rights, while other critics are most outraged at his stance against vaccines.Pence’s comments came as public alarm mounted among Democrats and in health circles about Kennedy, while there were bipartisan warnings that another of Trump’s choices, the far-right congressman Matt Gaetz for attorney general, faces “an uphill battle” to win confirmation in the US Senate, despite Republicans winning the majority in the upper congressional chamber.Pence cited his conservative views on abortion for his opposition to Kennedy’s elevation to secretary of health and human services (HHS).“The Trump-Pence administration was unapologetically pro-life for our four years in office. There are hundreds of decisions made at HHS every day that either lead our nation toward a respect for life or away from it, and HHS under our administration always stood for life,” Pence said in a statement released by his conservative non-profit, Advancing American Freedom.“I believe the nomination of RFK Jr to serve as Secretary of HHS is an abrupt departure from the pro-life record of our administration and should be deeply concerning to millions of Pro-Life Americans who have supported the Republican Party and our nominees for decades.”Prominent medical professionals have joined leading Democrats in speaking out against Kennedy, who has embraced a multitude of debunked health-related conspiracy theories, and whose proposed elevation to the government’s top health job represents “a clear and present danger to the nation’s health” and “a catastrophe”, according to some critics.“I think this is an extraordinarily bad choice. He does not plan to lean on evidence and rigorous analysis to make decisions but instead to use his own ideas,” Dr Ashish Jha, Covid-19 coordinator for the Biden White House and dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, told CNN.Dr Richard Besser, former acting director of the powerful US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told the network that Kennedy’s views criticizing childhood vaccines, including the false claim that they cause autism, were “dangerous”.“Frankly, I find it chilling. He has done so much to undermine the confidence that people have in that incredible intervention,” he said.Trump has been assembling a cabinet for his second term in office, making announcements this week from his residence in Florida, and on Thursday named Kennedy to lead HHS and its associated agencies.He praised the politician, a former independent presidential candidate and outcast from the Democratic Kennedy political dynasty, at a black-tie gala at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday night.“If you like health and if you like people that live a long time, it’s the most important position,” he said. Directly addressing Kennedy, who was in the ballroom of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and private resort club, he added: “We want you to come up with things and ideas, and what you’ve been talking about for a long time.”Democrats were quick to express outrage. The California representative Robert Garcia called it “fucking insane” and described Kennedy as “a tin foil hat conspiracy theorist”.The Massachusetts representative Jake Auchincloss promised to “fight back in Washington to protect the integrity” of federal public health agencies if Kennedy is confirmed by the Senate.“RFK Jr is a conspiracist & quack who threatens the health of Americans. He’s not simply angling for more sunshine & exercise (no one disagrees with that). He seeks to overturn evidence-driven, peer-reviewed research on medicines & more,” Auchincloss posted to X.Shares in several of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies and vaccine manufacturers, including Moderna, AstraZeneca and GSK, plummeted on Friday in reaction to the news.Kennedy has previously said “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective” but told NBC in a post-election interview that he “won’t take away anybody’s vaccines”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump on Thursday nominated a vocal ally of his to be interior secretary – Doug Burgum, the Republican North Dakota governor. The role would put him in charge of national parks and public lands, and he has strong links to the fossil fuel industry, where many companies have strong appetites for government permits to drill and mine on federal land.Republicans will have a majority of at least 53-47 seats in the chamber during the next Congress, but even so, two other of Trump’s picks are already receiving bipartisan pushback: Gaetz and the former Democratic congresswoman turned Republican Tulsi Gabbard, named for director of national intelligence. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton once described her as a “favorite of the Russians”.Gaetz resigned as a US representative for Florida on Wednesday, in effect suspending the planned release on Friday of a report by the House of Representatives ethics committee into allegations of sexual misconduct, including that he had sex with a 17-year-old girl, which he has denied. His nomination as the nation’s leading law enforcement officer was seen by some as a direct challenge by Trump to the incoming Republican Senate majority to defy his authority.“For me the message to the administration is simply that Matt Gaetz has a very long, steep hill to get across the finish line and it will require the spending of a lot of capital,” North Dakota’s Republican senator Kevin Cramer told the Washington Post.“That ethics report is clearly going to become a part of the record.”On Friday, Joni Ernst, Republican senator for Iowa, also said the report was expected to feature prominently in a confirmation hearing. “We’ll talk about it for certain, but I know he’s going to have an uphill battle [for confirmation],” she told NBC News.Other Republicans demanded the release of the report, including Washington congressman Dan Newhouse and Texas senator John Cornyn.Meanwhile former defense secretary and Republican US senator Chuck Hagel published an opinion piece in the New York Times challenging Trump’s controversial nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, as a potential “danger” to political independence, good ethics and progress towards equality in the US military. He also questioned the potential for Trump to sidestep Senate confirmations.Trump has signaled he could resort to rare recess appointments, the archaic process allowing a president to install his nominees while Congress is not in session. More

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      Hardliners, loyalists and a dog killer: Trump’s new White House team – podcast

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      When Donald Trump entered the White House in 2017, he came with a team of veteran Republicans, conventional politicians and celebrated generals, as well as the odd Trump ideologue or family member.As Guardian US political correspondent Lauren Gambino explains to Michael Safi, it was often a bad fit – marked by a record churn of senior staff.This week, as Trump again prepares a cabinet for office, he is doing things differently, valuing loyalty above all, and – from the Department of Defence to Justice to Homeland Security – nominating a series of extreme figures for his next government.Will the Republican-controlled Senate still wave them through? And what effect will the appointments have on Trump’s four years in power if it does? More

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      Trump 2.0: are his cabinet picks more extreme than in 2016?

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      Donald Trump has wasted no time in assembling his incoming cabinet, issuing a flurry of nominations this week that – in some cases – have further heightened fears that his return to the White House will lead to an extremist agenda.The roster of names has inevitably drawn comparisons with Trump’s 2016 victory, when he was reported to have devoted relatively little attention to a transition effort. Back then, his picks were described as “conventional” and the incoming cabinet was said have been broadly in line with that of a traditional Republican.Eight years on and the shape of the Trump 2.0 White House so far has spurred serious concerns about public health and reproductive rights, and left military leaders “stunned” and former intelligence experts “appalled”.Some senators have already expressed doubt that some of Trump’s nominees will garner sufficient votes to be confirmed – even in the Republican-majority chamber which holds the power to deny his appointments.So how do Trump’s cabinet nominees in 2024 compare with those he made in 2016?Secretary of health and human servicesIn 2016, Trump appointed Tom Price, an orthopedic surgeon and prominent critic of Obamacare but he was sacked a year later for using at least $400,000 of taxpayer money for private jets. He was replaced by Alex Azar, former executive at pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, prompting outcry over the proximity of Big Pharma to Congress.On Thursday, Trump said he will nominate Robert F Kennedy Jras the US secretary of health and human services. The scion of the Democratic dynasty rose to national prominence as a persistent and influential vaccine denier, and one rights group responded to his nomination by calling him “a clear and present danger to the nation’s health” . He has amplified unfounded claims that vaccines are tied to autism in children, promoted the false idea HIV is not the cause of Aids and baselessly linked certain antidepressants to a rise in school shootings, and the use of a certain herbicide to a rise in young people coming out as transgender.Secretary of defenseView image in fullscreenTrump’s pick of James Mattis in 2016 was well received by those in establishment defence circles, who reportedly had faith that he would “moderate” Trump. The retired marine general also had deep wells of support on Capitol Hill and Trump himself said he had been impressed by Mattis’s forceful argument against torture. His resignation less than two years into Trump’s first term was described by some analysts as “the last proverbial adult in the room” leaving.This week Trump named national guard veteran and Fox News presenter Pete Hegseth for the role. Hegseth served as a prison guard at Guantánamo Bay detention camp, as well as in Iraq and Afghanistan, before becoming an outspoken rightwing critic of the military. He has called for a purge of generals for pursuing “woke” diversity policies.Pentagon officials were said to be stunned by the choice and the Army Times quoted an unnamed senior military officer as saying there are concerns that Hegseth – who has minimal managerial experience – will be able to manage a government department with a budget of more than $800bn.Secretary of stateView image in fullscreenIn 2016, Donald Trump’s decision to nominate Rex Tillerson – the head of the biggest oil company in the world – as secretary of state triggered alarm among environmentalists and critics of Russian influence. As president and chief executive of ExxonMobil, Tillerson had a history of close business ties to Vladimir Putin.At the time, senator Marco Rubio said he had “serious concerns” about the nomination. In his time in the role, Tillerson clashed with Trump over Iran, North Korea – and the response to Russia’s nerve agent attack on British soil, which the then secretary of state said would have consequences. Trump went on to fire him in March 2018 and Tillerson later that year warned of a “crisis of ethics and integrity” in America.Trump’s choice of Marco Rubio for the role in 2024 was arguably the most hawkish option on his shortlist. The senator has in past years advocated for a muscular foreign policy with respect to China, Iran and Cuba. Over the last few years he has softened some of his stances to align more closely with Trump’s views, but his selection was greeted with relief by many in foreign policy circles.Attorney generalView image in fullscreenTrump’s 2016 pick of senator Jeff Sessions to be chief law enforcement officer for the government was backed by many Republicans, but criticised by rights groups who accused of him of making racist comments in the past.His tumultuous time in the role saw him recuse himself from an investigation into Russia’s role in the election and clash with Trump over the justice department’s independence. He was sacked in November 2018.Congressman Matt Gaetz’s nomination this week has been variously described as “silly”, “the worst in American history” and unlikely to be confirmed by the senate. Robert Weissman, the co-president of the watchdog group Public Citizen said “Gaetz has demonstrated contempt for the rule of law, truth and decency” and was “singularly unqualified to lead an agency that enforces civil rights laws and environmental protection statutes.”A loyal Trump follower, Gaetz’s nomination comes a little over a year after the justice department decided not to charge him as part of a sex trafficking investigation. He also faced investigation from the House ethics committee over allegations that he “engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use”. He has denied all wrongdoing.National security adviserView image in fullscreenIn 2016, the pick of retired three-star army general Michael Flynn to help shape foreign and military policy in the White House drew sharp criticism for his ties to Russia and comments about Muslims.In the end, Flynn lasted just 23 days in the job and resigned after it was revealed that he had misled the vice-president, Mike Pence, about his communications with the Russian ambassador.Congressman Mike Waltz has been seen as a more conventional pick for the role in 2024. A former Green Beret, Waltz has been a leading critic of China who has voiced the need for the US to be ready for a potential conflict in the region.Director of national intelligenceView image in fullscreenThe choice of Dan Coats – a former senator, ambassador and lobbyist – as director of national intelligence in 2016 was seen by many Republicans as the elevation of a dependable conservative voice. Coats went on to clash with his boss on several issues and was eventually fired three days after Trump’s now-infamous phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy which resulted in his first impeachment.On Wednesday, Trump named Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic representative who left the party in 2022 and who has little direct experience with intelligence work, for the role. Gabbard endorsed Trump for president in August.In the past she has criticised the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine in its war against Russia and publicly doubted the intelligence community – which she is now set to lead – after it concluded that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad carried out a chemical attack that killed dozens of his own citizens.Former intelligence officer and Democrat representative Abigail Spanberger said she was “appalled at the nomination” adding she was “deeply concerned about what this nomination portends for our national security.”Secretary of homeland securityView image in fullscreenIn 2016, Trump picked former Marine Corps Gen John Kelly to run the cabinet department responsible for enforcing US immigration laws, as well as a number of important agencies including the coast guard and the Secret Service. His nomination was greeted warmly on both sides of politics, including from the top Democrat on the Senate homeland security committee.Kelly went on to serve as Trump’s chief of staff, but later fell out with the president. Last month he claimed his former boss “falls into the general definition of fascist” and recalled the former president repeatedly lauding Hitler’s achievements when he was in the White House.This week Trump chose Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, for the role. She rose to national prominence after refusing to impose a statewide mask mandate during the Covid pandemic. In January she said the US was “in a time of invasion” and offered to send razor wire and agents to help shore up the border.Noem was reportedly on Trump’s shortlist for the role of vice-president, but was removed after an outcry over her admission that she once shot dead a pet dog, as well as a family goat. More

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      RFK Jr condemned as ‘clear and present danger’ after Trump nomination

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      Donald Trump’s nomination of Robert F Kennedy Jr as US secretary of health and human services has prompted widespread criticisms towards Kennedy, an anti-vaccine activist who has embraced a slew of other debunked health-related conspiracy theories.In a Truth Social post on Thursday, Trump claimed that Americans have been “crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies” and that Kennedy “will restore these Agencies to the traditions of Gold Standard Scientific Research, and beacons of Transparency, to end the Chronic Disease epidemic, and to Make America Great and Healthy Again!”In response to Kennedy’s nomination, Public Citizen, a progressive nonprofit organization focusing on consumer advocacy, said: “Robert F Kennedy Jr is a clear and present danger to the nation’s health. He shouldn’t be allowed in the building at the department of health and human services (HHS), let alone be placed in charge of the nation’s public health agency.”“Donald Trump’s bungling of public health policy during the Covid pandemic cost hundreds of thousands of lives. By appointing Kennedy as his secretary of HHS, Trump is courting another, policy-driven public health catastrophe,” the organization added.Apu Akkad, an infectious disease physician at the University of Southern California, called the announcement a “scary day for public health”.“I’m saying this over and over – but it will be of the utmost importance to ONLY make public health decisions or changes based on robust evidence. I hope we have at least learned this much from Covid,” Akkad added on X.The conservative pundit and lawyer George Conway also commented on Kennedy’s nomination, along with that of Tulsi Gabbard and Matt Gaetz.“Very little of what Trump does these days amazes me. Any one of the last three of Trump’s Cabinet-level picks (Gabbard as DNI, Gaetz as AG, RFK Jr for HHS), standing alone, would arguably have been the worst in American history. The fact that Trump made all three in a span of roughly 24 hours is astonishing,” Conway wrote.California’s Democratic representative Robert Garcia called the nomination “fucking insane”, writing on X: “He’s a vaccine denier and a tin foil hat conspiracy theorist. He will destroy our public health infrastructure and our vaccine distribution systems. This is going to cost lives.”Alastair McAlpine, a pediatric physician at British Columbia’s children’s hospital, wrote: “It is hard to overstate what a terrible decision this is. RFK Jr has no medical training. He is a hardcore anti-vaccine and misinformation peddler. The last time he meddled in a state’s medical affairs (Samoa), 83 children died of measles.”According to FactCheck.org, in 2018, two infants in Samoa died when nurses accidentally prepared the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine with an expired muscle relaxant instead of water. Following the infants’ deaths, the Samoan government temporarily suspended the vaccination program.The temporary suspension prompted Kennedy and his anti-vaccine nonprofit Children’s Health Defense to reportedly spread various falsehoods about vaccinations across the island, in turn resulting in a drastic decline in vaccination rates.A year later, a measles outbreak on the island caused by a sick traveler ended up infecting more than 57,000 people and killing 83, including children.In an interview for a documentary, Shot in the Arm, Kennedy said he bears no responsibility for the outcome.On another health issue, Kennedy has said that Trump would push to eliminate fluoride from drinking water, a mineral that strengthens teeth and reduces cavities, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Throughout his own independent campaign trail, Kennedy has also touted the effectiveness of raw milk and ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug that has been disproved as a Covid cure. In addition to health-related conspiracies, Kennedy has admitted to decapitating a beached whale and collecting its head, and to dumping a dead bear cub in New York City’s Central Park a decade ago because he did not have time to skin it and eat it later.Kennedy has also said that he had a worm in his brain which “ate a portion of it and then died” and vowed “to eat five more brain worms and still beat” Trump and Joe Biden in a staged debate earlier this year. More

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      Trump expected to announce RFK Jr as his pick to lead US health department

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      Donald Trump has announced he will nominate former independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr as the US secretary of health and human services (HHS) in his administration.Kennedy, an anti-vaccine activist, will be a contentious pick to lead the US health department, and the role will need to be confirmed by the Senate.Trump, in a post on his Truth Social platform on Thursday, claimed Americans have “for too long” been “crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health”.“HHS will play a big role in helping ensure that everybody will be protected from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceutical products, and food additives that have contributed to the overwhelming Health Crisis in this Country,” the president-elect wrote. “Mr. Kennedy will restore these Agencies to the traditions of Gold Standard Scientific Research, and beacons of Transparency, to end the Chronic Disease epidemic, and to Make America Great and Healthy Again!”Kennedy had attempted to win the White House himself during the 2024 presidential election but his bid never took off in the polls. After ending his attempt, he eventually endorsed Trump, who promised to put him into an influential position when it comes to health policy.Kennedy became one of Trump’s top surrogates, which came as a surprise to some observers as he is the scion of a famous Democratic dynasty and has had a long history of environmental activism often in causes which Trump will likely do great damage to.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHowever, Kennedy has also become well-known for his anti-vaccine beliefs and embrace of other conspiracy theories around health and wellness issues.His campaign was marked by at times bizarre scandals that ranged from part of his brain had been eaten by a worm to admitting to staging a dead bear corpse in Central Park as the victim of a hit-and-run accident.Kennedy’s nomination to Trump’s government is likely to boost already strong fears that he is keen on appointing extremists and loyalists to his administration rather than experts and technocrats. It follows on jobs for hard-right Stephen Miller on the issue of immigration, Fox News star Pete Hegseth at the Department of Defense and scandal-plagued Maga loyalist Matt Gaetz as attorney general. More

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      Fears mount over Trump’s second term amid flurry of shock selections

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      Fears that Donald Trump’s second presidency will be more extreme than his first have intensified amid a flurry of senior nominations that opponents have criticised as going from bad to worse.Dismay over some of the president-elect’s early picks escalated to outrage after the far-right Florida congressman Matt Gaetz was unveiled as his selection to be attorney general – a position Trump has previously said he views as the most important in his administration.The choice provoked disbelief, even among Republicans, and has fueled concerns that Trump is intent on carrying out mass firings at the Department of Justice in retribution for criminal investigations it instigated against him.Trump reportedly chose Gaetz, 42, after the congressman – who himself was subject to a two-year justice department investigation into suspected sex-trafficking that ended without charges – told Trump: “Yeah, I’ll go over there and start cuttin’ fuckin’ heads.”Others considered for the post were dismissed as too concerned with legal concepts or constitutional niceties.Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer in Trump’s first presidency, called Gaetz’s nomination “a big f… you to America”.“Matt Gaetz is just simply unqualified … academically, professionally, ethically, morally and experientially,” he told CNN this week.The nomination followed two other shock appointments: Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, and Fox News’s Pete Hegseth as defence secretary.Gabbard, 43 – a former Democratic member of Congress turned Republican – would oversee America’s vast intelligence complex despite past accusations of being a Russian asset or spouting Kremlin talking points.Her nomination followed repeated vows by Trump to purge intelligence chiefs who he considers to be part of a “deep state”.Army veteran Hegseth, 44, has railed against “woke” leadership in the military. He was nominated following reports Trump was considering issuing an early executive order that would establish a “warrior board” empowered to recommend the removal of generals and admirals deemed to lack “requisite leadership qualities”.Some observers saw these nominations as a deliberate challenge to Senate Republicans, who on Wednesday elected John Thune to replace the retiring Mitch McConnell as Senate leader after the party won a 53-47 majority in the chamber in last week’s general election.The Senate is constitutionally responsible for vetting senior appointments in confirmation hearings. Forecasts have already rolled in noting that Gaetz in particular would struggle to win acceptance.But Trump has urged the Senate to circumvent such hearings by allowing him to make recess appointments in what is seen as an early test of Thune’s independence.“These choices seem designed to poke the Senate in the eye,” Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice – a non-partisan law and policy institute – told the New York Times. “[They] are so appalling they’re a form of performance art.”The three latest nominees overshadowed concerns about Trump’s appointees on immigration, a key issue which he has highlighted by vowing mass deportations of an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants.Tom Homan, a hardline former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has been chosen as border czar, while Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, who earned notoriety by admitting that she shot her own dog, has been nominated as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.Trump has chosen an even more immoderate figure, Stephen Miller – the architect of the child separation policy for migrant families in his first presidency – as his deputy White House chief of staff for policy, a brief certain to include immigration.Trump had also raised eyebrows with his choice of Mike Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas, as US ambassador to Israel. Huckabee has previously championed internationally illegal Israeli settlements and has said Israel has a “title deed” to the West Bank, which the Palestinians want as part of a future state; he calls the West Bank by its Hebrew name, Judea and Samaria.Steve Witkoff, a golfing partner who was with Trump at his West Palm Beach golf club at the time of a second failed assassination attempt in September, has been chosen as Middle East envoy.Elise Stefanik, a New York representative whose pugnacious questioning about antisemitism brought down two female Ivy League university heads, will be ambassador to the UN, a body she has frequently criticised.Some nominations are relatively uncontroversial, including Marco Rubio, a senator for Florida, as secretary of state, and Susie Wiles, a veteran Republican operative and senior campaign adviser, as White House chief of staff. More

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      Kevin McCarthy predicts Senate won’t confirm Matt Gaetz as attorney general

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      The former Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy is predicting that Donald Trump’s nomination of Matt Gaetz as attorney general will be rejected by the Republican Senate next year.“Gaetz won’t get confirmed, everybody knows that,” McCarthy said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Thursday. Gaetz orchestrated the successful effort to oust McCarthy from his leadership role last year.The comments come amid growing calls by both Democrats and Republicans for the House ethics committee to release its report into Gaetz, from their investigation looking into allegations he engaged in sexual misconduct, illicit drug use and other ethical breaches.The House investigation in effect ended on Wednesday, after Gaetz announced that he would be resigning from Congress following the announcement that Trump would be nominating him to be US attorney general.Picking Gaetz to be the nation’s chief law enforcement officer in the justice department sent shock waves through Washington DC and nationwide on Wednesday.Lisa Murkowski, the Republican senator of Alaska, said that she didn’t think the nomination was “serious” and that she was “looking forward to the opportunity to consider somebody that is serious”.The Republican congressman Max Miller of Ohio also told Axios that Gaetz had “a better shot at having dinner with Queen Elizabeth II than being confirmed by the Senate”.On Thursday morning, Dick Durbin, the Democratic chair of the Senate judiciary committee, called on the House ethics committee to share and preserve its report on Gaetz.“The sequence and timing of Mr Gaetz’s resignation from the House raises serious questions about the contents of the House ethics committee report” Durbin said. “We cannot allow this valuable information from a bipartisan investigation to be hidden from the American people.”Durbin added that the information in the report could be relevant to Gaetz’s confirmation as the next US attorney general.The Republican senator John Cornyn also joined calls for the House ethics committee to release their report on Gaetz on Thursday, saying that he “absolutely” wanted to review the report examining the allegations.“I don’t want there to be any limitation at all on what the Senate could consider,” Cornyn told reporters, according to Reuters. When asked if that meant he wanted to see the ethics report, he replied: “Absolutely.”Gaetz was also investigated by the justice department in a sex-trafficking case, though the department ultimately declined to bring charges last year.Gaetz has insisted throughout both investigations that he was innocent of any wrongdoing.One of the lawyers representing an alleged victim of Gaetz’s said in a statement that Gaetz’s “likely nomination as Attorney General is a perverse development in a truly dark series of events” adding: “We would support the House Ethics Committee immediately releasing their report. She was a high school student and there were witnesses.”Though McCarthy is predicting that Gaetz will not get confirmed as attorney general, there is a mechanism by which Trump could technically bypass a Senate vote, and make a recess appointment, which is when a president can make an appointment without a vote in the Senate while the upper chamber is in recess. Past presidents have used this method, often as a way to circumvent political divides that would slow nominations. More

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

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