United States Politics and Government

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Want a Job in the Trump Administration? Be Prepared for the Loyalty Test.

      by

      Applicants for government posts, including inside the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies, say they have been asked about their thoughts on Jan. 6 and who they believe won the 2020 election.At the Trump transition offices in West Palm Beach, Fla., prospective occupants of high posts inside the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies typically run through a gamut of three to four interviews, conducted in recent weeks by a mix of Silicon Valley investors and innovators and a team of the MAGA faithful.The applicants report that they have been asked about how to overhaul the Pentagon, or what technologies could make the intelligence agencies more effective, or how they feel about the use of the military to enforce immigration policy. But before they leave, some of them have been asked a final set of questions that seemed designed to assess their loyalty to President-elect Donald J. Trump.The questions went further than just affirming allegiance to the incoming administration. The interviewers asked which candidate the applicants had supported in the three most recent elections, what they thought about the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and whether they believed the 2020 election was stolen. The sense they got was that there was only one right answer to each question.This account is based on interviews with nine people who either interviewed for jobs in the administration or were directly involved in the process. Among those were applicants who said they gave what they intuited to be the wrong answer — either decrying the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 or saying that President Biden won in 2020. Their answers were met with silence and the taking of notes. They didn’t get the jobs.Three of the people interviewed are close to the transition team and confirmed that loyalty questions were part of some interviews across multiple agencies, and that the Trump team researched what candidates had said about Mr. Trump on the day of the Capitol riot and in the days following. Candidates are also rated on a scale of one to four in more than a half-dozen categories, including competence.Karoline Leavitt, the incoming White House press secretary, declined to address specific questions about the topics being raised in job interviews. Instead, she said: “President Trump will continue to appoint highly qualified men and women who have the talent, experience, and necessary skill sets to make America great again.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      JD Vance, Elon Musk and the Future of America

      by

      Beneath all the furor around Donald Trump’s appointments — Matt Gaetz down and out, Pete Hegseth down but maybe coming back, the Kash Patel drama waiting the wings — the most important figures in this administration’s orbit have not changed since Election Day: Besides the president himself, the future of Trumpism is still most likely to be shaped and stamped by two men, JD Vance and Elon Musk.Not just because of their talent and achievements, and not just because Vance is the political heir apparent and Musk would be one of the world’s most influential men even if he didn’t have the ear of the president-elect. It’s also because they represent, more clearly than any other appointee, two potent visions for a 21st century right, and their interaction is likely to shape conservatism for the next four years and beyond.Musk is the dynamist, the believer in growth and innovation and exploration as the lodestars of American civilization. His dynamism was not always especially ideological: The Tesla and SpaceX mogul was once a Barack Obama Democrat, happy to support an active and sometimes spendthrift government so long as it spent freely on his projects. But as Musk has moved right, he has adopted a more libertarian pose, insisting on the profound wastefulness of government spending and the tyranny of the administrative state.Vance meanwhile is the populist, committed to protect and uplift those parts of America neglected or left behind in an age of globalization. Along with his support for the Trumpian causes of tariffs and immigration restriction, this worldview has made him more sympathetic than the average Republican senator to certain forms of government investment — from longstanding programs like Social Security to new ideas about industrial policy and family policy.Despite this contrast, the Musk and Vance worldviews overlap in important ways. Musk has moved in a populist direction on immigration, while Vance has been a venture capitalist and clearly has a strong sympathy for parts of the dynamist worldview, especially its critique of the regulatory state. Both men share a farsighted interest in the collapsing birthrate, a heretofore-fringe issue that’s likely to dominate the later parts of the 21st century. And there is modest-but-real convergence between the Muskian “tech” worldview and Vance’s more “neo-trad” style of religious conservatism, based on not just a shared antipathy toward wokeness but also similar views about the intelligibility of the cosmos and the providential place of humankind in history.So you can imagine a scenario, in Trump’s second term and beyond, where these convergences yield a dynamist-populist fusionism — a conservatism that manages to simultaneously aim for the stars and uplift and protect the working class, in which economic growth and technological progress help renew the heartland (as Musk’s own companies have brought jobs and optimism to South Texas) while also preserving our creaking social compact.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Elon Musk and the Tech Billionaires Steering Trump’s Transition Team

      by

      The involvement of wealthy investors has made this presidential transition one of the most potentially conflict-ridden in modern history.The week after the November election, President-elect Donald J. Trump gathered his top advisers in the tearoom at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, to plan the transition to his second-term government.Mr. Trump had brought two of his most valued houseguests to the meeting: the billionaire Tesla boss Elon Musk and the billionaire co-founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison. The president-elect looked around the conference table and issued a joking-not-joking challenge.“I brought the two richest people in the world today,” Mr. Trump told his advisers, according to a person who was in the room. “What did you bring?”Mr. Trump has delighted in a critical addition to his transition team: the Silicon Valley billionaires and millionaires who have been all over the transition, shaping hiring decisions and even conducting interviews for senior-level jobs. Many of those who are not formally involved, like Mr. Ellison, have been happy to sit in on the meetings.Their involvement, to a degree far deeper than previously reported, has made this one of the most potentially conflict-ridden presidential transitions in modern history. It also carries what could be vast implications for the Trump administration’s policies on issues including taxes and the regulation of artificial intelligence, not to mention clashing mightily with the notion that Mr. Trump’s brand of populism is all about helping the working man.The presence of the Silicon Valley crew during critical moments also reflects something larger. Silicon Valley was once seen as a Democratic stronghold, but the new generation of tech leaders — epitomized by Mr. Musk — often has a right-wing ideology and a sense that they have an opportunity now to shift the balance of power in favor of less-fettered entrepreneurship.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      The Kennedy Center’s Chairman Won’t Depart After All

      by

      As the nation’s capital prepares for a second Trump administration, the performing arts center announced that its chairman would not step down in January as planned.The White House was not the only Washington institution planning to welcome new leadership in January. The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts had announced that its longtime board chairman, David M. Rubenstein, would step down in January and had appointed a search committee to find a successor.But last month, shortly after the presidential election, the Kennedy Center announced that Mr. Rubenstein, a private equity titan who has led its board of 14 years, would stay on in the position until September 2026.The decision ensures continuity at a moment when the Kennedy Center, like much of Washington, is preparing for a second Trump administration. (On Sunday, President Biden is expected to attend the Kennedy Center Honors as it celebrates Francis Ford Coppola, the Grateful Dead and Bonnie Raitt; President-elect Donald J. Trump did not attend the ceremonies during his first term.) But it also raises questions about why the center failed to find a new chair.Deborah F. Rutter, the center’s president, said that on Nov. 15 the board’s search committee decided to keep Mr. Rubenstein on in part because the center is in the quiet phase of an endowment campaign, making a leadership transition “really tough.”“We looked at the needs of the Kennedy Center in a variety of different ways moving forward,” she said in an interview. “It is important for us to have somebody who knows the center and who knows and can play the leadership role that we need.”Mr. Rubenstein, a co-founder and co-chairman of the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm, has given the center $111 million over the years. He was initially appointed by former President George W. Bush. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Defends His Imperiled Pick for Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth

      by

      President-elect Donald J. Trump gave a public show of support to his embattled choice for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, on Friday morning, saying in a social media post that he will be “fantastic” in the job and that he has a “military state of mind.”Mr. Hegseth has spent the last two days fighting to stay as Mr. Trump’s choice to lead the Pentagon amid mounting news reports alleging troubling behaviors over time including rape, sexual assault, financial mismanagement and drunken behavior, which he denies.Mr. Trump’s post on Truth Social amounted to a public dare to Republican senators, a number of whom have expressed private concerns about Mr. Hegseth, to vote against his wishes. The president-elect until now has put relatively little of his own capital on the line for Mr. Hegseth and has even floated alternative candidates, such as Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, for the job.But on Friday, Mr. Trump doubled down publicly on his initial choice.“Pete Hegseth is doing very well. His support is strong and deep, much more so than the Fake News would have you believe,” Mr. Trump wrote. “He was a great student — Princeton/Harvard educated — with a Military state of mind. He will be a fantastic, high energy, Secretary of Defense Defense, one who leads with charisma and skill. Pete is a WINNER, and there is nothing that can be done to change that!!!”A string of damning news articles have reported problematic behavior. One woman filed a police report in 2017 accusing him of rape, which he denied and said was a consensual encounter. He entered into a settlement agreement with her that included a payment of money years later. The New York Times reported that Mr. Hegseth’s mother sent him an email in 2018 during a contentious divorce saying he had “abused” many women in different ways over the years. NBC News reported about concerns about Mr. Hegseth’s drinking, and The New Yorker reported that he had been accused of mismanagement of groups he had previously led.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Picks Frank Bisignano to Lead Social Security Administration

      by

      President-elect Trump announced on Wednesday night that he had chosen Frank Bisignano, the chairman of the payment processing behemoth Fiserv, to be the commissioner of the Social Security Administration, a sizable federal agency with more than 1,200 field offices and almost 60,000 employees.“Frank is a business leader, with a tremendous track record of transforming large corporations,” the president-elect said in a post on social media. “He will be responsible to deliver on the Agency’s commitment to the American People.”Mr. Bisignano vaulted into one of the most coveted positions in the New York finance world in his late 20s as a senior vice president of what was then known as Shearson Lehman Brothers, the investment bank whose collapse in 2008 helped set off a global recession. After nearly five years at the bank in the late 1980s, he moved to other major Wall Street banks, first to Morgan Stanley, then to Citigroup and then JPMorgan Chase & Company.Mr. Bisignano was listed as the second-highest-paid chief executive in the country in 2017, one of the few to have been compensated more than $100 million that year and to have received more than 2,000 times the average employee’s salary at his firm, First Data Corporation, which later merged with Fiserv.Mr. Bisignano has a long history of political giving, mainly to Republicans. Federal campaign finance reports show that his wife, Tracy Bisignano, donated nearly $1 million to Mr. Trump’s campaign in October. But in November 2023, he had thrown $15,000 behind the presidential campaign of Chris Christie, a Republican former governor of New Jersey who ran on an anti-Trump bid but later dropped out of the race.Earlier on Wednesday, Mr. Trump uploaded an elaborate biography of Mr. Bisignano to social media and congratulated him and his family without mentioning the post to which Mr. Bisignano was being named. The president-elect made a clarification an hour later, ending the speculation on what Mr. Bisignano’s next job would be. More

    • 88 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Bitcoin Price Surges to a Milestone: $100,000

      by

      The price of a single Bitcoin rose to six figures for the first time, an extraordinary level for a 16-year-old cryptocurrency once dismissed as a sideshow.In May 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz, an early cryptocurrency enthusiast, used Bitcoin to buy two pizzas from Papa John’s. He spent 10,000 Bitcoins, or roughly $40 at the time, in one of the first purchases ever made with the digital currency.It has turned out to be the most expensive dinner in history.On Wednesday, the price of a single Bitcoin rose to more than $100,000, a remarkable milestone for an experimental financial asset that had once been mocked as a sideshow and a fad. The total cost of those pizzas today: $1 billion.Bitcoin now stands as arguably the most successful investment product of the last 20 years. The value of all the coins in circulation is $2 trillion, more than the combined worth of Mastercard, Walmart and JPMorgan Chase. The motley assortment of hackers and political radicals who embraced Bitcoin when it was created by an anonymous coder in 2008 have become millionaires many times over. And the invention has spawned an entire industry anchored by publicly traded companies like Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange, and promoted by celebrities, athletes and Elon Musk.Even the president-elect says he is a believer. During the campaign, Donald J. Trump marketed himself as a Bitcoin enthusiast, vowing to create a federal stockpile that could push its price even higher.

      Note: As of 10 p.m. Eastern on Dec. 4Source: Investing.comBy The New York TimesBitcoin began as “essentially an experimental hobbyist project,” said Finn Brunton, the author of a 2019 book about the history of cryptocurrency. “To see where it is now is to see a really impressive feat.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 188 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Donors Who Give at Least $1 Million or Raise $2 Million Get Inaugural Access

      by

      President-elect Donald J. Trump is raising money for his inauguration in increments as high as $2 million, according to materials from fund-raisers for the inauguration.A flier titled “Trump Vance Inaugural Committee Benefits” lists the perks of donating $1 million or raising $2 million for the event. Donors who reach that elite level receive as many as a half-dozen tickets to eight inaugural events from Jan. 17 to Jan. 20.After a divisive election, donors and corporations typically put big money into presidents’ inaugural committees as a way to support the president and also to curry favor with an administration that will be in power for four years. There are no limits on the donations that can be made to the Trump committee, which is structured as a political nonprofit for tax purposes, but gifts over $200 are disclosed to the Federal Election Commission.Highlights of the schedule of events for the elite donors and fund-raisers include a reception with cabinet picks and a dinner with Vice President-elect JD Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, on Jan. 18, and an “elegant and intimate dinner with President Donald J. Trump and Mrs. Melania Trump” on Jan. 19, described as “the pinnacle event.” Before the dissemination of this flier, Mrs. Trump had not confirmed her plans to attend the inaugural festivities, which include a Sunday morning interfaith service that the materials say she plans to attend with Mr. Trump.On Monday, Jan. 20, the big donors will receive six tickets each to attend the inauguration itself.Mr. Trump’s first inaugural committee, which was investigated by federal prosecutors for illegal foreign donations and resulted in a 12-year prison sentence for one donor, raised $107 million in 2016 and 2017. The current inaugural committee is being led by Steven Witkoff, a billionaire real estate mogul who has given nearly $2 million to Mr. Trump’s political causes over the past decade and who has been named a special envoy to the Middle East, and Kelly Loeffler, a former Republican senator from Georgia.Mr. Trump is continuing to raise money for his political efforts, too. On Dec. 19, he is expected to headline an event at his private Florida club, Mar-a-Lago, for a pro-Trump super PAC, MAGA Inc., where tickets cost $1 million a person, according to a copy of the invitation seen by The New York Times. More