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      Trump voters hail controversial cabinet picks as the government they want

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      In the American heartland, they’re excited. Finally, say voters who put Donald Trump into the White House for a second time, they are about to get the president they wanted all along.Even as leading Democrats decry Trump’s cabinet nominations as “agents of his contempt, rage and vengeance”, the former and future president’s supporters are interpreting the selections as evidence that he has finally broken free of the Washington establishment.Democrats are fuming that Trump wants to put a vaccine denier in charge of health, former Fox News presenters at the helm of the Pentagon and transportation department, and at the prospect of Elon Musk slashing and burning his way through the sprawling federal bureaucracy.Even senior Republicans have been less than enthusiastic about some of Trump’s choices. The tapping of the former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz to be the US attorney general ran into the sand after just a few days over allegations of sex with a minor.But many of those who voted for Trump are weighing other priorities.Neil Shaffer, chair of the Republican party in Howard county, Iowa, which twice voted for Barack Obama but has swung ever more to Trump with each passing election, has never been an enthusiast for the former president even if he voted for him three times.“This time around I was still a little lukewarm on the whole thing but I’m very impressed with the people he’s surrounded himself with, especially Tulsi Gabbard and Bobby Kennedy and Elon Musk. With each one of these people there’s a big, big part of their appointment that is reforming and streamlining,” said Shaffer, who works in water conservation for the state.“I like the idea of bringing people from outside government to look at this with eyes from the real world not Washington DC. Washington DC is not the real world. It’s a made-up puppet regime of dark shadows. You’ve got the military-industrial complex, big pharma, big agriculture pulling all the levers. They want all that money. It’s why we got the way we are with our food. I’m actually mystified that he’s this well organised, that all these names are coming out so quickly.”View image in fullscreenShaffer offers a frequently heard view among Trump supporters that the former president was ill-prepared for his unexpected victory in 2016, and was then captured by big business and the Republican establishment in making cabinet appointments. That, he said, held back Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp”.“He was inundated with all these lobbyists and corporate interests and individuals who really were there more to perpetuate the system instead of reform the system,” he said.This time, said Shaffer, Trump has the experience to put in place officials who will represent his ambitions.Among the most contentious nominations, and popular with the next president’s supporters, is the choice of Robert F Kennedy, scion of the US’s most famous Democratic political family, as secretary of health and human services. His liberal critics see a crank who rejected Covid vaccinations and promoted false claims over links between immunisation and autism.But more than a few Trump supporters are focused on Kennedy’s longstanding criticisms of the power of the food and agricultural industry over what Americans farm and eat, and the prescription drug makers’ influence on healthcare.Corporate lobbyists helped ensure that the US government spent more than $100bn subsidising the growing of corn over the past 30 years. Some of that ends up as high-fructose corn syrup now found in most processed foods in the US, from breakfast cereals to salad dressings and soft drinks, and is a major contributor to some of the highest rates of obesity and diabetes in the world.A meme about the unhealthy ingredients in Heinz tomato ketchup made in the US, including corn syrup, compared with the UK version is doing the rounds among Trump supporters enthusiastic about Kennedy’s appointment. As Shafer sees it, corporations are getting taxpayers to subsidise an industry that is killing them.“It’s like I heard Bobby Kennedy say the other day, when you go back to the 1960s and what our health was then to where it is now, our DNA didn’t change, our diet changed. And what spurred our diet to change?” said Shaffer.“The food thing is huge. I’m so happy that he’s going to have a cabinet position.”Bo Copley, a former miner in West Virginia who now works as a salesman, said he was disappointed that Trump did not behave with more dignity during his first term. He’s not confident that will change but thinks the former president has learned from other mistakes, principally in who he appoints to positions of power.“Opponents would consider them radical but for the people who support him, he’s putting people in place who will help him get the job done. There are people that would shake up the establishment in Washington DC. We’re not looking for lobbyists to be in these positions. We’re not looking at people from big pharma to be in these positions,” he said.Copley named Kennedy and Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman who switched to the Republicans earlier this year and is nominated as director of national intelligence, as among the choices he most liked.Nikki Haley, the former UN ambassador who challenged Trump in the Republican primaries, on Thursday criticised Gabbard as “a Russian, Iranian, Syrian, Chinese sympathiser”. But Copley is not alone in welcoming Gabbard’s scepticism about Washington’s escalating military support for Ukraine, including the Biden administration’s decision this week to supply landmines and permit the firing of US-made missiles into Russia.View image in fullscreen“One of the biggest talking points the first time Donald Trump went into office was he’s going to start world war three and he actually de-escalated conflicts. Now we’ve sent Ukraine billions and billions of dollars when we have people in North Carolina who went through humongous disaster, the hurricane, and we offer them $750 apiece when their entire lives have been wiped out. It’s completely asinine to me,” he saidskip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThen there is Elon Musk. Even before he was nominated to head the new “Department of Government Efficiency”, some were questioning how long the egotistical billionaire would remain in Trump’s favour. But Shaffer is particularly keen on Musk carrying through his promise of deep cuts to government spending after the national debt rose by more than $2tn over the past year.“I was in DC this summer. I walked past this ginormous education department building every time I left my hotel. I thought there’s no reason for this to be here. If that money was spent in our local communities, the quality of education would skyrocket,” he said.Copley, too, is enthused at the prospect of Musk “cutting down the wasteful spending that happens in Washington”. He acknowledges that West Virginia, one of the poorest states in the US, is heavily reliant on federal aid to fund education, transport and social services. A relatively high proportion of people on low incomes in the state receive welfare payments and healthcare coverage.“I know that a lot of West Virginians receive money and receive those kind of payments, but I’m all for revamping those so that people don’t game the system and use them as lifelong crutches,” he said.For Ed Bisch the desire to tear down parts of the system is deeply personal. He lost his 18-year-old son Eddie to a prescription opioid overdose in 2001, an early victim of an epidemic that has claimed close to 900,000 lives. Bisch voted solidly Democratic all the way up to supporting Hillary Clinton in 2016 in the belief that the party would take on the big pharma interests that caused the opioid epidemic. But little changed.Then Bisch saw Trump in office and decided he was the president most likely to challenge the drug industry and what he sees as its corruption of American medicine and health regulation.Bisch is enthusiastic about Kennedy, who is a former heroin addict, and JD Vance as vice-president after he wrote a bestseller, Hillbilly Elegy, about growing up in a region blighted by drugs.He is also pleased by the nomination of Pam Bondi to be the US attorney general after Gaetz dropped out. As Florida’s attorney general, Bondi shut down the “pill mills” churning out opioid prescriptions at a time when more oxycodone pills were sold in Florida than all other US states combined.Bisch wants to see Bondi prosecute the Sackler family which owned the company that kicked off the opioid epidemic with the powerful narcotic OxyContin. He’s also counting on Kennedy to follow through on a pledge to “close the revolving door” between the drug industry and its regulators at the Food and Drug Administration which has been accused of allowing the epidemic to take off because of lax oversight and too close a relationship with the drug makers.Kennedy has repeatedly criticised the FDA for conflicts of interest, accusing it of putting the interests of the pharmaceutical industry ahead of the nation’s health.Then there is Trump’s promise to finish building the wall on the border with Mexico. That is primarily about immigration but Bisch said it would also help stem the flow of fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that is responsible for most overdose deaths these days.“I’m excited. Let’s finish the border wall. I agree when people say most of the fentanyl gets in through ports of entry not the open border but once we get the wall built and secure the border, then you can put more resources at the ports of entry. The bottom line is, you’ll never be able to stop it but reducing the supply is a proven way to reduce deaths,” he said.How the desire to see Trump take on a system that has increasingly come to resemble a corporate oligarchy will square with Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s authoritarian plan to impose rightwing control across the entire US government that would also enlarge the power of big business, remains to be seen. Trump has distanced himself from the plan even though members of his first administration were influential in its creation.Shaffer is no fan of Project 2025. He takes Trump assurances at face value and believes the next president will see that his supporters want to see the corporate grip on government broken.“The Democrats have leftwing crazies. We’ve got some wackos out there on the far right and they concocted this list of their priorities. There’s probably some good things in there but there’s a lot of screwball things. I don’t see those people coming to the table,” he said.“I think Trump is going to have enough free-thinkers and people that have already explicitly criticised a lot of the stuff that’s been going on out there. That will be his guiding force.” More

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      Trump picks Brooke Rollins to lead Department of Agriculture

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      Donald Trump has chosen Brooke Rollins, president of the America First Policy Institute, to be agriculture secretary.“As our next Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke will spearhead the effort to protect American Farmers, who are truly the backbone of our Country,” the US president-elect said in a statement.Trump’s nomination of Rollins marks the completion of his top cabinet picks for his incoming administration.If confirmed by the Senate, Rollins would lead a 100,000-person agency with offices in every county in the country, whose remit includes farm and nutrition programs, forestry, home and farm lending, food safety, rural development, agricultural research, trade and more. It had a budget of $437.2bn in 2024.The nominee’s agenda would carry implications for American diets and wallets, both urban and rural. Department of Agriculture officials and staff negotiate trade deals, guide dietary recommendations, inspect meat, fight wildfires and support rural broadband, among other activities.“Brooke’s commitment to support the American Farmer, defense of American Food Self-Sufficiency, and the restoration of Agriculture-dependent American Small Towns is second to none,” Trump said in the statement.In response to her nomination, Rollins wrote on X: “Thank you, Mr. President, for the opportunity to serve as the next U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. It will be the honor of my life to fight for America’s farmers and our Nation’s agricultural communities. This is big stuff for a small-town ag girl from Glen Rose, TX — truly the American Dream at its greatest.”She added: “Who’s ready to make agriculture great again!”The America First Policy Institute is a right-leaning thinktank whose personnel have worked closely with Trump’s campaign to help shape policy for his incoming administration. Rollins chaired the Domestic Policy Council during Trump’s first term.As agriculture secretary, Rollins would advise the administration on how and whether to implement clean fuel-tax credits for biofuels at a time when the sector is hoping to grow through the production of sustainable aviation fuel.The nominee would also guide next year’s renegotiation of the US-Mexico-Canada trade deal, in the shadow of disputes over Mexico’s attempt to bar imports of genetically modified corn and Canada’s dairy import quotas.Trump has said he again plans to institute sweeping tariffs that are likely to affect the farm sector.He was considering offering the role to the former US senator Kelly Loeffler, a staunch ally whom he chose to co-chair his inaugural committee, CNN reported on Friday.In a separate announcement on Saturday, Trump urged Randy Fine, a former gambling industry executive and current Florida state senator, to run in a special election to represent the state’s sixth congressional district in the House of Representatives.Trump’s endorsement of Fine comes after he named Mike Waltz, Florida’s current sixth congressional district representative, to serve as his national security adviser.Writing on Truth Social, Trump called Fine “an incredible voice for MAGA”.“Should he decide to enter this Race, Randy Fine has my Complete and Total Endorsement. RUN, RANDY, RUN!” Trump added. More

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      John Bolton rips into Trump’s pick for counter-terrorism chief Sebastian Gorka

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      Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton has laid into Sebastian Gorka, the president-elect’s pick for counter-terrorism chief, as a “conman” whose selection is not “going to bode well for counter-terrorism efforts when the [national security council’s] senior director is somebody like that”.Trump praised Gorka, an immigrant from Hungary, as a “tireless advocate for the America First Agenda and the MAGA Movement”.But Bolton came out swinging at Gorka on Friday. The neocon, who served in the Reagan, George W Bush and first Trump administrations, has set out his stall against many of Trump’s picks, including former Democrat and Iraq veteran Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, and told CNN that he “wouldn’t have him in any US government”.Earlier this week, Bolton told NewsNation’s The Hill that up until Gorka was nominated by Trump as a deputy assistant to the president and the senior director for counter-terrorism, he would have said that Gabbard’s nomination “was the worst cabinet appointment in recent American history”.Bolton’s not alone in his criticism. Democratic National Committee spokesperson Alex Floyd called Gorka “a far-right extremist who is as dangerous as he is unqualified to lead America’s counter-terrorism strategy”.Gorka is outspokenly pro-Israel and supportive of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and has faced allegations of Islamophobia for supporting Trump’s 2017 Muslim travel ban that barred travel to the US for 90 days for visitors from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.Gorka also claimed that Islam is “not a religion of peace”. He’s come under fire for showing up at Trump’s 2017 inaugural ball wearing an honorary medal from the Hungarian nationalist organization Vitézi Rend and for a previous position serving as an adviser to the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán.Bolton said Gorka “needs a full FBI field background investigation” and his “education claims” need to be investigated.“I think he is a perfect example of somebody who owes his position purely to Donald Trump,” Bolton told the outlet. “He doesn’t display loyalty. He displays fealty. And that’s what Trump wants. …“He doesn’t want Gorka’s opinions, he wants Gorka to say ‘yes, sir’, and I’m fully confident that’s exactly what will happen no matter what it is Trump says.” More

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      Women and LGBTQ+ people take up guns after Trump’s win: ‘We need to protect ourselves’

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      The misogyny and anti-trans rhetoric that were hallmarks of the 2024 election campaign have seemingly ramped up since Donald Trump’s win, prompting some women, queer and trans people to respond by buying guns – and learning how to defend themselves from potential attackers.The Guardian spoke to various Americans from marginalized groups taking firearms classes, arming themselves with stun guns and pepper spray and taking their friends shooting in an effort to protect themselves from bigots they fear will be emboldened by the president-elect’s return to power. A few left-leaning gun clubs say their numbers are increasing dramatically.“I am thinking about carrying every day,” said Ashley Parten, 38, a Douglasville, Georgia, resident who purchased stun guns for herself, her daughter and three nieces after the election. Parten, who is Black and bisexual, is also eyeing a maroon handgun that she plans on buying after taking a firearms class.“We all feel the need to make sure that we’re aware of our surroundings and protect ourselves in general, but even more so now,” she said.Earlier this week, the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, in effect targeted Sarah McBride, the first openly trans person elected to Congress, by stating single-sex bathrooms in the Capitol “are reserved for individuals of that biological sex”. Trump, whose campaign released a firehose of anti-trans attack ads, has promised to ban gender-affirming care for minors and “keep men out of women’s sports”.The president-elect and several of his cabinet picks are also facing sexual misconduct allegations; he and his allies have bragged about the overturning of Roe v Wade and denigrated childfree women.“Our identities are politicized every single day,” said Parten.View image in fullscreenA few days after Trump’s first presidential win in November 2016, Parten said she was filling up with gas in Charleston, South Carolina, when a white man in a red Maga hat shoved her against the pump. She says she elbowed the man and then drove off.“He told me that my N-word president couldn’t protect me any more, because it was Trump country,” she recalled.Some firearms sellers and trainers who serve marginalized groups said they had seen an explosion of interest following the election.“It’s been massively overwhelming,” said Tom Nguyen, founder of LA Progressive Shooters, a gun club that caters to Bipoc and LGBTQ+ people.His beginner pistol course is sold out until June 2025 and he says he’s been “getting more bookings on a daily basis, every single day since the election than I ever have in the past four years that I’ve been doing this work”.The nationwide Liberal Gun Club said it had fielded thousands of new membership requests since the election, about half of which have come from women, with queer and trans people also accounting for a bulk of newcomers. One Wisconsin-based instructor has already trained 100 new members, according to the club spokesperson, Lara Smith. The Pink Pistols, a national gun group catering to LGBTQ+ people, said it had opened six new chapters since the election.Politically motivated gun sales aren’t new, nor are they unique to progressive voters.Barack Obama’s 2008 election resulted in a sustained surge in gun sales throughout his tenure.Just a few days before the election, Michael Cargill, who owns Central Texas Gun Works in Austin, said he saw a spike in sales from conservatives stocking up on firearms and ammo because they believed Kamala Harris winning would result in a second amendment crackdown. (The US vice-president has said she owns a Glock.) Cargill, a Black, gay Republican, said his firearms classes have doubled in size since Trump’s win and are now at capacity. The influx is primarily coming from women and LGBTQ+ people worried about their rights and potential “civil unrest”, he said.The manosphere, an anti-feminist online ecosystem, has embraced Trump’s win with posts celebrating male dominance and the loss of bodily autonomy for women and LGBTQ+ people.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAfter the election, the white nationalist podcaster Nick Fuentes wrote on X: “Your body, my choice. Forever.” Smith, the Liberal Gun Club spokesperson, said many new members said the post motivated them to join.“If there’s men out there that really think like that, I want at least a fighting chance if I ever encounter one,” said Kylee Ortega, a 24-year-old Texan who bought a pink stun gun featuring a cartoon Grim Reaper and a strawberry keychain that can be used to stab people.Trans gun enthusiasts and content creators are also hearing from their previously gun-shy friends who want to learn defensive shooting.View image in fullscreenJessie McGrath, 63, a lifelong Republican who is trans, grew up around guns on farms in Colorado and Nebraska. She decided to vote for Harris when Republicans started attacking gender-affirming care and “wanting to basically outlaw my ability to exist”. She ended up being a delegate at the Democratic national convention.“Government getting involved in making healthcare decisions is something that I never thought I would see the Republican party doing,” she said.McGrath, a veteran and prosecutor, now splits her time between Los Angeles and Omaha, and said she plans on taking a group of friends shooting when she’s back in Nebraska next month.“I’ve seen a huge uptick in women who don’t like guns who are thinking about at least getting trained on it,” she said. “It is a real, valid feeling that these people have, because the attacks have gotten larger. They’ve gotten more vitriolic.”While many women and LGBTQ+ folks cite protection as a reason for owning a gun, and may feel comforted having one, Harvard University research shows that it’s relatively rare to use a gun in self-defense. A meta-analysis by the University of California, San Francisco found that women with access to firearms are three times more likely to be killed than women who don’t have access.Tacticool Girlfriend, a trans woman and gun YouTuber with more than 62,000 subscribers, said she was concerned that people were panic-buying guns because of Trump’s win.“Guns are not going to answer most of people’s problems, even in the realm of self-defense. Training to use and carry pepper spray and studying martial arts will always be far more practical and useful in everyday self-defense scenarios,” she said, noting that gun ownership is costly in both time and money.“If you can’t dry-fire at least once a week and go out to the range once a month on average, you’re likely to become more of a liability to yourself and everyone around you in the event that you ever needed a gun.” More

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      ‘An existential battle’: how Trump’s win is shifting the US media landscape

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      When MSNBC’s morning hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski announced to their viewers last week that they had paid a visit to Donald Trump at his Florida resort of Mar-a-Lago they must have suspected there would be a reaction.The married co-hosts on the liberal news network made hay for years lambasting Trump, especially in the run-up to the presidential election. Now, in the wake of his victory, they told their viewers they were seeking to reset communications with the man they had warned only a few weeks ago was set to bring fascism to America.“Joe and I realized it’s time to do something different,’ Brzezinski told Morning Joe viewers on Monday. “That starts with not only talking about Donald Trump but also talking with him.”Their reward? An online barn-burning by their critics online and a fall in viewer numbers for a show – and a network – already struggling in a rapidly declining US cable news sector. The following morning, broadcast viewing figures for the network plummeted 38%, according to Nielsen Media Research.Yet Scarborough and Brzezinski’s about-face is just one data point in the US media landscape that shows that some core elements of the press in America may be recalibrating its approach to how it covers the second Trump administration and where the all-in oppositional attitude that defined much of the press in his first term is in retreat.Yet the moves come after an election campaign in which Trump frequently attacked the media and dubbed them “enemies of the people”. It comes as his allies have threatened to curb the press and attack their media critics. They have also already launched a wave of multibillion-dollar lawsuits against a host of media companies for their coverage that they often baselessly claim to be bias, such as Trump’s allegation that CBS misleadingly edited an interview with Kamala Harris.Certainly those threats seemed to be at play with MSNBC, which is now also facing an uncertain future as the network is being spun off by its corporate parent, Comcast. A subsequent sale would come under the purview of Trump-appointed regulators.According to Puck News, the couple’s visit to Trump’s tropical paradise was because Scarborough was said to be “petrified” that the president-elect’s Department of Justice would go after him. “That’s what this was about,” a source told the news site about the motive. “It has nothing to do with ratings or Comcast. It’s all about fear of retribution and investigation.”“It was about access and power,” said Jeff Jarvis, a media writer. “But this visit didn’t do anything for access, and they didn’t come back with anything journalistic. They were willing to throw the reputation of the show, their reputations and the reputation of the network over for their own personal fears.”But MSNBC is not alone in facing tough choices. The US media are facing numerous issues: fears over what Trump might do, complex business decisions and interests faced by their corporate owners, and also an understanding that the president-elect won the popular vote, showing that their audiences exist beyond the safe havens of Trump criticism.But these are choppy waters. The Washington Post, famed for bringing down Richard Nixon, has been the focus of controversy under its billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, and the British journalist, Will Lewis, he has tasked with running the once-storied brand.The Washington Post lost 250,000 subscribers after it declined to make a presidential endorsement. Bezos defended the decision, triggering suspicion that Amazon’s role as a defense industry data cloud contractor had played a part. But since Trump won, Lewis has not changed tack and a longstanding and widely respected political editor at the paper was reportedly removed from his job last week.The Post’s controversy has played at the same time as the Los Angeles Times made a similar call to block an endorsement of Kamala Harris, also triggering widespread dismay in the newsroom and a questioning of how critical of Trump the newspaper would continue to be.The Los Angeles Times’ billionaire owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, framed the matter as an attempt at neutrality, though his activist daughter Nika Soon-Shiong also said the decision was informed by Harris’s continued support for Israel as it wars in Gaza – which he later confirmed in an internal email.After years of anti-Trump coverage under Jeff Zucker, CNN is also effecting course-correction. Last week, the cable news giant’s Dana Bash said it was unclear whether a group of men carrying swastika flags marching in Columbus, Ohio, belonged to the far right or far left.“A group of neo-Nazis paraded through that city wearing, waving swastikas, covering their faces,” Bash said. “We don’t know what side of the aisle this comes from. I mean, typically neo-Nazis are from the far right.” The statement immediately attracted ridicule for its seemingly bizarre attempt at neutrality.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSome at the New York Times, too, are offering a more ameliorated tone than under the first Trump administration, even as the paper has continued to break stories on Trump’s preparations to return to power. The columnist David Brooks advocated soon after the election that Trump is a “sower of chaos, not fascism”, adding: “In chaos there’s opportunity for a new society and a new response to the Trumpian political, economic and psychological assault.”It is certainly a complex challenge. The media’s symbiotic relationship with Trump was both nurturing and self-destructive the first time around as readerships boomed, but a significant chunk of the population – the chunk that delivered Trump back into the White House – became even more hostile to the mainstream media and embraced the idea it was “fake news”.The news industry in the US, with a few exceptions, is on life support as audiences fracture and social media traffic referrals dry up. Social media is more trusted by the public, and the press is now facing a second hostile Trump administration with diminished resources.But would a more restrained approach work? Would it attract readers previously hostile to the media, and would it blunt any attacks from the Trump administration?Some are skeptical.“You’re trying to pursue readers you’ll never have and in the process pissing off the readers you do have,” Jarvis, the media writer, said of outlets playing it safe on Trump. “That’s the paradox – mass media still believes in the mass media. The challenge for journalism now is for people to feel heard and a separation from the power structures of politics and money.”The only network firmly in a good place appears to be rightwing Fox News, which dominated 24-hour news broadcasting through the election cycle and seems confident of its identity as America returns to life under a Trump presidency.Fox News finished the week of 11-17 November with its highest share of the cable news audience in the network’s 28-year history across multiple categories, while MSNBC saw its lowest-rated week in quarter of a century.For some observers, all this makes for worrying times ahead as America confronts a president with openly autocratic sympathies and a radical rightwing agenda.“The press is going to find itself in an existential battle for its own integrity if it does not decide to confront and challenge Trump top to bottom. There’s no way a truly free press can be neutral about lies and broken civic norms and survive,” said Jim Sleeper, author and retired lecturer in political science at Yale University.“If the populace has decided to trade in its freedom and rights for stability and security that authoritarians always promise, then the press has to make a choice and decide that honest journalists are dissidents.” More

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      Trump’s pick for budget head worked on Project 2025 – and wants to bypass the US Senate

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      Even before Donald Trump tapped Project 2025 architect Russell Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for a second time, Vought’s thinktank had gotten to work in recent weeks lobbying for recess appointments – a means by which Trump could attempt to circumvent the US Senate’s confirmation process.Vought, who served as director of the OMB during Trump’s first term and of the thinktank he launched in 2021, is advocating for the archaic method to install Trump’s nominees, including Vought himself and some of Trump’s most heavily criticized picks.Many of Trump’s cabinet picks, including Pete Hegseth, Robert F Kennedy Jr and Tulsi Gabbard, could test Trump’s grip on congressional Republicans, some of whom have expressed skepticism about the nominees. Already, Matt Gaetz, whom Trump nominated to head the Department of Justice, removed himself from consideration on Thursday amid a push to release the findings of a House inquiry into alleged sexual misconduct.But Trump and some of his allies are pushing for the Senate to voluntarily go into recess to trigger the recess appointment process for high-level administration posts.“Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted LEADERSHIP position in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments,” Trump wrote in a post on X on 10 November, adding: “We need positions filled IMMEDIATELY!”In a 2,274-word policy brief, staffers with Vought’s thinktank, the Center for Renewing America, argue that the constitution’s recess appointments clause is “broad and extremely powerful” and that Trump has the right to employ it. Vought has also personally advocated for recess appointments, in an 18 November interview with Tucker Carlson.“We have to do things not based on how it has been done recently, like this whole notion of recess appointments,” Vought told Carlson. “He has to stand up an administration quickly, and he’s dealing with an administration that won’t move quickly to install his people.”Vought dismissed the argument that such a move would violate the spirit of the constitution and singled out Ed Whelan, a fellow at the conservative Public Policy Center who called the proposition “cockamamie” and urged congressional leaders to reject it.“Conservative thinktanks, with some exceptions, are not conservative – they’re tools of the left,” said Vought.Later in the interview, Vought described his vision for wiping out swaths of federal administrators, an idea that Trump campaigned on.“The president has to move as fast and as aggressively as possible with a radical constitutional perspective to be able to dismantle that bureaucracy in their power centers,” said Vought. “Number one is going after the whole notion of independence. There are no independent agencies.”During Trump’s first term, when Vought served as head of the OMB, he pressed on culture war issues and sought to block agencies from conducting diversity and inclusion trainings, claiming in a memo they constituted “anti-American propaganda”.With four years to strategize the ways that Trump could accrue executive power to quickly enact his agenda if re-elected, Vought founded a thinktank and preached his vision to Trump allies who could play a role in a second term.At events hosted in the last two years by the Center for Renewing America, Vought has espoused authoritarian ideas and plans for Trump’s administration. In videos obtained by ProPublica, Vought describes invoking the Insurrection Act to compel the military to crack down on protests and intentionally demoralizing career federal employees to push them out of their positions. Vought has openly promoted elevating Christianity in government, complaining in speeches about “secularism” and “Marxism” in America.Vought also played a role in drafting Project 2025, a sprawling policy agenda to reshape the federal government and dramatically consolidate the power of the president. In Vought’s chapter of the more than 900-page document, he prescribes “aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch” and describes the OMB as playing a key role in this effort. According to Vought, the office he will head if confirmed must be “intimately involved in all aspects of the White House policy process”. More

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      Denver mayor says he will urge protests against Trump’s mass deportations

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      Denver’s Democratic mayor, Mike Johnston, has said he will encourage people to protest mass immigrant deportations planned by the president-elect Donald Trump in Colorado, as civic leaders in “sanctuary cities” begin to plan their response to the threat.In an interview with Denver’s channel 9, Johnston, 50, said he is willing to go to jail to stop any deportation efforts. Denver’s neighboring city of Aurora has been a focus of the debate over migration after three apartment complexes were allegedly taken over by the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua.In comments, Aurora city council member Danielle Jurinsky, a Republican, said she had spoken with Trump’s transition team about “Operation Aurora” and warned city leaders that “I hope that we are taking this seriously. This is coming.”Metropolitan areas, including Denver, New York and Los Angeles, have offered mixed responses to Trump’s promise to deport a vast number of immigrants who are in the US illegally. “Sanctuary city” laws typically forbid city employees and resources from being involved in federal immigration enforcement.On Friday, Tom Homan, Trump’s incoming “border czar”, vowed to send “twice as many” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents to Los Angeles to enact mass deportations. LA city council members have warned that Los Angeles will not be collaborating.In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams has said the city has always welcomed immigrants and that law-abiding immigrants and families will be protected, but said that the current immigrant crisis had cost the city billions of dollars, and the federal government had not assisted it in dealing with the influx, estimated at more than 200,000 people.“I’m not allowed to let them work [legally],” Adams said. “I’m not allowed to get them to participate in our tax system.”But Denver’s Johnston walked back comments that he had made earlier this week to Denverite about sending police officers to the county line to stop federal agencies from entering the city.“It’s like the Tiananmen Square moment with the rose and the gun, right? You’d have every one of those Highland moms who came out for the migrants. And you do not want to mess with them,” he said.In the subsequent interview, he said he regretted using the Tiananmen Square image, from 1989, of a man blocking a tank during pro-democracy protests.“Would I have taken it back if I could? Yes, I probably wouldn’t have used that image,” Johnston said. “That’s the image I hope we can avoid. What I was trying to say is this is an outcome I hope we can avoid in this country. I think none of us want that.”Johnston added that his willingness to go to jail over the issue was real.“I would if I believed that our residents are having their rights violated,” he said. “I think things are happening that are illegal or immoral or un-American in our city, I would certainly protest it, and I would expect other residents would do the same.”The mayor also said he would encourage people to protest and that he is not opposed to all deportations – a line that other sanctuary city mayors have also sought to draw – including deportations for violent criminals.“We think if you are a violent criminal that is committing serious crimes like murder or rape in Denver, you should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law and you should be deported,” he said. More

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      US refugee groups are staffing up as Trump’s return sows uncertainty

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      As a second Trump term looms, refugee and immigrant advocacy groups across the country are bracing for what’s to come. The president-elect has vowed to utilize the US military to conduct mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, and there’s no reason to believe he’ll do otherwise.During his first term from 2016 to 2020, Trump made several efforts to end asylum for immigrants and refugees fleeing their home countries, instituted a highly controversial “Muslim ban” and slashed the number of refugees allowed into the country to the lowest ever since Congress passed the Refugee Act in 1980. Back then, however, the Trump administration had some guardrails in judges who ruled against restrictive policies, as well as substantive legal challenges from organizations such as the ACLU, which prevented his administration from fully enacting all of his plans.For this upcoming presidency, Trump aims to be more successful. He will have a much more lenient and malleable landscape, as Republicans control both the House and the Senate, and there is a conservative majority in the supreme court. Tom Homan, whom Trump has selected as his “border czar”, has said that the public can expect “shock and awe” on Trump’s first day in office. Under the second Trump administration, the number of refugees entering the country could dwindle.As such, organizations are working to ensure that they will be able to protect and assist the individuals and families that their groups serve come January. Emily Laney, executive director of the Welcome Co-op, a non-profit in Atlanta, said that the organization came into existence during “the last time resettlement was facing uncertainty” during Trump’s first term in office. This time, they are continuing to build collective power by working together in hopes that they will be prepared for whatever comes.View image in fullscreenThe group, which helps refugees secure housing, is building its volunteer base and trying to encourage people to support families who are arriving and those already in the country. People can volunteer to help set up apartments for refugees, donating hygiene kits and advocating for immigrants and refugees.“My role as the executive director is to build the collaboration and make sure there’s as many opportunities to support newly arrived refugees with housing,” Laney said. “As long as refugees are coming, we are prepared to welcome them in Atlanta and we have the support.” This year, Welcome Co-op said, it has set up 725 apartments for more than 3,200 newcomers and provided clothing and shoes to more than 1,200 people.Since the 1970s, Georgia has “attracted tens of thousands of refugees and immigrants”, according to the UN Refugee Agency. Nearly 11% of Georgia’s population are immigrants and, under the Biden administration, the state settled the third-largest number of refugees. Still, both Biden’s and Trump’s administrations also deported large numbers of immigrants.Refugee Women’s Network (RWN), the only organization in Georgia that specifically serves refugee women, is preparing to aid as many women as possible, while retaining staff, no matter the change in administration, according to Sushma Barakoti, the group’s executive director. Currently, RWN is raising funds to sustain it through four years of the Trump administration.During Trump’s first administration, some refugee agencies were forced to undergo significant job cuts and, in some cases, totally shutter due to a lack of funding. Barakoti said that RWN was hoping that small grants and donations can make up enough funding so that the organization does not have to lay off staff in the event of dwindling numbers of refugees entering the country.She said that the organization had had an opportunity to frankly discuss the situation with supporters after the election.“We had over 200 people there,” she said. “We did talk about the uncertainty that the next administration brings to the refugee and immigrant programs. We almost reached our [fundraising] goal. But then we asked them to stay connected.“We need our supporters not only for donations, but also to take action to call their senators, their representatives, and advocate on behalf of the community that we serve to pressure the federal government. If the funding is going to be reduced, then we want them to also put pressure on their representatives and senators to pass bills.”Barakoti said that it was important for everyone, not just people who have direct connections to refugees, to understand what’s going on.“This is not just here in Atlanta. It’s going to affect all across the country where there’s so many needy families [who] are being resettled with refugees and immigrants,” she said. “I would like to ask people to be involved, be aware of what’s going on and be engaged through donations, through volunteering, through advocating, and be connected to these organizations so that they can be part of the movement.”Though nearby Tennessee does not take in the same number of refugees as Georgia, the state is home to one of the fastest-growing immigrant populations. Nashville, the state’s capital, partnered with US Citizenship and Immigration Services to create Pathway for New Americans, a program to help immigrants who aim to become US citizens.Still, Tennessee has regularly passed restrictive legislation targeted at new arrivals to the US, and independent non-profits and volunteer groups are the organizations that primarily help with resettlement. Their efforts, too, will probably have to change.Judith Clerjeune, of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (Tirrc), said that many of the people in the communities her organization assists view this moment as “challenging and frightening”.“Our goal right now is to be honest with people,” she said. “We don’t know exactly what is going to happen, but we do know the stated intentions of the upcoming administration. They have a published blueprint for what they want to do, and so we’re taking that very seriously and doing our due diligence to prepare and ensure that the community is not caught up.”Under the first Trump presidency, Clerjeune said, many things that happened were surprises. This time, they have a better idea of what to expect. Tirrc already has advocacy and provides immigrant and refugee resources, but under a second Trump administration those efforts will probably only increase in importance.The group is also providing materials and resources for local governments, students, immigrant families and others who may need access to critical services, like adequate translation resources, school enrollment, housing or workplace help or assistance with naturalization. They plan to provide “entry points” for state community partners and other supporters who want to take action.“We have a lot of folks who are interested in [how] they can help support community gaps or possibly be supported in working with families,” Clerjeune said. “And so we’re working with those communities to guide and direct people with entry points when you can support folks.” More