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In today’s issue:
- Trump tests Senate with nominations of RFK Jr., Gaetz
- Dems seek Biden’s lame-duck executive intervention
- Jack Smith winds down Trump probes
- Biden heads on final foreign trip
President-elect Trump wants Washington to take him seriously — and literally. After promising voters he would rewire U.S. governance, he’s putting his political heft to the test in a Republican-led Senate already balking at some of his controversial Cabinet picks.
Trump’s choice to make former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) the attorney general hit serious hurdles Thursday. The president-elect’s announcement that he wants vaccine skeptic and disinformation disseminator Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be secretary of the Health and Human Services Department also stunned some GOP senators as well as public health experts.
Trump, emboldened by his decisive election victory and GOP triumphs in both chambers of Congress, is putting moderate and mainstream Republican senators in a tough spot, reports The Hill’s Alexander Bolton. The president-elect has demonstrated his intent to reward loyalists and dismantle the federal “deep state” with his unconventional nominees, including to lead the Defense Department and national intelligence.
Kennedy abandoned a Democratic presidential bid this year to endorse Trump, saying he sought an opening to influence federal food and drug regulation, public health and medical research.
Some GOP senators told reporters the president-elect’s selection of renegade Gaetz, a longtime Trump ally, was instantly on rocky footing. They promise thorough scrutiny of allegations that Gaetz was involved in sexual misconduct and obstruction. He has denied any wrongdoing.
▪ The Hill: Trump announced Thursday he plans to nominate Republican Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, a 2024 GOP presidential primary candidate, to be Interior secretary.
▪ The Hill: Trump says he’ll nominate his personal defense attorney Todd Blanche to be deputy attorney general and his lawyer Emil Bove to fill the No. 3 position at Justice.
The House Ethics Committee, chaired by Rep. Michael Guest (R-Miss.), on Thursday canceled a meeting that was anticipated today to discuss its report about the former congressman. The panel over the summer subpoenaed the woman at the center of the probe, now in her 20s, who, according to reports, testified Gaetz had sex with her when she was 17. Gaetz said such reports are “invented.” Lawmakers, however, want to know more.
“I think there should not be any limitation on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation, including whatever the House Ethics Committee generated,” Republican Senate Judiciary Committee member John Cornyn (Texas) said.
▪ The New York Times: Trump’s Cabinet picks test Senate Republican deference.
▪ The Hill: The president-elect is asking GOP senators to cede their “advise and consent” power to vet nominees while he demands their loyalty.
▪ BBC: What is the Senate process of recess appointments?
Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), who is leaving the Senate at the end of the year to be governor of the Hoosier State, said most of Trump’s nominees are good picks who want to shake up the system, but that not all of them will get confirmed.
“On any that are too far out there they’ve got to go through regular scrutiny in the Senate and some may get stopped here,” Braun said. “That’s the risk you have when you’re pushing that envelope too much.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who started out as a Trump critic in 2016 and says he backs Gaetz, is now the president-elect’s choice to be secretary of State.
“Presidents are entitled to have the people that they want in these key positions to carry out the mandate that’s been delivered to him by the voters of the United States,” he said Wednesday.
The Associated Press: Trump dares Republicans to oppose him.
Four nominees in history failed to clear Senate confirmation to lead the Justice Department. Two were rejected and two withdrew their nominations. In 1993, former President Clinton battled the Senate over attorney general nominee Zoë Baird, who withdrew amid objections that she had employed two undocumented Peruvians. She went on to a legal and business career and in 2022, Baird became senior counselor to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.
SMART TAKE FROM THE HILL’S BOB CUSACK:
The big question for Trump’s nominees this week: Will they get the votes to pass?
Trump announced on Thursday that Kennedy is his choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy, a Democrat-turned-independent-turned Trump supporter, is a controversial choice. His views on vaccines and the food industry could torpedo his confirmation chances.
Most Republicans on Capitol Hill maintain Trump deserves the right to have his own team and want the Senate to quickly confirm his Cabinet.
Trump World wanted Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) to become majority leader, but that didn’t work out, as Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) won the three-way leadership contest. Trump wisely didn’t endorse any candidate.
That was a secret vote. Voting on Cabinet picks is not. So, there could be a handful of GOP senators who take Kennedy down. But the defectors may pay a political price, especially any senator who is up for reelection in 2026.
3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY:
▪ Tropical Storm Sara, the 18th named storm of the season, is likely to bring rain to the U.S. Suncoast after dumping catastrophic flooding across Central America.
▪ Measles is making a comeback and it’s deadly, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns. And walking pneumonia in children has been spiking in the U.S., including in the Washington, D.C., region.
▪ NATO jets scrambled this week when Russian aircraft were spotted off Norway over the Baltic Sea.
LEADING THE DAY
© The Associated Press | Ben Curtis
CAPITOL HILL DEMOCRATS are pressing the White House to pull out all the stops to gird the executive branch against Trump’s promised efforts to tear down federal agencies and restructure them to his liking, The Hill’s Mike Lillis reports. The lawmakers want Biden to get aggressive — and creative — with unilateral actions in the final weeks of his administration. The idea is both to protect the Democrats’ policy victories and to fortify the Justice Department, the intelligence agencies and other offices in Trump’s crosshairs.
“There’s a lot that the Biden administration can do, and I know that they’ve done some scenario planning,” said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.). “It would be a huge political malpractice for them not to anticipate this scenario and have some plans in place.”
Pressed by reporters on Air Force One, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden still believed that Trump posed a threat to democracy, a warning he repeated often during the campaign.
Democrats are quick to point out that, with Republicans in control of the House, no major legislative changes are likely in the lame-duck session. But they see Biden as a kind of preemptive firewall against Trump’s vows to claw back their legislative wins and gut large parts of the federal bureaucracy in a “deep state” purge designed to streamline government and root out his executive branch critics.
“I’ve been here long enough to know you can do some really good things in a lame duck,” said Rep. Richard Neal (Mass.), senior Democrat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee.
The New York Times: Using Project 2025 as a blueprint, the group Democracy Forward says it has prepared a raft of potential legal challenges to respond to the Trump-Vance agenda as soon as Day 1.
Intelligence: Tulsi Gabbard’s expressed support for national security leakers and her elevation of Russian-backed narratives are coming under renewed scrutiny after Trump nominated her to the highest intelligence post in the country. If confirmed as director of national intelligence, Gabbard would be responsible for wrangling the information collected across all 18 intelligence agencies. Gabbard’s nomination surprised many in the national security world, who expressed alarm over her past controversial comments and lack of high-level national security experience.
“What is unusual here is you’ve got somebody who’s had such a long and vociferous track record of saying things that are factually incorrect, that seem to give aid and comfort to U.S. adversaries, and that undermine the very people they should be representing at the principals committee,” said Jamil Jaffer, a former Republican House Intelligence Committee staffer and national security prosecutor. “That’s what makes her an unlikely candidate to be nominated for this job, and to be an unlikely candidate to be confirmed to this job.”
The Hill: Scott Bessent and Howard Lutnick, two prominent supporters of Trump’s campaign, have emerged as the front-runners to lead the Treasury Department during his second administration.
The New York Times: Republicans float Lara Trump, the president-elect’s daughter-in-law, to fill Rubio’s Senate seat in Florida.
Foreign policy: Trump’s emerging Middle East team appears poised to push U.S. foreign policy into even tighter accord with Israel’s far-right government. But his picks have dismayed liberal Jews and Arab Americans alike, including Arab and Muslim voters who sided with Trump as a rebuke of Biden’s Gaza policy. Among Trump’s choices is former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) for U.S. ambassador to the country. Huckabee, an evangelical Christian, said that Israel has every right to annex the occupied West Bank, though much of the world treats Israeli settlements there as illegal under international law (The New York Times).
“There is no such thing as the West Bank — it’s Judea and Samaria,” Huckabee has said, using the biblical names for the territory. “There is no such thing as settlements — they’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There is no such thing as an occupation.”
Then there’s Elon Musk: The tech billionaire met with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations on Monday in New York and discussed how to defuse tensions between Iran and the United States, The New York Times reports. And when Trump spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the phone following the election, Musk joined the call.
“Elon won’t go home. I can’t get rid of him. Until I don’t like him,” Trump quipped to House Republicans this week.
Musk has been a near-constant presence in Trump’s orbit since the election, offering his input on staffing choices and even getting named to a role to propose massive cuts to government spending and regulations. Trump has shown an affection for the billionaire head of Tesla and SpaceX, frequently invoking him in speeches. But some Republicans have questioned how long Trump and Musk can happily coexist, writes The Hill’s Brett Samuels, particularly given Trump’s past frustration with those who take too much of the spotlight.
“Trump is not going to have another alpha,” said one source close to the transition. “I think Trump is going to tire of him.”
WHERE AND WHEN
- The House will meet at 9 a.m. The Senate will convene Monday at 3 p.m.
- The president is in Lima, Peru, to participate in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum. Biden will hold a trilateral meeting with Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba of Japan and President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea. The President will hold a bilateral meeting with President Dina Boluarte of Peru. On Saturday, Biden will be part of an official greeting with Boluarte.
- Vice President Harris has no public schedule.
- Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Lima, Peru, for APEC.
- First lady Jill Biden will travel to Newark, Del., to participate in the dedication in her honor at 2:30 p.m. of the Stanton Student Success Center on the Stanton campus of the Delaware Technical Community College.
ZOOM IN
© The Associated Press | Jose Luis Magana
TRUMP’S CASES: Special counsel Jack Smith on Thursday asked to pause the government’s appeal in the classified documents case against Trump. The request follows a similar one he made in the federal election interference case last week, which U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan granted.
Meanwhile, federal judges have so far often denied efforts by Capitol rioters to push off their proceedings in hopes of a future pardon from Trump, writes The Hill’s Ella Lee.
Just hours after Trump’s election victory, defendants charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack began peppering judges with requests for relief. Trump vowed he’d pardon those charged, and one federal judge has already agreed to delay a rioter’s trial until after Trump’s January inauguration. But that may prove to be pointless if Trump makes good on a promise to pardon his supporters.
Other judges aren’t buying those arguments.
“The Court is not inclined to postpone the conclusion of this matter based on events that may or may not transpire with respect to some or all of the January 6 defendants at some unspecified date in the future,” U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson wrote in response to one rioter’s request.
CLIMATE LEGISLATION: Republicans are poised to claw back the Democrats’ major legislative accomplishments on climate change. Chief in their crosshairs are provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act — a massive climate, tax and health care package that has major incentives for low-carbon energy and was projected to deliver serious reductions in planet-warming emissions, writes The Hill’s Rachel Frazin. While some Republicans have indicated that they don’t want to eliminate all of these incentives, some, like subsidies for electric vehicles, could be on the chopping block.
The Washington Post: Argentine President Javier Milei is evaluating whether to withdraw his country from the Paris climate agreement as part of a broader review of all international policy. Trump withdrew from the accord during his first term; Biden rejoined.
ELSEWHERE
© The Associated Press | Jade Gao, AFP
FINAL FOREIGN TRIP: Biden headed to South America on Thursday for a one last summit with global leaders after more than 50 years in politics. The president will first attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting, or APEC, in Peru and then the Group of 20 (G20) summit in Brazil. Biden will hold private meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping and the heads of Japan, South Korea and Brazil during the summits. The meetings are not expected to yield any major new agreements, but a looming focus of both summits is likely to be Trump (Reuters).
In agreeing to meet with Biden in his lame-duck period, Xi appears to be signaling a desire to maintain continuity and relative stability. But Biden administration officials told CNN they couldn’t predict what direction the countries’ relationship will take once Biden leaves office.
“This is a tough, complicated relationship between the U.S. and China, and so whatever the next administration decides, they are going to need to find ways to manage that tough, complicated relationship,” one senior administration official said.
▪ Bloomberg News: “Not very good news”: Trump’s first mention at APEC is a warning.
▪ CBC: Trump casts a long shadow as world leaders gather for the APEC and G20 summits.
CEASE-FIRE TALKS: A senior official in Lebanon signaled Hezbollah is ready to pull its forces away from the Lebanese-Israeli border in any cease-fire, while rejecting Israel’s demand for freedom to act against the group in Lebanon in the future. An Israeli minister said the demand is a sticking point (Reuters).
CNN: Human Rights Watch accuses Israel of mass displacement in Gaza amounting to a war crime.
OPINION
■ Trump’s national security wrecking crew, by David Ignatus, columnist, The Washington Post.
■ Trump’s recess appointment scheme, by The Wall Street Journal editorial board.
THE CLOSER
© The Associated Press | Andrew Harnik
And finally … 🦆 Congratulations to winners of this week’s Morning Report Quiz about lame-duck moments in history!
Here’s who went 4/4: Richard Baznik, Lynn Gardner, Stan Wasser, Sari Wisch, Joe Summer, Harry Strulovici, Rick Schmidtke, Linda L. Field, Gil Carter, Mark Roeddiger, Mark R. Williamson, John van Santen, Chuck Schoenenberger, Steve James, Pam Manges, Carmine Petracca and John Trombetti.
Readers knew that the U.S. borrowed the term “lame duck” from descriptions of bankrupt businessmen in Britain’s 18th century and from 19th century politicians in the U.K. whose time in office was running out.
The Constitution’s 20th Amendment moved Inauguration Day from March 4 to Jan. 20.
The Watergate scandal, among quiz options, triggered the enactment of 138 substantive, impactful laws in a lame-duck session.
Former President Clinton was impeached during a lame-duck session (and subsequently acquitted by the Senate).
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