WASHINGTON—Prime MAGA hell-raiser and Donald Trump cheerleader Matt Gaetz as Attorney General. Fox talk show host and Army grunt Pete Hegseth to run the military. A foe-turned-Trump clone and Cuba critic Marco Rubio as Secretary of State.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who shot and killed her pet dog and who hates migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. She’ll be Homeland Security Secretary, unleashing her against migrants even more.
And an even more extreme migrant hater: Jeffrey Miller, who lobbied to send red state National Guard units to blue states to round up, jail and deport anyone brown. He’ll be deputy chief of staff for policy—a top White House job—for the convicted felon and migrant-hater, incoming Republican President Trump.
Then there’s former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a favorite of the Christian right, as Ambassador to Israel. His simple solution for Israel’s war on Gaza: Palestinians “don’t exist.” Huckabee wants Israel to remain intact until the second coming of Christ who will, according to his fundamentalist beliefs, usher in his thousand-year rule over the Earth after destroying Israel all together. With friends like Huckabee, Israel doesn’t need enemies! For now, though, he’d support turning loose the nationalist Israeli government, its military, and its West Bank settlers to act accordingly.
No reason to back ceasefire
Huckabee also told The Hill he sees no reason to support a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas—and the way to end the Gaza War is to eradicate Hamas, which invaded southern Israel just over a year ago. Eliminating Hamas is one objective of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, too.
Welcome to the not-so-funny funny farm, aka the looming second Trump regime.
Gaetz, Hegseth, Rubio, Huckabee and Noem and more were among the first round of nominees Trump unveiled a week after winning the presidential election. To say Democrats and progressives are appalled is an understatement. But unless they add Republican senatorial dissidents—a possibility where Gaetz is concerned—there’s little they can do about it.
All the Trump picks share two common characteristics. One is absolute fealty, no questions asked, to Donald Trump now and in the future. Nobody’s used the word “quisling,” remembering the World War II Premier of Nazi-occupied Norway and his absolute fealty to Adolf Hitler. Yet.
The other is they were among the most vociferous defenders of Trump, adopting and sometimes embellishing his lies, during the two impeachment investigations and trials he underwent.
The worst, Gaetz, is under House investigation for sexual misconduct, human trafficking of young girls across state lines, improper gifts and obstructing the panel’s investigations. But when Trump named Gaetz his Attorney General pick, Gaetz promptly resigned his House seat, automatically terminating the probes.
“Donald Trump is very intentional with this pick….Donald Trump is ready to move forward by giving Matt Gaetz the Attorney General’s” job, Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., told The Hill. “He’s giving” the post to “someone who’s fiercely loyal, fiercely competent, and so look, Donald Trump told the American people what he wanted to do…Elections have consequences.”
The president-elect claims, without proof, Gaetz “will end weaponized government, protect our borders, dismantle criminal organizations and restore Americans’ badly-shattered Faith and Confidence in the Justice Department.” One wonders if Gaetz is to push deportation of convicted criminals why he doesn’t start with incoming President Trump.
Democrats and their progressive allies at least seem to be focusing their initial fire on Gaetz, a hell-raiser as a member of the “Crazy Eight” of the so-called House Freedom Caucus. He unseated a former GOP House Speaker and earlier fought on the House floor with Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., a more conventional Republican.
But the problem in naming Gaetz as Attorney General is that it’s not just Gaetz. It’ll be his impact on administration of justice, or lack of it. Trump openly hates the agency. Nonpartisan analysts cite Trump’s determination to use it to punish his political enemies. Remember “Lock her up!”?
They are in an uproar over his selection of Tulsi Gabbard for chief of intelligence because of her past opposition to CIA crimes around the world but not for her current support of the right-wing government in India. They also oppose her criticism of NATO expansion, the war in Ukraine and her alleged agreement on numerous issues with the Russian leader, Putin. A big problem with Gabbard is that she has set the need for Democratic Party support of economic populism against the party’s support for inclusivity and human rights.
If senators give him the nod, Gaetz will have a ready-made playbook to politicize DOJ: Trump’s agenda, aka Project 2025. It demands gutting DOJ, installing “partisan agents to implement highly politicized agendas, aim at marginalized communities, and instill a punishing standard of unquestioned fealty to the president,” analysts point out.
Demands total immunity
The agenda also demands total immunity for law enforcers who wantonly kill, “callous, unconstitutional immigration policies” and prioritizing “investigating violent crime by sabotaging the department’s white-collar, corporate, and environmental crime units” through shifting staff. It also declares the FBI should “pivot to protecting white supremacists and far-right agitators,” the militarized Trumpites.
No wonder news reports say thousands of DOJ workers are considering fleeing for the exit door—before Trump fires them and replaces them with his loyalists.
“We’ve all seen this movie before and it’s going to be worse,” one former DOJ official who served there under several presidents, ending with Trump, told Politico. “It will be worse. It’s just a question of how much worse it’s going to be.”
One key departee: Special Counsel Jack Smith. He’s been running long-stalled federal court cases against Trump in D.C., for depriving people of their right to vote via the U.S. Capitol insurrection four years ago, and in Florida, for illegally taking secret papers—such as a Pentagon plan to invade Iran—and stashing them at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Smith plans to resign two days before Trump’s inauguration, anticipating Trump’s DOJ will drop the cases. Trump threatens to arrest Smith or expel him from the U.S.
As for the other top Trump picks:
- Rubio, Florida’s senior senator, is slated to head the State Department. He ran against Trump in GOP presidential primaries eight years ago. He lost to Trump by 431,000 votes in his own state and withdrew the next day. A vociferous critic of the Cuban government—a key cause of right-wing exiles in his hometown of Miami—Rubio now focuses his criticism on the People’s Republic of China and on U.S. “corporate and political leaders who assumed capitalism would change China,” his senatorial website says. “That thinking was naive and dangerous.”
Trump has a shifting relationship with China, which will be an important issue at the State Department.
The president-elect claims to get along well with Chinese President Xi Jinping. But Trump, braying about “America First,” used his campaign to threaten to slam tariffs of up to 1000% on imported Chinese goods. Without proof, he declared tariffs would force firms to move factories here.
- Hegseth, a ten-year Army enlisted man, served in Iraq, Afghanistan and the prison for 9/11 captives at Guantánamo Bay. The GOP has blocked all of Biden’s attempts to close the prison.
“Pete has spent his entire life as a Warrior for the Troops, and for the Country. Pete is tough, smart and a true believer in America First,” Trump tweeted on X. “With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice-Our Military will be Great Again, and America will Never Back Down.”
A Fox News host
Hegseth is a Fox “News” host of a Sunday show for the last eight years. What he’s really known for, says Al.com, the online version of the former Birmingham, Ala., News, is loyalty to Trump. Hegseth’s “key test will be loyalty and a willingness to do whatever Trump wants, as he [Trump] seeks to avoid the pushback he got from the Pentagon the first time around.”
- Trump named former Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., to lead the Environmental Protection Agency—and to implement Trump’s plans to deregulate the fossil fuel industries of coal, oil and natural gas,. The two would also wipe out and dismantle Democratic President Joe Biden’s clean energy agenda, and end its funding. AP reported Trump also wants Zeldin to force California to roll back its stronger air quality standards, which many other states follow, too.
Trump and his adviser, multibillionaire Elon Musk, also target the EPA for massive job cuts, sacrificing scientific expertise there. Trump subverted science in favor of PR during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Lee, with a very strong legal background, has been a true fighter for America First policies,” Trump said in a statement. “He will ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses, while at the same time maintaining the highest environmental standards,” a pledge green groups believe Trump and Zeldin will break.
“We’ve read the Project 2025—the road map for a second Trump term—and will fight tooth and nail to make sure it becomes a dead end,” retorts Jason Walsh, executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, an organization uniting unions, led by the Steelworkers, with environmental groups.
“We will not stand aside when Trump comes to attack union workers, the environment, and our freedoms. We will stand together in solidarity with our partners and allies and work together at the local, state, and federal levels to protect our fundamental rights, the health and safety of workers and communities, the investments across America driving a clean energy future, and our very democracy.
“Buckle up, Donald. We’re ready for this fight.”
Zeldin was more straightforward, in a tweet on X: “We will restore US energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs, and make the US the global leader of AI [artificial intelligence]. We will do so while protecting access to clean air and water.”
- Top Trump aide Jeffrey Miller hasn’t changed his hatred of migrants. “Illegals are raping and murdering American children,” he lied, just as his boss, Trump, does. “All the men of America need to fulfill their duty, get to the voting booth, and end the invasion once and for all,” Miller tweeted on X on Election Day. Now Miller will get to push hardline migration policy from a top White House post—and one which doesn’t need Senate approval or accountability.
- Kristi Noem sent several thousand armed South Dakota National Guard members to the Texas-Mexico border to help right-wing GOP Gov. Greg Abbott round up, detain and return migrants trying to flee across to seek asylum. As Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary, she could dispatch Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents nationwide.
ICE agents gleefully raid factories, churches, schools and farms, including cases where owners call them in to stop union organizing, by arresting the organizers. Agents pick up, hold and deport anyone who looks Hispanic, often yanking parents away from crying children. Then ICE sends the orphaned kids to the Health and Human Services Department for “relocation.” Hundreds have been lost since.
- Trump talks of making Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a vaccine denier who even opposes fluoride in drinking water—another longtime right-wing bugaboo—HHS Secretary. He hasn’t done so yet. Kennedy still inveighs against vaccines too.
- Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., the House’s third-ranking Republican, who hails from a sprawling district of upstate New York, would be Trump’s spokeswoman to the world as UN Ambassador.
Made a name for herself
Stefanik made a name for herself by defending Trump on the House Judiciary Committee and, this year, skewering and forcing the resignations of university presidents who, defending free speech on campus, refused to send police to clobber and evict pro-Palestinian—and sometimes anti-Semitic–demonstrators.
- Former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tom Homan as “border czar,” a position that doesn’t need a senatorial OK. When Homan held the acting ICE post during the first Trump regime, he established the policy of forcibly separating kids from their parents. Under his reign at ICE, there was also a 40% surge in deportation arrests. And Homan ordered ICE arrests at courthouses and of pregnant women.
“No one’s off the table. If you’re here illegally, you better be looking over your shoulder. You’ve got my word. Trump comes back in January, I’ll be in his heels coming back, and I will run the biggest deportation operation this country’s ever seen,” Homan told a right-wing conference earlier this year.
More recently, Homan ducked questions about sending soldiers to find and deport migrants, adding he would “concentrate on the public safety threats and the national security threats first, because they’re the worst of the worst…Any border czar needs to be a person who coordinates an all-government response to the border,” he told Fox News.
As Trump makes his picks, Democrats are floundering. Meanwhile some Republicans—non-Trump supporters—are skeptical, especially of Gaetz.
- Some Democratic “moderates” urge current Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to concentrate on approving money bills, confirming Biden’s remaining federal judgeship nominees and scrap everything else.
- The Nation magazine urged action on a post important to workers, reconfirming National Labor Relations Board chair Lauren McFarren to that job. The Senate Labor Committee, headed by strong pro-worker Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ind-Vt., voted for her, on party lines, in August.
Schumer has let it sit. The GOP takes over the committee next year. The NLRB chair nod would be dead, though McFarren would still hold her board seat. “There’s no time to waste in getting McFarren over the line,” The Nation said. The chair has a big say over the board agenda and what cases it hears.
McFarren’s board and NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo have issued rules punishing bosses for retaliating against organizing drives, dumped Trump anti-worker directives and secured basic collective bargaining rights.
On November 13, the board voted to outlaw bosses’ captive audience meetings—a tactic firms and their union busters often use to harangue, lie to, and intimidate workers during organizing. All that would be in danger under a Trump-named NLRB chair and a Trump-named General Counsel.
Some Trump picks mystify or dismay non-Trumpite Republicans—including senators who must approve Cabinet nominees and ambassadors, such as Gaetz, Rubio, Stefanik, Noem, Zeldin and Huckabee. They won’t get the chance to vote on two extremely controversial ones, Homan and Miller.
Trump picked Hegseth to run the military “because he was on Fox News,” said former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., a top Trump critic on the House committee investigating the January 6 Trumpite invasion, insurrection and coup try at the U.S. Capitol four years ago. “Weird.”
“Who?” Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., asked about Hegseth. Gaetz “wasn’t on my bingo card” for Attorney General, said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. Goetz “got his work cut out for him” to get the needed votes to become AG, said Senate Judiciary Committee member Thom Tillis, R-N.C. His panel will handle the Gaetz nomination.
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