<When President Biden and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, met on Saturday in Peru, they spoke directly to each other for perhaps the last time about a fierce superpower rivalry that Mr. Biden has sought to keep from spiraling into open conflict.

But both men also seemed to be addressing someone not in the room: Donald J. Trump, who has promised to take a more aggressive approach to Beijing when he becomes president again in January.

Mr. Xi, in his opening remarks, offered what appeared to be a stern warning as U.S.-China relations enter a new period of uncertainty after the American election.

“Make the wise choice,” he said in a conference hall at a hotel in Lima where the Chinese delegation was staying. “Keep exploring the right way for two major countries to get along well with each other.”

In his own opening comments, Mr. Biden seemed to try to make the case for maintaining a relationship with Beijing, as Mr. Trump talks about imposing more punishing tariffs on China and picks hard-liners for top administration posts.

“These conversations prevent miscalculations, and they ensure the competition between our two countries will not veer into conflict — be competition, not conflict,” he said.

“That’s our responsibility, and over the last four years I think we’ve proven it’s possible to have this relationship,” Mr. Biden added before the meeting, which lasted one hour and 40 minutes.

But even as Mr. Biden’s session with Mr. Xi, during a gathering of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, began with conciliatory words, it also gave the president a final chance to challenge the Chinese leader directly on some of the many issues that divide the two countries.

As Mr. Biden — and his vision for the world — heads for the exits, China’s recent actions suggest that it has little interest in placating Washington.

American officials have expressed alarm over China’s increasingly close relationship with the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. And Chinese hackers were recently accused of breaking into the American telecommunications system and obtaining information from the phones of U.S. officials.

Beijing has also continued to flex its muscle in Asia, with U.S. officials voicing growing concern about China’s military exercises around Taiwan and its broader aggression in the contested South China Sea.

Mr. Biden pushed Mr. Xi to maintain peace in Taiwan, and pressed the Chinese leader over Beijing’s support for Russia, according to his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan. Mr. Biden also urged Mr. Xi to discourage North Korea from continuing to support Russia in its war in Ukraine.

“He also pointed out that the P.R.C. does have influence and capacity and should use it to try to prevent further escalation and further expansion of the conflict” in Ukraine, Mr. Sullivan said, using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China.

In addition, Mr. Biden raised the U.S. goal of transforming a Kenya-led and largely U.S.-funded security mission in Haiti to combat gangs into a formal U.N. peacekeeping mission, which would provide more money and personnel. China has expressed opposition to such a shift. Mr. Sullivan said Mr. Xi did not indicate any change in his position.

It was unclear how receptive Mr. Xi would be to any of Mr. Biden’s entreaties, with the clock quickly winding down on his presidency. China is now focused on preparing for the return of Mr. Trump, who has threatened to punish Beijing with 60 percent tariffs on its exported goods. Mr. Trump has also chosen Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, who has taken a hard line on China, as his nominee for secretary of state.

In his remarks, Mr. Xi signaled an openness to cooperation with the incoming Trump White House.

“China is ready to work with the new U.S. administration to maintain communication, expand cooperation and manage differences,” he said.

Mr. Sullivan also acknowledged the difficulty of ensuring that the new administration would respect any commitment agreed to on Saturday, including an agreement by both nations to maintain control by humans, rather than artificial intelligence, over nuclear weapons.

“The incoming administration is not in the business of providing us assurances about anything,” Mr. Sullivan said. “They’ll make their own decisions as they go forward.”

The Biden administration in many ways continued the tough approach toward Beijing initiated by the first Trump administration, including on tariffs, while adding restrictions intended to slow the Chinese military’s technological advancements.

Mr. Biden’s top aides said that countering Beijing, particularly around the Taiwan Strait, must be a continued priority for the incoming Trump administration....>

<....For the past year, the Biden administration has tried to smooth tensions with China after the relationship hit a low point over a Chinese spy balloon that drifted over the United States and was ordered shot down by Mr. Biden. The two nations also tangled after Mr. Biden twice called Mr. Xi a “dictator” last year.

The White House has pointed to its shuttle diplomacy and efforts to open lines of communication as important steps in avoiding a spiral in relations.

Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi last met face to face in November 2023 in Northern California, where officials from both nations signaled a small improvement in the relationship. Since then, Mr. Biden’s aides have described steady progress in talks with Beijing and credited China’s effort to stem the flow of materials used to produce fentanyl.

Still, even as Mr. Biden has sought to steady relations, the fierce competition between the two countries was on vivid display during the APEC meeting in Lima.

China has courted Peru as part of a broader strategy to invest in smaller powers that feel neglected by the West. Earlier this week, Mr. Xi joined President Dina Boluarte of Peru to open a Chinese-funded port in a city 40 miles north of Lima.

Washington has warned that such projects could be used by the Chinese military in the future and potentially bring national security risks.

Mr. Biden has often cited his long and complicated relationship with Mr. Xi as evidence of his diplomatic skills. He often speaks of getting to know Mr. Xi when he was the vice president in the administration of President Barack Obama.

After returning to the White House from China in 2011, Mr. Biden told his aides that “I think we’ve got our hands full with this guy.”

But soon, the relationship with Mr. Xi will no longer be Mr. Biden’s responsibility to manage.>

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/worl...

The country? Eff that!

<The opening phase of President-elect Donald Trump’s second trip to the White House has been nothing like the first. What this portends for the coming four years is exactly what Trump pledged in the campaign: disruption and retribution.

Eight years ago, Trump got off to a stumbling start. Days after his surprise victory over Hillary Clinton, he unexpectedly blew up his transition operation. He fired transition chief Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey and erstwhile rival for the nomination that year (and this year) and started over. It took months to recover, if he ever truly did.

Eight years ago, he paraded potential Cabinet officers in public displays. Trump seemed enamored with some of his establishment picks. He selected retired general Jim Mattis as his defense secretary and loved calling him by his nickname, “Mad Dog.” He thought Rex Tillerson, the ExxonMobil CEO, and his eventual pick for secretary of state, looked like an actor from central casting for the role.

His selection process included a well-photographed dinner with Mitt Romney, who was said to be under consideration for secretary of state despite having criticized Trump during the campaign. Trump went on to reject Romney. Perhaps that was the plan all along.

This year Trump is operating with a different playbook. He has ventured out in public only occasionally, such as for a trip to Washington to meet with President Joe Biden at the White House and to visit Capitol Hill. Both Trump and Biden played their parts — enforced cordiality — at what could only have been an awkward encounter.

Otherwise, the president-elect has mostly been sequestered at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida with aides and advisers, populating his administration by press release rather than public events. He is moving at a what seems a record pace to fill some of the biggest jobs in the administration — secretaries of state and defense, as well as attorney general — along with others that seem more random to everyone but perhaps Trump, like the announcement of a new U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

He has won praise for some of his choices — Sen. Marco Rubio (Florida) as his nominee for secretary of state and Rep. Mike Waltz (Florida) as national security adviser. His choice of Rep. Elise Stefanik (New York), one of his most loyal advocates, for United Nations ambassador was cheered many in the GOP.

Others have brought bewilderment and opposition. Is he serious about wanting Matt Gaetz, perhaps the least liked member of the House and a renegade politician who had been under a House Ethics Committee investigation for alleged sexual misconduct and illegal drug use, as attorney general?

Does he really want Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host with no governmental experience, to run one of the biggest and most critical parts of government, the Pentagon? Hegseth’s nomination has become clouded by a report that police investigated an allegation that he sexually assaulted a woman in a hotel in Monterey, California, in 2017.

Is Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman-turned-Trump acolyte whose past comments about Russia and about Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have raised questions about her loyalty to U.S. national security, the best person to oversee the entire intelligence apparatus of the government? Is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic, the right choice to oversee the Department of Health and Human Services?

There’s always been this issue about Trump. Should he be taken seriously but not literally, literally but not seriously, or both literally and seriously? At this point, after the campaign he waged, after sweeping all seven battleground states and winning the popular vote, it seems that taking him literally and seriously is the right way to view what’s happened to date.

Trump appears intent on making good on what he pledged as a candidate. He is going after what he calls “the deep state,” the vast federal bureaucracy that he saw as resisting his wishes during his first term. He is determined to have his way with the Pentagon brass, after several generals who served in his first administration turned on him. And he appears ready to go after those in the legal system who he feels went after him. Trump demands loyalty and in his early appointments is rewarding loyalty. That makes this coming administration far different from his first one.

Eight years ago, he said he intended to “drain the swamp.” He made little progress. Now he is trying again, with more focus. Some of his appointments — Gaetz, Gabbard and Kennedy among them — is likely to have a chilling effect on civil servants, perhaps driving out some employees even before he tries to make his own cuts. That’s one brutal way to shrink the government.....>

<....His decision to put billionaire Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who as a candidate for president proposed huge cuts in government personnel, in charge of a commission to slash the size of government is another difference from eight years ago. Their ambitions are beyond large — and beyond what anyone who took on this issue in the past had accomplished. The first time around, Trump had no plan, nor did he have enough willing partners. This time, his loyalists will do their best to carry out his orders.

He is also filling the Justice Department with true loyalists, and not just Gaetz. He made clear in his campaign that he wants to clean house there and some of his supporters want retribution against those who brought charges against Trump during the past four years. The president-elect has complained about a weaponized Justice Department under Biden and now seems ready to weaponize the department against his adversaries. Trump named his own criminal defense attorneys to fill the department’s No. 2 and No. 3 roles, tapping Todd Blanche as deputy attorney general and Emil Bove as principal associate deputy attorney general.

Rubio has developed expertise as a senator to become the nation’s chief diplomat, but the selections of Gabbard and Hegseth have alarmed many in the national security and foreign policy community, in part because they lack the kind of experience normally assumed necessary for such big management jobs but also because what they have said in the past seem more polemical than thoughtful. Decisions about support for Ukraine in its war with Russia, for Israel in its war against Hamas and Hezbollah and its conflicts with Iran, about China and Taiwan will be key tests ahead.

Trump’s appointment of South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem to head the Department of Homeland Security, of Tom Homan, a former ICE director, as his “border czar” and of Stephen Miller as White House deputy chief of staff for policy signaled that his call for mass deportations of millions of undocumented immigrants was not idle talk. That promise is fraught with potential problems and the prospect of huge disruptions — to families, communities and the economy. In making early personnel choices, Trump let it be known that he intends to make a concerted start.

Trump has put the Senate, which will now be in Republican hands under the new leadership of Sen. John Thune (South Dakota), on notice. He would like to steamroll his nominees past the normal Senate confirmation process by using recess appointments. The Senate could resist and in doing so maintain its independence as a part of a coequal branch of government. But just how independent will senators be?

There appears to be serious opposition in the Senate to Gaetz’s nomination, which is colored by the existence of the House Ethics Committee investigation. Some senators want the committee’s report made available ahead of any confirmation hearings. House Speaker Mike Johnson (Louisiana) opposes the release of a report about a former member as setting “a terrible precedent.”

Beyond Gaetz, the question is whether many Republican senators will stand up in opposition to Trump’s other controversial nominees. And if they do, what kind of retribution might Trump seek in return?

Despite questions about Hegseth’s qualifications to run the Defense Department, Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), who lost to Thune in his bid to become the new Senate Republican leader, said Friday he stands ready to help Hegseth win confirmation. “The Pentagon needs shaking up,” he wrote on X. “The status quo is dangerous.”

Trump won the election on a promise again to try to shake up the status quo. Many voters bought it. The president-elect is gambling that those who voted for him were prepared for the amount of disruption that his early nominations suggest is coming.>

<Companies are scrambling to respond to President-elect Donald Trump’s “beautiful” tariff proposals that his administration may seek to enact early in his second term.

Proactive steps that companies are taking to evade anticipated price increases include stockpiling inventory in U.S. warehouses and weighing whether they need to completely eliminate China from their supply chains and raise the price of imported goods affected by tariff hikes, whose costs will be passed onto consumers.

Free-trade skeptics are touting companies’ anticipatory actions as delivering a clear sign that Trump’s proposed tariff hikes are already achieving their intended effect of pressuring retailers to eliminate China from their supply chains. However, some policy experts are warning that higher tariffs will be a regressive tax for America’s lower and middle-income families and make inflation worse, according to retailers and economists who spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

On the campaign trail, Trump proposed a universal tariff of up to 20% on all imports coming into the U.S. and a 60% or higher tariff on all imports from China. Trump is considering Robert Lighthizer, the former U.S. trade representative during his administration’s first term who is well-known for favoring high tariffs, to serve as his second administration’s trade czar, the Wall Street Journal first reported.

Companies are taking preemptive measures, such as stockpiling goods in U.S. warehouses, to work proactively against anticipated price increases that higher tariffs would inflict, Jonathan Gold, vice president of supply chains and customs policy for the National Retail Federation, told the DCNF during an interview.

“They’re looking at different mitigation strategies to lessen the impact that they might feel from the tariffs,” Gold told the DCNF. “One of those strategies is to start looking at potentially bringing in cargo, bringing products earlier to get ahead of potential tariffs that Trump might put in place.”

Importing goods into the U.S. ahead of schedule leads to additional costs for retailers that will likely be passed onto [sic] consumers, but waiting to import goods from China after a 60% or higher tariff on Chinese imports goes into effect would be substantially more expensive, according to Gold.

A recent NRF study projected that Trump’s proposed tariff hikes on consumer products would cost American consumers an additional $46 billion to $78 billion a year.

“A tariff is a tax paid by the U.S. importer, not a foreign country or the exporter,” Gold said in a press release accompanying the study. “This tax ultimately comes out of consumers’ pockets through higher prices.”

Part of the rationale behind Trump’s tariff proposals is to force manufacturing jobs to return to the United States and pressure companies to completely eliminate China from their supply chains, according to Mark DiPlacido, policy advisor at American Compass.

“I hope in addition to stockpiling, they’re also looking at actually moving their supply chains out of China and ideally back to the United States,” DiPlacido told the DCNF.

“For a long time, the framing has been what is best for just increasing trade flows, regardless of the direction those flows are going. What that’s resulted in for the last 25 years is a flow of manufacturing, a flow of factories and a flow of jobs, especially solid middle class jobs out of the United States and across the world,” DiPlacido added.

But completely shifting production outside of China is not feasible for some retailers even if companies have taken further steps to diversify their supply chain for the past decade, according to Gold.

“It takes a while to make those shifts and not everyone is able to do that, Gold acknowledged. “Nobody has the [production] capacity that China does. Trying to find that within multiple countries is a challenge. And it’s not just the capacity, but the skilled workforce as well.”

In addition, companies who move production out of China to avoid a 60% tariff on imported goods from the nation could still get hit by a 20% across the board tariff if they move their supply chain to countries other than the United States, Gold and several economists told the DCNF.

“They’re talking about tariffs on imports for which there’s not a domestic producer to switch to,” Clark Packard, a research fellow on trade policy at the CATO institute, told the DCNF in an interview. “For example, we don’t make coffee in the United States, so why are we going to impose a tariff on coffee?”

“Who are we trying to protect?” he added.

Some economists are also pessimistic that the president-elect’s planned tariff hikes will ultimately bring jobs that moved overseas to cheaper labor markets back to the United States....>

<....“What we actually saw from the 2018-2019 trade war was a decrease in manufacturing output and employment because of the tariffs,” Erica York, senior economist and research director of the Tax Foundation’s Center for Federal Tax Policy, told the DCNF in an interview. “It played out just like every economist predicted: higher costs for U.S. consumers, reduced output, reduced incomes for American workers, foreign retaliation that’s harmful.”

The president-elect’s proposed tariff hikes could also eliminate more jobs than those saved or created as a result of protecting domestic industries, such as the U.S. steel or solar manufacturing industries, that may benefit from higher tariffs on foreign competitors, Packard told the DCNF.

“It’s disproportionate — the cost that is passed onto the broader economy to protect a very small slice of U.S. employment,” Packard said. Trump’s 25% tariff on imported steel enacted during his first administration slightly increased employment in the U.S. steel industry, but each job that was maintained or created came at a cost of roughly $650,000 that likely killed jobs in other sectors forced to buy more expensive steel, according to Packard.

Despite tariffs’ potential to force companies to raise the price of goods they import into the United States, DiPlacido defended Trump’s proposed tariff hikes as essential to eliminating U.S. dependence on China for a variety of strategic goods and consumer products.

“We need to be able to manufacture a broad range of goods in the United States. And we need the job security and the economic security that a strong manufacturing industrial base provides,” DiPlacido said. “That’s going to be important to any future conflict or emergency that the United States may have with China or with anyone else.”

DiPlacido, citing Trump’s dominant electoral performance, also believes Trump has the “mandate” to carry out the tariff proposals he floated during the campaign.

“There’s a sort of a bipartisan recognition of the problem. Even the Biden administration kept almost all of Trump’s tariffs in place,” DiPlacido told the DCNF. “I think he has the political mandate, and that’s often a harder thing to get.”

However, some economists are questioning whether the thousands of dollars of projected costs that American families would be forced to pay as a result of these tariff hikes could create political backlash that has so far failed to materialize against Trump and Biden’s relatively similar trade policies.

“Voters were rightly pretty upset about price increases and inflation,” Packard told the DCNF. “We’re talking about utilizing a tool in tariffs that will increase relative prices.”

“Tariffs as a whole are a regressive tax,” Gold told the DCNF. “They certainly hit low and middle income consumers the hardest.”

Retailers are forecasting a decrease in demand for consumer products as a result of Trump’s tariff proposals, according to Gold.

The incoming Senate Republican leader has also notably criticized Trump’s proposed tariff hikes.

“I get concerned when I hear we just want to uniformly impose a 10% or 20% tariff on everything that comes into the United States,” Republican South Dakota Sen. John Thune, Senate GOP leader, said in August during a panel on agriculture policy in his home state. “Generally, that’s a recipe for increased inflation.”>

<Senate Republicans opted to delay votes and draw out floor action on Monday night after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., sought to stack additional judicial confirmation votes on the calendar ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.

Two sources familiar told Fox News Digital that the plan to slow down the Senate was spearheaded by Senate Minority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., who was recently elected as the next Republican Senate leader.

"If Sen. Schumer thought Senate Republicans would just roll over and allow him to quickly confirm multiple Biden-appointed judges to lifetime jobs in the final weeks of the Democrat [sic] majority, he thought wrong," Thune told Fox News Digital in an exclusive statement.

In response to the Democrat [sic] leader's decision to file cloture on a number of judicial nominees, which would come up for confirmation votes in a number of days, Republicans plotted procedural maneuvers on the Senate floor to significantly delay votes, multiple GOP sources told Fox News.

The additional cloture filings by Schumer come as Democrats are focusing their efforts on confirming as many judges nominated by President Biden as they can in the time they have left in the majority.

During the first procedural vote of the evening, a source familiar told Fox News, "it could be a late night."

In order to file cloture on a nomination, the Senate needs to transition from legislative session to executive session. This is typically done by unanimous consent from the Senate. But on Monday evening, Republicans began objecting to the requests for unanimous consent.

When a senator objects, it requires the transition between executive and legislative sessions to be voted on.

By objecting to Democrats' unanimous consent requests in order to file cloture on the Biden nominees, Republicans are adding additional votes to the schedule, taking up a substantial amount of time.

Schumer's office did not immediately provide comment to Fox News Digital.

In floor remarks on Monday, Schumer emphasized that Democrats are prioritizing judges in the lame duck session.

"The judges we’ve confirmed represent perhaps the widest range of backgrounds and experiences ever seen under any president. We have more judges that worked as public defenders, legal aid attorneys, civil rights lawyers, federal prosecutors, voting rights lawyers, and more women and people of color than we’ve ever had under one Administration," he said of the 215 nominees that have already been confirmed.

"After we vote today, we’ll keep going. Tonight, I will file on additional judges who we will move forward on the floor this week."

"So, let me repeat: the Senate is going to keep prioritizing judicial and administrative confirmations this week, this month, and for the rest of this year," he said.

During Biden's term, his administration has sought to surpass President-elect Donald Trump's first-term legacy of 234 confirmed Article III judicial nominees. And as Democrats look down the barrel of a Republican trifecta in Washington, D.C., controlling the House, Senate, and White House, they appear more energized than ever to push Biden's judges through and potentially beat Trump's number.>

<Even before President-elect Donald Trump and his tariff-heavy agenda won the White House, top companies were already planning to shift production out of China at a faster pace, according to a new study.

Based on a survey of 166 CEOs and COOs, Bain and Company found that the share of companies moving operations out of China jumped to 69% in 2024 from 55% in 2022.

Where will they go? The top destination was the Indian subcontinent, with 39% of execs saying they were headed there. That was followed by 16% moving to the U.S. or Canada, 11% to Southeast Asia, 10% to Western Europe, and 8% to Latin America, rounding out the top five destinations.

Meanwhile, more companies are "reshoring" operations to their home countries or "near-shoring" to neighboring countries.

The survey, conducted in July, found that the share of executives whose companies have plans to bring supply chains closer to market soared to 81% this year from 63% in 2022. That also includes the emerging trend of "split-shoring," where there's a mix of offshore production and manufacturing close to home.

Bain attributed the trend to growing geopolitical uncertainties and rising costs. But for U.S. companies, which made up 39% of the survey, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act was another factor in reshoring operations, it added.

One of President Joe Biden's signature domestic policy achievements, the act offers incentives and tax credits in key areas like green-energy technologies. Another Biden initiative, the CHIPS Act, also encouraged domestic production of semiconductors.

To be sure, there are a range of issues that factor into a company's supply-chain decisions. Bain's 2022 survey showed that geopolitics, which includes tariffs, regulations, and inflation, was a leading consideration. But labor conditions, climate, and environmental characteristics, as well as catastrophe risks like natural disasters, terrorism, and health threats, were also top of mind.

The risk of relying too heavily on Chinese factories became evident when Trump imposed tariffs on Beijing during his first term as part of his "America first" economic policies. Supply-chain disruptions during the pandemic also highlighted the need for more diversification.

Then Biden retained Trump's China tariffs, imposed curbs on U.S. investment in China, and encouraged more domestic production. And for his second term, Trump has vowed to hike tariffs across the board, including stiffer duties on China.

Higher U.S. tariffs on China could deal another severe blow to the world's second-largest economy, which has already been slammed by a real estate crash, debt woes, and even pockets of deflation.

That's because exports are one of China's key economic engines, though Beijing's flurry of stimulus measures has shown some signs of boosting domestic consumption.

Still, the flood of cheap exports China has been sending around the world has prompted other countries to impose more trade barriers against Beijing.

Meanwhile, foreign investment into China has been in a three-year slump that continued last quarter. Despite China's efforts to revive growth, foreign investment is down by $13 billion for the first nine months of the year.>

<A Fox News host who lobbied Donald Trump to pardon troops accused of war crimes and doesn’t want women serving in combat could be leading the nation’s military. An accused sexual predator who has taken up Trump’s promise to destroy his political rivals could be the nation’s top law enforcement officer. A prolific conspiracy theorist who doesn’t hold a single medical or public health degree but plans to immediately halt vaccine development could be in charge of the nation’s health agencies.

An Evangelical preacher who espouses end-times theology and has said “there’s no such thing as a Palestinian” could be the nation’s ambassador to Israel. A former congresswoman who secretly met with Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and has blamed US and NATO for Russia’s assault in Ukraine could direct the nation’s intelligence. The world’s wealthiest man will recommend drastic cuts to the government’s budget in a made-up “efficiency” agency.

Two of his attorneys who are actively overseeing his hush money case, which led to Trump’s 34 criminal convictions, have been nominated for top roles at the Department of Justice. The lawyer who got him “immunity” at the Supreme Court will be solicitor general.

Trump’s first wave of cabinet nominations and White House appointments, within the week after he won the 2024 presidential election, have stunned members of Congress, veterans and active-duty service members, public health advocates and democratic advocates, who have warned for years that he is building a government of loyalists to fulfill his campaign-trail promises to deliver “retribution” by destroying the “deep state.”

They’re shocking choices, but they shouldn’t be surprising. When Trump formally launched his 2024 campaign from Waco, Texas, he declared himself a “warrior” and the election a “final battle.”

“To those who have been wronged and betrayed, of which there are many people out there, I will be your retribution,” he said.

There is no secret plan or conspiracy theory at work; putting an enemy of the “deep state” in charge of it, creating an agency named after a meme, naming widely loathed congressman Matt Gaetz as attorney general — it’s the trolling as politics that Trump’s movement inspired. It’s an absurd attack on the institutions that Trump despises, and they’re laughing all the way to the White House. It’s what he campaigned on, and he’s fulfilling his campaign promises.

He has repeatedly pledged to “drain the swamp” in Washington, and he’s filling it with an army of loyalists left in its wake. But the punchlines will have consequences.

Tulsi Gabbard, who is nominated as director of national intelligence, said Trump’s election was a “mandate for change.”

“Of course there’s going to be resistance from the swamp in Washington — I think that’s kind of the point,” he told Fox News on November 14. “The American people are saying, Hey, stop looking at yourselves, stop focusing on your own power, your own positions, your own bank accounts. How about we have leaders in Washington who are actually looking out for the American people?”

Olivia Troye, a former homeland security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, said Gabbard’s nomination is a “slap in the face to intel officers, but that’s the point given Trump’s disdain for our national security community.”

“Having a Russian propagandist who spreads fringe conspiracies at the helm will likely lead to our allies refraining from sharing intel with us,” she said. “It will weaken our security posture [and] make us more susceptible to terrorist attacks on our homeland.”

If she is confirmed by the Senate, Gabbard will “demoralize the hell out of everyone” in national intelligence and the active duty service members and federal law enforcement officers relying on her leadership, according to Kris Goldsmith, CEO of veterans’ anti-extremism group Task Force Butler and its Vets Fighting Fascism project.

“They’re not going to be able to trust their own boss,” he told The Independent. “She is a danger, and she’s more likely to side with Assad and Putin than she is with the people of the United States.”

Trump nominated anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, putting a conspiracy theorist in charge of the nation’s public health agencies, with the potential to upend vital research and derail life-saving vaccine development and distribution.

Kennedy has previously declared that “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective” and chaired the group Children’s Health Defense, which claimed that there is a “parallel between rising disease rates and the increasing number of childhood vaccines is hard to ignore.”.....>

<....He also supports removing fluoride from water supplies, based on Cold War-era conspiracy theories, which health professionals say if put into practice would rot the nation’s teeth.

The department oversees critical public health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the Food and Drug Administration.

When he was running for president, Kennedy said he would immediately tell NIH to stop drug development and infectious disease research for eight years, and instead study chronic disease.

Kennedy has also speculated that exposure to chemicals in tap water or the environment could be making children question their sexuality or gender identity — amplifying a conspiracy theory infamously raised by Alex Jones, who said tap water is “turning the friggin’ frogs gay.”

His nomination is “disastrous for public health,” according to Lawrence Gostin, director of the O’Neill Institute for public health at Georgia University Law Center.

Doctors and public health advocates have been sounding the alarm for months over their grave concerns that Kennedy — as president or the nation’s top health officials — could be in a powerful position to cast doubt on the safety and efficacy of life-saving medicine, and potentially accelerate a trend of parents rejecting vaccinations for their children.

Gaetz is widely expected to deliver the “vengeance” Trump has vowed against those he believes have wronged him and his supporters, including the end of criminal cases against the former president and potential prosecutions for the people who were leading them.

“I don’t care if it takes every second of our time and every ounce of our energy,” Gaetz told the Conservative Political Action Conference last year. “We either get this government back on our side or we defund and … abolish the FBI, CDC, ATF, DOJ, every last one of ’em if they do not come to heel.”

He resigned from the House of Represenatives moments after Trump announced him for attorney general, while a looming House Ethics Committee investigation into allegations that he raped a teenager – something he has repeatedly denied – was set to be released.

Mimi Rocah, a former federal prosecutor and current district attorney for New York’s Westchester County, anticipates “mass resignations” across the nation’s law enforcement agencies if Gaetz is confirmed, emptying out the offices that prosecute corruption, civil rights abuses and national security threats.

“Which is maybe exactly what they want,” she said. “But Republican Senators need to really understand the chaos that will ensue.”

Pete Hegseth, one of the hosts of Fox & Friends on Fox News, was selected by the president-elect to run the Department of Defense, which oversees 3 million service members and civilian employees across all branches of the nation’s military.

Active duty troops “are extremely concerned about being given illegal orders and being deployed within the United States, or for a war just kicking off because Trump tweets,” Goldsmith told The Independent. “There are a lot of active service members who are rightfully terrified that they are going to have a completely unhinged and even less stable time than the last time he was commander in chief.”>

<Hakeem Jeffries nearly became House speaker. Instead, he’s steering the Democratic Party through an identity crisis and hoping to avoid an ugly intraparty civil war.

Even without the gavel, many Democrats across Washington say House Minority Leader Jeffries — a 54-year-old New Yorker with centrist roots and messaging chops — is about to become the de facto voice of the party’s future and the face of resistance to Donald Trump.

So far, Jeffries has said little about his role in the party’s postelection rebuild. But his allies say he’s aware of the part he’s about to play. And many are making the case directly to him: Multiple Democratic donors have personally urged him to “take the lead” until the party has a new official leader, according to two people familiar with the discussions.

“‘You are the guy for the entire country right now,’” Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a longtime ally, recalled recently telling Jeffries. “I don’t think he’s ever tried to reach that kind of position, but it’s on him.”

Jeffries is already playing referee in some of the biggest internal spats emerging from the election. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus, for instance, is privately sparring over how the party should handle Trump’s promised mass deportations. Progressives are seething over corporate influence in internal meetings. One group of centrists has even privately discussed a contentious term limits proposal aimed at the party’s old-guard committee leaders, according to two people familiar with the conversations.

As Jeffries prepares to be elected leader this week for the second time, one of his most urgent questions will be how to handle another two years in the minority — this time, in a GOP-run Washington. He and his leadership team are already discussing how to avoid a repeat of 2016, when Democrats “chased Donald Trump every hour” while failing to deliver their own message, according to one leadership aide. There are even some preliminary talks about sending Jeffries and leadership to battleground turf around the county to help diagnose their party’s failings outside of Capitol Hill.

Back in Washington, even though Democrats will be in the minority, they have a significant role to play in a House with a narrow Republican majority where GOP infighting over the last two years led to one of the least productive sessions ever. In the last Congress, Democrats repeatedly helped Republicans keep the government open and propped up Speaker Mike Johnson when he faced a challenge to his leadership post. In a new era under a Trump administration with Republicans in control of both chambers of Congress, Democrats are weighing whether they want to continue to extend a lifeline, with many expressing their ideas to Jeffries directly.

“We have to take a long hard look at what our leverage is” Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the influential House Appropriations Committee, told CNN.

Even before the election, Jeffries had been aggressively working behind the scenes to try to convince the Biden-Harris administration to sharpen its economic strategy. In meetings with White House advisers, Jeffries frequently paraphrased a famed Hollywood quote that every good story needs a good villain, according to two people who’ve heard him say it, as he urged Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to make an enemy out of corporations over price gouging. For more than a year, he was on a “crusade” with the Biden-Harris team, urging them to craft a more hard-hitting, succinct economic message, that person said. He even tapped other senior House Democrats to echo his message to the Biden team, according to another person familiar with the efforts.

Still, unlike some in his party, Jeffries is not in despair, according to multiple people familiar with his thinking. He believes he has a road map to flip the House in 2026 that looks a lot like the way he helped his party win back most of its New York seats this year. Democrats there dramatically overperformed Harris. And with his skill in recruiting candidates, some Democratic operatives are already talking about ways for Jeffries to be more involved in primaries — not just general elections — to ensure their party has the best chance at flipping the shrinking number of competitive seats nationwide....>

<....Some are more pessimistic: Several Democrats told CNN the party won’t be fixed in Washington and that the fact that the party lost battleground seats in New York in the 2022 midterms was a clear warning sign. But Democrats say Jeffries — alongside Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who will serve as minority leader in the next Congress — might be the best person to at least try.

“He is the next generation,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks, a fellow New York Democrat. “He can talk hip-hop and he can talk civil rights.”

Flanked by newly elected members of Congress, Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal had a bold prediction for how Democrats will operate in the next Congress: “Democrats will be united for a block and tackle and let [Republicans] figure out how they’re going to run.”

Not all Democrats feel that way.

House Rules Committee Chair Jim McGovern, whose panel plays a key role in determining what legislation gets brought to the House floor, is listening to Johnny Cash’s rendition of “I Won’t Back Down” as he prepares for the next Congress. But McGovern believes his party should look for opportunities to work with Republicans when the situation presents itself: “If there are areas we can work together, absolutely.”

For his part, Jeffries has telegraphed that he is open to working with Republicans, but — this time — does not want to get caught responding to Trump’s every move. Multiple members have approached Jeffries to weigh in on how the caucus should approach the strategy.

Pledging to work with Republicans when possible, Jeffries said, “The House Democratic Caucus will be a check and balance on this incoming administration. That’s not a partisan strategy. That’s James Madison’s strategy. So we’re going to do it.”

But when asked to respond to Trump’s string of controversial Cabinet picks, Jeffries didn’t hesitate to draw a line.

“No, that I’m not doing, because that’s all a distraction,” he said.

One of Jeffries’ toughest tasks will be keeping Democrats unified on immigration despite the many intraparty divisions.

Those cracks are already beginning to show. At a meeting of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus last week, Democrats heard from a panel of immigration experts about Trump’s mass deportation plans.

But things quickly got tense. At one point, one of the experts mentioned undocumented immigrants sitting in jail cells, and Rep. Henry Cuellar, a famously outspoken member on border issues, spoke up.

“I hope all of us are for deporting undocumented criminals,” Cuellar said as he looked around at fellow Democrats and an awkward silence fell over the room, according to three people who attended the meeting.

And that’s not the only time Democrats like Cuellar have spoken up to party leaders since the election.

Jeffries sat quietly alongside his two deputies as multiple fellow Democrats — including Reps. Gabe Vasquez of New Mexico, Susie Lee of Nevada and Scott Peters of California — spoke up about the role that border issues played in the party’s tough losses this month, according to two people in the room.

In the Democrats’ first postmortem “listening sessions,” these lawmakers said the party failed to address issues such as border security and crime. While Democrats did attempt a border deal with Republicans earlier this Congress, they said it happened far too late.

The border was not the only issue Democrats feel they were late to develop an inclusive response to, leading many to say that in this soul-searching period, the party needs to develop a better strategy of responding early and often.

“Democrats have to figure out how to communicate, where to communicate and on what mediums,” one lawmaker told CNN.>

<Could President-elect Donald Trump use the military within the U.S. to suppress protests on college campuses, patrol the southern border, and conduct mass deportations? By invoking the Insurrection Act — a little-known law that grants the president sweeping authority to deploy the military on American soil — he plans to do just that.

We need to take steps now to ensure that the law does not become Trump’s most dangerous weapon.

The Posse Comitatus Act generally makes it a crime for the military to engage in domestic law enforcement. But the Insurrection Act provides a crucial exception to this rule, giving the president seemingly broad authority to deploy military forces on American soil. Historically, it has been invoked sparingly and responsibly — only 30 times in the 230 years since its inception. Most famously, the act enabled Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson to desegregate schools in the South and protect civil rights marchers to enforce court orders over the objection of state officials.

But in a moment when our democracy hangs by a thread, when the president-elect has openly declared potentially authoritarian ambitions, it could become the legal mechanism for Trump (or any president) to transform our constitutional democracy into a military state.

In 2020, Trump wanted to deploy military forces to quash the Black Lives Matter protests, but was convinced not to by advisers such as Attorney General William Barr and Gen. Mark Milley. In his second term, with Trump pledging to purge independent voices and install loyalists across government, there may be no one left to say no.

The Insurrection Act contains three triggers for military deployment. The first is relatively uncontroversial because it requires a state to explicitly request military assistance to suppress an insurrection. But the other two triggers appear to grant the president virtually unchecked power to deploy troops without state consent — or even against state wishes.

The language in these other two sections of the law is breathtakingly broad. One section seems to allow the president to deploy troops whenever “unlawful obstructions” make it “impractical” to enforce federal law. The other goes further still, purporting to authorize the use of military force to suppress any “domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” that “opposes or obstructs” federal law enforcement.

Even more alarming, in addition to allowing the deployment of regular troops and federalizing the National Guard, the act permits the president to deputize “private militias.” In theory, Trump could grant federal law enforcement authority to the extremist groups who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 or to militant organizations like the Proud Boys.

Our military is primarily trained for overseas combat, not domestic law enforcement, which requires different rules of engagement and careful protection of constitutional rights. And coordination between federal troops, local police and state officials becomes a logistical nightmare.

But all is not yet lost.....>

<....The Biden administration and Congress have roughly two months to reform this dangerous law before Trump returns to office. Experts across the political spectrum have proposed crucial reforms. Congress could explicitly narrow the specific substantive circumstances in which the act can be invoked, eliminate the private militia provisions, or add procedural checks on the use of the act, for example by requiring congressional approval or judicial review.

But even without congressional reform, executive branch lawyers in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel can make it clear that the current language in the Insurrection Act is not as broad as it may seem. Indeed, OLC has long maintained that the act’s sweeping language must be read narrowly in conjunction with other specific constitutional provisions and historical practice. Now, faced with explicit threats to weaponize the act, OLC should forcefully clarify these constitutional constraints, while providing needed guidance to judges should they be required to interpret the scope of the act.

First, OLC should emphasize that Congress enacted much of the act’s broad language immediately after the Civil War pursuant to its authority under the 14th Amendment. Because the 14th Amendment requires state action, the Insurrection Act should too, preventing the president from unilaterally deploying troops unless state authorities are either actively denying federal rights or completely powerless to protect them.

Second, OLC should establish a high bar for military deployment not tied to enforcing specific court orders. Both the Supremacy Clause and Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution suggest that the president must demonstrate a genuine collapse of state and local authority, and that the statute should only be used as a last resort.

Under this constitutional framework, Trump’s threats to deploy troops against protesters or undocumented immigrants are clearly illegitimate. They involve neither state violations of constitutional rights nor a breakdown of civil authority.

The framers of our Constitution were deeply skeptical of standing armies and military involvement in civilian affairs. They understood that turning troops against citizens was a hallmark of tyranny. It is deeply embedded in our Constitution and tradition that, outside of invasion or rebellion, civilian law enforcement — not soldiers — would maintain domestic order.

Our military exists primarily to protect the nation from foreign threats, not to serve as any president’s personal enforcement army against the American people. Now, as we face four more years of a president who has shown contempt for democratic norms and institutional restraints, we must use every legal tool available to prevent the abuse of this extraordinary power.>

<Multiple Republican senators are looming as potential obstacles to President-elect Trump’s controversial Cabinet picks, especially his two most polarizing choices: former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Trump has had a rocky relationship in the past with a handful of Republicans senators who won’t likely give him the same deference as loyal allies such as Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), who last week called on his GOP colleagues to “get out of the way” and approve Trump’s nominees.

Trump can afford three defections within the Senate GOP conference and still get his picks confirmed.

But four Republican senators would be enough to sink any of his nominees, and two moderates — Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) — have already voiced deep reservations about Gaetz, who was embroiled in a federal sex trafficking investigation, of leading the Justice Department.

Here are the senators who could stymie Trump’s nominees.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)

Murkowski signaled her likely opposition to Gaetz soon after he was announced as Trump’s pick to serve as attorney general.

“I don’t think it’s a serious nomination for attorney general. We need to have a serious attorney general,” she told reporters.

Murkowski, who didn’t vote for either Trump or Vice President Harris, would likely also be skeptical of Trump’s choice of Kennedy to head the Department of Health and Human Services.

The Alaska senator, who serves on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, used social media to promote vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic, but she also voted in December 2021 to overturn the vaccine mandate for private businesses.

She expressed surprised [sic] over Trump’s choice of Pete Hegseth, a military veteran and Fox News host, to head the Department of Defense.

“Wow. … I’m just surprised. I’m not going to comment on whether it’s good, bad or indifferent, I’m just surprised, because the names that I’ve heard for secretary of Defense have not included him,” she said.

Murkowski was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump of inciting insurrection during his 2021 Senate impeachment trial.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine)

Collins is the only Republican senator up for reelection in 2026 in a state Harris won, and she immediately expressed her skepticism about Gaetz serving as the nation’s next attorney general.

“I was shocked by the announcement,” she said. “I’m sure that there will be a lot of questions raised at his hearing. Obviously, the president has the right to nominate whomever he wishes, but I’m certain that there will be a lot of questions.”

Collins will closely review Trump’s nomination of Kennedy, as she also sits on the HELP Committee.

Collins told The New York Times that she found some of Kennedy’s past statements “alarming.”

“I’ve never even met with him or sat down with him or heard him speak at length,” she said before Trump formally announced his nomination of Kennedy.

But she said Kennedy “would be a surprising choice” to head the nation’s health services, given his long track record of claiming that vaccines pose serious health concerns and his push to remove fluoride from public water, something many lawmakers view as a fringe issue.

Sen.-elect John Curtis (R-Utah)

John Curtis will be filling the seat of retiring Sen. Mitt Romney (R), and he has the reputation of a practical centrist who is expected to approach his job in the same thoughtful and measured way Romney did during his six years in the Senate.

Curtis heads the Conservative Climate Caucus and has pushed back against climate skeptics, arguing conservatives have a role to serve as “good stewards” of the environment.

He favored censuring Trump for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election but voted “no” on impeachment during his tenure in the House, urging colleagues to “tone down the rhetoric and calm the tensions.”

Curtis doesn’t have a great relationship with Gaetz, who traveled to Utah in March to campaign against him in the Senate Republican primary.

Gaetz accused Curtis on the campaign trail of “weakness” and a “willingness to prioritize foreign interests abroad” and “special interests in the halls of Washington.”

Curtis has already signaled he would not support putting the Senate into an extended recess to allow Trump to circumvent the confirmation process by making recess appointments.

“Senator-elect Curtis believes that every president is afforded a degree of deference to select his team and make nominations,” Curtis’s chief of staff, Corey Norman, told KSL-TV in Salt Lake City. “He also firmly believes in and is committed to the Senate’s critical role to confirm or reject nominations based on information and insight from confirmation hearings.”....>

<....Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.)

Bill Cassidy will be one of only three Republican senators still serving next year who voted to convict Trump on the impeachment charge of inciting insurrection.

Cassidy is known as a principled politician who’s not afraid to buck Trump or tackle politically dangerous issues, such as reforming Social Security to extend its solvency.

But the Louisiana lawmaker is up for reelection in 2026 and faces a potential primary challenge given his vote to convict Trump.

He will likely serve as chair of the HELP Committee next year, giving him jurisdiction over Kennedy’s nomination to head Health and Human Services.

Cassidy, a doctor, has disputed claims attempting to link vaccines and autism as “fake news.”

“As a doctor who has spent my life trying to bring health to the people of Louisiana, I strongly endorse immunizations,” he said in 2019. “There is no linkage to autism that has ever been made by a credible scientist.”

Cassidy’s Health panel will hold a hearing on Kennedy, but the Senate Finance Committee will handle Kennedy’s paperwork and vote to advance him to the floor, according to a Republican source familiar with the process.

The Louisiana senator noted in a statement that Kennedy “has championed issues like healthy foods and the need for greater transparency in our public health infrastructure.

He said he is looking “forward to learning more about his other policy positions.”

Cassidy dodged questions about Gaetz’s nomination to head the Justice Department but did not appear to be impressed by Trump’s choice of Hegseth to lead the Department of Defense, given his career in television and lack of experience managing large organizations such as the Pentagon.

“Who?” Cassidy said when asked Tuesday about Hegseth becoming the next secretary of Defense, expressing the same bewilderment several GOP senators voiced about the unorthodox choice when news of it broke Tuesday.

Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.)

Todd Young is a serious legislator who doesn’t like to be asked about Trump’s latest provocative statements on Truth Social.

But while Young doesn’t often talk about the controversies that constantly swirl around Trump, he’s made clear in the past that he’s not a fan.

He did not endorse Trump for president in 2024 and has criticized him for refusing to call Russian President Vladimir Putin a war criminal.

He also faulted Trump for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol but did not vote to convict him of inciting insurrection.

Young was one of several Republican senators, along with Collins, Murkowski and Cassidy, to vote for a 2022 bill to address gun violence.

Gaetz said at the time that any Republican senator who supported the measure would be “a traitor to the Constitution,” a statement that won’t endear him to the senators whose support he needs to win confirmation.

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa)

Joni Ernst told The Hill that Gaetz has an “uphill climb” to securing enough votes to win confirmation, and she’s taking a wait-and-see approach to Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii who is Trump’s pick serve as director of national intelligence.

Ernst said she wants to meet with Gabbard before forming any judgments about her nomination.

“I’ve had a relationship with her. It might be a little unconventional, but at the same time, she might bring value to us too. So we’ll have to sort through all that,” she said.

Asked about Gabbard’s past statements defending Putin and Syrian President Bashar Assad, Ernst said, “We’ll have to talk about that.”

Ernst is also up for reelection in 2026. While Trump won Iowa in the 2016, 2020 and 2024 presidential elections, former President Obama carried it in 2008 and 2012.

Democrats may target her seat simply because they don’t have many other promising options on the electoral map.

Ernst lost her race to become Senate Republican Conference chair and may be more inclined to break with her party now that she will no longer be a member of the elected leadership.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.)

Thom Tillis is not afraid to play the role of Republican maverick if he feels strongly about a nominee or an issue, and he’s already suggesting Gaetz might not have much support in the Senate.

“It’ll just be interesting to see what his organic base is,” Tillis said of the nominee. “At the end of the day, Congressman Gaetz, he’ll have a hearing, but I’m all about counting votes, and I would think that he’s probably got some work cut out for him to get a good strong vote.”

“We’re not going to get a single Democrat vote,” he said.

Tillis will be one of the Senate Democrats’ top targets in 2026 if he decides to run for reelection in North Carolina, a battleground state Trump won by 3.5 percentage points over Harris....>

<....Tillis, who represents more than 90,000 active duty service members in his home state, which is also home to Fort Liberty — formerly known as Fort Bragg — says Hegseth will need to answer some tough questions at his confirmation hearing.

“I think he’s just got to go through the vetting process and withstand what I’m sure is going to be an interesting murder board in the Senate Armed Services Committee,” he told reporters.

Tillis acknowledged Hegseth’s lack of experience leading large organizations will be something he needs to address at his confirmation hearing.

“Those are all things you got to have good, sound answers for. It’s a large, complex, very, very important agency,” he said. “We’ve got to see all the vetting. There’s a lot of work that’ll go into between now and the time he actually comes before the committee.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas)

John Cornyn pledged to get Trump’s nominees through the Senate quickly when he was running against Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) to become the next Senate majority leader.

The Texan, however, lost that race, which could give him more freedom to criticize Trump’s picks, especially if he doesn’t think they’re qualified for the highest-profile Cabinet roles.

He joked to reporters that he and Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.), who will retire as Senate GOP leader, are now “liberated” as they won’t have elected leadership positions in 2025, giving them more latitude to push back against flawed nominees.

Cornyn, a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has called for members of his panel to have full access to the findings of the House Ethics Committee’s investigation of Gaetz for alleged sexual misconduct and illicit drug use.

He warned that if there’s evidence of wrongdoing, Gaetz could become “an embarrassment to the president.”

“We need to get access to everything,” he said, breaking with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who said Friday that he will “strongly request” the House Ethics panel stick to its practice of not releasing a report about a onetime member who has resigned from the House, as Gaetz did this past week.

Cornyn also appeared surprised that Trump picked Gabbard to serve as director of national intelligence, given her past statements disputing the U.S. government’s claim that Assad used chemical weapons against his own people and defending Putin’s stated rationale for invading Ukraine.

Cornyn, however, is up for reelection in 2026 and is likely to face a conservative primary challenger.

This might give him reason to be cautious in criticizing Trump’s nominees, but even so, he’s not likely to shy away from standing his ground on Trump’s most controversial picks, such as Gaetz.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)

McConnell will be one of the most interesting Senate wild cards next year given his deep skepticism of Trump’s character and many of his policy positions.

McConnell has served as Senate majority or minority leader for the past 18 years, which saddled him with the responsibility of preserving unity within the GOP conference.

As majority leader during Trump’s first four years in office, he played a leading role in confirming Trump’s nominees to the executive and judicial branches. He counts his role in confirming three conservative justices to the Supreme Court under Trump among his greatest career accomplishments.

Yet McConnell, an institutionalist and defense hawk, is not likely to rubber-stamp Trump’s nomination of Gaetz to head the Justice Department if he thinks it would undermine public confidence in the nation’s top law enforcement institution.

“Looking at his track record, he’s never cowed to Trump on things, especially as they relate to the Senate and the Senate’s role,” a Senate Republican aide said.

McConnell rejected Trump’s call in 2018 for Senate Republicans to abolish the filibuster to improve the chances of passing his legislative agenda at the time.

Given his role as a defender of Senate prerogatives, he will likely counsel against putting the Senate in an extended recess to allow Trump to make recess appointments.

McConnell will carefully examine Gabbard’s statements about Russia, given the leading role he has played directing U.S. military aid to Ukraine.

He said his priority over the final two years of his seventh Senate term will be to build up defense spending and the nation’s defense industrial base. If he views Hegseth as a Trump loyalist who might be at odds with that mission, he will likely speak out against him.>

<President-elect Trump’s vows to seek revenge have brought a renewed sense of alarm to those who have crossed ways with him now that he’s returning to the White House.

Trump routinely calls for adverse actions against his perceived enemies and often makes veiled threats – a dynamic present during his first term in office that accelerated as he battled for reelection.

After his inauguration, Trump will have new avenues to make good on those calls. He’s also assembling a team that would be well-positioned to carry out any vows for retribution.

Trump nominated former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) to serve as attorney general and several lawyers on his criminal defense team to fill out other top leadership posts at the Department of Justice.

And Trump is likely to be bolstered by his allies in Congress. House Republicans who kept their majority have also vowed to investigate Trump adversaries.

Their potential targets are nervous.

“I have heard from a number of organizational clients and some individual clients who are very scared that they may be targeted even though their conduct has been entirely lawful. They fear being targeted for their views, their statements, and for the causes and people they support. They’re very scared, and I think for good reason,” said Michael R. Bromwich, an attorney with Steptoe who previously represented former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe when he was investigated by the Trump Department of Justice.

“They are concerned that they could be audited by the IRS. They could be the subject of a bogus congressional investigation. There may be even a way to conduct, or at least initiate, a bogus criminal investigation. And all with the goal of, ironically, for the first time actually weaponizing the Department of Justice.”

Trump has issued a wide variety of threats, from saying special counsel Jack Smith should be arrested, to suggesting those involved with the Jan. 6 committee could be prosecuted. He said former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the panel’s vice chair, “should go to jail.”

Trump has called some Democrats the “enemies from within” while also targeting Republicans who have criticized him.

One person fearful of being targeted said they and others similarly situated have been commiserating as well as “information sharing” ahead of potential investigations or other actions.

They hoped that if Trump has “smart people advising him,” he’d stay focused on broader policy goals.

“I just don’t know if he’ll be able to help himself and it just seems like he’s kind of consumed by all of it,” they said.

One former senior Republican aide noted Trump won’t be surrounded by many of the same people that pushed back against his inclinations during his first time in office nor may he be restrained by the courts the same way following the Supreme Court’s finding that former presidents retain broad criminal immunity.

Those factors weighed heavily on their mind when it comes to the extent Trump will make good on his plans to follow through on any threats.

“It’s really unknown. Donald Trump is somebody that you need to take seriously and literally. He has proven that. Some of his supporters have claimed they take him seriously, not literally. There are some on the left who say, ‘Well, don’t take him seriously, but you have to take him literally.’ You have to take him both,” the former aide said.

“The fact that there are not guard rails this time; the fact that you do have to take him seriously and literally, I think all just raise the specter of alarm if you’re someone that’s been in his crosshairs in the past.”

Mark Zaid, an attorney who represents various figures who have angered Trump, has already had conversations with multiple clients.

“Some of my biggest concerns are actually not that the Trump administration would abuse the law, but that they would make use of existing law beyond the norms that we have seen at any time in the past,” said Zaid.

Zaid, who specializes in national security law, said those who work in the intelligence community have little recourse if they are fired or if their security clearance is stripped – a career damaging prospect even if one leaves government, since many work on contracts that require holding a security clearance.

In a few cases, he’s even advised “a very small number of people” to be prepared to leave the country or travel during the inauguration.....>

<....“Why? Because this is what they have said they’re going to do. I mean, I don’t understand why people aren’t willing to take Trump and [Vice President-elect JD] Vance and the sycophants surrounding them at their word. Yeah, lots of it is rhetoric, I get it, but they’ve telegraphed exactly what they’re going to do,” Zaid said of their vows to seek revenge.

“Trump has promised that his second administration is just that – fulfillment of promises. So it would be naive and foolish not to take that seriously, and if it doesn’t come to pass, fantastic. I mean, look, I’m not telling anyone: ‘Sell your house, panic, hide all your assets’…That’s ridiculous, because I can’t assess the seriousness of the risk. I can only assess the seriousness of what they say they are going to do.”

What most fear is a long-running investigation – something that could come from the Justice Department or Congress.

“I think that the Justice Department, if it makes shrewd decisions, it will leave the clown show largely to the House of Representatives,” Bromwich said.

“But I can easily imagine Trump, or somebody doing Trump’s bidding, calling over to the Justice Department and saying, ‘Look, I want so and so investigated who said nasty things about me.’ If an investigation is opened in response and materials are subpoenaed, being put through that kind of ringer is scary and costly and does great damage to not only the individual, but the individual’s family and associates.”

There were at least a dozen instances from Trump’s first term in which he pushed for some kind of investigation or prosecution of those he saw as enemies.

But few gained much traction and Trump would face similar pushback in a second administration, from possible apprehension at DOJ to grand juries or judges airing skepticism over investigations or any charges they might try and file.

In the case of McCabe, a grand jury declined to indict the former FBI official – countering expectations of panels that often greenlight charges.

“You had the very unusual situation where the grand jury refused to indict. That doesn’t happen very often. And so I think we did a very good job of representing Mr. McCabe, but he was lucky and he knows it,” Bromwich said.

“And there’s no guarantee that somebody subject to the same kind of extremely factually weak investigation wouldn’t be pursued and that the grand jury wouldn’t, in such a case, go along with it. So I think you can only draw very limited comfort from what happened to him. And I think people are right to be afraid.”>

<Fresh from a devastating loss to Donald Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris may now head to Capitol Hill to defy him in what could be her last major act in office.

As President Joe Biden attempts to advance a crush of judicial confirmations before he leaves the White House, Democrats are bracing for the possibility of close calls in the process as they ambitiously seek to top the 234 judges Trump secured during his first term.

That’s where Harris would come in. As the president of the Senate, Harris wields the constitutional power to provide a tie-breaking vote. Democrats’ slim majority has made Harris a go-to on this procedure throughout Biden’s tenure, having broken a record last year for casting the most decisive votes of any vice president in history.

It is an issue so important to the president — and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. — that it came up last week when Harris and Biden met for lunch in their first post-election interface, three sources with knowledge of the meeting said.

“This is something they want to clear the decks on,” a senior aide to Harris said.

“She will definitely be available for any tie votes,” a second senior aide said.

“It is a big focus,” a third person familiar with internal dynamics said.

With Harris leaving Tuesday for a respite in Hawaii, the votes aren’t expected to come up in the Senate until December, one of the sources said.>

<Senate Republicans are acting pretty mad that Democrats are using the lame duck to confirm lots of President Joe Biden’s judges.

“I’m a bit frustrated,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) told reporters Tuesday. “After last night’s voting extravaganza, I wonder what we are doing.”

Capito was referring to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) scheduling votes on some of Biden’s court picks on Monday night. Republicans don’t have the votes to stop Biden’s nominees from advancing, so they dragged out the process by hours, forcing time-consuming votes on otherwise routine procedural steps.

It kept everyone in the Senate later than they wanted to be.

“Last night, we were sitting around voting time and time again for these liberal judges that Chuck Schumer wants to put in and ram through at the very last minute before the balance of power shifts,” complained the West Virginia Republican. “I would implore our leadership to go to the important issues the American people are thinking about: that’s completing our work at the end of the year and moving into next year.”

Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) emerged from a GOP lunch griping about some of his colleagues not being in town, which is making it easier for Democrats to get more judges confirmed. He said he was glad to see Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), who is now the vice president-elect, return to the Senate on Tuesday.

“We want to see him and some of our members back because of these votes we’re having,” Hoeven said. “Particularly on some of the circuit court judges.”

As a reporter tried to change the subject, Hoeven interrupted to say again how important it is for Republican senators to immediately come back to D.C.

“Because, you know, we could win possibly some of those votes if we have all our folks here,” he said. “Particularly in the circuit court.”

Even President-elect Donald Trump vented on social media about Democrats still confirming Biden’s judges, and demanded that Republicans stop them.

“The Democrats are trying to stack the Courts with Radical Left Judges on their way out the door,” Trump yelled in a Tuesday post. “Republican Senators need to Show Up and Hold the Line — No more Judges confirmed before Inauguration Day!”

It’s a pretty ridiculous moment.

It’s not just because Democrats still control the Senate for the next several weeks and can proceed however they want. It’s because when the tables were turned in 2020 ― when the GOP controlled the Senate in the lame duck and Biden had just defeated Trump ― Republicans took full advantage of confirming as many of Trump’s court picks as possible.

Republicans confirmed 23 of Trump’s lifetime federal judges in the lame duck in 2020, after Biden won the election. That’s not even factoring in the GOP’s unprecedented race to confirm Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett in October 2020, as votes were already being cast in the presidential election.

Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.), who will be the Senate majority leader in January, was among those celebrating the volume of Trump’s judges being confirmed during the lame duck in 2020.

“A couple of weeks ago, we confirmed one of the most qualified Supreme Court judges in living memory to the bench,” Thune said in a Senate floor speech on Nov. 18, 2020, after Biden had won the election.

“This week we will confirm five district court judges, bringing the total number of judges we’ve confirmed over the last four years to nearly 230,” he said. “Confirming good judges is one of our most important responsibilities as senators.”

In the same speech, the South Dakota Republican condemned Democrats for blocking some of President George W. Bush’s judicial nominees in 2004.

“I was one of the many Americans upset by the blockade of talented, well-qualified nominees,” he said. “And it was one of the main reasons I ran for the Senate.”

Thune sounds a lot different this week as he, too, complains about Democrats lining up votes on Biden’s judicial picks. In fact, he is reportedly taking credit for the GOP’s efforts Monday night to delay Democrats’ votes.

“If Sen. Schumer thought Senate Republicans would just roll over and allow him to quickly confirm multiple Biden-appointed judges to lifetime jobs in the final weeks of the Democrat majority, he thought wrong,” Thune told ABC News....>

<....White House spokesman Andrew Bates scoffed at Thune’s about-face.

“Delaying the confirmation of highly qualified, experienced judges takes a real-life toll on constituents and leads to backlogs of criminal cases ― meaning Senator Thune was correct in 2020 when he said senators have every urgent reason to continue working together in good faith to staff the federal bench,” Bates said in a statement. “There is no excuse for choosing partisanship over enforcing the rule of law.”

As much as Republicans may complain, Democrats still control the Senate for another several weeks, and Schumer plans to use that time to confirm as many of Biden’s pending judicial nominees as he can ― possibly all of them.

As of Tuesday night, the Senate had confirmed 217 of Biden’s judges since he took office. There are 26 more judicial nominees awaiting Senate action, of which 22 are district court nominees and four are appeals court nominees.

If Democrats are able to confirm all of them before Congress adjourns for the year, that would put Biden’s total number of lifetime federal judges at 243. That’s more than Trump got in his first term, 234, and would be a massive win for Biden if Democrats can pull it off.

“It’s no secret the Senate is moving forward on confirming more of Biden’s judicial nominees,” Schumer told reporters Tuesday.

Since the end of last week, he’s lined up confirmation votes on 12 of Biden’s district court nominees and one appeals court nominee, Embry Kidd, who was confirmed Monday to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. The Senate also confirmed Mustafa Kasubhai on Tuesday, an Oregon district court nominee.

All of these judges are lifetime appointments. Since the Senate doesn’t need the House to confirm judges, which are arguably a president’s most lasting legacy, Schumer is just plowing ahead with votes on all of Biden’s court nominees.

Senate rules require up to two hours of debate on each district judge, which comprises the bulk of Biden’s remaining court picks. So if Schumer lined up votes for five of them, for example, and Republicans decided to drag out those votes, he would keep senators in session for 10 hours to get through them all.

“We’ll keep working to confirm these lifetime appointments,” Schumer said. “It’s far too important. We’re not going to let anything stand in our way.”

He warned senators to be prepared for another late night on Wednesday “to get as many judges done as possible.”

With the clock ticking, Republicans are scrambling to get all of their colleagues back in Washington. Five GOP senators missed votes on Tuesday: Sens. Mike Braun (Ind.), Kevin Cramer (N.D.), Ted Cruz (Texas), Bill Hagerty (Tenn.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.).

Hoeven said he wasn’t sure if or when all the missing senators will return.

“We’re going to have some dialogue and try to see if we can’t get everybody back,” he said.

Democrats are plowing ahead regardless. Schumer brushed off a question from a reporter about some Republicans vowing to use procedural rules to gum up Senate business to try to stop him from confirming more judges.

“They can try dilatory tactics,” he said, “but we’re going to persist.”>

<Republican senators are urging some of their colleagues, including Vice President-elect JD Vance, R-Ohio, and Donald Trump's Secretary of State pick Marco Rubio, R-Florida, to get back to the office and block Democrats from confirming judges during the lame-duck session while they still have the majority and the White House.

After their absences helped Senate Democrats to confirm several of President Joe Biden's nominees, Republicans fumed about Vance, Rubio and others during their weekly caucus lunch and to reporters. “I’m not going to bubble wrap it,” said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La. “There’s no excuse for that, it’s our job to be here and vote.”

“We want to see [Vance] and some of our members back because of these votes we’re having,” Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., told reporters. “Particularly on some of the circuit court judges.”

Trump himself issued marching orders on Truth Social on Tuesday. "The Democrats are trying to stack the Courts with Radical Left Judges on their way out the door," Trump declared. "Republican Senators need to Show Up and Hold the Line — No more Judges confirmed before Inauguration Day!" he wrote, just a few hours after he invited several GOP senators, including Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to witness a SpaceX launch while the rest of the chamber was voting.

If they were present, Democrats might not have been able to confirm several of Biden's judges, with Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., playing they typical roles as wild cards and Vice President Kamala Harris, who casts tie-breaking votes, on vacation in Hawaii.

Embry Kidd, a Florida Democrat, passed his confirmation vote to the Atlanta-based Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday despite opposition from Manchin, prompting outrage from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. "This leftist judge would have been voted down and the seat on the important 11th circuit would have been filled by Donald Trump next year had Republicans showed up," he tweeted.

On Tuesday, Mustafa Taher Kasubhai passed by a 51-44 vote to be confirmed as U.S. District Court judge in Oregon. Vance, who said he was busy interviewing candidates for federal office under a Trump administration in a now-deleted tweet, rushed back after the procedural vote to oppose the confirmation itself, but it was too late to make a difference.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board did not accept Vance's excuse, writing that while he was “on the job that begins in January, which is two months away,” his neglect of his current job allowed Biden to get his nominees "a lifetime appointment to the federal bench because Republicans couldn’t get their full team on the field.”

At the time of the Nov. 5 election, there were 47 vacancies on the federal bench, with 17 nominees awaiting confirmation. Biden has since named several more nominees in hopes that they would pass the Senate hurdle before the chamber switches to GOP control on Jan. 3, 2025. As of Wednesday, there are 30 nominees pending....>

<....To get them all passed on time, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. is racing against GOP senators who are trying to drag out the process by forcing time-consuming votes on typically routine procedural steps. The delays kept everyone voting late into the night, to no one's pleasure.

“Last night, we were sitting around voting time and time again for these liberal judges that Chuck Schumer wants to put in and ram through at the very last minute before the balance of power shifts,” complained Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.V., on Tuesday. “I would implore our leadership to go to the important issues the American people are thinking about: that’s completing our work at the end of the year and moving into next year.”

Her and Trump's gripes over lame duck nominations are a reversal of the late 2020 dynamic, in which the GOP first defied precedent to confirm 23 of Trump's judicial nominees even after Biden had won and Democrats were projected to control the Senate following two December runoff victories in Georgia. Republicans at the time made no secret of their accomplishment.

“This week we will confirm five district court judges, bringing the total number of judges we’ve confirmed over the last four years to nearly 230. Confirming good judges is one of our most important responsibilities as senators,” crowed Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., in a Senate floor speech in late November 2020. He is set to replace Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., as Senate GOP leader in the next congress.

Now, he is spinning a different line. “If Sen. Schumer thought Senate Republicans would just roll over and allow him to quickly confirm multiple Biden-appointed judges to lifetime jobs in the final weeks of the Democrat [sic] majority, he thought wrong,” Thune told ABC News.

“[Republicans] can try dilatory tactics, but we're going to persist,” Schumer told reporters on Tuesday, warning of the possibility of another round of late-night votes on Wednesday.

Should the Democrats succeed with most or all of the nominations, Trump will have around just 20 judicial vacancies to fill upon assuming office in January. It's a far less open field than the 108 vacancies he had at the start of his first term.>

<As President-elect Donald Trump rolls out his controversial Cabinet picks, he has demanded the Republican-led Senate take extended breaks to allow him to make recess appointments rather than subject his nominees to an extensive public vetting process and upper chamber approval.

Trump's demand not only tests congressional Republicans' willingness to uphold checks and balances over bending to the president-elect's wishes but, if met, would be an affront to the Constitution, which empowers the Senate to provide "advice and consent" over the president's key executive branch nominees, experts told Salon.

"It's certainly one of the biggest attempts at a power grab that we've seen. He wants not to just recess appointment, he wants to basically do an end-around around the Senate's role in advice and consent," said Josh Huder, a senior fellow of the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University.

Such an action would "undermine" Congress' power of personnel and its ability to shape the federal government and the Judiciary, he said in a phone interview. "It would be something that would be unprecedented in American history — there's no question."

Since winning the presidency earlier this month, Trump has picked potential Cabinet members at a lightning quick pace, raising the question of whether he could bypass Congress to install his selections. His nominees, a swath of loyalists with contentious positions, have drawn widespread pushback — even from Republican elected officials.

Chief among the president-elect's controversial picks is former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who was nominated for attorney general despite being investigated by the Justice Department and the House Ethics Committee over allegations that he paid to have sex with a 17-year-old girl, which he denies.

Trump also chose former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services, and ex-Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, to oversee the nation's intelligence services. Many in the medical community have harangued Kennedy Jr.'s appointment over his outspoken criticism and skepticism of vaccines, while national security experts have sounded alarms over Gabbard's ties to Russia and Syria.

Though they could receive Senate backing from a traditional confirmation process, the GOP's narrow 53-seat majority does not guarantee it, especially as some senators question the choices.

David Alvis, a professor of political science at Wofford College in South Carolina, told Salon that making recess appointments offers the incoming Trump administration a "stronger hand" over the appointees than the confirmation process typically affords.

By circumventing Senate confirmation, "you're not having to negotiate the terms of the appointee. You don't have to come up with deals or bargaining with members of the Senate — especially Senate holdouts — so that gives you greater strength over it," he said in a phone interview. The recess appointment concluding at the end of the legislative session creates a "threat of non-renewal of that appointment" that "allows the executive a little bit more control over the recess appointee."

Trump's push for recess appointments ahead of his second term could "easily" be anticipated based on "maneuverings toward" this action in the later years of his first term, Alvis argued.

Trump made a quick appointment of then-Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, who the Senate had already confirmed for that role, to acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in late 2017 to avoid a confirmation process for a different nominee. He also threatened to invoke his constitutional power to adjourn Congress to push through nominees while lawmakers were out of Washington, D.C., during the early months of the pandemic....>