A MAGA Cabinet, if you can confirm it
Trump’s GOP loyalty test.
If you’re looking for a reference point to understand Donald Trump’s grasp on the Republican Party circa November 2024, here are two places to start.
The first comes courtesy of Rep. Troy Nehls, Republican of Texas:
The second comes from Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin, who has sparred repeatedly with Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz. And when I say “sparred,” I mean:
He has called Gaetz a “liar.”
He has said that Getz would show colleagues on the House floor videos of “the girls that he had slept with” and “brag about how he would crush ED medicine and chase it with an energy drink so he could go all night.”
He has said that Gaetz lives off his “daddy’s money.”
He has accused Gaetz of referring to Kristi Noem, another Trump Cabinet pick, as a “fine b***h” when all three served together in the House.
Got it? Well, here’s what Mullin says about Gaetz now that he’s been nominated by Trump to lead the Justice Department:
After banking these statements of loyalty from congressional Republicans, Trump has spent this week setting the stage for them to prove it, sending a slate of increasingly controversial picks for them to confirm to his new Cabinet.
On the Hill, Gaetz is seen as the most endangered pick. Beloved by Trump for his bomb-throwing attacks on the president-elect’s critics, the AG nominee is reviled by many House Republicans for his role ousting former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) last year. Gaetz has spent years publicly bashing many of the Senate Republicans whose votes he will now need.
His confirmation process is also expected to be marred by long-running allegations that he violated sex trafficking laws in 2017 by having sex with an underage girl after paying for her travel with him across state lines. Gaetz denies the allegations; the Justice Department investigated him but did not bring charges. The House Ethics Committee was due to release a report today about his conduct, but the meeting was cancelled after Gaetz resigned from the House in light of his AG nomination. Per ABC News, the woman at the center of the probe had testified that Gaetz did have sex with her when she was 17 and he was 35.
“Look, Gaetz won’t get confirmed,” McCarthy, a longtime Gaetz antagonist, said this week. “Everybody knows that.” According to the Wall Street Journal, “significantly more than four” Republican senators — the number needed to sink a nomination — are planning to vote against Gaetz, and possibly as many as 30. However, none have publicly announced opposition to Trump’s pick.
Trump sparked yet another difficult confirmation battle Thursday when he nominated Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to be Secretary of Health and Human Services. A prominent anti-vaccine activist, Kennedy has made a long line of false claims that have troubled public health experts, including linking vaccines to autism and claiming that Covid-19 was “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people. Kennedy has said that, as a Trump administration official, he plans to promote raw milk and push for the removal of fluoride from drinking water.
As HHS Secretary, Kennedy would control one of the largest U.S. government agencies, overseeing a $1.7 trillion budget, more than 80,000 employees, and sub-agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Kennedy is also an ex-Democrat, like former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who Trump has nominated to be Director of National Intelligence, overseeing all 18 U.S. intelligence agencies. That means, in addition to sparking controversy for their outlandish claims, Kennedy and Gabbard could face suspicion from GOP senators for their breaks with Republican orthodoxy: Kennedy, for example, is pro-choice; Gabbard, a fierce critic of military intervention, is far more dovish than most congressional Republicans.
The picks add up to a Cabinet that would be a much purer distillation of the MAGA coalition than Trump’s first administration — and composed mostly of picks known more for their loyalty to the president-elect than for their expertise in the policy areas they would be overseeing.
To lead the Defense Department, Trump has nominated Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host with little management experience. To serve under Gaetz at the Justice Department, Trump has nominated three of his personal defense lawyers for the second-, third-, and fourth-ranking positions at the agency.
The nominations also appear to betray a president-elect who was less prepared for the transition than either his defenders or his critics — wielding Project 2025, a conservative playbook Trump has distanced himself from — have alleged.
According to CNN, Trump chose both Gaetz and Hegseth after being frustrated by the short list of nominees his aides provided to him, overruling their recommendations to select loyalists he knew from their defenses of him on television. Both nominations appear to have come about in a matter of hours: Trump reportedly interviewed Hegseth on the same day his nomination was announced; per the New York Times, Gaetz’s name first came up as a potential AG on Trump’s flight to Washington on Wednesday. By the time Trump was flying home that night, the Florida congressman had been selected.
As a result — not unlike Trump’s first term — the nominees appear to be coming out in a haphazard manner, with the transition team reportedly bypassing the traditional FBI background checks for at least some picks. That chaotic process increases the chances of pitfalls emerging in the confirmation process, when senators engage in the vetting that Trump’s advisers don’t appear to be carrying out.
One such revelation has already emerged. The police department in Monterey, California, confirmed on Thursday that it investigated Hegseth in 2017 for an allegation of sexual assault involving contusions to a victim’s thigh. (Hegseth, who was never charged, denies the allegation.) According to Vanity Fair, Trump’s transition team scrambled to meet with its lawyers after first learning about the allegation Wednesday night — 24 hours after Hegseth had already been selected to lead the nation’s military.
More news to know
Trump has announced plans to nominate North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum as Interior Secretary and former Georgia Rep. Doug Collins as Veterans Affairs Secretary.
Mar-a-Lago insiders are watching closely as the president-elect decides between hedge fund executive Scott Bessent and transition co-chair Howard Lutnick for Treasury Secretary.
Colorado’s Democratic governor raised eyebrows with his praise for RFK Jr. after the vaccine skeptic’s nomination.
The Biden administration is racing to finish distributing semiconductor grants before its time in office ends.
The day ahead
President Biden is in Lima, Peru, for an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. He will participate in an APEC dialogue today; later, he will hold meetings with Japanese prime minister Ishiba Shigeru of Japan, South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol, and Peruvian president Dina Boluarte Zegarra.
Vice President Harris has nothing on her schedule.
The Senate is out for the week.
The House will vote on the FAFSA Deadline Act, which would require the Education Department to make the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) available by October 1 instead of January 1 each year.
The Supreme Court will meet for its weekly conference.
I had to read this three times "On the Hill, Gaetz is seen as the most endangered pick." I keep wanting to put a 'r' in that last word. 😊
It’s pretty clear that things are going to fall apart even sooner than I anticipated. Trump is going to sour on these people even sooner than the last set. We are going to be in free fall very quickly - if we aren’t already.