Attention to the Unseen

Rolling Stone reports: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is Donald Trump’s pick to run the Department of Health and Human Services, recently called Trump’s diet “poison.” On Saturday, he was photographed on Trump’s plane eating McDonald’s with the president-elect and his inner circle. RFK Jr., who says he wants to operate under the slogan Make America Healthy Again (MAHA), criticized Trump’s diet on a podcast last week. “The stuff that he eats is really, like, bad,” he said. “Campaign food…

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The New York Times reports: Locked out of power next year, Democrats are hatching plans to oppose President-elect Donald J. Trump that look nothing like the liberal “resistance” of 2017. Gone are the pink knit caps and homemade signs from the huge protest that convulsed blue America that year, as exhausted liberals seem more inclined to tune out Mr. Trump than fight. Washington is far different, too. The Republicans who stymied some of Mr. Trump’s first-term agenda are now dead,…

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The New York Times reports: President-elect Donald J. Trump chose his attorney general almost on a whim, in the sky between Washington and Palm Beach, Fla. He scoffed at a candidate for the Department of Homeland Security, then abruptly changed his mind. His defense secretary pick was a snap judgment during a slide presentation at Mar-a-Lago. Emboldened, confident in his instincts and more contemptuous than ever of Washington expertise, Mr. Trump is staffing the most important roles in his government…

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Mother Jones reports: On Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump announced former Fox News host Pete Hegseth was his pick for secretary of defense. The choice is iconoclastic to say the least. Although Hegseth served as an Army National Guard officer, he has no experience in government leadership that could inform the management of the federal government’s largest agency. What Hegseth does have are connections to the TheoBros, a group of mostly millennial, ultra-conservative men, many of whom proudly call themselves Christian…

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Politico reports: Elon Musk is backing Donald Trump’s transition co-chair Howard Lutnick to lead the Treasury Department, touting the billionaire CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald as a potential secretary who “will actually enact change” from the most powerful economic post in Trump’s Cabinet. Musk labeled another prime contender for the post, hedge fund CEO Scott Bessent, a “business-as-usual choice,” he posted on X, the social media network he purchased two years ago. “Business-as-usual is driving America bankrupt, so we need change…

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Rolling Stone reports: Donald Trump’s incoming administration brass wants it made clear: The president-elect is not planning to build a brand new network of “camps” to house the myriad undocumented immigrants who Trump has vowed to round up in what he claims will be “the largest deportation” operation in the “history of our country.” To be sure, Trump’s migrant expulsion program, if he were to follow through with his plans to deport millions, would require massive new camps — something…

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Politico reports: The last time Cliff Sims was this close to presidential power, he coined an indelible phrase for the cut-throat coterie around Donald Trump — it was a “Team of Vipers,” as he titled his 2019 tell-all. Now a key member of the Trump transition, Sims is showing that he knows his way around the old snake pit. That has become clear in recent weeks, when he turned into the subject of a Mar-a-Lago whisper campaign that arose alongside…

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The Washington Post reports: As Donald Trump moves to fill his administration with polarizing figures like former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz and onetime presidential rival Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he may need Congress to heed his demand to allow him to bypass the traditional confirmation process and appoint his picks without Senate approval. The president-elect has insisted that rather than put his nominees through an extended public vetting process, the GOP-led Senate should take extended breaks that would allow him…

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The New York Times reports: Elon Musk, a close adviser to President-elect Donald J. Trump, met with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations on Monday in New York in a session that two Iranian officials described as a discussion of how to defuse tensions between Iran and the United States. The Iranians said the meeting between Mr. Musk and Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani lasted more than an hour and was held at a secret location. The Iranians, who spoke on…

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Reuters reports: U.S. Muslim leaders who supported Republican Donald Trump to protest against the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza and attacks on Lebanon have been deeply disappointed by his Cabinet picks, they tell Reuters. “Trump won because of us and we’re not happy with his Secretary of State pick and others,” said Rabiul Chowdhury, a Philadelphia investor who chaired the Abandon Harris campaign in Pennsylvania and co-founded Muslims for Trump. Muslim support for Trump helped him win…

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Jonathan Chait writes: If you had predicted before the election that Donald Trump’s second administration would seek to hand some of the most sensitive and powerful roles in government to a Fox News personality (Pete Hegseth, nominated for defense secretary), a recurring Fox News guest who is also featured frequently on Russian state-controlled media (Tulsi Gabbard, nominated for director of national intelligence), and the target of an ongoing House Ethics Committee sexual-misconduct investigation (Matt Gaetz, nominated for attorney general), you…

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