The race to confirm Donald Trump’s nightmare Cabinet has entered its final stretch: Senate confirmation hearings.
Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi is Trump’s nominee for attorney general and returns to the hot seat Thursday as her confirmation hearing enters its second day. The ride-or-die Trump ally defended the former president during his first impeachment trial and was at the forefront of his efforts to steal the 2020 election that he lost to President Joe Biden.
Highlights from the first day of Bondi’s hearing include her lying about Trump’s well-documented attempt to pressure Georgia Secretary of State to “find 11,780 votes” to help him win the state in 2020, as well as refusing—multiple times—to admit that Trump lost to Biden in 2020.
Bondi’s hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee begins its second day at 10:15 AM ET Thurssday. Read her opening statement here.
The race to confirm Donald Trump’s nightmare Cabinet has entered its final stretch: Senate confirmation hearings.
Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, was part of Trump’s legal team during his first impeachment. The second choice for the role—after former Rep. Matt Gaetz was forced to withdraw amid multiple scandals—first made a name for herself by fighting the Affordable Care Act as the Sunshine State’s first woman AG. Bondi also was at the forefront of Trump’s attempts to steal the 2020 election.
Bondi’s hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee begins at 9:30 AM ET Wednesday. Read her opening statement here.
The Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, created by Donald Trump, is now interviewing federal workers at multiple agencies as part of the group’s stated plans to cut government spending.
The Washington Post reports that representatives from DOGE have spoken to employees at the Department of Health and Human Services, the IRS, the Treasury Department, and at the Department of Homeland Security.
Musk was named as the cochair of DOGE along with failed presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. The advisory committee has no legal authority within the U.S. government and despite its name is not an actual department, as that is a status that can only be conferred via a congressional vote. DOGE can merely make recommendations to the government, like any other group of citizens.
Musk was awarded with the DOGE leadership position by Trump after he donated at least $250 million to political groups designed to win the election for the Republican nominee.
“Send Him Back”
During the presidential campaign, Musk said a commission like DOGE would be able to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. But in a recent podcast interview with disgraced political strategist Mark Penn, Musk already began to tamp down expectations.
“I think if we try for $2 trillion, we’ve got a good shot at getting $1 [trillion],” Musk said.
Recent political activity by Musk is perhaps an early warning sign of how DOGE will operate once Trump is in office.
In December, Musk used his account on social media site X to agitate against a bipartisan spending agreement in Congress. Musk spread numerous falsehoods about the bill, leading to Republican leaders pulling the legislation. Failure to pass the bill could have led to a government shutdown and triggered billions in lost productivity as has been the case in previous shutdowns. Ultimately a new bill passed, without funds for programs like pediatric cancer research.
Despite these disruptive actions, another Republican leader has adopted a DOGE-style program. Recently elected New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte announced that she would create a “Commission on Government Efficiency.” COGE will operate outside of the state government and purportedly offer up recommendations to cut spending.
Musk has said that government spending must be curbed, even if middle income people experience “hardship” when services are curtailed. At the same time, Republicans are pursuing legislation that would include continued tax cuts for billionaires like Musk (he is the richest person in the world).
DOGE interfering in federal work is part of the strategy to get a pro-Musk agenda in play, even if it means disruption and problems for everyone else.
Americans are giving President Joe Biden harsh reviews before he leaves office in less than two weeks, on Jan. 20. And worse than that, they appear to be judging him even more harshly than his two most recent predecessors, Donald Trump and Barack Obama.
According to a survey released on Friday by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, just one-quarter of U.S. adults (25%) said that Biden was a “good” or “great” president, compared with Trump, whom 36% of U.S. adults gave the same ranking after his first term in office ended, in 2021. (Notably, though, Trump had slightly higher “poor” and “terrible” ratings than Biden.)
Even more remarkable is that the survey about Trump was conducted shortly after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. And this is backed up by other polling as well. For instance, between Jan. 7-20, 2021, Trump’s approval ratings dropped from 42% to 39%, according to 538’s average. But at present, Biden’s job approval ratings sit at about 37%, according to 538’s average.
The result of this past November’s election, where Trump got very close to earning a majority of the popular vote, showed that voters preferred a return to Trump versus a continuation of Democratic rule, perhaps especially one tied to Biden. But now we have even more verification of the degree to which voters, after seeing both men govern, simply (if slightly) prefer Trump to Biden.
According to a national tracking poll by Civiqs, just 38% of registered voters have a favorable view of Biden. In fact, he has been below 40% since Nov. 10, making the odds of a rebound ahead of Trump’s inauguration pretty slim. Meanwhile, 45% of voters have a favorable view of Trump, according to Civiqs, and his favorability has been steadily increasing since about February 2023.
The issue? Polling suggests voters either don’t know this or believe Biden was insufficient in other ways. The AP-NORC survey found that only 2 in 10 Americans (22%) think Biden made good on his campaign promises. A larger share, 38%, said that Biden did not keep his word. The remaining 39% said he tried but failed to keep his campaign promises.
Biden is also faring considerably worse than Obama was at the end of his presidency. AP-NORC found that Obama left his second term in office with a majority of Americans (52%) describing his tenure as “good” or “great.” This squares with data released earlier this week by Gallup, which found Biden’s standing is similar to that of former President Richard Nixon, who resigned amid the infamous Watergate scandal. (Unlike the AP-NORC survey, Gallup’s involved a retrospective assessment of past presidents, not a contemporaneous one.)
Former President Barack Obama
As other politicos have pointed out, Trump seems to be enjoying a honeymoon period since his win in November. It’s possible, of course, that four years of Biden caused the electorate to reassess Trump, who once had dismal approval and favorability ratings too.
The good news for Biden, if there is any, is that Americans’ negative views toward him may change over time. After all, Gallup found that other presidents who left with low approval ratings—including George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter—saw Americans’ perception of their presidencies warm with time.
Plus, knowing Trump, he’ll surely squander his goodwill with the American electorate in due time. Every honeymoon must come to an end, including Trump’s. And with the high number of unpopular campaign pledges he’s made, he’s likely to only accelerate that timeline.
Donald Trump's co-president, Elon Musk, admitted on Wednesday that he probably can't cut $2 trillion from the federal budget as he had promised, running into the political reality everyone told him existed but that he refused to accept because he’s a billionaire who thinks he knows better than everyone else.
"I think if we try for $2 trillion, we’ve got a good shot at getting $1 [trillion],” Musk said in the interview, which aired on Musk's disinformation platform X. “And if we can drop the budget deficit from $2 trillion to $1 trillion and free up the economy to have additional growth, such that the output of goods and services keeps pace with the increase in the money supply, then there will be no inflation. So that, I think, would be an epic outcome.”
When asked what specific things he'd cut, Musk offered nothing concrete.
“It’s a very target-rich environment for saving money. … It’s like being in a room full of targets—you could close your eyes and you can’t miss,” Musk said, a metaphor so stupid he almost sounds like his buddy Trump.
Experts always said Musk's $2 trillion goal was unattainable.
Elon Musk, left, and Donald Trump attend a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 5, 2024.
The entire federal budget in fiscal year 2024 was $6.75 trillion, with massive chunks of it spending that is either legally or politically impossible to cut, including Social Security, Medicare, defense spending, and debt service.
“Our federal budget is about $7 trillion a year. And I still think that they're talking about that $2 trillion number with serious purpose, that that's what they're looking at. And it would be unimaginable that we could find $2 trillion in savings out of seven in one year," Maya MacGuineas, president of the nonprofit Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, told NPR in November.
Even finding $1 trillion in cuts, as Musk now says he can achieve, will be extremely hard.
Of the discretionary spending Congress appropriates each year, more than half goes toward national defense, while “the rest to fund the administration of other agencies and programs,” according to the Treasury Department. “These programs range from transportation, education, housing, and social service programs, as well as science and environmental organizations.”
According to an analysis from the CRFB, “in order to achieve balance within a decade, all spending would need to be cut by roughly one-quarter and that the necessary cuts would grow to 85% if defense, veterans, Social Security, and Medicare spending were off the table.”
What’s more, Musk admitted in October that slashing the budget would require "hardship" for the American people. And given that members of Congress are accountable to voters, they are unlikely to slash spending for programs that their constituents could punish them for.
This isn't the first promise Musk and Trump are backtracking on after the 2024 election.
Trump recently admitted he probably can't bring grocery prices down—arguably the key reason Trump was elected in November. "It's hard to bring things down once they're up. You know, it's very hard," Trump said in an interview with Time magazine.
The American people were sold a bag of goods that they'll never get.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has disclosed that he had a private phone call with Donald Trump just hours before Trump petitioned the court to block his criminal sentence in his hush money case. The call raises new questions about the independence of the court and the court’s role in putting Trump above the law.
Alito claims that the call between him and Trump was about recommending one of his former law clerks for a job in the upcoming administration.
“William Levi, one of my former law clerks, asked me to take a call from President-elect Trump regarding his qualifications to serve in a government position,” Alito told ABC News.
But after the two conservative leaders spoke, Trump’s lawyers filed an emergency request with the court to prevent New York from handing down a criminal sentence for him on Friday. Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records when he tried to cover up payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Trump was trying to cover up details of his affair with Daniels, preventing them from being disclosed to the public while he was running for president in 2016.
Stormy Daniels
“We did not discuss the emergency application he filed today, and indeed, I was not even aware at the time of our conversation that such an application would be filed,” Alito told ABC. He also told the outlet that he and Trump did not discuss current or possible Supreme Court cases.
But there is no independent confirmation of what was said in the phone call, nor has a recording been provided and the discussion has raised concerns about the court and corruption.
“No person, no matter who they are, should engage in out-of-court communication with a judge or justice who’s considering that person’s case,” Gabe Roth, executive director of the group Fix the Court, said in a statement. Roth also described the Trump-Alito call as an “unmistakable breach of protocol.”
Trump and Alito are ideologically aligned on conservative issues. Alito was part of the 6-3 majority on the court that overturned the federal right to an abortion in the landmark case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. Trump appointed three of the justices who voted along with Alito—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Trump has also praised the court for their decision despite the devastating effect it has had on millions of Americans.
In his personal life, an upside-down U.S. flag (a sign of distress) was flown over Alito’s house while President Joe Biden was in office, echoing other anti-Biden conservatives. The Alito family also hung an “Appeal to Heaven” flag at their beach house, a symbol used by conservative “Stop the Seal” election conspiracy theorists.
Trump has a history of exerting corrupt political influence in private phone calls.
His first impeachment came about because Trump tried to pressure Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy to implicate Trump’s political rivals (especially President Joe Biden) in corruption allegations. Similarly, after he lost the 2020 election to Biden, Trump used a phone call as part of his pressure campaign to get Georgia election officials to throw out votes for Biden so he would win the race.
The Trump-Alito call comes just a few months after the conservative majority on the Supreme Court (including Alito) voted to put Trump above the law with a presidential immunity ruling, blocking him from being charged with criminal actions undertaken while he was in office.
The public has continued to express a lack of confidence in the conservative-led court. In an aggregate of opinion polls on the matter, the court only has the approval of 40% of the public while 50.3% disapprove of the body.
As Trump heads into the presidency with the court on his side, those trends are unlikely to improve.
Republican President-elect Donald Trump spent the closing months of his campaign trying to distance himself from a blueprint for his second term known as Project 2025.
Then, in the days after his victory, Trump picked major architects of the Heritage Foundation’s vision for key posts in his next administration, setting the stage for them to implement a conservative Christian agenda that has the potential to reshape the federal government and redefine rights long held by all Americans, though likely to disproportionately impact women, LGBTQ+ people and vulnerable populations like the elderly and disabled.
One of these architects is Russell Vought, whom Trump has again tapped to lead his Office of Management and Budget, or OMB, an under-the-radar entity to most Americans that wields immense influence over the federal government by crafting the president’s budget. If confirmed by the Senate, a very likely outcome, Vought will be optimally positioned to inject Project 2025’s priorities — many of which reflect his career-long push to dismantle programs for low-income Americans and expand the president’s authority — across the federal agencies and departments that OMB oversees.
Ben Olinsky, who advised Democratic former President Barack Obama on labor and workforce policy before joining the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress, where he works on issues related to the economy and governance, said that Vought’s vision for OMB as presented in Project 2025 is “to basically change the plumbing so they can do whatever they want without any meaningful checks and balances” during Trump’s second term.
“I think that it's important to really make sure [Americans] understand what the plans are for changing the plumbing,” Olinsky said.
Vought has firsthand knowledge of the OMB’s wide-ranging scope. During Trump’s first term, he was OMB’s deputy director, acting director and, finally, confirmed director. In those roles, he helped then-President Trump craft a plan to jettison job protections for thousands of federal workers and assisted with a legally ambiguous effort to redirect congressionally appropriated foreign aid for Ukraine.
Vought has used two pro-Trump groups he founded — the nonprofit Center for Renewing America and its advocacy arm, America Restoration Action — to discredit structural racism as a driver for inequality and attempt to stymie diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts. In August, he told a pair of British journalists posing as potential donors that the Center for Renewing America is “an organization I helped turn into the Death Star,” the fictional Star Wars space station that can destroy planets, and it “is accomplishing all of the debates you are reading about.”
The chapter that Vought wrote for Project 2025 details how the Office of Management and Budget could be a vehicle to advance the Christian nationalist agenda he favors — and he has not hesitated to talk about it.
Acting Office of Management and Budget director Russ Vought speaks during the daily press briefing at the White House in March 2019.
“I think you have to rehabilitate Christian nationalism,” Vought told the British journalists at the Centre for Climate Reporting, which released video of the conversation that was recorded using hidden cameras.
In an interview with conservative activist Tucker Carlson shortly after Trump’s reelection, Vought likened OMB to the “nerve center” through which a president can ensure their policy directives trickle down to the multitude of federal agencies and a civilian workforce of more than two million people.
“Properly understood, [OMB] is a President’s air-traffic control system with the ability and charge to ensure that all policy initiatives are flying in sync and with the authority to let planes take off and, at times, ground planes that are flying off course,” Vought wrote in Project 2025.
He sees two primary ways to ground wayward planes: by eliminating potential dissent within agencies and withholding money appropriated by Congress for projects and programs the president does not support.
Both would clear the way for Trump’s next administration to implement many of the priorities detailed in Project 2025, which could essentially redefine rights, systems and cultural norms for all Americans.
Some of Project 2025’s recommendations include restricting abortion access and supporting a “biblically based” definition of family, because the “male-female dyad is essential to human nature,” by replacing policies related to LGBTQ+ equity with those that “support the formation of stable, married, nuclear families.”
It also suggests transforming the FBI into a politically motivated entity to settle scores and barring U.S. citizens from receiving federal housing assistance if they live with anyone who is not a citizen or permanent legal resident, which would serve Trump’s campaign promise to take extraordinary measures to crack down on illegal immigration. During remarks in September titled “Theology of America’s Statecraft: The Case for Immigration Restriction,” Vought justified the separation of families and condemned so-called sanctuary cities, or those that pass laws that limit their cooperation with federal immigration authorities. “Failing to secure the border is a complete abdication of [the government’s] God-given responsibility,” he said.
Olinsky explained that while many of the policies in Project 2025 have been floating around Republican circles in Washington for years without gaining much traction, the document is a detailed roadmap that shows how its authors believe they can finally deliver on key pieces of their conservative Christian agenda.
“One, it says all of the quiet parts out loud about the full scope of the agenda. And then the second thing, which I think is something folks should really pay attention to, is it says how they're going to accomplish it, practically, by using executive action,” Olinsky said.
In many ways, Vought’s approach to bending the federal government to a president’s will began taking shape during Trump’s first administration. In late 2020, as Trump’s first term drew to a close, Vought helped him craft an executive order known as “Schedule F,” which reclassified thousands of civil servants and, with that, stripped them of their job protections; Vought recommended that close to 90 percent of OMB’s workforce be reclassified.
President Joe Biden rescinded the executive order on his third day in office. Project 2025 recommends reinstating it.
Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, a Democrat who sponsored the legislation to protect federal employees, warned of a “loyalty-based system that would impede the work of the federal government, expose people to intimidation and bring people into jobs that are not qualified to do them, thus risking the American public’s safety and quality of life.”
Vought is among the Trump loyalists who have been open about their desire to slash the federal workforce — as a route to purge critics, improve efficiency or both.
In the interview with Carlson, Vought said, “There certainly is going to be mass layoffs and firings, particularly at some of the agencies that we don’t even think should exist.” His language appeared to communicate an effort to ensure obedience and compliance. With the firings and layoffs, Vought said he wants to avoid having “really awesome Cabinet secretaries sitting on top of massive bureaucracies that largely don’t do what they tell them to do.”
Trump’s transition team did not respond to requests to discuss Vought’s selection for OMB or the chapter he wrote for Project 2025 about the agency. The 19th reached out to Vought through his Center for Renewing America, which likewise did not respond to a request for comment.
Power of the Purse
During Trump’s first term, OMB helped find money to begin building a small section of wall along the U.S.-Mexico border — a key campaign promise Trump made in 2016 — “because Congress wouldn’t give him the ordinary money,” Vought told Carlson.
Trump also enlisted OMB to withhold $400 million in military aid that Congress approved for Ukraine, as Trump and his associates tried to pressure the country to investigate Biden and his family. The move prompted the abuse-of-power case House Democrats made against Trump during his first impeachment, when Vought defied a subpoena to testify. The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan watchdog, concluded that the scheme violated the 1974 Impoundment Control Act. Days later, the Republican-led Senate acquitted Trump. (Trump had eventually released the aid.)
When Trump subsequently nominated Vought to lead OMB in 2020, Democrats opposed him because of his approach to impoundment authority. He was nonetheless confirmed.
Vought’s path to confirmation is all but certain this time around: Republicans control the Senate, the congressional chamber charged with approving presidential nominations. Very likely to feature in his confirmation hearings is Vought’s belief that the OMB can help Trump overcome opposition and implement policy priorities, possibly including those contained in Project 2025, by redirecting or refusing to spend funds appropriated by Congress, which under the Constitution holds the power of the purse.
“Making Impoundment Great Again!” Vought wrote in June on X, riffing on the “Make America Great Again” slogan that has come to define Trump’s movement.
A copy of Project 2025 is held during the 2024 Democratic National Convention.
Trump spent his campaign insisting that he had not read Project 2025 and did not know its authors. “I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” he wrote in a July post on his Truth Social platform.
But of the more than 350 people who contributed to Project 2025, at least 60 percent are linked to the incoming president, according to a list of contributors and their ties reviewed by The 19th. They range from appointees and nominees from Trump’s first administration, like Vought, to members of his previous transition team and those who served on commissions and as unofficial advisers.
Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris, seized on Project 2025 during their campaigns to highlight the dangers they believe are posed by a second Trump presidency. At 920 pages, it offers a vision of government that is far more detailed and specific than the policy proposals put forward by Trump directly. The “Agenda 47” on Trump’s campaign website was a list of 20 bullet points that included vague policies like “end the weaponization of government against the American people” and “unite our country by bringing it to new and record levels of success.”
When Trump announced Vought as his OMB pick, he said Vought “knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end Weaponized Government.” His other selections for OMB leadership posts include anti-abortion activist Ed Martin and Vought’s colleague at the Center for Renewing America, Mark Paoletta, whom the president-elect praised as a “conservative warrior.”
One question as Trump takes office on January 20 and Vought, if confirmed, helps him control the government’s workforce and purse strings, is which version of the country they will promote and whose rights are — and aren’t — protected.
Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy described the insurrectionists who violently attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as “political dissidents” during a rant about federal law enforcement on Friday.
Campos-Duffy, who is perhaps best known for appearing on MTV’s “The Real World” in the 1990s, made her claim during an appearance on “Fox & Friends.”
“We have an FBI, a DOD, and a Homeland Security that has given us zero confidence. They've said nothing with a border open and terrorists flowing over the borders. They've been directing agents to go after political dissidents from J6, from January 6, instead of going after terrorists,” Duffy said while commenting on the New Orleans attackerwho was reported to be inspired by ISIS.
Campos-Duffy’s sympathetic description of the insurrections echoes that of Donald Trump, who has floated the idea of pardoning them and has referred to the armed attack as a “day of love.”
In reality, the attackers violently forced their way into the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to prevent Congress from fulfilling one of its longest-running and most important functions: certifying the presidential election results.
At least seven people died as a result of the Jan. 6 attack, a direct contradiction to the casual language that Campos-Duffy used to describe the rioters. More than 1,200 people have been arrested and charged in connection with the insurrection, with some charges including sedition against the United States. In fact, Trump was also charged—and even impeached—for his role in inciting the attack.
Campos-Duffy’s underlying argument that the U.S. government fails to go after terrorists is also faulty. Under President Joe Biden, the U.S. military executed a drone strike in 2022 that killed Ayman al-Zawahiri, who, alongside Osama bin Laden, led the terrorist group Al Qaeda and assisted in the planning of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The drone strike was a continuation of policy from Trump’s predecessor President Barack Obama, who ordered the operation that successfully killed bin Laden in 2011.
Looks like the latest Fox News rant was just that—a rant.
Susie Wiles, Donald Trump’s pick for chief of staff, issued a memo Sunday to Trump’s Cabinet nominees ordering them to stop making social media posts without approval ahead of the upcoming Senate confirmation hearings.
“All intended nominees should refrain from any public social media posts without prior approval of the incoming White House counsel,”the memo said, according to the New York Post.
Wiles also noted, “I am reiterating that no member of the incoming administration or Transition speaks for the United States or the President-elect himself.”
The missive comes after the spectacular flame out of former Rep. Matt Gaetz’s nomination for attorney general and the ongoing controversies of several other nominees, including Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mehmet Oz, and Tulsi Gabbard.
Gaetz’s nomination was withdrawn after the resurfacing of sordid allegations of illicit drug use and sexual behavior, including sending money to multiple women via PayPal and Venmo. Gaetz’s activity on social media was a key part of the controversy, as the House Ethics Committee's report notes.
“From 2017 to 2020, Representative Gaetz made tens of thousands of dollars in payments to women that the Committee determined were likely in connection with sexual activity and/or drug use,” the report states.
Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, has been accused of financial mismanagement, sexual assault, and public drunkenness. In response to reporting on these allegations, Hegseth has taken to social media to complain about “anti-Christian bigotry” in the media, the “lying press”, and the “Left Wing hack group” ProPublica.
Anti-vaccine activist and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, has also made strange social media posts. He recently posted a meme on X characterizing the medical industry as “financially dependent on you being sick,” as well as a video of himself with CGI-generated electric eyes and a link to his merchandise site.
An anonymous source with the Trump transition team claimed that the order to stop social media posts is not related to the recent online infighting between Trump megadonor Elon Musk and anti-immigration MAGA supporters. But the timing of the edict, coming directly from Trump’s right-hand woman, is extremely convenient.
Musk recently went on a posting frenzy, calling MAGA fans “upside-down and backwards” in their understanding of immigration issues, while telling one person to “take a big step back and FUCK YOURSELF in the face.”
The controversy generated international headlines, and Trump was dragged into commenting on the discussion—a less-than-ideal situation as he prepares for his inauguration.
Trump of all people telling others to be more mindful about social media posts is an ironic development. Trump made a name for himself as a political figure largely due to constantly posting inflammatory messages online. Most notoriously, he called on his supporters to protest the results of the 2020 election after losing to President Joe Biden.
“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” he wrote.
