Let me return to something I wrote about yesterday and said I’d return to: Adam Jentleson’s piece in the Times on whether the Democratic Party can learn to say no to interest groups that often demand assent to various positions and commitments that are either obscure or toxic to a majority of voters. Trans rights aren’t the only issue Jentleson was talking about. But the larger debate clearly revolves around the ad the Trump campaign ran against Kamala Harris saying she supported tax payer-funded sex change operations/gender affirming care for prisoners. This was a question Harris checked “yes” to on an ACLU candidate questionnaire in 2019 as part of her 2020 run for the presidential nomination. There is at least the perception among some that it played a non-trivial role in turning the campaign against her
As a general matter I agree with Jentleson’s point. Not specifically about trans rights issues, but more generally. The goal of parties and campaigns is first to win elections.
But I can’t say that without noting some recent history.
Will House Ethics Committee GOPers Bury The Gaetz Report?
The House Ethics Committee is set to meet today when it could decide whether to bury its completed report on recently resigned Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), President-elect Trump’s pick for attorney general. The committee is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats so it would take a GOP defection in defiance of Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) for the committee to release the Gaetz report.
While new damaging information could be in the report, most of the details of the allegations of Gaetz are already public, and the House Ethics Committee vote is increasingly representative of whether Republicans will be transparent, show any inclination to air their own dirty laundry in the service of battling corruption, and put up any kind of resistance to Donald Trump. I hope you’re not holding your breath on any of these fronts.
Senate Republicans are registering mild interest at most in seeing the House Ethics Committee report, but there is no groundswell among them to make it public.
In reporting on the hack, the WaPo offered this gem (emphasis mine):
Florida attorney Joel Leppard said in an interview with The Washington Post last weekend that one of his clients witnessed Gaetz having sex with the minor at a drug-fueled party in July 2017 — and that Gaetz was unaware of her age at the time but subsequently was told she was underage.
This woman and a second woman, also represented by Leppard, testified that they were paid by Gaetz to have sex with him and other individuals who attended these “sex parties.” They were paid through Venmo or other conduits — including the PayPal of Nestor Galban, whom Gaetz has referred to as his “adopted son.
Trump’s attorney general nominee was allegedly using his adopted son’s PayPal account to pay women for sex. By all means, release the House Ethics Committee report, but what more do GOP senators really need to know?
Hegseth’s Prospects For DoD
Republican senators are generally taking the same noncommittal approach on the controversial nomination of Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense as they are for Matt Gaetz as attorney general. Both nominees face sexual misconduct allegations on top of their woeful lack of qualifications, conspiracist tendencies, and extremist views.
Here’s Hegseth on a podcast Monday night (yeah, this week) touting “a system of ‘classical Christian schools’ to provide the recruits for an underground army that will eventually launch an ‘educational insurgency’ to take over the nation” (h/t Right Wing Watch):
Note the Beavis and Butthead laughter at the end when he disclaims that this is literal warfare.
Donald Trump is keeping his controversial adviser Kash Patel in the running to be the next FBI director, according to two people familiar with the matter, as the transition team conducted interviews for the role on Monday night at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago club.
The existence of the interviews, made public in a since-deleted post by the vice president-elect JD Vance, underscored the intent to fire the current FBI director, Christopher Wray, years before his current term is up.
Even if Patel is passed over for director, he is still in the running for deputy director of the FBI, according to the Guardian report.
Trump II Clown Show
Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick: commerce secretary
WWE co-founder Linda McMahon: secretary of education
Dr. Mehmet Oz: administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
‘Hostile Takeover’
Behold this nugget in a good WaPo piece on how outside-the-lines the Trump transition team is operating (emphasis mine):
Thus far, Trump has left the job of vetting candidates to Stanley Woodward, a Palm Beach lawyer on his campaign who has represented several Jan. 6 rioters and Trump associates caught up in the classified documents case, according to transition staff who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the decision.
Remember this comes as Trump is bypassing FBI background checks for some nominees.
Senate Republicans will be validating all of this corruption if, as expected, they confirm all or nearly all of Trump’s nominees with minimal fuss.
UPDATE: The Withering Trump Prosecutions
Hush money case: “Prosecutors with the Manhattan DA’s office made clear in a Tuesday letter: they want to see Donald Trump sentenced over the hush money scheme, even if means waiting until he leaves the White House.”–TPM’s Josh Kovensky
Jan. 6 cases: “A Trump-appointed judge on Tuesday said it would be ‘beyond frustrating and disappointing’ if the incoming president grants sweeping clemency to most of the defendants charged in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.”–Politico
Fake electors cases: “Election interference cases against President-elect Donald J. Trump and his allies are moving forward in Georgia and Arizona, but recent complications in each case have fueled speculation about whether the prosecutions are in more fragile shape than they were before Mr. Trump won the election.”–NYT
House GOP Targets New Transgender Member
The GOP 2024 effort to use transgender people as a so-called “culture war” attack is carrying right over into Congress, where the House GOP is targeting the first openly transgender member, Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-DE):
REPORTER: Is this effort in response to Congresswoman McBride coming to Congress?
NANCY MACE: Yes, and absolutely, and then some. Someone with a penis in the women’s locker room — that’s not ok. I’m a victim of abuse myself. I’m a rape survivor.
NYT: Medicaid May Face Big Cuts and Work Requirements
AP: What to know about Dr. Mehmet Oz, Trump’s pick to lead Medicare and Medicaid
2024 Ephemera
NYT: Key to Trump’s Win: Heavy Losses for Harris Across the Map
Natalie Jackon: Trump’s decisive margin probably came from whims of low-information voters
Slate: This Election’s Surprising Bright Spot for Progressives Is a Very Big Deal
GOP Launches New Power Grab In North Carolina
“Republicans in the North Carolina legislature moved swiftly Tuesday to reduce the authority of statewide offices that will be held by Democrats in the new year, fast-tracking a bill that makes major changes to state government’s structure and functions.”–News From The States
Texas Is A Lab For Right-Wing Education Policy
“Texas education officials backed on Tuesday a new elementary school curriculum that infuses material drawn from the Bible into reading and language arts lessons, a contentious move that would test the limits of religion’s presence in public education.”–NYT
University of North Texas responds to new anti-DEI state law by removing dozens of references to race and equity in course names.
An analysis of newly released census data estimates the death toll from the American Civil War was 698,000, with a mortality rate twice as high for the Confederacy as for the Union. “This is substantially higher than the conventional historical estimate of 618,000 but lower than the most recent estimate of around 750,000 deaths,” the authors of the new analysis said.
Here’s a morsel of news that shows you how far we’ve come over the last eight years. Donald Trump made a heavy play for the crypto world in the last campaign, promising to be a “crypto president” and courting donors in that space. He’s now in talks to buy (through the parent company of Truth Social) the crypto trading firm Bakkt. This comes after he already founded his own new crypto venture, World Liberty Financial. Bakkt was formerly led by former appointed Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who was later defeated by Sen. Raphael Warnock. This was when Loeffler was an executive at Atlanta-based Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of The New York Stock Exchange. Loeffler’s husband Jeff Sprecher is ICE’s CEO. Both Loeffler and Sprecher remain major backers and financial supporters of Donald Trump.
Due to scheduling conflicts, the newest episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast will be released Thursday. We’ll be back to our regular schedule next week just in time for Thanksgiving!
As my colleague David Kurtz explained in Monday’s Morning Memo, it would be a massive break from precedent for Donald Trump to come into office with plans to replace the FBI director, a position that’s given a 10-year term specifically to inoculate against partisan politics seeping into the bureau’s operations.
But it is increasingly looking like Trump will do just that.
Prosecutors with the Manhattan DA’s office made clear in a Tuesday letter: they want to see Donald Trump sentenced over the hush money scheme, even if means waiting until he leaves the White House.
Kari Lake, who has been one of the most prominent faces of the “Stop the Steal” movement the last four years, has been uncharacteristically quiet about her recent Senate race loss.
Because these thoughts are provisional and in process, I’ve decided to package them seriatim, as a list of ideas, possibilities, counters and so forth.
One of the shortfalls of the recriminationfests that come after a big political defeat is that the people getting the most attention are usually those shouting loudest and making the most totalizing claims. But there are important caveats and qualifiers to keep in mind. One is that anything obvious, sure-fire and without real costs would have been tried already. There’s no silver-bullet solution. This is just common sense, perhaps even conventional wisdom. At worst, it can be used to stifle new thinking or taking new chances. That’s another important pitfall. But it’s still true.
The way Donald Trump sees it, his demand that Senate Republicans either humiliate themselves by confirming his abominable choice of Matt Gaetz for attorney general or walk the plank in rejecting the nomination is a win-win either way.
Trump has been telling confidants that he thinks Gaetz’s prospects of Senate confirmation are less than 50-50, the NYT reports, but he’s pushing ahead with the nomination anyway for strategic reasons: “He is making calls on Mr. Gaetz’s behalf, and he remains confident that even if Mr. Gaetz does not make it, the standard for an acceptable candidate will have shifted so much that the Senate may simply approve his other nominees who have appalled much of Washington.”
While some GOP senators are privately urging Trump to ditch Gaetz, many of them continue to demur on the nomination in public, with none of them being bold enough to publicly oppose it outright yet. Many Senate Republicans are taking the posture of a supplicant toward Trump: Please don’t do this to us.
“Numerous GOP members have indicated to Trump and his team that they believe Gaetz has little chance of being confirmed, according to multiple Senate Republican and Trump world sources,” Playbook reported. “And they’re privately hoping Trump doesn’t make them walk the plank.”
The unreleased House Ethics Committee report on Gaetz allegedly having sex with a minor and using illicit drugs remains the wild card that could tip the nomination.
The Gory Details
Joel Leppard, a lawyer representing two women who told the House Ethics Committee that then-Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) paid them for sex, made the media rounds yesterday:
“A woman testified to the House Ethics Committee that former congressman Matt Gaetz paid her for sex and that she witnessed President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general having sex with a 17-year-old at a party, her lawyer said over the weekend.”–WaPo
“Two women testified to the House Ethics Committee that they were paid for “sexual favors” by former Rep. Matt Gaetz, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, a lawyer for the two women told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday.”–CNN
“Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, former Rep. Matt Gaetz, allegedly paid for two women in 2019 to travel to New York to have sex, watch his appearance on Fox News, and attend the Broadway show ‘Pretty Woman,’ an attorney for the women told ABC News.” –ABC News
Trump Is Receiving Intel Briefings Again
“President-elect Donald Trump, the only former president to have been charged with mishandling classified information, has begun receiving intelligence briefings, U.S. officials said.”–WaPo
Trump Re-Ups Threat To Use Military Domestically
“President-elect Donald J. Trump confirmed on Monday that he intended to declare a national emergency and use the U.S. military in some form to assist in his plans for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.”–NYT
“Using the military domestically — absent any crisis remotely needed to prompt or justify such a move — would break with centuries of practice in the United States, giving a President who has promised to deploy troops against the ‘enemy from within’ the most powerful, and potentially unconstrained, tool in the federal arsenal.”–TPM’s Josh Kovensky
“Such a sprawling campaign – and the use of military personnel to carry it out – is almost certain to draw legal challenges and pushback from Democratic leaders, some of whom have already said they would refuse to cooperate with Trump’s deportation agenda.”–The Guardian
The Trump II Clown Show
FBI: If Trump corruptly fires FBI Director Chris Wray, the leading contenders for the post are MAGA minion Kash Patel and former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI).
DNI: How Tulsi Gabbard Became a Favorite of Russia’s State Media–NYT
DOT: Trump picks realty TV star turned congressman turned Fox Business host Sean Duffy for Transportation secretary.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“To be as clear as I can be, the second Trump administration with Elon Musk embedded within it represents the most direct and sustained threat to the First Amendmentand the freedom of the press any of us will ever experience.”–Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge
The Grift
WaPo: Trump tried to limit financial conflicts in 2017. This time could be different.
WSJ: Donald Trump Jr. Goes All-In on the Anti-Woke Economy
For Your Radar …
New York: “Manhattan prosecutors face a Tuesday deadline to tell a judge how they want to proceed with Donald Trump’s 34-felony convictions hush money case now that he is the president-elect.”–WaPo
Texas: “Education officials are expected to vote this week on whether to approve a new elementary-school curriculum that infuses teachings on the Bible into reading and language arts lessons.”–NYT
DC: “House Ethics Committee members are set to meet privately Wednesday as debate rages over whether the panel should release its report on its investigation into former Rep. Matt Gaetz.”–Politico
“The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled Monday that election officials must abide by an earlier decision and stop counting mail-in ballots that were invalidated because of an incorrect date on the outer envelope — a major victory for Republican Senate candidate David McCormick, who holds a narrow lead over Democratic Sen. Bob Casey ahead of a statewide recount.”–WaPo
An Abortion Rights Win In Wyoming
“A state judge on Monday struck down Wyoming’s overall ban on abortion and its first-in-the-nation explicit prohibition on the use of medication to end pregnancy.”–CNN
Just Mean
With Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-DE) set to become the first openly transgender member of Congress, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) plans to introduce a resolution banning transgender women from women’s bathrooms in the Capitol. “Asked if she planned to talk to McBride, Mace said: ‘No, Sarah McBride doesn’t get a say,'” Politico reported.
DOJ To Strike At Core Of Google Monopoly
INDIA – 2023/12/20: In this photo illustration, the Google Chrome logo is seen displayed on a mobile phone screen with Google Logo in the background. (Photo Illustration by Idrees Abbas/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
“Top Justice Department antitrust officials have decided to ask a judge to force Alphabet Inc.’s Google to sell off its Chrome browser in what would be a historic crackdown on one of the world’s biggest tech companies.”–Bloomberg
As the Trump II administration has taken shape over the past two weeks — in the form of haphazard nominations via Truth Social posts — and as policy proposals once cloaked in the shadows of Project 2025 make their way into the sunlight, we’re starting to get a picture of which vulnerable segments of the population will suffer first.
Immigrants will, unsurprisingly, be an early target of a second Trump administration and their congressional allies. Lower-income people, we’re learning, will be as well.
