November 15, 2024 - Presidential transition news

Americans want President-elect Donald Trump to bring down prices. But economists and agriculture experts say his plan for mass deportations will be inflationary.

Chuck Conner, CEO of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, said as much as 90 percent of the labor in certain agriculture sectors consist of people “who may not have proper documentation to be in this country.”

With fewer workers available, “there’s only one way prices are gonna go: They’re gonna go dramatically higher,” he said.

Watch below for more:

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Why Trump's mass deportations could raise grocery prices

03:06 - Source: CNN

The U.S. Capitol building is seen in Washington, DC on November 11.

For all the drama generated every four years by Cabinet appointments, defeat of a nominee by a vote in the Senate is extremely rare.

The only time a nominee by a new president was rejected by a Senate vote occurred in 1989, when George H.W. Bush nominated John Tower, a former senator from Texas, to be his secretary of defense.

Tower was undone by stories of his excessive drinking and what press reports at the time referred to as “womanizing,” and which Pentagon files back then documented as placing “special attention on the secretaries” as an arms negotiator in Geneva. Tower was the subject of an FBI investigation into drinking and sexual harassment, part of a security clearance check.

Compare that situation with Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be attorney general. Gaetz was once the subject of a federal investigation for sex trafficking by the Department of Justice – the same agency Trump wants him to lead. Gaetz says he’s innocent. But the FBI files, which have never been released, seem likely to come up at his confirmation hearing.

Perhaps Trump’s nomination of Gaetz will test the yearslong streak of no Cabinet nominee being rejected by the Senate. Former House colleagues have said Gaetz bragged about sex with an underage girl. Plus, he has earned the enmity of some of his Republican colleagues, although Trump’s influence could overcome all of that.

Or maybe it will be Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the vaccine skeptic Trump is tapping to head the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy has a history of drug use, although it’s rarely mentioned these days.

Rather than face the humiliation of a rejection vote in the Senate, Cabinet nominees are more frequently withdrawn when it becomes clear they cannot be confirmed.

Every recent president since Bill Clinton has withdrawn at least one of their initial nominees. Clinton’s initial nominee to be attorney general, Zoe Baird, withdrew her nomination after admitting she employed undocumented immigrants to watch her child.

Read more about the Senate’s Cabinet confirmation process.

A Tesla Cybertruck is parked outside of a dealership on November 14 in Austin, Texas.

The $7,500 tax credit for buyers of electric vehicles could be vanishing early in the new Trump administration, but that might actually be good news for Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk, one of President-elect Donald Trump’s most prominent backers.

While the US tax credit goes to EV buyers, not to the automakers themselves, it allows higher pricing for EVs as they compete with traditional gasoline-powered cars. When an earlier version of the tax credit phased out several years ago, Tesla was forced to cut prices on its vehicles by roughly half of the amount of the credit its buyers were no longer getting.

Tesla, the world’s largest maker of EVs, is the only automaker making a profit on its US EV sales. Legacy automakers such as General Motors and Ford admit they are losing money on every EV they sell, partly because they are selling only a fraction of Tesla’s EV volume. When Tesla sold a relatively small number of EVs back in the last decade, it also lost money — but it is now among the most profitable automakers.

So if the EV tax credit goes away, the price of all EVs might come down. But that would only reduce Tesla profits, not increase losses the way it might at established automakers trying to get into the market. Some of those automakers might even pull back on their EV production and sales in order to limit the losses, which would mean less competition among EV buyers for Tesla.

Even with the EV tax credit in place, Tesla and Musk have used this greater profitability to cut prices on his EVs in order to support demand in the face of greater competition and to put pressure on his established automaker rivals.

Read more on the EV tax credit here.

Senate Majority Leader-elect John Thune said Thursday that Republicans want to get President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees approved quickly and that using recess appointments to get that done is an option, but he hopes it doesn’t come to that, adding that it just depends on “whether Democrats want to play ball or not.”

Thune, appearing on Fox News, said the Senate takes its consent and advise role seriously, “but we also are not going to allow the Democrats to obstruct or block President Trump and the will of the American employment.”

Asked whether the Senate would use a recess appointment to push through the more controversial Trump picks, such as Matt Gaetz for attorney general, Thune said, “Hopefully it doesn’t get to that, but we’ll find out fairly quickly whether the Democrats want to play ball or not.”

The incoming Senate leader also indicated that Republicans might face an uphill battle in getting that simple majority vote to initiate recess if there are senators who oppose a nominee’s confirmation.

Thune acknowledged that getting Trump’s Cabinet approved could be contentious, saying, “None of this is going to be easy.

More on recess appointments: Both chambers have to pass a resolution to go into recess, which would give Senate Democrats an opportunity to filibuster the resolution and essentially block its passage. During Trump’s first term, for example, he was blocked by the Senate from using recess appointments to replace then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

CNN’s Kate Sullivan, Manu Raju and Sam Fossum contributed reporting to this post.

Although President-elect Donald Trump signaled in the runup to the election that he planned to let Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “go wild” on health, food and medicine, Kennedy’s official selection for the nation’s top health post sent shockwaves through the public health world, with experts concerned about his potential effects on vaccination rates, research on infectious diseases and misrepresentation of established science.

Here are some of the areas where Kennedy has said he’s planning to make changes:

“Cleaning up” HHS: In a statement after Thursday’s announcement, Kennedy said he’s eager to work with Health and Human Services employees to rid public health agencies of “corporate capture” and to “clean up corruption.”

Vaccines: Kennedy has promoted false claims about vaccination for years and founded the nonprofit Children’s Health Defense, which promotes anti-vaccine material such as the recent documentary “Vaxed III: Authorized to Kill.”

Fluoridated water: Kennedy has said the second Trump administration would advise that fluoride be removed from the nation’s water supply. “On January 20, the Trump White House will advise all U.S​. water systems to remove fluoride from public water. Fluoride is an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease,” he wrote in a social media post. Here’s what the science says about fluoride.

Food: Kennedy has advocated for regulating chemicals in food and limiting access to soda and processed foods through school lunches and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, as well as proposing an idea to swap tallow fat in for seed oils to make McDonald’s french fries healthier.

Read more about RFK Jr.’s to-do list.

The US Capitol in Washington, DC on October 3.

Presidents lead the federal government with the help of a group of close advisers and the heads of federal agencies like the Department of Justice and the Pentagon. Some members of the Cabinet, like vice president and White House chief of staff, do not need Senate approval. But most of them do.

Why does the Senate get a say in who works for the president?

Article II is the section of the Constitution that deals with the executive branch. In Section II, it makes clear that while the president is the executive, he hires certain positions spelled out in the Constitution and others established by law with the “advice and consent” of senators. If the Senate is in recess, the president can make temporary appointments.

How does the nomination and confirmation process work?

In modern times, a president-elect nominates his picks for top officials ASAP after winning the election. Planning should ideally begin before Election Day. Oversight committees in the Senate can conduct confirmation hearings before Inauguration Day on January 20. They can refer nominees to the full Senate or quick votes when the new president takes the oath of office. But things frequently take a lot longer.

How long does a nomination take?

Longer than it used to. Even after Democratic senators pushed through changes to the rules in 2013 to remove the filibuster from confirmation of administration officials, the two parties have gotten more adversarial about the process. When Trump started his first term, he had two confirmations for 26 nominees. When President Joe Biden took office in 2021, he had one confirmation for 36 nominees. The slowness continues. The three presidents before Donald Trump’s first term all had more than 200 nominees confirmed by 200 days in office. Trump had 119 and Biden had 118 confirmed nominees at that point.

Is there a way around the nomination process?

Sort of. There is that mention in the Constitution of recess appointments – something Trump has said he wants to use. While his fellow Republicans who will control the Senate in January have not rejected the idea, leaders like Sen. John Thune also clearly don’t want to give away their power over oversight. Plus, recess appointments only last until the end of the next Senate session, usually around the calendar year.

Trump, frustrated with the process during his first term, appointed multiple people to be “acting” heads of agencies, but they can only serve in that capacity for a matter of months, according to law. There are also limits on who can be made an acting secretary.

Read more on the Senate’s Cabinet confirmation process here.

Elon Musk arrives to a House Republicans Conference meeting at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill 4 in Washington, DC, on November 13.

As President-elect Donald Trump turns heads with his picks for key roles in his incoming administration, Russians are trying to understand the appointments and what impacts they might have for Moscow.

Russian state TV has spent the last few days telling people what they should make of the choices — in particular what it might mean for Russians and the war in Ukraine.

Evgeny Popov, a well-known face on Russian state TV and Duma representative used his show, co-hosted with his wife, to tear into Mike Waltz, Trump’s pick for his national security adviser.

Waltz has previously expressed reservations about continued congressional support for Ukraine, and is a proponent of a peace plan for Ukraine — but has not ruled out applying pressure on Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin to force him to the table. Waltz also described Russia as “a gas station with nukes” in an interview with NPR on November 4.

Popov was quick to point out the potential threat to Moscow:

But across the studio floor, Olga Skabeeva, Popov’s wife, was welcoming of the pick of former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence. Gabbard had been “clear on the reason for Russia’s special operation in Ukraine,” Skabeeva said, praising Gabbard’s criticism of US support for Kyiv.

On the streets in Moscow, people interviewed by CNN were largely not well versed with the incoming administration — except for Elon Musk, who has been named as the future leader of a new Department of Government Efficiency along with Vivek Ramaswamy.

Tatiyana, wrapped in her matching pink hat and scarf, told CNN that Musk “is an example of the future of the planet. He does a lot to improve our planet, and this is the right development. Therefore, we wish him only prosperity and all the best.”

Michael Prieto, owner of Barrel-Art, sprays a clear coat finish on products in his shop in Newport News, Virginia, on November 13.

Family-run furniture and barware maker Barrel-Art has now been through three US presidential elections. While business before the 2024 race felt similar to 2016 and 2020, this year has also brought more unpredictability.

Sales petered out in the months ahead of Election Day as businesses and shoppers paused their purchases while waiting for an outcome. Sales for their handcrafted products, made from whiskey and wine barrels, bounced back as soon as the race was called.

However, the post-election environment is hitting different this time around for many small business owners, such as Barrel-Art’s Michael Prieto, and leaving them wondering what comes next.

While President-elect Donald Trump will be a familiar face in the White House, his campaign trail rhetoric was amplified and ambitious, sweeping policy proposals have raised more questions than answers, said John Arensmeyer, founder and chief executive of Small Business Majority, a center-left business advocacy group.

For business owners who already were unsettled about the economy or its direction prior to the election, navigating the months and years ahead could be even more precarious, he added.

“It’s just pure uncertainty,” he said.

Read more about how some small businesses are viewing a second Trump term here.

Donald Trump walks with National Border Patrol Council board member Art Del Cueto along a section of the US-Mexico border south of Sierra Vista, Arizona on August 22.

The incoming Trump administration’s plans to implement strict border measures, strike down Biden-era policies and kick off the detention and deportation of migrants at large scale are underway and starting to come into focus, according to four sources familiar with the plans.

President-elect Donald Trump made immigration a central element of his 2024 presidential campaign – but unlike his first run, which was spent largely focused on building a border wall, he’s turned his attention to interior enforcement and the removal of undocumented immigrants already in the United States.

Mass detention: People close to the president and his aides are laying the groundwork for expanding detention facilities to fulfill his mass deportation campaign promise, including reviewing metropolitan areas where capabilities exist.

But they are also preparing executive actions that are a call back to his first term in office and could be rolled out as soon as Trump takes office, sources say.

Taken together, it amounts to the return of hardline immigration policies that garnered fierce criticism from Democrats and immigrant advocates during Trump’s first term – and a dramatic change for migrants and immigrants in the United States.

Return of Trump-era policy: The executive actions and reviews underway include the return of the program informally known as “remain in Mexico,” which requires migrants to stay in Mexico during their immigration proceedings in the US, revising asylum restrictions, revoking protections for migrants covered by Biden’s humanitarian parole programs and undoing ICE’s enforcement priorities, according to two sources briefed on transition policy discussions.

Jared Kushner looks on as President-elect Donald Trump speaks during an election night event in West Palm Beach, Florida on November 6.

President-elect Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is seen as being pivotal to the incoming administration’s Middle East efforts, even though he is not likely to take a formal job within it, regional diplomats and Trump allies told CNN.

Trump’s Middle East team has been taking shape this week after he selected a former Republican governor and a close friend and real-estate developer to take on key roles. But the close relationships that Kushner developed with leaders in the region over Trump’s first four years in office and maintained in recent years will be hard to replicate, sources told CNN.

Some former diplomats and critics of the Trump administration point out that Kushner has significant financial interests in the region, but many regional diplomats recognize the value of the deep relationships he has formed.

Those sentiments are widespread.

“Friendships are forever in this region,” said an Israeli source who dealt with the first Trump administration, speaking to the deep personal relationships that Kushner developed – and maintained – with leaders throughout the region. “My assumption is that his role is much more in his hands than anybody else’s.”

Kushner is not likely to assume a formal role in Trump’s second administration, but he is likely to serve as an outside advisor, said two sources familiar with his current thinking.

Keep reading about Kushner here.

President Joe Biden’s climate law is on the chopping block as Republicans prepare to have full control in Washington.

But it’s not just Democrats gearing up to protect the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean energy policies. President-elect Donald Trump is out on a limb within even his own party as he vows to the kill clean energy tax subsidies that automakers, the fossil fuel industry and Republican lawmakers have become increasingly amenable toward over the past two years.

The “good parts” for Republicans are the hundreds of billions of dollars being funneled into clean energy projects, the overwhelming majority of which are going to Republican districts.

Close to 80% of the $243 billion-worth of projects that are either completed or under construction are in GOP districts. The same goes for another $435 billion in clean energy projects companies have announced but have not yet built, according to an exclusive CNN analysis of data from the nonpartisan Rhodium Group and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Read the full story.

President-elect Donald Trump gestures after speaking during an America First Policy Institute gala at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, on November 14.

President-elect Donald Trump took a victory lap at a Mar-a-Lago gala last night, boasting of a GOP sweep of the federal government.

Trump said he has chosen North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum to be secretary of the Department of the Interior. The president-elect also previewed his expectations for vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who he has chosen to be the country’s top health official.

Trump has now named over 20 picks for his administration, including members of his personal criminal defense team: Todd Blanche as deputy attorney general and Emil Bove as principal associate deputy attorney general. John Sauer, who won the presidential immunity case at the Supreme Court, was chosen as solicitor general.

Here’s what else happened at the gala:

How people are reacting to Trump picking RFK Jr. :

Trump’s picks are under the microscope:

Watch Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez from Washington’s 3rd congressional district speak to Jake Tapper:

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She won in a red district. Her blunt message to fellow Dems

06:35 - Source: CNN

The Israeli settlement of Givat Zeev, near the Palestinian city of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, on February 3, 2023.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has discussed the future of Israeli settlements under a Donald Trump presidency with the top official in the Binyamin Region, which is responsible for an area of settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Yisrael Gantz, Binyamin’s Regional Council Chief, told CNN on Friday the future of settlements was one of several topics discussed in the meeting with the prime minister, and declined to give details on any concrete plans.

Binyamin Region is an area in the West Bank home to 80,000 Israeli settlers north of Jerusalem, according to the municipality’s website.

Some background: Under international law, Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and the presence of settlers there, is considered illegal because the international community — through repeated United Nations Security Council resolutions — has declared the West Bank, along with Gaza and East Jerusalem, to be occupied territory. Israel disputes that characterization.

On Monday, Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, ordered preparations for the annexation of settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Smotrich told the Israeli parliament that Trump’s victory in the US election “brings an important opportunity for the state of Israel.”

Gideon Sa’ar, Israel’s new foreign minister, said that the government had made no decision on the issue of annexation as yet, but noted it had been discussed during Trump’s first term as US president and added that “if it will be relevant it will be discussed again with our friends in Washington.”

Remember: During his first term, Trump took several steps in Israel’s favor. In 2017, he recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, upending decades of US policy and international consensus. He also recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria during the 1967 war and is also considered occupied under international law.

President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is bypassing traditional FBI background checks for at least some of his Cabinet picks while using private companies to conduct vetting of potential candidates for administration jobs, people close to the transition planning say.

Trump and his allies believe the FBI system is slow and plagued with issues that could stymie the president-elect’s plan to quickly begin the work of implementing his agenda, people briefed on the plans said. Critics say the intrusive background checks sometimes turn up embarrassing information used to inflict political damage.

The discussions come as Trump has floated several controversial choices for high-level positions in the US government.

Ultimately, the president has the final authority on who he nominates and decides to share intelligence with, regardless of the established protocol to make sure those selections don’t have unknown foreign ties or other issues that could raise national security concerns.

Why this matters: But circumventing background checks would be bucking a long-established norm in Washington. It also reflects Trump’s deep mistrust of the national security establishment, which he derides as the Deep State. Sources say he has privately questioned the need for law enforcement background checks.

Read the full story.

Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary, was involved in a police investigation into an alleged sexual assault in 2017, local officials in California confirmed on Thursday night.

A spokesperson for the city government of Monterey, California, said its police department had investigated “an alleged sexual assault” involving Hegseth, a Fox News host and Army National Guard veteran.

The alleged assault took place in the early morning hours of October 8, 2017 at the address of the Hyatt Regency Monterey Hotel and Spa, and was reported four days later, according to the statement.

Hegseth was a speaker at a conference held by the California Federation of Republican Women at the hotel during the timeframe when the alleged assault took place, according to photos of the event posted on Facebook.

The city’s statement did not specifically identify Hegseth as an alleged assailant, but said he was involved in the investigation and that the victim’s name and age were confidential. The statement said that there were no weapons involved, but there were injuries — “contusions to right thigh” — without providing additional details. The city said that it would not release the full police report or comment further on the investigation, citing state public records law.

Describing Trump’s early selections for his administration as “high-caliber and extremely qualified,” Trump’s communications director defended Hegseth in a statement to CNN.

“Mr. Hegseth has vigorously denied any and all accusations, and no charges were filed,” said Trump communications director Steven Cheung.

Members of Trump’s transition team, including incoming Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, discussed the allegation with Hegseth on Thursday, and he said the investigation was related to a consensual sexual encounter, Vanity Fair reported, citing two unnamed sources.

Timothy Parlatore, a lawyer representing Hegseth, told Vanity Fair that “this allegation was already investigated by the Monterey police department and they found no evidence for it.” Parlatore could not immediately be reached for comment by CNN.

The city’s statement does not indicate what became of the investigation. Hegseth has not been charged in any criminal case or named as a defendant in any civil lawsuit filed in Monterey County since 2017, a spokesperson for the county court told CNN.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. joins then-candidate Donald Trump on stage at a campaign event sponsored by conservative group Turning Point USA, in Duluth, Georgia, on October 23.

Each of Donald Trump’s most provocative Cabinet picks has been a calculated punch in the mouth to experts, elites and bureaucrats in Washington’s government agencies.

But his decision to let Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist, “go wild” on health and medicines as health and human services secretary is his most shocking attempt yet at an anti-establishment tear-down.

The president-elect’s previous selections for director of national intelligence, attorney general and defense secretary could change the country and the world in the long term. Their effect, however, would be distant for most Americans.

If Kennedy gets an opportunity to promote his past claims that vaccines are not safe and effective or to act on his desire to fire 600 people at the National Institutes of Health, which oversees many facets of health research, including vaccines, he could have a more immediate impact on the lives of millions of Americans.

Kennedy has some views that top physicians welcome, including his calls for processed foods to be removed from school lunches and his warnings that the food industry is marketing products that increase chronic disease. But Trump’s decision to put RFK Jr. in charge of the health of 350 million Americans, despite his stances on vaccines that contradict the science-based research of most scientists and medical experts, is likely to ignite a new debate about the potential real-world implications of the second Trump term.

Kennedy’s ascendency and apparently long political leash goes far beyond a Trumpian retribution quest. It could impact the medicines Americans use, the treatments and drug therapies that are approved, the inoculations used to protect the country’s school kids from diseases like measles and the food that everyone eats.

President Joe Biden meets with President-elect Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, on November 13.

President Joe Biden will use his time in Peru and Brazil this week for reflection and looking ahead. No longer viewed on the world stage as the American president who defeated Donald Trump — and his “America First” ideology — for good, Biden will find himself amid leaders who are already moving on.

Many of his counterparts have pivoted to cultivating — or in many cases recultivating — relationships with Trump, angling for meetings in Palm Beach while they are in the hemisphere.

The two leaders’ summits carry an inevitable awkwardness given the short time Biden has left in office and the sea change that awaits when he leaves. Leaders are talking amongst themselves about how to insulate their economies and respond to the threats Trump has already put forth, but Biden administration officials have been largely excluded from those conversations.

Aside from the summits’ hosts, Biden will meet only one other leader one-on-one: President Xi Jinping of China. He will hold trilateral talks with the leaders of Japan and South Korea, the latter of whom said this week he was dusting off his golf clubs in preparation for a potential round with Trump.

Biden’s entourage will represent slimmed-down staffing from prior foreign trips, with a relatively light schedule and low stakes — and the desire of many to begin searching for new jobs.

Biden, who met with Trump for two hours Wednesday at the White House, isn’t likely to be able to offer a great deal of reassurance to allies who wonder what’s in store for the next four years. It’s also not clear whether foreign leaders will be all that interested in his perspective.

In this September 2023 photo, migrants who crossed the Rio Grande and entered the US from Mexico are lined up for processing by US Customs and Border Protection in Eagle Pass, Texas.

Senior administration officials are bracing for the incoming Trump administration to scrap the immigration policies put in place under President Joe Biden — many of which can be undone with the stroke of a pen, leaving many immigrants in limbo.

Multiple administration officials who spoke to CNN said there are few, if any, ways to protect the policies implemented by Biden that, for example, provided temporary protections to certain migrants in the United States.

It’s a reflection of the state of immigration policy, which for the last several years has been made through the executive and as a result, vulnerable to change depending on who’s in office.

In the aftermath of the election, immigration advocates have been scrambling to determine what, if anything, Biden and his administration might be able to do before Donald Trump comes back to the White House — and potentially follows through on his long-stated promise of mass deportations and curbing migration.

One advocate who works closely with the Biden White House floated ideas like expanding Temporary Protected Status (TPS) eligibility for people coming from places like Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Ecuador; making a fresh push on DACA renewals and to get resolution for individuals with pending cases; and corralling local elected leaders to raise money for legal services.

But internally, administration officials are skeptical that expanding or designating new TPS would pass muster. There is also expected to be a robust push for action across the private sector.