November 18, 2024 - Presidential transition news

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs speaks during a press conference in Nogales, Arizona, on Monday, November 18.

Arizona Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs said she plans to have conversations with the incoming Trump administration about the state’s border security needs, but she said she will oppose certain policies if they don’t help her state.

“I will not tolerate terrorizing communities, or threatening Arizonans,” she said at a press conference Monday near the border.

Hobbs declined to comment specifically on Trump’s mass deportation threats, saying she won’t weigh in on policies that haven’t been strictly spelled out.

However, she made it clear that while she’s willing to work with the administration to augment some of the counter-drug programs her state has implemented, she may not agree with every policy proposed by the incoming president.

“I will be relentless in advocating for those resources from Congress and the White House. What I won’t do is tolerate attacks on Arizona families. I will not allow everyday Arizonans to suffer from misguided policies that will only divert resources from the important work happening here and across our border,” she told reporters in Nogales, Arizona.

There’s a lot unfolding as President-elect Donald Trump gears up for his return to the White House and President Joe Biden tries to navigate his lame-duck period.

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Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with GOP Sen. Marco Rubio — President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to head the State Department — on Sunday.

Blinken called Rubio to “offer his congratulations on his appointment and then pledge to him, as we have said publicly, that we will do everything within our power to make it a successful transition,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Monday.

Miller would not say if they discussed any policy positions. There has been no other contact with Trump’s transition team, he said.

The US Department of Treasury in Washington, DC, on February 22, 2024.

President-elect Donald Trump is casting a wider net for Treasury secretary after jockeying among his top two candidates sent him looking for an alternative solution, according to multiple people familiar with the process.

Trump is now considering Kevin Warsh, a former investment banker and former Federal Reserve governor whom Trump has often consulted for economic advice, and Marc Rowan, the billionaire co-founder of private equity firm Apollo Global Management, these people said.

Trump has a personal affinity for Warsh, who is married to an heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetic fortune. Warsh has been on Trump’s shortlist for chairman of the Federal Reserve for years and has remained a close member of his orbit.

Rowan, on the other hand, has the backing of many close Trump allies, including his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who has consulted with Rowan on foreign and economic policy. Kushner enlisted Rowan to participate in a meeting with the Qatari prime minister in 2023 on the conflict in the Middle East, and Rowan in 2020 made suggestions to Kushner for loosening qualifications on a pandemic-era lending program. Apollo has also extended loans to Kushner Companies to refinance debt on a Chicago skyscraper.

Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty visited Mar-a-Lago over the weekend to interview for a variety of roles, and two sources said he remains in the mix for Treasury. Hagerty ran his own eponymous private equity and investment firm and has served on the boards of directors of several companies before re-entering politics. During Trump’s first term, he served as US ambassador to Japan before resigning in 2019 to run for the Senate.

Treasury secretary is seen as the top financial job in any administration and has become a trophy position for many well-heeled Wall Street donors. The expanded slate of potential Trump picks comes after a week of bitter infighting among the top two candidates — hedge fund manager Scott Bessent and Cantor Fitzgerald chief executive Howard Lutnick, who also co-chairs the Trump transition — that led the president-elect to scrap a decision he expected to announce on Friday after markets closed.

Read more about the possible contenders for Treasury secretary.

Eric Hovde speaks at his election night party Wednesday, November 6, in Madison, Wisconsin.

Republican candidate Eric Hovde on Monday officially conceded the competitive Wisconsin Senate race to Sen. Tammy Baldwin.

He previously acknowledged that he lost the race, but had not yet made a statement conceding to his opponent. CNN projected that Baldwin would win reelection the day after Election Day

In a video posted on Monday, Hovde continued to express concern about ballots reported overnight on Election Day in Milwaukee, which erased his lead and cemented Baldwin’s victory.

“There are many troubling issues around these absentee ballots and their timing,” he said, though Wisconsin election officials and other experts have made clear there is nothing illegitimate about the votes.

Hovde said he had heard from “numerous supporters” asking him to challenge the election results, but noted it would be “difficult” to challenge the votes in court, so a recount would just tally the same ballots “regardless of their integrity.”

A spokesperson for Baldwin’s campaign confirmed to CNN that Hovde has not called the senator to concede.

Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Atlanta on October 28.

“Impoundment” is another word that Americans may need to learn in the vernacular of President-elect Donald Trump’s second term.

What is it? The Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse. But the president is in charge of executing the law. Impoundment occurs when Congress appropriates money that the president then declines to spend.

It occurred frequently in US history, beginning in 1803 when Thomas Jefferson declined to buy gunboats to patrol the Mississippi as he negotiated the Louisiana Purchase with France.

Richard Nixon abused the privilege, at least according to Congress at the time. After his reelection in 1972, Nixon planned to use impoundment to achieve sweeping policy aims, according to the Congressional Research Service. He wanted to halt federal housing programs, reduce disaster aid and more.

When Congress overrode his veto of the Clean Water Act of 1972, he used the power of impoundment to refuse to spend a good portion of the $24 billion in funds meant to help clean sewage out of municipal water systems.

As a result of these standoffs, Congress passed a law to curtail a president’s use of impoundment, particularly for policy reasons. The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 did a lot more than that, however. It was passed alongside legislation that created the Congressional Budget Office, the official nonpartisan accountant on Capitol Hill, and also the House and Senate budget committees.

Why might Trump use it? If “recess appointments” are the unlikely and unprecedented way Trump wants to work around the Senate to get his most controversial nominees in charge of Cabinet agencies, “impoundment” is the unlikely way he envisions shrinking the federal government with or without congressional approval.

Read more about what impoundment is here.

An empty classroom at Walnut Street Elementary in Uniondale, New York, on April 3.

Donald Trump has laid out some big changes for education in the US.

Here are some of the things he has promised:

Pledge: Trump has repeatedly said he will close the federal Department of Education, sending authority over education back to the states and saving taxpayer dollars.

How it can be done: Trump will need Congress to get rid of the department, which administers federal funding to K-12 schools and manages the student loan and financial aid programs.

It’s possible that some programs and funding could be retained and shifted to other agencies, which is where they were housed before the department was created.

Some advocates for eliminating the department have called for “block-granting” the money that the federal government sends to K-12 schools. The goal would be to deliver the funds with fewer strings attached so that it could be used without as many restrictions.

Another idea is to move two major K-12 funding programs to the Department of Health and Human Services, as proposed by Project 2025, the conservative blueprint that Trump tried to distance himself from when campaigning.

Project 2025 also recommends moving the department’s Office for Civil Rights, which investigates discrimination complaints at colleges and K-12 schools, to the Department of Justice. And it proposes moving the $1.6 trillion federal student loan portfolio to the Treasury, among other ideas.

Pledge: Trump’s platform calls for restoring the right of parents to know what their children are being taught in the classroom and to cut funding for school programs that “push” critical race theory and gender ideology.

How it could be done: It’s not clear how Trump could achieve these goals. States and local school boards, not the federal government, have direct control over curriculum in schools.

But the new administration could set certain requirements that schools must meet to receive federal funding.

Read more about how Trump could change US education.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Monday that vetting interviews would take place over the next few weeks to appoint a senator to replace Sen. Marco Rubio, who has been named as President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for secretary of state.

DeSantis said a selection was likely to be made “by the beginning of January” and that his office has “already received strong interest from several possible candidates.” DeSantis has been receiving pressure to replace Rubio with Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, who has been serving as co-chair of the RNC.

“Senator Marco Rubio is expected to resign from the Senate to assume duties as Secretary of State when the Trump administration takes power on January 20th, creating a vacancy roughly two months from today,” DeSantis tweeted.

The news was so shocking that some “Morning Joe” viewers probably spit out their coffee.

MSNBC co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski “went to Mar-a-Lago to meet personally” with President-elect Donald Trump, Brzezinski revealed at the beginning of Monday’s show.

The Friday rendezvous was “the first time we have seen him in seven years,” she added.

In a back-and-forth that the husband and wife co-hosts scripted ahead of time, Scarborough said “we didn’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues, and we told him so.” But “what we did agree on was to restart communications,” Brzezinski said, suggesting that their behavior should be a model for others.

The meeting between Trump and the progressive cable network’s hosts — two of the most avowed anti-Trump hosts on television — immediately raised speculation about a détente with the president-elect and sparked criticism from some “Morning Joe” fans.

Veteran media critic Jeff Jarvis, a loyal “Joe” viewer, said on Threads that the meeting was a “betrayal of their colleagues, democracy, and us all. It is a disgusting show of obeisance in advance.” Others on social media vowed not to watch the show anymore, though it is impossible to measure how widespread that sentiment was.

Scarborough and Brzezinski anticipated the criticism and addressed some of it in Monday morning’s announcement.

The co-hosts, however, did not share many details from the Friday sit-down.

Brzezinski said Trump was cheerful, upbeat and “seemed interested in finding common ground with Democrats on some of the most divisive issues.” She did not specify which ones.

In her explanation of the meeting, Brzezinski pointed to Trump’s election victory and said “Joe and I realized it’s time to do something different, and that starts with not only talking about Donald Trump, but talking with him.”

Read more about Scarborough and Brzezinski’s meeting with Trump.

President-elect Donald Trump confirmed in a post on Truth Social on Monday that he is prepared to declare a national emergency as part of his plan to deport migrants in the United States at a large scale.

CNN reported over the weekend that Trump’s team is evaluating a national emergency declaration to unlock Pentagon resources and tailoring that declaration to pave the way for expanding detention space.

In his first term, Trump declared a national emergency on the border with Mexico to circumvent Congress and use Pentagon funds for his border wall—a move that was faced with numerous lawsuits.

The incoming administration’s sweeping immigration plans are beginning to come into focus, sources previously told CNN, including implementing strict border measures, striking down Biden-era policies and kicking off the detention and deportation of migrants at large scale.

People close to the president-elect 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, the sources said.

President-elect Donald Trump continues to move ahead with his presidential transition, announcing his selection for key Cabinet positions that will help carry out his policies.

Cabinet members include the vice president and the heads of the 15 executive departments in the presidential line of succession, which require Senate confirmation. Here’s a look at who Trump has picked so far — and the positions that are yet to be filled.

Below are some of the key Cabinet positions in each administration and their critical function in running the US government:

Attorney General: The attorney general’s main duty is to represent the US in legal matters as head of the Department of Justice, according to the DOJ’s website. The attorney general oversees the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, among others. He or she also provides advice and opinions “on legal matters to the president and the Cabinet,” the DOJ site said. Trump has selected former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz for attorney general, a role that is expected to be crucial to Trump’s vision for his second term and will help enforce the president-elect’s policy on immigration, reproductive health and the political retribution he’s vowed to pursue.

Secretary of State: The secretary of state is the head of the State Department, and serves as the US president’s primary adviser on the country’s foreign policy and conducts negotiations relating to US foreign affairs, according to the State Department’s website. The secretary is tasked with carrying out the president’s “foreign policies through the State Department and the Foreign Service,” the department’s website adds. Trump has selected Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as his pick for this high-ranking position.

Defense secretary: According to the Defense Department website, “the secretary of defense oversees the Defense Department and acts as the principle defense policymaker and adviser.” The defense secretary’s authority over the US military is second only to the president. Trump has selected Fox News host Pete Hegseth as his pick for this position.

Health and Human Services secretary: The HHS secretary advises the president
“on health, welfare, and income security plans, policies and programs of the Federal Government and directs Department staff in carrying out the programs and activities of the Department,” according to the US government manual site. The agencies and offices that fall under HHS include the National Institutes of Health, Center for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration. Trump has selected Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for this position.

Homeland Security secretary: The duties of the secretary’s office include counterterrorism efforts, cybersecurity, aviation security, border and port security and enforcement of US immigration laws, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s website. Trump has selected South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has his pick to lead the agency that’s expected to play a central role in his immigration crackdown.

The House Ethics Committee is expected to meet on Wednesday as the panel weighs whether to release its final report on Matt Gaetz, two sources tell CNN.

The scheduled meeting could get canceled, as it did last week, the sources added.

Members on the committee are weighing whether they can release the report given that Gaetz resigned from Congress when President-elect Donald Trump picked him to be his attorney general.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Friday that he does not think the report should be released and is “going to strongly request that the Ethics Committee not issue the report.”

The Ethics Committee, which has been investigating Gaetz for years, had a narrow window on when it could release its actual report. Because the bipartisan committee doesn’t allow reports to be published close to an election, it could not release the information around the time of Florida’s August primary or the November general election.

Brendan Carr testifies during an oversight hearing to examine the Federal Communications Commission on Capitol Hill on June 24, 2020 in Washington, DC.

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, wasted no time in stating his priorities on Sunday night. Just one hour after thanking the president for the appointment, Carr wrote on X, “We must dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech rights for everyday Americans.”

Carr and Trump’s powerful ally Elon Musk immediately replied with one word of affirmation: “Based.”

The comments from Carr, who wrote the chapter on the FCC in the conservative blueprint Project 2025, signaled that it won’t be business-as-usual at the country’s communications regulatory agency. Past chairs of the agency, both Republicans and Democrats, have emphasized broadband internet deployment and wireless spectrum policy. Carr didn’t mention those issues on Sunday night.

Instead, he took aim at technology companies for “censorship;” promised to hold broadcast TV and radio stations accountable; and pledged to end the FCC’s promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

Carr was very clearly channeling the president-elect, who raised all three topics on the campaign trail, often in misleading ways.

Trump appointed Carr to the FCC in 2017. Carr is now the senior Republican at the agency, which meant he was widely expected to get the chairman appointment.

He also has a close relationship with Musk (some of it has been visible in their interactions on X) and has accused Democrats of waging “regulatory lawfare” against Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service.

As chairman, Carr may be able to steer generous federal subsidies to Starlink. When Politico published a story titled “the DC bureaucrat who could deliver billions to Elon Musk” last month, Carr told the outlet that he would be an even-handed regulator.

Read more about this here.

Donald Trump speaks during an election night event at the Palm Beach Convention Center on in West Palm Beach, Florida, on November 6.

Donald Trump is refusing to back down over his Cabinet picks in the first clash in an epic battle he will wage against Washington when he takes office.

The coming days will show whether Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have staying power for confirmation fights in the new Republican Senate over their assignments to safeguard the rule of law, the US intelligence community, the military, and the health of all Americans.

Each of the most selections is facing criticism that they lack the expertise and experience to run the vast, specialized bureaucracies that would be under their control.

And debate over their prospects is intensifying following fresh revelations and allegations about their pasts, which will set up a test for Trump’s intention to wield what he regards as almost uncheckable power from the Oval Office.

Trump is adamant he’s not going to give in as he seeks people who will fulfill his goals of tearing down the Washington establishment in a second term he pledged to devote to retribution.

The outcome of the coming showdown will depend on whether Republican senators are willing to abrogate their own power to vet nominees.

Read the full analysis.

A woman walks carrying an umbrella walks by a G20 Social Summit logo in Rio de Janeiro on November 16.

President-elect Donald Trump’s influence is already causing behind-the-scenes drama as Group of 20 (G20) talks get underway in Rio de Janeiro this week. Already, one of Trump’s top global allies put up resistance to a joint leaders’ statement, a move diplomats interpreted as meant to curry favor with the incoming administration.

Argentine President Javier Milei, who last week became the first world leader to meet face-to-face with Trump since his election, threatened to block a final communiqué over disputes about language related to taxation on the ultra-rich and gender issues, according to two diplomats familiar with the matter.

While it’s not unusual for leaders’ summits to involve some back-and-forth over a final statement, Milei’s roadblocks were seen by diplomats as curious since Argentina had already agreed to a declaration about taxing the ultra-rich over the summer — only to reverse itself after Trump was elected president.

It was just one example of Trump casting a long shadow over a pair of world leader summits taking place in South America this week. Even as President Joe Biden works during his final major summits to promote American leadership and burnish his legacy, leaders are looking past him and toward the next occupant of the Oval Office.

Donald Trump has been making key choices to fill out the ranks of his incoming administration, tapping loyalists for major roles and making some controversial selections.

This weekend, Trump picked fracking executive Chris Wright to be the energy secretary. He selected another of his personal lawyers, William Owen Scharf, as White House staff secretary — a powerful position that helps control the flow of documents to and from the president. And he chose an ally in the FCC, Brendan Carr, to lead the agency.

Two of Trump’s would-be Cabinet members are facing scrutiny over past allegations. More lawmakers, including Senate Republicans, are asking to review a House Ethics Committee report on sexual misconduct accusations against Trump’s choice for attorney general, Matt Gaetz.

And Trump’s team is dealing with the revelation of a 2017 sexual assault allegation against defense secretary pick Pete Hegseth, who received little internal vetting, according to sources. Hegseth’s lawyer said he paid a woman who accused him of sexual assault in a settlement agreement that included a confidentiality clause, but denies the assault took place.

Keep in mind: Most of Trump’s picks for his Cabinet are subject to Senate approval, though he is pushing Republican leaders to buck recent norms and allow him to bypass confirmation hearings through procedural means. It will be an early test of loyalty for GOP senators.

Here’s how Trump’s team is taking shape:

The cryptocurrency industry’s leading super PACs plowed $131 million into congressional races this election cycle to help elect dozens of pro-crypto lawmakers, while individual billionaires with crypto interests spent millions to help return Donald Trump to the White House.

Now, they are determined to change how Washington treats their business.

Goals include ensuring Trump selects a crypto-friendly Securities and Exchange Commission chair to replace Gary Gensler, whose aggressive enforcement actions during the Biden administration enraged cryptocurrency CEOs. Industry groups are also lobbying Congress to pass a regulatory framework that they say is needed to pull crypto into the mainstream of the US financial system.

The industry could be well-positioned heading into the new session of Congress. A tracker run by a group called Stand with Crypto said 274 pro-crypto candidates had been elected to the House, and 20 to the Senate this cycle. Crypto super PACs spent heavily on Republicans as well as key Democrats, including two who won open seats in the US Senate, Elissa Slotkin in Michigan and Ruben Gallego in Arizona.

Crypto’s bipartisan political clout signals a remarkable rebound from just two years ago when the industry was reeling from the sudden implosion of the troubled FTX crypto exchange. In its aftermath, lawmakers scrambled to rid themselves of campaign donations from the firm’s leader, Sam Bankman-Fried, who is now serving a 25-year prison term for defrauding customers and investors.

Read more about the new crypto industry landscape.

When he takes office, President-elect Donald Trump will inherit a Russia-Ukraine war with even higher stakes, after President Joe Biden gave Ukraine the green light to use US precision missiles to hit deeper inside Russia.

Biden’s move is quite provocative, and while Moscow is militarily weak now — and unlikely to seek full conflict with NATO or the US — at some point, the Kremlin will seek to restore its deterrence.

Moscow’s intelligence services have been blamed for the sabotage of civilian targets across Europe, including recent reports that explosive packages were planted on courier planes inside Europe.

The Biden administration had to weigh the value of longer range strikes by Ukraine against the potential for civilian collateral damage in NATO member states, if Russia felt obliged to somehow hit back.

The wider goal seems to have been to get the Biden administration to put more skin in the game of Ukraine’s war — to truly takes the gloves off. And it follows months of efforts by the US and its allies to ensure Ukraine has what it needs through the end of 2025 — a way to “Trump-proof” US security aid.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that the war would not have started if he had been president. In July, he said he could settle the war in one day — without saying how he would do so. Throughout his campaign, the president-elect and his running mate, JD Vance, cast strong doubts on continued US commitment to Kyiv.

Read more analysis on Biden’s missile decision here.