The Best People

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. 

Lauren Weber and Caitlin Gilbert:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump’s nominee for the nation’s top health post, has repeatedly disparaged vaccines, falsely linked them to autism and argued that White and Black people should have separate vaccination schedules, according to a Washington Post review of his public statements from recent years.

In at least 36 appearances, Kennedy linked autism to vaccines, despite overwhelming scientific evidence supporting the use of vaccination to protect people from deadly infectious diseases and refuting any ties to autism, The Post found in a review of more than 400 of Kennedy’s podcast appearances, interviews and public speeches since 2020.

Kennedy, who is scheduled to face a Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday, criticized vaccines more broadly in at least 114 appearances, calling them dangerous, saying the risks outweigh the benefits and making misleading claims about vaccine safety testing or discrediting vaccine efficacy.

Holy sh*t. Senator Bennet absolutely annihilated RFK Jr. and exposed him for what he really is—an anti-vaxxer crackpot and grifter. In the pre-Trump era, this would have been the end of his nomination, and he would have withdrawn immediately.pic.twitter.com/Mmu6Ic23Vn

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) January 29, 2025

 

Ambassador Caroline Kennedy’s statement to the US Senate on RFKJr’s nomination for HHS Secretary

This is a reading of a letter she just sent to Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions

I’m so proud of my courageous mother, who’s lived a life of dignity,… pic.twitter.com/feysNA0Wwp

— Jack Schlossberg (@JBKSchlossberg) January 28, 2025

Brett Forrest, Caitlin Ostroff and Rebecca Feng at WSJ:

To defend and burnish Tulsi Gabbard’s image as her political star was rising, her congressional campaign hired a public-affairs firm in 2017 that tried to suppress coverage of an alleged pyramid scheme connected to her Hindu sect, according to interviews, emails and Federal Election Commission records.

Gabbard, a former House member who is now President Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, was raised in the Science of Identity Foundation, a sect tied to a direct-marketing firm accused of running a pyramid scheme in several countries. Neither Gabbard, the sect nor the firm, QI Group, wanted the relationships scrutinized.

Gabbard’s campaign paid Washington, D.C.,-based Potomac Square Group for the PR cleanup, trying to mask the connections. But the operation was directed by a Science of Identity follower—and longtime Gabbard adviser—who sits on the board of a QI subsidiary.

The revelations shed further light on Gabbard’s ties to the religious group—publicly described by some former followers as a cult that demands total loyalty to its founder—and to the Hong Kong-based QI, which has been a target of criminal and civil cases alleging fraud and racketeering in at least seven countries.

...

Gabbard’s relative inexperience in national intelligence, as well as her past support for regimes in Russia and Syria, has raised concern among some national-security officials and lawmakers. Gabbard served two years on the House Homeland Security committee.

Gabbard seemed confused about a key U.S. national-security surveillance power in recent meetings with Senate Republicans. GOP lawmakers are expected to support her nomination.

Trump and the Bureaucracy

Our next book is titled The Comeback: the 2024 Elections and American Politics.

With Vance casting the tiebreaker, the Senate confirmed Hegseth as SECDEF.  McConnell voted no.

“Stewardship of the United States Armed Forces, and of the complex bureaucracy that exists to support them, is a massive and solemn responsibility. At the gravest moments, under the weight of this public trust, even the most capable and well-qualified leaders to set foot in the Pentagon have done so with great humility – from George Marshall harnessing American enterprise and Atlantic allies for the Cold War, to Caspar Weinberger orchestrating the Reagan build-up, to Bob Gates earning the wartime trust of two Commanders-in-Chief, of both parties.

“Mere desire to be a ‘change agent’ is not enough to fill these shoes. And ‘dust on boots’ fails even to distinguish this nominee from multiple predecessors of the last decade. Nor is it a precondition for success. Secretaries with distinguished combat experience and time in the trenches have failed at the job.

“Effective management of nearly 3 million military and civilian personnel, an annual budget of nearly $1 trillion, and alliances and partnerships around the world is a daily test with staggering consequences for the security of the American people and our global interests.

“Mr. Hegseth has failed, as yet, to demonstrate that he will pass this test. But as he assumes office, the consequences of failure are as high as they have ever been.

David Nakamura,  Lisa Rein and Matt Viser at WP:

The White House late Friday fired the independent inspectors general of at least 12 major federal agencies in a purge that could clear the way for President Donald Trump to install loyalists in the crucial role of identifying fraud, waste and abuse in the government.

The inspectors general were notified by emails from the White House personnel director that they had been terminated immediately, according to people familiar with the actions, who like others in this report spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private messages.

The dismissals appeared to violate federal law, which requires Congress to receive 30 days’ notice of any intent to fire a Senate-confirmed inspector general.

 Lisa FriedmanHiroko Tabuchi and Coral Davenport at NYT:

President Trump is stocking the Environmental Protection Agency with officials who have served as lawyers and lobbyists for the oil and chemical industries, many of whom worked in his first administration to weaken climate and pollution protections.

Lee Zeldin, Mr. Trump’s choice to lead the E.P.A., has little experience with environmental policy. He will be expected to hit the ground running, though, to fulfill Mr. Trump’s fire hose of orders directing the agency to cut regulations.

Mr. Zeldin already has marshaled more than a dozen deputies and senior advisers. The quick appointments are in contrast to Mr. Trump’s first term, when many Republicans hesitated to join the administration and internal squabbling delayed the selection of the deputy administrator as well as the chief air pollution regulator for nearly a year.

The top appointees, who have already moved into their offices, include David Fotouhi, Mr. Zeldin’s second-in-command, a lawyer who recently challenged a ban on asbestos; Alex Dominguez, a former oil lobbyist who will work on automobile emissions; and Aaron Szabo, a lobbyist for both the oil and chemical industries who is expected to be the top air pollution regulator.

The Senate Rejected John Tower for a Lot Less

 Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Our next book is about the 2024 election. The consequences of that election are coming into view. Trump is nominating Fox pundit Pete Hegseth to be secretary of defense.

Jane Mayer at The New Yorker:

A previously undisclosed whistle-blower report on Hegseth’s tenure as the president of Concerned Veterans for America, from 2013 until 2016, describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity—to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization’s events. The detailed seven-page report—which was compiled by multiple former C.V.A. employees and sent to the organization’s senior management in February, 2015—states that, at one point, Hegseth had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club, where he had brought his team. The report also says that Hegseth, who was married at the time, and other members of his management team sexually pursued the organization’s female staffers, whom they divided into two groups—the “party girls” and the “not party girls.” In addition, the report asserts that, under Hegseth’s leadership, the organization became a hostile workplace that ignored serious accusations of impropriety, including an allegation made by a female employee that another employee on Hegseth’s staff had attempted to sexually assault her at the Louisiana strip club. In a separate letter of complaint, which was sent to the organization in late 2015, a different former employee described Hegseth being at a bar in the early-morning hours of May 29, 2015, while on an official tour through Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, drunkenly chanting “Kill All Muslims! Kill All Muslims!”

In response to questions from this magazine, Tim Parlatore, a lawyer for Hegseth, replied with the following statement, which he said came from “an advisor” to Hegseth: “We’re not going to comment on outlandish claims laundered through The New Yorker by a petty and jealous disgruntled former associate of Mr. Hegseth’s. Get back to us when you try your first attempt at actual journalism.”

Judd Legum:

Hegseth published a column in college that claimed having sex with an unconscious woman is not rape

While he was a student at Princeton in 2002, Hegseth was the publisher of the Princeton Tory, a right-wing student newspaper. In the September 2002 edition of the publication, flagged for Popular Information by Will Davis of Arc Initiatives, Hegseth published a column that claimed having intercourse with an unconscious woman was not rape. The columnist claimed that rape required both the failure to consent and "duress," and women who are passed out cannot experience "duress":

[A] bemusing yet mandatory orientation program, revolved entirely around whether an instance of sexual intercourse constituted “rape.” The actual instance portrayed in the skit was in fact not a clear case of rape – at least not in my home state. (In short, though intercourse was not consented to, there was no duress because the girl drank herself into unconsciousness. Both criteria must be satisfied for rape. Unfortunately, the panelists never cited any legal definition of rape.) Yet the panel – all females in the session I attended – claimed that rape it was.

In an introductory note to students in the September edition, Hegseth wrote that he hoped the Princeton Tory would "help shape the way you view the world." 

 

GOP and Labor

In Defying the Odds, we suggest an under-examined reason why Democrats were unexpectedly weak in key industrial states;  union membership was way down.  Our next book examines the 2024 election.

Trump nominated pro-union Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon to labor secretary. Conservatives are unhappy.  Nick Catoggio at The Dispatch:

But a lot of conservative ideological mooring has come unmoored under Trump. Why hasn’t right-wing opinion about unions done so as well?

One reason, I assume, is the role teachers unions played in lobbying to keep schools closed during the pandemic after it became clear that children had little to fear from COVID. Despite politicians bending over backward to prioritize teachers’ safety, from ushering them toward the front of the line for vaccines to appropriating nearly $200 billion for public education to address COVID-related problems, unions encouraged friendly Democratic politicians to extend closures well into 2021. Parents’ outrage at the learning loss their children suffered may have helped reelect Trump; his nominees to fill the public health positions in his Cabinet are all “COVID contrarians,” coincidentally enough.

The human face of union opposition to reopening schools was Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers. She’s become a top-tier political villain in Republican politics because of it—yet there she was on Friday night cheering Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Labor Department. “It is significant that the Pres-elect nominated Rep. Chavez-DeRemer for Labor,” she tweeted. “Her record suggests real support of workers & their right to unionize. I hope it means the Trump admin will actually respect collective bargaining and workers’ voices from Teamsters to teachers.”

The implied warranty in Trump’s Us-and-Them brand of politics is that he’ll use public power to ruthlessly punish the right’s cultural enemies. That Weingarten, the dictionary definition of a tribal enemy, should be gratified by his choice on labor policy feels like a grievous breach of that warranty.

There’s another reason why Chavez-DeRemer might be hard for partisan conservatives to swallow, though. Compared with issues like government spending and foreign interventions, there’s been little ideological work done by populists to “uninstall” the Reaganite conventional wisdom on unions...

A lot of political energy has been spent over the last few years smuggling those ideas into mainstream right-wing thought. But comparatively little has been devoted to presenting organized labor as beneficial to the economy or useful to the working joes who voted for Trump on November 5.

That means unions are still “Democrat-coded.” The old Reaganite software on that topic is still running.

Janice Fine and Benjamin Schlesinger  at Boston Review:

In the blame game that followed Harris’s loss, union leadership has been clear: you can’t put this on us. They are only partly right. According to both public exit polling and internal union surveys, the labor movement came through and a large majority of union members voted for Harris. While some polls had Biden tied with Trump among union members before he dropped out, early returns in some battleground states showed a commanding twenty-point margin for Harris. In every swing state, UNITE HERE and the AFL-CIO’s field program made personal contact with millions of their members. Organizers persuaded tens of thousands of voters to side with their economic interests and reward the administration that had done so much for them with another term. That spadework is what labor has traditionally been good at. It’s entirely possible that unions’ internal organizing efforts saved Senate seats in Nevada, Wisconsin, and Michigan along with overperforming in down-ballot legislative races in Pennsylvania.

The Biden-Harris administration saw in unions what unions would like to see in themselves: a broad and powerful organization of the working class that could reshape American society and partner with them to end the neoliberal era. The problem with that vision is that it isn’t true. When only 6 percent of private-sector workers belong to unions, unions are no longer a legitimate stand-in for the working class.Most working-class Americans have no experience with unions in their daily lives.

Gaetz as Caligula's Horse

Kyle Cheney at Politico:

Donald Trump is not a monarch.

That’s the unmistakable lesson of the ill-fated nomination of Matt Gaetz for attorney general. Rather than showcasing Trump’s absolute power over his GOP allies, it revealed his limits. The doomed nomination lasted just eight days — and its failure is an unwelcome lesson for the president-elect, who has been projecting invincibility and claiming a historic mandate despite his reed-thin popular vote victory.

“The short version is ‘checks and balances work,’” said Eugene Volokh, a UCLA professor of law.

Though Republicans will control both chambers of Congress, the resistance from Senate Republicans to Gaetz’s nomination proved that there are still some checks on Trump — no matter how limited — that can hold, despite fear on the left that he will squeeze Congress into submission, get carte blanche from the conservative-dominated Supreme Court and enact his agenda at will.

“I think it shows that Donald Trump cannot get anything he wants,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California-Berkeley School of Law.

Chemerinsky and others cautioned against extrapolating too much from the Gaetz debacle; he was so uniquely despised and compromised by legal and political scandal, and vying for a position that wields unique and extraordinary power, that his failed nomination may not be a harbinger of the pushback Trump may face for other nominees.

In fact, if Trump is able to muscle through his other controversial nominees, the lesson may be that Trump is more unchecked by Congress than ever, said Edward Foley, an Ohio State University constitutional law expert.

Trump and the Rule of Law

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's dishonesty and his record of disregarding the rule of law.   The update  -- just published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.

At NYT, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Maggie Haberman, Michael D. Shear and Eric Schmitt report on the firing of DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen:

The president called Ms. Nielsen at home early in the mornings to demand that she take action to stop migrants from entering the country, including doing things that were clearly illegal, such as blocking all migrants from seeking asylum. She repeatedly noted the limitations imposed on her department by federal laws, court settlements and international obligations.

The Ways and Means Committee has requested Trump's tax returns. Jonathan Chait at New York:

The law governing this matter is unusually clear. The Internal Revenue Code states, “Upon written request from the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives, the chairman of the Committee on Finance of the Senate, or the chairman of the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Secretary shall furnish such committee with any return or return information specified in such request.” This law has been used to examine tax returns of high-placed political officials. It was enacted in order to let Congress examine financial conflicts of interest by the administration, and forced the disclosure of a president’s tax returns (Richard Nixon).

News accounts describe this law as “obscure” or “little used,” which it is — but only because presidential candidates who receive a major-party nomination have habitually published their tax returns. It is a very strong norm that has made the law unnecessary. But the fact that the norm is backstopped by a law strengthens rather than weakens the case for enforcing it.

Trump recently told reporters, “From what I understand, the law’s 100 percent on my side.” The president declined to support this strident interpretation with any references to legal texts or other precedent, which is hardly surprising. Somewhat more unusually, his supporters have likewise failed to explain why the plain-text meaning of the law does not actually apply.

Team of Grifters

 In  Defying the Odds, we discuss  Trump's record of scandal.   An update on his team of grifters.

Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis at WP:

Revelations about repeated use of chartered airplanes forced the resignation of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price in September. More recently, Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin has continued to wrestle with the fallout of news that taxpayers covered the expenses for his wife during a 10-day trip to Europe last year — and more recently that his chief of staff doctored an email and made false statements to justify the payments.

Meanwhile, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has faced public criticism and the scrutiny of government investigators for his own frequent first-class travels and for other expenditures he made using public funding. The Washington Post reported Wednesday that records showed a soundproof phone booth installed in Pruitt’s office cost $43,000 — $18,000 more than previously disclosed.

At the Interior Department, Secretary Ryan Zinke has faced inquiries about his travel practices, and last fall an official in the agency’s inspector general office wrote that Zinke had failed to properly document his trips since taking office.

And at HUD, public records released this week detail how [Secretary Ben] Carson’s wife was closely involved in the redecorating of his office at the agency, including the purchase of a $31,561 dining set.

Graham Lanktree at Newsweek:

Trump’s Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, has argued that he never took a private jet, because the planes he travelled on had propellers. He made the bizarre statement Tuesday as he faced questions in Congress about his spending of taxpayer dollars for a series of chartered flights.

“I never took a private jet anywhere,” Zinke told Sen. Maria Cantwell, the ranking Democrat on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, when she pressed him about three flights, including a $12,375 flight he made last spring from Las Vegas to Kalispell near his hometown in Montana.

Zinke pointed out that the plane, a Beechcraft King Air 200 owned by oil and gas executives, and the aircraft used during the other two flights, didn’t have jet engines but were driven by propellers.

Jon Swaine at The Guardian:

He said he was a multimillionaire – an international property developer with a plan to fix America’s cities through radical privatization. He felt that Donald Trump’s administration was where he was meant to work.

“It was a natural fit,” Naved Jafry said in an interview. Citing connections across the military, business and academia, he said: “I bring, and draw on, experiences from different areas of knowledge, like a polymath.”

Jafry was contracted to work for Trump’s housing and urban development department (Hud). His government email signature said his title was senior adviser. Jafry said he used his role to advocate for “microcities”, where managers privately set their own laws and taxes away from central government control.

But those plans are now stalled. Jafry, 38, said he had resigned from his position with Hud after the Guardian asked him to explain multiple allegations of fraud as well as exaggerations in his biography.

Jafry, who has also been known by Jafari and Jafri, apologised for inflating his military record but denied making other false claims. He said he resigned because the Guardian’s questions tarnished his reputation inside Hud.

Firings

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's approach to governing.

Zack Beauchamp at Vox:

Shortly after President Donald Trump ousted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and tapped CIA Director Mike Pompeo to take his place, State Department spokesperson Steve Goldstein issued a statement on the firing that’s frankly astonishing. It undercut the White House so aggressively that Goldstein was reportedly fired shortly after it went out.

Goldstein confirmed that Tillerson was fired, a rarity in a Washington where “resigns to spend more time with his family” is the norm. But the statement goes further than that, revealing that Trump did not inform Tillerson of the reason for his firing or even speak to the secretary personally before dismissing him.

I’ve been in Washington covering foreign policy and politics for nearly a decade now.

I’ve never seen anything like this statement. Here’s the full text, as emailed to reporters:

The Secretary had every intention of staying because of the critical progress made in national security. He will miss his colleagues at the the [sic] Department of State and the foreign ministers he has worked with throughout the world.

The Secretary did not speak to the President and is unaware of the reason, but he is grateful for the opportunity to serve, and still believes strongly that public service is a noble calling.

We wish Secretary Designate Pompeo well.

Michael Shear and Maggie Haberman at NYT:

John McEntee, who has served as President Trump’s personal assistant since Mr. Trump won the presidency, was forced out of his position and escorted from the White House on Monday after his security clearance was revoked, officials with knowledge of the incident said.

But Mr. McEntee will remain in the president’s orbit despite his abrupt departure from the White House. Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign announced Tuesday that Mr. McEntee has been named Senior Adviser for Campaign Operations, putting him in a position to remain as a close aide during the next several years.

The campaign’s decision underscores Mr. Trump’s tolerance for — and often encouragement of — dueling centers of power around him. And it highlights the extent to which the re-election campaign has already become a landing pad for former Trump associates who have left the White House but remain loyal to the president.

Vacuum

Mike Allen reports at Axios that many Trump jobs are going unfilled, so responsibility flows to Kushner, who can't possibly keep up with it.

"Too few people are doing too much, and it's keeping the Cabinet weak," said one outside adviser to the West Wing. "In a Cabinet of people who are used to being superstars, no one has been able to negotiate to get a high-powered team in."

...
"I don't know what Rex does every day," a friend said. "[SecDef] James Mattis is home alone."

According to the Political Appointee Tracker of the Partnership for Public Service, of 553 key positions in the Trump administration requiring Senate confirmation, 486 have no nominee, 24 are awaiting nomination, 21 have been nominated and 22 confirmed.

The partnership shared the latest historical equivalents with Axios AM. As of today:

• Trump: 21 nominations, 22 confirmed.
• George H.W. Bush: 72 nominations, 27 confirmed.
• Bill Clinton: 69 nominations, 44 confirmed.
• George W. Bush: 65 nominations, 32 confirmed.
• Obama: 120 nominations, 54 confirmed.
• As Trump might tweet: Big difference!

Commissars

Lisa Rein and Juliet Eilperin write at The Washington Post:

The political appointee charged with keeping watch over Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt and his aides has offered unsolicited advice so often that after just four weeks on the job, Pruitt has shut him out of many staff meetings, according to two senior administration officials.

At the Pentagon, they’re privately calling the former Marine officer and fighter pilot who’s supposed to keep his eye on Defense Secretary Jim Mattis “the commissar,” according to a high-ranking defense official with knowledge of the situation. It’s a reference to Soviet-era Communist Party officials who were assigned to military units to ensure their commanders remained loyal.

Most members of President Trump’s Cabinet do not yet have leadership teams in place or even nominees for top deputies. But they do have an influential coterie of senior aides installed by the White House who are charged — above all — with monitoring the secretaries’ loyalty, according to eight officials in and outside the administration.

This shadow government of political appointees with the title of senior White House adviser is embedded at every Cabinet agency, with offices in or just outside the secretary’s suite. The White House has installed at least 16 of the advisers at departments including Energy and Health and Human Services and at some smaller agencies such as NASA, according to records first obtained by ProPublica through a Freedom of Information Act request.

These aides report not to the secretary, but to the Office of Cabinet Affairs, which is overseen by Rick Dearborn, a White House deputy chief of staff, according to administration officials. A top Dearborn aide, John Mashburn, leads a weekly conference call with the advisers, who are in constant contact with the White House.

Commissars who enforce loyalty may someday find others questioning them.  From Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon: 

"The undersigned, N. S. Rubashov, former member of the Central Committee of the Party, former Commissar of the People, former Commander of the 2nd Division of the Revolutionary Army, bearer of the Revolutionary Order for Fearlessness before the Enemy of the People, has decided, in consideration of the reasons exposed above, utterly to renounce his oppositional attitude and to denounce publicly his errors."

Puzder

The Senate lists rejected and withdrawn Cabinet nominations.  At the bottom of this page are the seven that have failed during the past 30 years, and I add the reasons for the failure.  All involved questions of about ethics or personal misconduct.  (Kerik later went to prison on other charges.)

The list shows that the last four presidents -- George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all lost a nominee in their first couple of months in office.

It seems very likely that Labor nominee Andrew Pudzer will be the latest entry.

Manu Raju reports at CNN:

Top Senate Republicans have urged the White House to withdraw the Andrew Puzder nomination for labor secretary, a senior GOP source said, adding there are four firm Republican no votes and possibly up to 12.

Puzder needs at least 50 votes to pass with the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Mike Pence, and Republicans only hold control of 52 seats.

Puzder, the CEO of the company that owns the Hardee's and Carl's Jr. fast food chains, has faced fierce opposition mostly from Democrats in part related to his position on labor issues as well as the fact that he employed an undocumented housekeeper.

=========================================================
Name: John G. Tower
Nominated by: George Bush
Nomination Position: Defense
Date Nominated: January 20, 1989
Date Rejected: March 9, 1989 Vote: 47-53

Reasons: drinking, conduct toward women, financial conflicts 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Name: Zoe E. Baird
Nominated by: William J. Clinton
Nomination Position: Attorney General
Date Nominated: January 21, 1993
Date Withdrawn: January 26, 1993
Reason:  Undocumented household employee
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name: Anthony Lake
Nominated by: William J. Clinton
Nomination Position: Director, CIA
Date Nominated: January 9, 1997
Date Withdrawn: April 18, 1997
Reasons: policy disputes, financial issues
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name: Hershel W. Gober
Nominated by: William J. Clinton
Nomination Position: Veterans Affairs
Date Nominated: July 31, 1997
Date Withdrawn: October 27, 1997
Reason: sexual misconduct allegations
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name: Linda Chavez
Nominated by: George W. Bush
Nomination Position: Labor
Date Nominated: January 3, 2001
Date Withdrawn: January 9, 2001
Reason: undocumented household employee
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name: Bernard Kerik
Nominated by: George W. Bush
Nomination Position: Homeland Security
Date Nominated: December 2, 2004
Date Withdrawn: December 10, 2004
Reason:  undocumented household employee
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name: Tom Daschle
Nominated by: Barack Obama
Nomination Position: Secretary of Health & Human Services
Date Nominated: December 11, 2008
Date Withdrawn: February 9, 2009
Reason: tax issues

Nominate First, Vet Later

Josh Dawsey and Eli Stokols report at Politico:

Steve Mnuchin, Donald Trump’s pick to be treasury Secretary, failed to list $100 million in assets on his federal disclosure forms. Vincent Viola, nominated to be Army secretary, punched a man in the face at a horse race last summer.

The ex-wife of Andrew Puzder, the labor secretary nominee, once appeared incognito on “Oprah” to raise domestic abuse allegations, which Puzder has denied. Betsy DeVos, Trump’s choice for education secretary, struggled to demonstrate a basic comprehension of department policy and basic education terms during her hearing this week. Two nominees didn’t pay taxes on their household employees.

This string of startling revelations over the past two weeks caught senior members of Trump’s staff by surprise, and they didn’t know some of the potential for problems before Senate confirmation hearings began, sources said. A person involved in preparing several nominees said, “They nominated these people first, and then they sort of vetted them. It’s exactly the reverse way you’re supposed to do it, and now you see the consequences.”

Trump Flips Off Congressional GOP

At The New York Times, Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns report that Mitch McConnell had been courting Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT) to run against Senator Jon Tester.  But Trump had different ideas.

Mr. McConnell learned early this week that Mr. Trump had grown interested in Mr. Zinke to be secretary of the interior. Mr. McConnell quickly contacted both Vice President-elect Mike Pence and Reince Priebus, the incoming White House chief of staff, in an effort to head off the appointment, according to multiple Republican officials familiar with the calls.

Mr. Trump was not moved. He was so taken with Mr. Zinke during their meeting on Monday at Trump Tower that he offered him the position. Mr. Trump’s son Donald Jr. quashed a competing candidate, Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington State, because of her support for selling off public land, a senior Republican official said.

. Mr. Trump’s defiant selection of Mr. Zinke, 55, dismayed Republicans in the capital and raised suspicions about how reliable an ally he will be for the party. Even as Mr. Trump has installed party stalwarts in a few cabinet departments, he has repeatedly shrugged off the requests of Republicans who have asked for help reinforcing their power in Congress.

Trump's camp had earlier floated the name of Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), chair of the House GOP Conference.

With just one appointment, Mr. Trump snubbed the highest-ranking Republican woman in the House, Ms. McMorris Rodgers, imperiled the party’s chances in a key Senate race and likely triggered a special election for Mr. Zinke’s House seat.

...
House and Senate Republicans had little warning about the decision to select Mr. Zinke and pass over Ms. McMorris Rodgers. Indeed, some House Republican leadership aides believed that Ms. McMorris Rodgers already had the job in hand.

But Donald J. Trump has never been a party guy. In June, as CNN reported, he made his attitude clear:

Donald Trump slammed GOP leaders on Wednesday for not lining up behind him, implying that he's willing to go forward without their help.

"We have to have our Republicans either stick together or let me just do it by myself. I'll do very well. I'm going to do very well. OK? I'm going to do very well. A lot of people thought I should do that anyway, but I'll just do it very nicely by myself," Trump said, though he did not elaborate on what doing it "by myself" would mean.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee also accused his party's leaders of being weak and told them to "please be quiet."

Team of Nobodies

Another gap between promise and performance lies in the administration of the executive branch.  Glenn Thrush writes at Politico:

For any modern president, the advantages of hoarding power in the White House at the expense of the Cabinet are obvious—from more efficient internal communication and better control of external messaging to avoiding messy confirmation battles and protecting against pesky congressional subpoenas. But over the course of his five years in office, Obama has taken this White House tendency to an extreme, according to more than 50 interviews with current and former secretaries, White House staffers and executive branch officials, who described his Cabinet as a restless nest of ambition, fits-and-starts achievement and power-jockeying under a shadow of unfulfilled promise.

Obama, many of his associates now concede, never really intended to be pushed out of his comfort zone. While he personally recruited stars such as Clinton, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, most other picks for his first Cabinet were made by his staff, with less involvement from the president. “[Bill] Clinton spent almost all of his time picking the Cabinet at the expense of the White House staff; Obama made the opposite mistake,” says a person close to both presidents.That’s a far cry from the vision Obama sketched out in the months leading up to his 2008 election. Back then, he waxed expansive about the Cabinet, promising to rejuvenate the institution as a venue for serious innovation and genuine decision making. “I don’t want to have people who just agree with me,” he told Time magazine, after reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s classic account of President Abraham Lincoln and his advisers, Team of Rivals. “I want people who are continually pushing me out of my comfort zone.”

Obama's Second Term: Mixed Opening

The Pew Research Center reports:

Barack Obama is viewed as the clear political winner in the fiscal cliff negotiations, but the legislation itself gets only a lukewarm reception from the public: As many disapprove as approve of the new tax legislation, and more say it will have a negative than positive impact on the federal budget deficit, the national economy and people like themselves.

The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Jan. 3-6 among 1,003 adults, finds that 57% say that Obama got more of what he wanted from the tax legislation while just 20% say Republican leaders got more of what they wanted. And while 48% approve of the way Obama handled the fiscal cliff negotiations only 19% approve of the way GOP leaders handled the negotiations.

Republicans take a particularly sour view of the outcome: just 16% approve of the final legislation, and by a 74% to 11% margin they think Obama got more of what he wanted. Only 40% of Republicans approve of how their party’s leaders handled the negotiations; by comparison, fully 81% of Democrats approve of how Obama handled the negotiations.

Relatively few Americans expect that the tax legislation that resulted from those talks will help people like themselves, the budget deficit, or the national economy. Just three-in-ten Americans say the tax measure will mostly help people like them; 52% say it will mostly hurt. And even when it comes to the budget deficit, 44% say the deal will mostly hurt, while 33% say it will mostly help.

At MSNBC, Chuck Todd reports:

There is no question that Team Obama’s campaign operation outgunned the Romney effort last year. And there’s little doubt that the Obama White House outmaneuvered (at least in the short term) congressional Republicans in the fiscal-cliff talks. But since November, where the White House has fallen short -- and seemed completely disorganized -- has been in its planning for staffing the second term. For starters, Susan Rice’s and Chuck Hagel’s potential nominations to top cabinet jobs were allowed to twist in the wind for weeks, with Rice eventually pulling out of consideration for secretary of state and Hagel now in real fight to win confirmation as defense secretary. In addition, the White House yesterday announced that Labor Secretary Hilda Solis was leaving the administration -- on the very day the New York Times ran a piece observing the lack of women in the administration. And also yesterday, the White House said Attorney General Eric Holder, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shineski are staying in a second term, but it didn’t announce what’s happening with the other cabinet secretaries, which then set off mini-feeding frenzies “are you staying, are you going?” for the cabinet secretaries not included on this seemingly arbitrary list.

Jennifer Rubin writes:

 Personnel is policy, the saying goes. We know that in selecting Chuck Hagel, whose advice the president finds so valuable, we are headed, as Bill Burton said, for “huge” cuts in the military and a less pro-Israel national security policy. With the announcement that chief of staff Jack Lew will be nominated for Treasury secretary we know that the president (if you had any doubt) was going to seek confrontation, not cooperation, with Republicans.

Every GOP House and Senate office I spoke to yesterday had the same take on Lew. “Much worse than [Tim] Geithner,” said one. Another cited Bob Woodward’s book, “The Price of Politics,” arguing that Lew “was always the one to screw up any deals, pushed for the lefty position.