It’s Thursday and the hits just keep on comin’.
Trump Announces Another Shocking Cabinet Choice: RFK Jr. for HHS
Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill are still grappling with how to handle a trio of shocking Cabinet nominations this week by President-elect Donald Trump. Even as questions continue to swirl about the stunning choices of former Rep. Matt Gaetz for attorney general, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard to lead the intelligence community and Fox News host Pete Hegseth to head the Defense Department, Trump on Thursday dropped another bombshell pick: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., known for his anti-vaccine activism, as secretary of Health and Human Services.
Trump chose Kennedy to lead the massive department, a post that would have him oversee a sweeping range of health and medical efforts, from drug and vaccine approvals to food safety to core research. The department includes the Medicare and Medicaid programs, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health. It has more than 80,000 employees and is responsible for some $2 trillion in annual outlays as of fiscal year 2024.
“For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health,” Trump said in a statement announcing the pick.
Trump said Kennedy would restore public health agencies’ standards and push to end an epidemic of chronic disease in the country.
Kennedy, a controversial former Democrat who ran for the White House as an independent this year before endorsing Trump, had reportedly been promised a key role overseeing health policy. He has pledged to pursue a “Make America Healthy Again” agenda focused in large part on the country’s food and nutrition.
“I’m going to let him go wild on health. I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on the medicines,” Trump said at a New York rally last month.
Why it matters: The prospect that Kennedy might be given broad influence over the nation’s healthcare programs has deeply alarmed public health experts, who fear that he could cause real damage if given an official platform from which to promote conspiracy theories, debunked medical claims or outright misinformation about vaccines and other topics.
“Basically, we’re putting not just a vaccine denier but a science skeptic in charge of all the nation’s premier health agencies,” Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a medical analyst and professor at George Washington University, said on CNN, equating the choice to “putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.”
Trump is testing the Senate: The Trump team reportedly knew that these latest staffing choices would send shockwaves through official Washington, D.C.
The choice of Gaetz, the caustic Florida lawmaker, to be attorney general was particularly startling to many lawmakers and pundits, but the choices of Gabbard as director of national intelligence and Hegseth for Defense secretary have also raised serious national security concerns and questions about whether the appointees are in any way qualified for the responsibilities they’d have.
Gaetz, who resigned from Congress after being nominated Wednesday, has faced ethics investigations. He would lead a Justice Department that he has routinely railed against — and one that has investigated him as part of a sex-trafficking probe, though it declined to bring charges against him. Gaetz has denied wrongdoing.
“I’ve got very few skills. Vote-counting is one,” Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said. “I think he’s got a lot of work to do to get 50” votes in the Senate.
Gabbard has a history of spreading disinformation and conspiracy theories and defending Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. She has no background in the spy world or intelligence community. Hegseth, similarly, has little in the way of the traditional credentials required to lead a massive Pentagon bureaucracy or oversee global military strategy.
Taken together, the choices amount to a clear loyalty test for Senate Republicans newly in the majority — and a middle finger to the political establishment, pushing the limits of what lawmakers might accept, daring them to step out of line.
“The point is to make your allies defend the indefensible,” political analyst Ron Brownstein told CNN, “and each surrender paves the path to the next surrender, because you’re basically pulling them out further and further beyond where they thought they would ever go.”
Trump has also demanded the ability to make recess appointments, essentially bypassing the Senate’s role in vetting and confirming some appointments. Some Republicans have expressed reservations about recess appointments and certain Trump’s nominees, but others have said they’re willing to go however far the president-elect wants and give him essentially complete deference in picking his Cabinet. And with each increasingly outrageous nomination, the confirmation prospects for prior nominees may get better given the GOP senators are unlikely to want to derail many of Trump’s early plans.
Trump Plans to Eliminate EV Tax Credit: Report
The transition team for President-elect Donald Trump is discussing plans to kill the tax credit for electric vehicles as part of a larger tax overhaul, Reuters reported Thursday.
The tax credit, worth up to $7,500 for new vehicles and $4,000 for used, is meant to encourage a broad transition from internal combustion engines to electric drivetrains by lowering the net retail price of electric vehicles for American consumers. Authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, President Joe Biden’s signature legislation that focuses in large part on energy and climate issues, the tax credit is restricted to vehicles that meet a variety of technical requirements, including assembly location and materials sourcing. It is also limited to vehicles that cost less than $80,000 and can be claimed only by purchasers who meet income requirements (i.e., less than $300,000 household income for married couples).
According to Reuters, the Trump transition team members discussing the elimination of the tax credit include billionaire oilman Harold Hamm and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who has close ties to the oil and gas industry.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said earlier this year that eliminating the tax credit could hurt his electric car company, whose shares fell more than 5% on the news. But the lack of a tax credit could hurt his competitors even more, Musk reportedly said, and indeed shares in electric truck maker Rivian were down more than 14% on the day.
In Washington, Republicans could use the elimination of the tax credit to help cover the cost of the tax cuts they want to implement next year. And killing the credit would come with the added bonus for Republicans of undoing part of Biden’s climate-focused legacy.
Quotes of the Day: Gearing Up for DOGE
President Trump’s announcement this week that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead a new cost-cutting “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, has inspired a wide range of comments and responses. Here are a few notable ones:
“We are very grateful to the thousands of Americans who have expressed interest in helping us at DOGE. We don’t need more part-time idea generators. We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting. If that’s you, DM this account with your CV. Elon & Vivek will review the top 1% of applicants.”
– The DOGE account on X, formerly known as Twitter, which Musk purchased for $44 billion two years ago. Musk added on his own X feed, “Indeed, this will be tedious work, make lots of enemies & compensation is zero.”
“We welcome the creation of a new entity to get under the hood of the federal government and look for ways to reduce inefficiencies and generate fiscal savings. Given our cumbersome bureaucracy and large fiscal imbalances, the effort is long overdue. ... It will take an all-hands-on-deck approach to fix our fiscal situation, and this effort could make a tremendous contribution.”
– Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, in a note Thursday.
“Washington is littered with spending-reduction plans that never got implemented. The 2010 Simpson-Bowles commission proposed $4 trillion in cuts over about a decade through delaying the retirement age for Social Security, capping health care costs and eliminating tax breaks. Congress never acted. Then, a new congressional committee dubbed the Supercommittee attempted to find a ‘grand bargain’ for President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans in 2011. It failed. Multiple government shutdowns and debt-ceiling faceoffs that Republicans tried to use to force a budgetary reckoning resulted in short-term fixes. And Trump himself promised in 2016 that he would balance the budget ‘fairly quickly’ but when he left office in 2021, US debt was at a record level.”
– Bloomberg’s Gregory Korte, writing Thursday.
“There’s the executive branch that might be in their way. The Congress might be in their way. The Constitution is a bit of an obstacle. Other than that, clear sailing.”
– Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of American Action Forum, quoted at The Hill.
“What’s stopping Trump from asking for Congress to create this efficiency agency? For one, it (largely) already exists, having just celebrated its 100th birthday. Say hello – again – to the Government Accountability Office, the hawkish auditor of the federal government that clawed back $70 billion from agencies in fiscal 2023 as part of hundreds of actions to properly steward federal funds. The GAO staff is comprised of experts in the areas they oversee, and these quiet technocrats punch well above their weight. The agency calculates that it gives back $133 to the government for every $1 it spends.”
– Economist and columnist Kathryn Anne Edwards, writing at Bloomberg Thursday.
Fiscal News Roundup
- Trump Chooses Anti-Vaccine Activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health Secretary – Associated Press
- Scientists Fear What’s Next for Public Health if RFK Jr. Is Allowed To ‘Go Wild’ – KFF Health News
- Trump Issues Early Challenge to GOP Senate With Defiant Nominations – Associated Press
- Matt Gaetz Once Faced a Sex Trafficking Investigation by the Justice Department He Could Now Lead – Associated Press
- McCarthy Says Gaetz Won’t Get Confirmed: ‘Everyone Knows That’ – The Hill
- House GOP Lawmakers Hang On to Critical Rules Deal – Politico
- Trump’s Transition Team Aims to Kill Biden EV Tax Credit – Reuters
- Musk’s Bold Plans for ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Face Roadblocks – The Hill
- US Initial Jobless Claims Dropped to Lowest Since May Last Week – Bloomberg
- Biden Is Sending Aid to Help Ukraine Keep Fighting Next Year, Blinken Says – Associated Press
- The House Just Voted ‘Yes’ on a Bill That Would Increase Social Security Checks for Some Pensioners – CNBC
- Wholesale Inflation Heated Up Again Last Month, Reversing Recent Progress – CNN
- Fed's Powell: Economy "Remarkably Good," No Need to Hurry Lowering Rates – Axios
- Top Federal Reserve Official Defends Central Bank’s Independence in Wake of Trump Win – Associated Press
Views and Analysis
- Trump’s Great Government Purge Begins – Catherine Rampell, Washington Post
- How RFK Jr. Could Cause an Earthquake for American Public Health – Daniel Payne, Chelsea Cirruzzo, Marcia Brown, Brittany Gibson and Annie Snider, Politico
- Musk’s Efficiency Department Is Highly Inefficient – Kathryn Anne Ewards, Bloomberg
- What Can Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency Actually Do? – Gregory Korte, Bloomberg
- Elon Musk Is a Showman, Not an Accountant – Allison Morrow, CNN
- How Freaked Out Should We Be About Trump’s Cabinet? – Megan McArdle, Washington Post
- Trump Keeps Trolling as the ‘Resistance’ Fades – Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal
- What a Trump Presidency Could Mean for Social Security Benefits – Tara Siegel Bernard, New York Times
- It’s Pretty Clear Why Trump Wants Total Crackpots to Run the Military and Intelligence Agencies – Fred Kaplan, Slate
- Kennedy Could Save Gaetz – Ross Douthat, New York Times
- Food Prices Worried Most Voters, but Trump’s Plans Likely Won’t Lower Their Grocery Bills – Dee-Ann Durbin, Associated Press
- The Real Story of Inflation – Peter R. Orszag, Washington Post