Well, Well, Well: Trump Gives up the Game on Project 2025

Donald Trump is taking yet another page out of the authoritarian playbook Project 2025—and it’s the one with a list of MAGA loyalists for hire.

After trying desperately, often unconvincingly, to distance his campaign from Project 2025’s unpopular, extremist policies, Trump’s transition team has been using the right-wing playbook’s staffing database to make appointments within the new administration, a source familiar told NBC News.

“There’s a lot of positions to fill and we continue to send names over, including ones from the database as they are conservative, qualified and vetted,” the source, who had worked on Project 2025, told NBC News. “Hard to find 4,000 solid people, so we are happy to help.”

Paul Dans, the former director of Project 2025, once described his plans to make a “conservative Linkedin” containing information on thousands of potential hires for the Trump administration. He envisioned it as a personnel machine for rooting out the “deep state” and replacing federal employees with devoted MAGA loyalists.

Dans hoped his system would allow Trump to make big changes fast. “If a person can’t get in and fire people right away, what good is political management?” Dans said in December.

Earlier this week, Trump nominated Russ Vought, a Christian nationalist with ties to Project 2025, to lead the Office of Management and Budget. He also nominated Brendan Carr, who wrote the Project 2025 chapter on the Federal Communications Commission, to head that government agency.

Last week, Trump nominated John Ratcliffe, another Project 2025 author, to head the Central Intelligence Agency.

Donald Trump is expected to appoint former Senator Kelly Loeffler as Secretary of Agriculture, CNN reported Friday.

Loeffler previously served as Georgia senator after she was appointed by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp in 2019 to fill the seat vacated by Senator Johnny Isakson, who resigned for health reasons. She ran in a 2020 special election to hold the seat but was defeated by Democrat Raphael Warnock. She was a staunch election denier, objecting to the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, but she later voted to certify the results after the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection.

A former business executive, Loeffler was among Trump’s top billionaire donors during his 2024 campaign, contributing more than $4.9 million to his reelection effort. Trump chose her to chair his upcoming inauguration, and is set to meet with her Friday at his Mar-a-Lago estate, according to CNN.

Loeffler said earlier this week that she would welcome the appointment, saying on the Politically Georgia podcast that “I grew up on a farm and I’m still actively involved in agriculture. I’m a huge advocate for rural America, and most of my bills that I passed in Congress were rural healthcare funding & related bills.”

During her time in Congress, she was considered the wealthiest person in the legislative body, and had to fend off accusations of insider trading and dumping stocks after receiving early briefings about the potential of the Covid-19 pandemic. She’s married to a former chairman of The New York Stock Exchange, Jeffrey Sprecher, and the two have an estimated combined net worth of more than $1 billion.

Sprecher and Loeffler also have business ties to Trump. The president-elect’s social media venture, Trump Media & Technology, is reportedly buying cryptocurrency trading firm Bakkt, Sprecher is now the CEO of Intercontinental Exchange, which backs the crypto firm, and Loeffler is a former CEO of Bakkt. Loeffler’s appointment to a cabinet position is sure to raise questions about it being part of a business deal with Trump, but he’s never been concerned about mixing his finances with politics.

This story has been updated.

It seems that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un isn’t interested in reviving his relationship with Donald Trump this time.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Kim is unenthusiastic about reviving talks with the United States during Trump’s second term, expressing skepticism during a speech Thursday about what could actually be achieved.

“We have already explored every possible avenue in negotiating with the U.S.,” Kim reportedly said at a Pyongyang defense expo. He added that America’s “unchanging aggressive and hostile policy” toward North Korea is clear.

Kim also called the U.S. a superpower that prefers the use of force to coexistence, claiming that the previous negotiations during the Trump administration didn’t lead anywhere. Plus, the Journal reports that North Korea doesn’t have as big of a need for sanctions relief as it did during the Trump years, having expanded its nuclear arsenal and strengthened economic and military ties with Russia.

Today, Kim is just not that into Trump anymore. He doesn’t have much of a willingness to disarm and passed a law allowing the country to make preemptive nuclear strikes. Vladimir Putin is giving Kim things Trump cannot: military technology as well as diplomatic protection at the United Nations Security Council.

But Trump and Putin also have a disturbingly close relationship, meaning that there still may be a path open for the president-elect to pursue better relations with North Korea. Lest we forget, Trump’s talks with Kim during his first term started with “love letters” before falling apart and devolving into insults and threats. Trump still reminisces about those early days and, referring to Kim, said, “I think he misses me” at the July Republican National Convention.

It doesn’t seem that Kim has the same fond memories as Trump, though, making new talks unlikely unless the president-elect convinces Putin to facilitate things and Kim comes around on the idea. But that seems implausible when the effort last time resulted in North Korea calling Trump a “dotard” and a “heedless and erratic man.”

Even Newsmax is turning its back on Representative Nancy Mace’s transphobic bathroom stunt.

Speaking with Indiana Representative Erin Houchin about Mace’s recent efforts to keep Representative-elect Sarah McBride—the first openly transgender person to be elected to Congress—out of the Capitol complex’s women’s restrooms, the far-right network’s hosts struggled to point to any statistics that actually warranted the conspiracy.

“Do you have any idea how often an attack happens involving a trans person in a restroom? I haven’t heard of any cases at all,” pressed Newsmax host Katie McCall.

“Just because there aren’t cases of attack doesn’t mean that having a man in a woman’s facility is not a violation of their privacy,” Houchin said, before referring to an instance in 2023 when police were called on a 50-year-old transgender swimmer in a women’s locker room—in Canada.

Statistically speaking, the threat that transgender people pose to the sanctity of public restrooms is zilch. A 2018 study from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law found that bathroom-related nondiscrimination laws pose practically no risk to women, and that claims to the contrary are little more than myths that are “not empirically grounded.”

Even Mace’s own ex-staffers have gone nuclear on her over the transphobic stunt on McBride. On Wednesday, the lawmaker’s former communications director Natalie Johnson said that Mace’s attacks on McBride were little more than a “ploy to get on Fox.”

“Tweeting 262 times about a bill that applies to like .00000001% of Congress in 36 hours is definitely about protecting women. It’s certainly not just a ploy for media attention,” Johnson tweeted.

Scandal-ridden former representative and failed attorney general nominee Matt Gaetz has pledged not to rejoin Congress. We can all only hope he keeps that promise.

In an appearance on The Charlie Kirk Show on Friday, Gaetz told the right-wing shill that he will be fighting for President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda “from a new perch.”

“I do not intend to join the 119th Congress,” Gaetz said. “There are a number of fantastic Floridians who’ve stepped up to run for my seat, people who have inspired with their heroism, with their public service. And I’m actually excited to see northwest Florida go to new heights and have great representation.”

Gaetz resigned from the 118th Congress days before a House Ethics Committee was set to wrap up its probe into allegations that he trafficked and had sex with a 17-year-old girl at a sex party. Gaetz fervently denied the allegations, even resigning from Congress last week as evidence piled up. While the probe has still yet to be released, the House Ethics Committee reportedly obtained documents that showed Gaetz’s payment to the 17-year-old girl on Venmo. Multiple Senate Republicans, including Mitch McConnell, said they had qualms with Gaetz’s nomination, and Gaetz finally announced he would not pursue the attorney general nomination after CNN reported the House Ethics Committee somehow had even more evidence against him.

Gaetz is still eligible to serve in the 119th Congress, even though he told Kirk he won’t. He could still run to be reelected to his own seat or hope that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis appoints him to take Marco Rubio’s spot as senator after Trump nominated Rubio for secretary of state.

Trump has pegged his loyalist former impeachment hearing attorney Pam Bondi as Gaetz’s replacement for attorney general. And in Florida, a woman equally strange and bigoted as Gaetz—Michelle Salzman—is set to run for his open seat.