Will Democrats Help Appoint Trump’s Worst Nominee?

Donald Trump’s pick to run the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., may receive some support, or at least an open mind, from some Senate Democrats.

The Hill reports that Senators John Fetterman and Bernie Sanders may consider voting to confirm the former presidential candidate’s appointment to Trump’s cabinet, citing Kennedy’s criticism of food additives, as well as corporate control of the U.S. food industry.

“I think Bernie will give him a fair review,” one anonymous source told the publication, and a different pro-Kennedy source said Fetterman is “definitely a swing vote for all of Trump’s nominees.”

Last week, Sanders wrote a column for The Guardian in which he criticized the U.S. health care industry and called for reform to the U.S. food industry, saying “Large food corporations should not make record-breaking profits making children addicted to processed foods, which make them overweight and prone to diabetes and other diseases.”

These criticisms overlap with parts of Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Initiative” plan, which includes promises to remove chemical additives from food and reduce federal funding for processed foods. Kennedy has said that Americans have been “mass poisoned by big pharma and big food,” and Trump has pledged to let Kennedy “go wild.”

But Kennedy’s longstanding opposition to vaccines and pledge to ban water fluoridation has drawn criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike, and he’ll have a tough time selling those parts of his ideology to the Senate. Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, a doctor, said on Fox News Sunday that Kennedy was “wrong” on vaccines, but still planned to meet with the nominee this week.

Kennedy has met with many senators in recent days to bolster his cabinet bid, including Republicans John Barrasso, Shelley Moore Capito, and Marsha Blackburn. But, in addition to concerns about his medical views, Kennedy also faces from the GOP over his support for abortion, which means his confirmation is far from a done deal.

Donald Trump is (unsurprisingly) trying to get out of his sentencing hearing for the 34 felony counts in his hush-money case.

In a 17-page filing Monday, Trump’s lawyers announced that the president-elect would seek an automatic stay on his sentencing, challenging New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan’s rejection of presidential immunity claims.

Trump’s lawyers argued that the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States required a stay of all trial proceedings, as Trump had been granted presidential immunity for official acts. They also argued that Merchan had wrongly denied Trump’s request to have the verdict dismissed on those same grounds.

“Due to the fact that further criminal proceedings are automatically stayed by operation of federal constitutional law, the Court will lack authority to proceed with sentencing, must therefore immediately vacate the sentencing hearing scheduled for January 10, 2025, and suspend all proceedings in the case until the conclusion of President Trump’s appeal on Presidential immunity,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.

The lawyers requested a response from the court on whether they intend to proceed with the sentencing by the end of Monday.

Last week, Merchan ordered that Trump attend a sentencing hearing on January 10, a little more than a week before his inauguration. Merchan made clear in his order that he did not plan to levy a sentence of jail time, fines, or probation against the president-elect. Instead, Merchan said he plans to sentence Trump with “unconditional discharge,” which means he will receive no punishment.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg responded Monday in a 16-page filing, urging the judge not to postpone Trump’s sentencing. Bragg’s office argued that Trump’s claim that presidential immunity should spare him from trial proceedings was moot, considering that the trial itself ended several months ago, and emphasized Merchan’s intention to give an “unconditional discharge.”

“There is no risk here of an ‘extended proceeding’ that impairs the discharge of defendant’s official duties—duties he does not possess before January 20, 2025 in any event,” Bragg wrote.

Over the weekend, Trump published several angry posts ranting against the “RIGGED” case and claiming his innocence—to which a jury of his peers did not agree.

“I never falsified business records. It is a fake, made up charge by a corrupt judge who is just doing the work of the Biden/Harris Injustice Department, an attack on their political opponent, ME!” Trump wrote.

Lodged within Trump’s diatribes, the president-elect signaled his hopes to use his conviction as the pretext for a new authoritarian rule.

This story has been updated.

Trump’s promise to “drill baby drill” may be easier said than done. 

On Monday Joe Biden announced a buzzer-beater ban on new offshore drilling for oil and gas in 625 million acres of ocean. President-elect Trump wants to undo it immediately. 

“Drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation’s energy needs. It is not worth the risks,” the Biden White House said in a statement. “As the climate crisis continues to threaten communities across the country and we are transitioning to a clean energy economy, now is the time to protect these coasts for our children and grandchildren.”

This move left Trump and his team predictably incensed, as confirmed by his spokesperson Karoline Leavitt on X. 

“This is a disgraceful decision designed to exact political revenge on the American people who gave President Trump a mandate to increase drilling and lower gas prices,” Leavitt wrote. “Rest assured, Joe Biden will fail, and we will drill, baby, drill.”

But Trump may not be able to overturn this ban at all, at least not immediately. 

Biden passed this action using the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which grants presidents sweeping privileges to save federal waters from being used for future oil and gas development. The act does not allow a president to overturn said law alone, meaning President-elect Trump would have to turn to an already fractured and tumultuous Congress to allow drilling to begin.  

In a bizarre move, Elon Musk has locked out a journalist from his X platform—after she published a story that seemed to exonerate him.

On Sunday, Jacqueline Sweet, a journalist writing for The Spectator, had her X account suspended after she posted an article claiming that Musk wasn’t using a burner account under the name “Adrian Dittman,” after she traced it to a German Musk fan in Fiji.

Responding to her post, Musk replied “I am Adrian Dittmann. It’s time the world knew,” before suspending her account for 30 days. The Dittman account has frequently responded to Musk’s posts and supported his political positions, and in videos and audio recordings, seemed to sound remarkably similar to Musk, complete with the tech mogul’s accent and unorthodox speaking cadence.

Sweet’s article has also been flagged on X, with users seeing a warning that the link “may be unsafe” if they click on it. Musk supporters have defended the move by claiming Sweet’s article included Dittman’s personal information—even though it contained no private identifying information whatsoever like his address or phone number—while critics have pointed out the irony of the self-proclaimed “free speech champion” Musk censoring an article that he doesn’t like, pointing out how the tech CEO complained about Twitter censoring stories on Hunter Biden’s laptop. The episode is only more bizarre because it’s not clear why Musk wants to bury this largely anodyne news story.

This is the latest absurd chapter in Musk’s ownership of the social media platform. It is, by recent standards, which include arguing with his far-right ex-supporters over immigration policy and subsequently penalizing their X accounts after they began to attack him, less destructive but it nevertheless underscores the dangers of having one very rich, deranged person in charge of content moderation on a social media platform used by millions.

Donald Trump may be planning to break one of his key—and most disastrous—campaign promises to implement “universal” tariffs on goods imported into the U.S., The Washington Post reported Monday.

Trump’s aides have been quietly prepping a plan to target only critical imports, rather than all imports from a country, three people familiar with discussions anonymously told the Post.

The tariffs would be levied on imports considered to be critical to national or economic security, the people said. While it was not immediately clear which imports those would be, the tariffs are intended to strengthen certain U.S. industries, including materials for the military supply industrial chain, medical supplies, and energy production, two of the three people said.

Trump had previously stated his intention to place a 25 percent tariff on all imports from Canada and Mexico, in addition to a 10 percent tariff on all imports from China—a plan that experts say would be disastrous for the U.S. economy, raising costs for consumers, ravaging the stock market, and severely damaging the America’s global economic standing.

Sector-based tariffs might be a “little bit easier for everybody to stomach out of the gate,” one of the people told the Post. “The thought is if you’re going to do universal tariffs, why not at least start with these targeted measures? And it would still give CEOs a massive incentive to start making their products here.”

It seems that some people inside the forthcoming Trump administration are hoping to avert some of the fallout of his outlandish, dangerous economic plan. In sharing this information, it seems insiders are hoping to float a more moderate approach to tariffs, despite what the president-elect may think. But Trump doesn’t seem to be ready to back down.

Trump immediately contradicted the reporting in a post on Truth Social. “The story in the Washington Post, quoting so-called anonymous sources, which don’t exist, incorrectly states that my tariff policy will be pared back. That is wrong,” Trump wrote. “The Washington Post knows it’s wrong. It’s just another example of Fake News.”