The Most Terrifying Answer in Trump’s Budget Chief Hearing

Senators on both sides of the aisle took issue Wednesday with Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Office of Management and Budget, noting that Russell Vought’s evasive and bureaucratic nonanswers as to whether he’d obey the law while serving the country were alarming.

When pressed on whether he would obey the Impoundment Control Act—in which Congress reexamines executive branch withholdings from the budget—and break away from Trump on his plans to withhold congressionally approved funds, Vought deferred and said that he would obey the law.

“I’m not going to continue to break the law,” Vought said. “I’m giving you my commitment to uphold the laws of this land.”

But the nominee then followed up by claiming that the law is unconstitutional and suggested that Trump’s incoming administration would have to consider on their own whether or not they would follow it.

Vought also refused to pledge that he wouldn’t deny grants based on the requester’s political alignment.

“I’m astonished and aghast that someone in this responsible a position would, in effect, say that the president is above the law and that the United States Supreme Court is entitled to their opinion, but mine should supersede it,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal during the hearing.

Vought ran Trump’s Office of Management and Budget from July 2020 to January 2021, during which time he froze military aid for Ukraine, claimed that foreign aid expenditures were “wasteful spending,” and worked to expand the number of federal employees required to work during a government shutdown.

He scooped up another supporting role in Trumpworld during the incoming executive’s presidential campaign: developing a 180-day “transition playbook” to expedite Project 2025’s implementation in the federal government. But his appointment to run the nation’s budget office could see him enter a critical role in shrinking the federal government and advancing Trump’s agenda.

The 920-page Christian nationalist manifesto advanced outwardly outrageous policy positions, including dismantling wholesale staples of the executive branch such as the Department of Education. But as time has marched on, those outlandish policies have morphed from a fascistic pipe dream to a forthcoming reality among the far right in Congress: On Monday, North Carolina Representative David Rouzer introduced legislation in the House formally filing to eradicate the public education agency.

Other portions of Vought’s Project 2025 proposed revisiting federal approval of the abortion pill, a national ban on pornography, placing the Justice Department under the control of the president, slashing federal funds for climate change research in an effort to sideline mitigation efforts, and increasing funding for the U.S.-Mexico border wall.

Vought was also the architect of Trump’s “Schedule F” proposal, which plans to fire thousands of civil servants and replace them with as many as 54,000 pre-vetted Trump loyalists to the executive branch via executive order.

In oral arguments for a First Amendment case before the Supreme Court Wednesday, Justice Samuel Alito pursued an odd line of questioning regarding free speech and pornography.

The case, Free Speech Coalition et al. v. Paxton, concerns a Texas law that requires adult users of pornographic websites to verify their ages before they can view content. The law is opposed by free speech advocates, including the ACLU, which is representing a coalition of organizations, including some adult websites, in the lawsuit against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

During Wednesday’s arguments, Alito brought up the pornographic website Pornhub, one of the members of the coalition, and asked the lawyer representing the coalition how much of Pornhub’s content is “obscene” to children. The attorney, Derek Shaffer, couldn’t provide exact numbers, but ultimately Alito and Shaffer arrived at an estimate of 70 percent. Then Alito revealed his ignorance about the topic.

“Is it like the old Playboy magazine; you have essays there by the modern-day equivalent of Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr.?” Alito asked, drawing an audible laugh from Shaffer.

“Not in that sense, but in the sense you have wellness posts about women recovering from hysterectomies and how they can enjoy sex,” Shaffer replied. “That’s on there, discussions about age verification proposals and where the industry lines up, as far as what they think should be legislated and what should not.”

While Alito’s question might seem funny, it also creates the impression that only serious essays merit free speech protection, and nothing else, which doesn’t seem to be in line with what the First Amendment actually says.

Texas’s law, as well as similar laws in Republican-led states across the country, are part of a greater right-wing effort, as spelled out in the Project 2025 manifesto, to target not just pornography but also drag queens, trans people, LGBTQ library books, and more. By placing such a high standard for free speech, the right would be able to criminalize what it previously could only demonize.

Donald Trump is moving his pawns around the board.

The incoming forty-seventh president has reportedly encouraged Vivek Ramaswamy to take the Ohio Senate seat vacated by Vice President–elect JD Vance, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

Vance officially resigned from the post Friday. The next senator will be chosen by Republican Governor Mike DeWine, who under Ohio law will be tasked with appointing a replacement until 2026, when a special election will determine who will serve in the role until the term expires in 2029.

Two anonymous sources with knowledge of the matter told the Post that Trump had personally appealed to Ramswamy to take the high-powered position if offered.

DeWine has been tight-lipped during the months-long process to fill Vance’s vacancy, but potential candidates have included Ohio Treasurer Robert Sprague, former state Senator Matt Dolan, Ohio Secretary of State Frank Larose, Columbus-area Congressman Mike Carey, former Ohio Republican Party Chair Jane Timken, and Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted, the last of whom has emerged as a clear front-runner.

But a visit to Mar-A-Lago on Thursday could have planted another suggestion.

“I’ll have an announcement probably next week,” DeWine told reporters in Florida that day.

Blade Columbus Bureau chief Jim Provance had the inside details on DeWine’s process.

“He has said that, number one, he wants somebody who can legislate and have Ohio in mind for any progress that would be made. He’s also said that he wants somebody who can raise money,” Provance told WTVG on Monday. “You have to remember that the Moreno–Sherrod Brown race set records.”

Ramaswamy publicly backed out of the race to replace Vance in November after Trump announced him as a potential co-chair for the not-yet-real Department of Government Efficiency alongside world’s-richest-man Elon Musk. The bold new agency was tasked with identifying what they determined to be wasteful government spending to help the Republican trifecta make sweeping spending cuts. Ramaswamy’s exit could call the project’s future into question, especially as Musk’s presence (and his opposing views on immigration) face heightened scrutiny in Trumpworld.

“Trump’s decisive victory on Tuesday opens up a lot of possibilities to change the country,” Ramaswamy told ABC affiliate News 5 Cleveland in the wake of the election. “We’re obviously having discussions, and they’re not going to be sorted out in the press.”

It doesn’t seem like Greenlanders are warming up to Donald Trump’s pitch to take over their territory.

Fox News’s London-based correspondent Alex Hogan traveled to Nuuk, Greenland’s frigid capital, where she reported Tuesday that there had been a “lot of mixed reaction” to Trump’s threat to acquire the island. But she quickly revealed that they spoke to only one native Greenlander who seemed interested in the idea. 

“Most other Greenlanders we spoke with bashed Trump’s comments, calling them offensive,” Hogan explained.

She spoke to one resident, Jørgen Boassen, whom she described as an “avid Trump supporter.” The man, who was decked out in MAGA merch, had been “trying to convince others that a partnership between Greenland and the U.S. just makes sense,” Hogan explained. 

Boassen told Hogan that the U.S. could potentially protect Greenland from aggression from China and Russia.

Meanwhile, three other Greenlanders said they weren’t the slightest bit interested in becoming U.S. citizens. One man said he would like to “stick with” the current Danish government. Another noted that he would “prefer to be with Denmark than with the U.S.”

“The United States used to be a place that was sort of admired here, and basically all the goodwill that they used to have is almost gone now,” said a third man. 

This is consistent with other reports indicating that there isn’t much enthusiasm for a Trump takeover. Earlier this month, Trump sent his idiot son on a futile mission to the world’s largest island to drum up hype for his bad idea. However, the event they held with supposed MAGA fans was completely staged, according to local reports. Instead of finding actual supporters, staffers reportedly just rounded up a group of “homeless and socially disadvantaged” people who are often outside the supermarket directly across from the hotel where the event took place, put them in some merch, and filmed them.

In the last month, Trump has been outspoken about his pipe dream to acquire the Danish-controlled territory, for its value as a geopolitical asset and mineral and oil resources. After Danish officials made clear that Greenland wasn’t for sale, Trump refused to rule out the prospect of taking it by force.

Of his outlandish imperialist claims (he’s also made threats against Canada and the Panama Canal), this is decidedly the most unserious, but it does reveal a startling obsession with size and a penchant for picking on countries he knows won’t fight back.  

Pam Bondi, Trump’s attorney general pick, revealed in her confirmation hearing Wednesday that there probably is an enemies list after all.

When asked by Senator Mazie Hirono about specific people who have been targeted by Republicans in the past, Bondi refused to say she wouldn’t use the Justice Department against them.

“On Fox News, you said ... ‘The prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones. The investigators will be investigated,’” Hirono said. “Is Jack Smith one of those bad prosecutors that you will prosecute as A.G.?”

Bondi pushed back, stating that she wouldn’t answer “hypotheticals.”

“I’m just asking whether you would consider Jack Smith to be one of the people,” Hirono responded. “How about Liz Cheney? How about Merrick Garland?”

Bondi would not answer—revealing that those individuals are very likely among the top targets of a Trump DOJ.

Earlier in the hearing, Bondi refused to disavow Trump’s FBI pick Kash Patel’s past comments on compiling an “enemies list.”

“Would you have hired someone to the Florida Attorney General’s Office who you knew had an enemies list?” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse asked Bondi.

“Senator, to cut to the chase, you’re clearly talking about Kash Patel,” Bondi said. “I don’t believe he has an enemies list. He made a quote on TV, which I have not heard.… He has great experience in the intel department and Department of Defense. I have known Kash, and I believe that Kash is the right person at this time for this job.

“There will never be an enemies list within the Department of Justice,” she added, a disingenuous comment given the full-throated defense of Patel.

This list comes from Patel’s own 2023 book, Government Gangsters. While he does not include a literal hit list in the book, he does attach an appendix titled, “Members of the Executive Branch Deep State.” Patel refers to this “deep state” as “a cabal of unelected tyrants” and “the most dangerous threat to our democracy” in other sections of the book. The list includes names like Bill Barr, Joe Biden, Lloyd Austin, Sally Yates, Kamala Harris, and 55 other people whom Trump considers political opponents.

Israel and Hamas have brokered a ceasefire agreement, marking a pause to the violence that has killed more than 46,000 Palestinians and wounded 109,000 more since the conflict began 15 months ago.

But on Wednesday, an American leader who was never in office during the war jumped to take credit for the historic deal.

“WE HAVE A DEAL FOR THE HOSTAGES IN THE MIDDLE EAST,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “THEY WILL BE RELEASED SHORTLY. THANK YOU!”

“This EPIC ceasefire agreement could have only happened as a result of our Historic Victory in November, as it signaled to the entire World that my Administration would seek Peace and negotiate deals to ensure the safety of all Americans, and our Allies,” Trump continued in a separate post. “I am thrilled American and Israeli hostages will be returning home to be reunited with their families and loved ones.

“With this deal in place, my National Security team, through the efforts of Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, will continue to work closely with Israel and our Allies to make sure Gaza NEVER again becomes a terrorist safe haven,” Trump said, promising to expand the Abraham Accords.

“We have achieved so much without even being in the White House. Just imagine all of the wonderful things that will happen when I return to the White House, and my Administration is fully confirmed, so they can secure more Victories for the United States!”

The Biden administration had yet to make an announcement by the time Trump made his posts.

Trump warned last week that “all hell” would break loose if the two nations did not reach a ceasefire agreement by the time he returned to the White House on January 20.

“It will not be good for Hamas and it will not be good, frankly, for anyone. All hell will break out. I don’t have to say anymore, but that’s what it is,” Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago, remarking that there “should have never been” the October 7 attack that obtained the hostages.

Trump’s remarks were well received by his allies, who claimed that it was singularly Trump and his threats that were responsible for expediting the hostage release.

“We’re hopeful there’s going to be a deal that is struck toward the very end of (Joe) Biden’s administration—maybe the last day or two,” Vice President-elect JD Vance said in an interview with Fox News Sunday.

“It’s very clear that President Trump threatening Hamas and making it clear that there is going to be hell to pay, is part of the reason why we’ve made progress on getting some hostages out,” Vance said.

Journalists at The Washington Post are sounding the alarm over a crisis at the newspaper.

More than 400 reporters and editors on Tuesday evening sent a petition to the outlet’s billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, urging him to intervene and make changes.

“We are deeply alarmed by recent leadership decisions that have led readers to question the integrity of this institution, broken with a tradition of transparency, and prompted some of our most distinguished colleagues to leave,” the journalists wrote in the petition, which was first reported on by NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik.

The petition did not mention anyone by name, including the paper’s CEO, Will Lewis, who has faced criticism for his editorial decisions, as well as accusations of obstruction of justice from his time working more than a decade ago for Rupert Murdoch in England.

Since assuming the position in 2023, Lewis’s decisions have not been well received, including his choice of executive editor Robert Winnett, who ended up withdrawing from the position due to ethics concerns. Then, in October of last year, Lewis announced that the newspaper’s editorial board would not be making an endorsement in the presidential election.

This caused an immediate backlash, with the newspaper losing more than 250,000 subscribers days after Lewis’s announcement. The decision was seen as the paper trying to soften its coverage of Donald Trump, under the influence of Bezos. When a cartoonist for the Post, Ann Telnaes, decided to satirize Bezos and other tech leaders’ approach to Trump, her cartoon was spiked by an editor, leading to her resignation.

Shortly after the election, Lewis announced that remote work for Post employees was over and that staffers must return to working in the office five days a week, which couldn’t have earned him any deference at the newsroom.

In recent weeks, several high-profile editors and writers have departed the paper. Two political reporters, Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer, left for The Atlantic, while reporter Tyler Pager moved to The New York Times. Former managing editor Matea Gold, once considered a contender for executive editor, also left for the Times last month. And last week, the Post laid off 4 percent of its staff, comprising close to 100 people on the business side of the paper.

“We understand the need for change and we are eager to deliver the news in innovative ways. But we need a clear vision we can believe in,” the Post’s journalists wrote in their petition. It’s hard to see what Bezos will do, considering Lewis was his choice to take over as publisher and that he is likely the reason behind many of their grievances.

After Trump took office the first time, the Post adopted the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Now that Trump is taking office again, and Bezos is cozying up to him, it seems that the Post’s journalists are making a last-ditch effort to live up to that slogan. The question is whether Bezos will listen.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. failed to report making hundreds of thousands of dollars off his anti-vaccine nonprofit, which he claimed he never took a cent from, The Daily Beast reported Wednesday.

The failed presidential candidate and Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services owned up to an “inadvertent error” in his financial disclosure forms that concealed the actual amount he was raking in from the Children’s Health Fund, a 501 nonprofit founded in 2007 under the name World Mercury Project. The group pushes long-debunked misinformation linking vaccines to autism.

Tax filings for the group initially showed that Kennedy had made $510,000 in 2022, and $326,000 for his 15 weeks of work in 2023. But in a corrected filing last month, he revealed he’d actually made $836,571.25 in 2022.

In the filing, Kennedy claimed he’d mistakenly reported the net pay received, as opposed to gross wages.

When the Beast asked Trump’s transition team about the filing, an official said, “Bobby’s (personal financial disclosure) amounts were reported incorrectly.”

Trump transition spokeswoman Katie Miller confirmed that there had been an “oversight in the preparation of the PFD.”

Kennedy repeatedly claimed that he wasn’t making money off the group—in fact, he called it the “opposite of a profit motive” during an appearance on InfoWars in 2021, adding that his involvement with the group had damaged relationships with those in his family. In 2017, he told Tucker Carlson, “I’m getting unpaid for this.”

However, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Between 2017 and 2023, Kennedy earned $2.2 million, according to the group’s federal tax filings.

Kennedy had served as chairman and chief litigation counsel for the Children’s Health Fund since 2015, and in April 2023, he announced that he was going “on leave” to conduct his ultimately unsuccessful run as an independent candidate for president.

Pam Bondi tried to weasel her way out of admitting that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, during her confirmation hearing for U.S. attorney general Wednesday.

Bondi, who received the nomination only after Matt Gaetz was canned for being a sexual predator, faced some questioning from Senator Dick Durbin regarding her past loyalty to the president-elect.

“Ms Bondi, you are one of four Trump personal lawyers that he has already selected for top positions in the Department of Justice. You joined Mr. Trump in working to overturn the 2020 election. You repeatedly described investigations and prosecutions of Mr. Trump as ‘witch hunts,’” Durbin told Bondi.

“To my knowledge Donald Trump has never acknowledged the legal results of the 2020 election,” he continued. “Are you prepared to say under oath without reservation that Donald Trump lost the presidential contest to Joe Biden in 2020?”

“Ranking member Durbin, President Biden is the president of the United States. He was duly sworn in, and he is the president of the United States,” Bondi replied, avoiding a straightforward answer. “There was a peaceful transition of power; President Trump left office and was overwhelmingly elected in 2024.”

Durbin then reframed the question, asking Bondi if she “had any doubts” that Joe Biden won the Electoral College in 2020.

“All I can tell you as a prosecutor is from my first-hand experience.… When I went to Pennsylvania as an advocate for the [Trump] campaign … I saw many things there. But do I accept the results? Of course I do. Do I agree with what happened? I saw so much,” Bondi rambled. “No one on either side of the aisle should want there to be any issues with election integrity in our country. We should all want our elections to be free and fair, and the rules and the laws to be followed.”

“I think that question deserved a yes or no,” Durbin bluntly replied. “And I think the length of your answer is an indication that you weren’t prepared to answer yes.”

Durbin continued. “Have you heard the recording of President Trump on January 2, 2021, when he urged the secretary of state of Georgia to quote ‘find 11,780 votes’ and declare him the winner of that state?”

“No, I’ve heard about it through clips, but no, Senator …” said Bondi.

“What was your reaction to President Trump making that call?”

Bondi stumbled a bit. “I would have to listen to the tape, Senator.”

“Well that quote that I give you is exact. He said to the Georgia secretary of state, ‘Find 11,780 votes.’

Bondi said that the call was long and the quote may have been taken out of context.

Bondi is a former lawyer for Trump, representing him during his first impeachment trial.

A second administration under Donald Trump apparently looks like a free-for-all for punishing liberal-minded states for their ideological differences.

On Tuesday, Ohio Representative Jim Jordan agreed that the incoming forty-seventh president should consider moving the 2028 Olympics, currently slated to be held in Los Angeles, to a deep red state.

“I’m wondering if you think the Trump administration should seriously look at moving the Olympics to a red city where you know things are gonna be run properly, like a city in Florida, maybe Miami, or maybe Dallas in Texas, or maybe a city in your home state of Ohio,” started Newsmax host Rob Finnerty. “I’m not convinced that California can manage the Olympics, the World Cup, and the Superbowl, all within a year of each other.”

The network then cut to footage of the Los Angeles wildfires, which so far have torched an area double the size of Manhattan, killed at least 25 people, and razed more than 12,000 structures and thousands of homes around the city.

“Yeah, especially when they’re spending time quote ‘Trump-proofing’ their state, looking for ways to set up barriers and obstacles to what the American people elected us to do, particularly I think when it comes to this whole immigration and repatriation issue,” Jordan said. “So we’ll see. I’ll leave that up to President Trump and his team.

“But I do think the American people rightly see how poorly that state is being run,” Jordan added.

Republicans have transformed the national disaster into a political game, floating ideas of conditioning aid to California to force it to bend its ideological knee to conservative preferences. That could include atoning for “bad behavior” related to their land management and “broken tax policy” under a “liberal administration,” according to Iowa Representative Zach Nunn.

California operates as the single largest economy in the nation (and the fifth-largest in the world, according to the Public Policy Institute of California), contributing to 14 percent of America’s national gross domestic product.

An analysis from the Rockefeller Institute of Government showed that in 2022, California was just one of a small handful of states that gave more than it got to the federal government, contributing $83 billion more in taxes to the federal government than it received back.*

*This story originally misstated the amount California contributes in taxes relative to the federal spending it receives.