Nancy Pelosi Gives Trump the Finger With Inauguration Plans

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is planning to skip out on Donald Trump’s inauguration, Politico reported Thursday.

A spokesperson for Pelosi told Politico that she would be joining other Democrats who planned to miss Monday’s festivities.

The decision is hardly surprising, considering that Pelosi has been a staunch critic of Trump, and the president-elect has lobbed plenty of accusations at her in response. Just earlier this week, Trump called her “guilty” in a rant about Jack Smith, possibly referring to his old accusations that she could be tried for treason for her involvement in his impeachment inquiry.

Pelosi isn’t the only one who has no interest in setting aside her disdain for Trump: Michelle Obama will also play hooky on Monday.

Several Democratic lawmakers will be similarly absent, including Representatives Ilhan Omar, Jasmine Crockett, and Ayanna Pressley, who said she would be “with my constituents honoring Dr. King’s legacy.”

Pelosi has made plenty of enemies on both sides of the aisle as she’s affixed herself as the power player of the Democratic establishment. Earlier this week, first lady Jill Biden expressed her disappointment in Pelosi, who had refused to fight for Joe Biden to stay in the presidential race. After Trump won, Pelosi blamed Trump’s victory on Biden’s insistence on prolonging his campaign. Last month, she successfully killed a bid from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive, to join the House Oversight Committee as ranking member.

President Joe Biden is suddenly looking for ways to keep TikTok alive in the U.S. market, despite the fact that he was the one to sign a law banning it in the first place.

“Americans shouldn’t expect to see TikTok suddenly banned on Sunday,” a Biden official told NBC News, noting that the administration is “exploring options” to keep TikTok from going offline.

TikTok is reportedly prepared to shut down its app on Sunday, when the ban is scheduled to take effect, though the actual language of the law technically only mandates that the platform be taken off app stores to prevent new users from downloading it.

The forty-sixth president has just two days left in office before President-elect Donald Trump takes the White House. Reinterpreting the law could save Biden’s final days atop the executive branch from being marred by the massively unpopular ban and effectively defer the issue to the MAGA leader.

The Supreme Court is poised to weigh on whether the law banning TikTok is constitutional. Trump filed a brief with the court last month, urging the bench to pass on ruling on the ban until he takes office, when his lawyers argue he could “pursue a political resolution that could obviate the Court’s need to decide these constitutionally significant questions.”

But Trump has not always been on TikTok’s side. Before he left office in 2020, Trump attempted to eradicate TikTok via an executive order. He claimed that the video-sharing platform threatened “the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.”

Meanwhile, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will attend Trump’s inauguration, sitting on the dais alongside other Silicon Valley leaders, a Trump transition source told Axios. He will join X owner Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. All of these men have opportunistically caved to the incoming forty-seventh president’s politics since he won in November, in an apparent bid to curry the executive’s favor on the advent of a tech-centric, AI-fueled future.

Lee Zeldin, Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency, struggled to answer simple questions about science during his confirmation hearing Thursday.

During his hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, ranking member Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said he intended to deliver on a promise to Zeldin to ask “really basic no-tricks questions about climate change,” and Zeldin could barely answer a single one.

“First, as a matter of law, is carbon dioxide a pollutant?” Whitehouse asked.

“As far as carbon dioxide ‘emitted’ from you during that question, I would say no,” Zeldin joked. “As far as carbon dioxide that is emitted in larger masses, that we hear concern about from scientists, as well as from Congress, that’s something that certainly needs to be focused on for the EPA.”

“And as a matter of law, it is a designated pollutant, correct?” Whitehouse pressed.

“Senator, while carbon dioxide is not named as one of the six in the Clean Air Act, the EPA has been treating it as such,” Zeldin replied. Whitehouse affirmed that the Supreme Court had determined that it is a pollutant and ought to be regulated by the EPA. Zeldin appeared to treat that standard, which has been in place since 2007, with the skepticism of a technicality.

But Whitehouse was far from done administering his pop quiz. “What effect—briefly and in layman terms, I know you’re not a scientific expert—what effect are carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion having in the atmosphere?” he asked.

“Senator, while I am someone who believes strongly that we should work with the scientists, leaving science to the scientist, the policy to the policymakers, and that we all work together,” Zeldin replied.

Moments earlier, however, Zeldin had promised to “honor” the Supreme Court’s Loper Bright decision, which entails basically the exact opposite by upending a 40-year-old doctrine that required judges to defer to a federal agency (stocked with experts) when determining the meaning of any ambiguous laws that agency should try to enforce.

“I don’t sit before you as a scientist,” Zeldin continued. “Fortunately, at EPA we do have many talented scientists who provide that research. They have that talent to be able to tell us exactly what the metrics are of their research—”

“Just generally, and in layman’s terms, what effects do these carbon dioxide emissions have when they enter the atmosphere?” Whitehouse pressed, his head resting on his hand.

“Trapping—uh trapping heat, senator,” Zeldin said awkwardly.

The ranking member then asked the same question, this time about “methane leakage from fossil fuel production and transport,” to which Zeldin brilliantly replied, “Same.”

“What effect are carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion having in the oceans?”

“Well the emissions of greenhouse gases trap, trap heat, Senator,” Zeldin repeated, also offering that “rising sea levels are concerns where I’m from, as well.”

Whitehouse asked if it was correct that the trapped heat is “heating up the oceans.”

“That is what the scientists tell me, Senator,” Zeldin remarked. Always a good sign when someone is bothering to differentiate between what scientists tell you and what is “correct.”

“Have we hit the 1.5 degree risk threshold, and why is that important?” Whitehouse said.

Zeldin said that he would have to “defer to the talented scientists to be able to provide that advice on an ongoing basis.” (The Earth passed that threshold for the first time last year, a dangerous breach climate experts have been warning about for some time.)

Finally, Whitehouse asked Zeldin what he considered to be key climate or oceans “tipping points” that concerned him. Zeldin couldn’t name one, but said that there was concern about rising sea levels from both sides of the aisle, and its potential impact was evident on maps of places all across the country. How comforting.

In his opening statements, Whitehouse had flagged his concerns that Trump intends to pour millions into the pockets of billionaire fossil fuel barons, and that he hoped Zeldin would demonstrate an ability to “follow the science” and economics, as opposed to act as a “rubber stamp for looters and polluters.”

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has appointed the state’s Attorney General Ashley Moody to fill the Senate seat vacated by Donald Trump’s nomination of Marco Rubio as secretary of state.

The move, reported Thursday by Axios, may be a snub of Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, who has publicly sought the Senate seat and had the backing of several MAGA politicians, including Senator Katie Britt and Representative Anna Paulina Luna. Lara Trump resigned last month from her position as co-chair of the Republican National Committee, fueling speculation that she would be appointed to the Senate seat.

But DeSantis has gone in another direction, albeit with a person who supports the president-elect. Moody endorsed Trump for president and has accused President Biden of “aiding and abetting” an immigrant “invasion.” Still, Moody’s appointment could potentially cause conflict between DeSantis and the president-elect.

Citing an unnamed source, the report states that DeSantis plans to appoint his chief of staff, James Uthmeier, to replace Moody as Florida attorney general.

Trump and DeSantis played golf together on Tuesday, presumably discussing many subjects, but the president-elect hasn’t said anything about the state’s Senate vacancy. The Florida governor fully supports Trump, including his plans for the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. DeSantis has promised to boost funding to local governments and called for a special legislative session to assist the new administration’s immigration crackdown.

Lara Trump also had the support of tech oligarch Elon Musk, who called her “genuinely great” in an X post last month. Musk spent more than $250 million to elect Trump and may not be happy with DeSantis’s choice. It remains to be seen how MAGA, and the president-elect, will react to this appointment, or if DeSantis cleared it with Trump first.

This story has been updated.

Trump shared a “Do not hire” list for his incoming administration with some very familiar names on it—and some curious ones.

“As of today, the incoming Trump Administration has hired over 1,000 people for The United States Government. They are outstanding in every way, and you will see the fruits of their labor over the coming years. We will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, and it will happen very quickly!” the president-elect wrote on Truth Social Wednesday evening.

“In order to save time, money, and effort, it would be helpful if you would not send, or recommend to us, people who worked with, or are endorsed by, Americans for No Prosperity (headed by Charles Koch), ‘Dumb as a Rock’ John Bolton, ‘Birdbrain’ Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, disloyal Warmongers Dick Cheney, and his Psycho daughter, Liz, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, General(?) Mark Milley, James Mattis, Mark Yesper, or any of the other people suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, more commonly known as TDS. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

While it’s no surprise that Trump wants nothing to do with ex-allies like John Bolton or vocal critics like Liz Cheney, it’s strange that he’s also going after current allies like Nikki Haley or the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, which backs some of Trump’s worst policies.

This statement, like so many others in the past, shows that Trump still feels he has grudges and scores to settle and that he will use his office to do so. Announcing that he doesn’t want to hire anyone connected to mainline conservatives is an obvious political statement, but there may also be no rhyme or reason to who’s added to the list next.