Trump’s Treasury Pick Leaves Glaring Gap in Answer on Cutting Medicaid

Treasury secretary nominee Scott Bessent won’t commit to not cutting Medicaid.

In a heated back and forth Thursday with New Mexico Senator Ben Ray Luján, the hedge fund manager refused to specify where exactly he stood on the future of the critical health care program, claiming instead that he would leverage future negotiations on Medicaid to “empower” states.

“Yes or no: Will you recommend cutting Medicaid?” pressed Luján.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear if you said Medicaid or Medicare,” stuttered Bessent.

“Will you recommend cutting Medicaid?” the senator reiterated.

“Medicaid? The, um—I will—it’s the business of Congress to do the budget,” Bessent responded. “And I am in favor of empowering states, and I believe that for some states that will be an increase and for some states that will be a decrease.”

“So, Mr. Bessent, will you recommend cutting Medicaid to President Trump? And I’ll remind you that you acknowledged that one of your responsibilities as secretary of the Treasury will be to be providing this advice,” Luján said.

“I will get back to you on this,” Bessent concluded.

More than 72 million Americans, or roughly one in five citizens, were enrolled in Medicaid as of October, according to a federal Medicaid factsheet. The joint federal and state health care program provides comprehensive health care insurance to low-income Americans.

The wildly popular program has come under increased scrutiny by Donald Trump and his allies since his November win. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published in November, Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk (the potential co-chairs of the not-yet-real Department of Government Efficiency) said they intended to take a knife to “entitlement programs” such as Medicare and Medicaid, though they refused to specify how much they planned to burn from the health care programs.

That could help Trump extend his 2017 tax plan, which overwhelmingly benefits corporations and could add as much as $15 trillion to the national deficit, and which Bessent repeatedly vouched for and framed on Thursday as a salvation for America’s working class.

A stunning 61 Democrats on Thursday voted in favor of MAGA Representative Nancy Mace’s useless and antagonistic immigration bill. 

On its face, Mace’s so-called “Preventing Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act” doesn’t seem like a problem. The bill  “ensures predators who pose a threat and have been previously convicted of sexual assault, domestic violence and other heinous crimes are turned away or immediately deported,” the South Carolina representative wrote in an op-ed last September. 

But in reality, the bill’s aim is redundant at best. Undocumented immigrants can already be deported on account of any crimes, and about 200,000 were deported in 2023. Documented immigrants can be deported for crimes as well, including the exact grounds Mace is referring to. 

At its worst, the bill’s vague text could hurt the very people it claims it’s trying to help. Multiple groups, including the National Task Force to end Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence, have come out in opposition to Mace’s bill, stating that it increases the scope of what constitutes “grounds of inadmissibility.” In effect, it would “negatively impact immigrant survivors of domestic and sexual violence, and fail to alleviate the primary barriers to safety and stability experienced by survivors seeking relief under the Immigration and Nationality Act.” 

The group went on to argue that abusers could use this potential law to accuse their victims of abuse when they actually acted in self-defense. That’s not to mention things like language barriers, fear of retaliation or arrest, a lack of knowledge of rights, and many other obstacles that could result in immigrants being hurt by this bill. 

Here are the 61 Democrats who voted for the bill regardless:

1. Boyle — Pennsylvania
2. Budzinski — Illinois
3. Bynum — Oregon
4. Clyburn —South Carolina
5. Conaway — New Jersey
6. Courtney — Connecticut
7. Craig — Minnesota
8. Cuellar — Texas
   
9. Davis — North Carolina
10. Figures — Alabama
11. Gillen — New York
12. Golden — Maine
13. Vicente Gonzalez — Texas
14. Goodlander — New Hampshire
15. Gottheimer — New Jersey
16. Gray — California
17. Harder — California
18. Hayes — Connecticut
19. Himes — Connecticut
20. Horsford — Nevada
21. Houlahan — Pennsylvania
22. Johnson — Texas
23. Kaptur — Ohio
24. Kennedy — New York
25. Khanna — California
26. Landsman — Ohio
27. Lee — Nevada
28. Levin — California
29. Lynch — Massachusetts
30. Magaziner — Rhode Island
31. Mannion — New York
32. McBride — Delaware
33. McClain Delaney — Maryland
34. McDonald Rivet — Michigan
35. Morrison — Minnesota
36. Moskowitz — Florida
37. Panetta — California
38. Pappas — New Hampshire
39. Perez — Washington
40. Riley — New York
41. Ryan — New York
42. Salinas — Oregon
43. Scholten — Michigan
44. Schrier — Washington
45. Sewell — Alabama
46. Sherrill — New Jersey
47. Sorensen — Illinois
48. Soto — Florida
49. Stanton — Arizona
50. Subramanyam — Virginia
51. Suozzi — New York
52. Swalwell — California
53. Sykes — Ohio
54. Titus — Nevada
55. Torres — New York
56. Trahan — Massachusetts
57. Tran — California
58. Vasquez — New Mexico
59. Vindman — Virginia
60. Whitesides — California

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.

Just hours after a ceasefire between Israeli and Hamas was seemingly agreed to, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is suddenly trying to change its terms.

The agreement stipulates that the Israel military withdraw from the Philadelphi corridor, a narrow strip of land between Gaza and Egypt, and that Israel cease hostilities. In a statement Thursday morning, however, Netanyahu’s office said Israel would not be withdrawing from the Philadelphi corridor and would continue to “achieve the war’s objectives,” which means either Hamas disbands itself or Israel continues the war to destroy the group.

These were major sticking points for a ceasefire deal, and Netanyahu’s insistence on these two points threaten to scuttle the agreement and humiliate Donald Trump, who has warned that “all hell will break out” if there is no deal before he is sworn in as president on Monday. Trump is already promising a sort of “gift bag” for Israel when he is president, including lifting sanctions on Israeli settlers and approving more land seizures in the occupied West Bank.

Trump claimed credit for the deal shortly after it was announced Wednesday, even though he isn’t in office yet and the deal is almost identical to one proposed back in May. Previous deals were repeatedly sabotaged by Israeli officials, as Israel National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir boasted on Tuesday.

The timing of the deal, as well as the fact that it is supposed to go into effect on Sunday, the day before Trump’s inauguration, was an obvious gift from Netanyahu to the president-elect. With Netanyahu suddenly trying to alter the deal, will Trump have his usual reaction to bad news and lash out against Netanyahu, or is the Israeli leader the rare person who gets a pass?

A live hot mic moment made it on air on Fox News Wednesday evening, when a disembodied voice let slip some unsavory language during the introduction of one of the network’s more controversial guests: Charlie Kirk.

The Turning Point USA founder was double-boxed on live air when a loud, unknown voice could be heard speaking over Fox News host Laura Ingraham.

“Joining me now, someone who knows a little bit about this, Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA founder,” said Ingraham, when a deep voice effectively cut her off with an unexpected cuss: “Oh shit.”

The gaffe quickly made the rounds on social media, with users taking their own spin on the audio issue.

“In fairness this is the sound I make when Charlie Kirk is on my TV,” posted journalist Aaron Rupar.

An anonymous source at Fox News chalked the incident up to a control room issue, claiming that the audio operator accidentally raised the levels on an upcoming guest who dished the expletive while adjusting his clip-on microphone.

“The audio operator accidentally slid the wrong fader which was allotted for a different guest,” the source told Mediaite. “That guest in turn was adjusting his IFB at the time and said ‘oh shit’ which was accidentally transmitted on the air.”

Kirk was under fire last week for partaking in a self-described tourism trip to Greenland with Donald Trump Jr. and Trump administration staffer Sergio Gor. The trio’s presence on the island—and myriad photo ops with local residents—was not taken well by some of Greenland’s politicians, who slammed Don Jr.’s visit as a stunt to make the territory appear open to U.S. governance in the wake of odd jokes and eyebrow-raising militaristic threats about buying Greenland by the president-elect.

Local criticism extended to a series of photos featuring Kirk and Greenlandic residents in MAGA hats that Danish media reported was staged. The MAGA cohort reportedly rounded up homeless people from the area—including one person from under a bridge—promising them a meal at the Hotel Hans Egede in exchange for their participation in the pro-Trump photo circuit.

President Joe Biden used his farewell address Wednesday evening to tell Americans to stay involved, stay informed, and beware of the ominous cloud of “oligarchy” that in his eyes is now forming.

“I want to warn the country of some things that give me great concern. And that’s the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultrawealthy people, and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked,” Biden told America. 

“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America, of extreme wealth, power, and influence, that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead. We see the consequences all across America, and we’ve seen it before, more than a century ago. But the American people stood up to the robber barons back then, and busted the trusts. They didn’t punish the wealthy, they just made the wealthy play by the rules everybody else had to.”

While Biden tactfully communicated a fundamental truth and core party principle that’s been often overlooked, many felt that Biden delivering the message in the last gasps of his presidency was emblematic of his time in office: far too little, far too late. 

“This is probably the most important speech Biden has made during his presidency—but who will hear or heed it now?” asked historian Simon Shama on X. “Against unelected billionaires and for the people ought to be the Democrats’ simple message going forward. Will they speak it?”

Others were much less favorable. 

“In 2020, there was one person worth over $100 billion. Today at the end of Biden’s term there are 16 of them,” Matt Stoller of the American Economic Liberties Project wrote, with a meme captioned, “We’re all trying to find the guy who did this,” insinuating that Biden was indeed the “guy.” 

“It kills me that this is the message Biden is delivering in his farewell address,” said Josh Miller-Lewis of A More Perfect Union. “Why wasn’t this delivered consistently for the last 4 years?”

“Biden’s Presidential Medal of Freedom awardees, with net worth, earlier this month: George Soros, $7 billion. David Rubenstein, $4 billion,” wrote ProPublica’s Alec MacGillis. 

The ultrarich have been deeply involved with modern presidential politics, even when it’s a Democrat in office. But Trump, with his billionaire Cabinet, corporate hobnobbing, and backroom hotel business deals, is openly flaunting the oligarchy. Maybe Biden is longing for the subtlety of the past.