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Tracking Trump Administration and Cabinet picks

PenelopeWitherspoon

By PenelopeWitherspoon
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Incidentally, “recess appointments” are what Matt Gaetz calls his dates. 

Ghost of LL
Ghost of LL

I genuinely don't understand why you post here. Literally everyone here thinks you're of significantly below-average intelligence.  Even the people who agree with your positions on a topic sigh a

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Hank Kingsley

Hank Kingsley 20884

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4 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

dear leader will not be happy …

 

This is the perfect political tweet. The watermarked "BlueATLGeorgia" video rip of a national news segment, which then was ripped by "Democratic Wins Media" (LOL), where Trump is "demolished" by 1 minute of a calm recounting of his appointments. 

Check off another "Democratic Win"!  Hope that user made 2-3 dollars for that post! ENGAGEMENT, BABY. 

So fucking glad I got off Twitter. 

 

Edited by Hank Kingsley
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Nice Guy Eddie

Nice Guy Eddie 13479

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Of all of the bad picks, I see Hegseth as being the least impactful. The DoD/Pentagon will eat him up. The folks in there will spin him around in a million directions and provide him some meaningless wins that he can crow about. And I doubt Elon’s DOGE will even be given a DoD report much less allowed in the building.

The real pentagon powers will convince hegsetg to go on tour and compare tattoos with the military personnel around the global bases. It will be interesting when hegseth learns that supplying the Ukraine war has been a benefit to US readiness. Not sure he will be allowed to believe it.

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sidis

sidis 9803

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protip: if a video on youtube, twitter, etc... has any use of the words "DESTROYS" or "DEMOLISHES" or "WRECKS" or "DEVASTATES" or "DISMANTLES" or "ANNIHILATES" in the title (particularly if it is all caps), it can more than likely be summarily ignored.

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yoladu

yoladu 4086

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5 minutes ago, sidis said:

protip: if a video on youtube, twitter, etc... has any use of the words "DESTROYS" or "DEMOLISHES" or "WRECKS" or "DEVASTATES" or "DISMANTLES" or "ANNIHILATES" in the title (particularly if it is all caps), it can more than likely be summarily ignored.

This post DESTROYS.

😋

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Anastasis

Anastasis 23435

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33 minutes ago, sidis said:

protip: if a video on youtube, twitter, etc... has any use of the words "DESTROYS" or "DEMOLISHES" or "WRECKS" or "DEVASTATES" or "DISMANTLES" or "ANNIHILATES" in the title (particularly if it is all caps), it can more than likely be summarily ignored.

Also, anything with BREAKING in all caps, and esp if it has the red siren next to it, should be auto hidden by the algo. 

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bolverk

bolverk 29601

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I was just reading a piece about the Cabinet picks and came across this passage:

Somehow disruption doesn’t begin to cover it. Upheaval might be closer. Revolution maybe. In less than two weeks since being elected again, Donald J. Trump has embarked on a new campaign to shatter the institutions of Washington as no incoming president has in his lifetime.

He has rolled a giant grenade into the middle of the nation’s capital and watched with mischievous glee to see who runs away and who throws themselves on it. Suffice it to say, so far there have been more of the former than the latter. Mr. Trump has said that “real power” is the ability to engender fear, and he seems to have achieved that.

Mr. Trump’s early transition moves amount to a generational stress test for the system. If Republicans bow to his demand to recess the Senate so that he can install appointees without confirmation, it would rewrite the balance of power established by the founders more than two centuries ago. And if he gets his way on selections for some of the most important posts in government, he would put in place loyalists intent on blowing up the very departments they would lead.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/11/18/us/trump-news-live/trump-signals-a-seismic-shift-shocking-the-washington-establishment?smid=url-share

The bolded was new to me, so I looked it up. It apparently appeared in Woodward's book Peril and was a quote from TFG.

image.png.4629dc91bcd4face97373b67efd28bd5.png

Now, we can all argue about how he's incompetent or about how his Cabinet picks are all incompetent, but this quote betrays a self-awareness of which I didn't think Trump was capable. And it seems to confirm that his outrageous selections may very well be a loyalty test to see how far Congress (and the Senate, in particular) will allow him to go on future Executive decisions/actions, which is what's been hypothesized.

To quote Susan Collins, "That's concerning."

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Nice Guy Eddie

Nice Guy Eddie 13479

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Don't be so quick to think that Trump's picks will be able to make too many changes. If there is one lesson from Trump's first admin, they were incompetent. He was successful in some areas like appointing and confirming judges but that was very much handled by competent people like McConnell.

Trump's appointees first inclination will be to fire people in many agencies. Then they will learn that policy change #2 will be tough to implement because there's no one to do it. And never underestimate an office worker in slowing down a project or causing it to fail. "Yes sir, I knew a change to that process would create unidentified problems but you ordered me to implement the change immediately."

 

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WhatTheBuck

WhatTheBuck 28755

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29 minutes ago, bolverk said:

I was just reading a piece about the Cabinet picks and came across this passage:

Somehow disruption doesn’t begin to cover it. Upheaval might be closer. Revolution maybe. In less than two weeks since being elected again, Donald J. Trump has embarked on a new campaign to shatter the institutions of Washington as no incoming president has in his lifetime.

He has rolled a giant grenade into the middle of the nation’s capital and watched with mischievous glee to see who runs away and who throws themselves on it. Suffice it to say, so far there have been more of the former than the latter. Mr. Trump has said that “real power” is the ability to engender fear, and he seems to have achieved that.

Mr. Trump’s early transition moves amount to a generational stress test for the system. If Republicans bow to his demand to recess the Senate so that he can install appointees without confirmation, it would rewrite the balance of power established by the founders more than two centuries ago. And if he gets his way on selections for some of the most important posts in government, he would put in place loyalists intent on blowing up the very departments they would lead.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/11/18/us/trump-news-live/trump-signals-a-seismic-shift-shocking-the-washington-establishment?smid=url-share

The bolded was new to me, so I looked it up. It apparently appeared in Woodward's book Peril and was a quote from TFG.

image.png.4629dc91bcd4face97373b67efd28bd5.png

Now, we can all argue about how he's incompetent or about how his Cabinet picks are all incompetent, but this quote betrays a self-awareness of which I didn't think Trump was capable. And it seems to confirm that his outrageous selections may very well be a loyalty test to see how far Congress (and the Senate, in particular) will allow him to go on future Executive decisions/actions, which is what's been hypothesized.

To quote Susan Collins, "That's concerning."

It was Woodward’s first book about the Trump presidency, published in 2018.

IMG_6271.jpeg.2879bed6161c4f241f3e4a2ece8fcb6b.jpeg

It’s printed on the back cover.

IMG_6272.thumb.jpeg.3152c7c496646ffb0abc0dce73857d20.jpeg

His second book about the Trump presidency, published in 2020, was titled Rage.

IMG_6273.jpeg.fffdbde77f47d4f233ebda87de8cc851.jpeg

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bolverk

bolverk 29601

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36 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Don't be so quick to think that Trump's picks will be able to make too many changes. If there is one lesson from Trump's first admin, they were incompetent. He was successful in some areas like appointing and confirming judges but that was very much handled by competent people like McConnell.

Trump's appointees first inclination will be to fire people in many agencies. Then they will learn that policy change #2 will be tough to implement because there's no one to do it. And never underestimate an office worker in slowing down a project or causing it to fail. "Yes sir, I knew a change to that process would create unidentified problems but you ordered me to implement the change immediately."

Have you forgotten the part of Project 2025 that includes firing 75,000 career bureaucrats and replacing them with political appointees (i.e., loyalists), whom they've been interviewing for the past couple of years?

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Brisketexan

Brisketexan 104855

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55 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Have you forgotten the part of Project 2025 that includes firing 75,000 career bureaucrats and replacing them with political appointees (i.e., loyalists), whom they've been interviewing for the past couple of years?

And if you'd like to see how this goes, check out the Stalinist approach of staffing bureaucracies with loyalists who knew fucking NOTHING about the actual function the enterprise needed to perform.  Fucking polemicists in charge of major agricultural initiatives, that kind of stuff.

It's a system that is very, very well suited to keeping authoritarians in power.  And very, very poorly suited to actually performing the actual missions of enterprises.

And yeah yeah, we hear you MAGAs, the government doesn't do anything useful, blah blah blah.  We're all about to find out how many ordinary, bland, workaday things that functional government agencies and the like play a part in.  It's actually been one of the foundations of American prosperity over the past century, running mostly in the background.  Take it away, and....FAFO.  When grandma doesn't get her social security check on time is an easy one to think of, but when applications for certain financing mechanisms fall into black holes, or regulatory approval of quite necessary (and quite necessary to regulate) items get held up for months/years, delaying projects, adding massive costs, costing people jobs, etc., that's when we're going to be able to trace it to a collapse of systems because Trump appointed Catturd to oversee government office X or Y.

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InkaUtexas

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1 hour ago, bolverk said:

Have you forgotten the part of Project 2025 that includes firing 75,000 career bureaucrats and replacing them with political appointees (i.e., loyalists), whom they've been interviewing for the past couple of years?

I wonder what type of government people will get laid off? Social workers probably. You know, the ones that are needed to give all those struggling their newly needed benefits. Like SNAP.

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InkaUtexas

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3 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

And if you'd like to see how this goes, check out the Stalinist approach of staffing bureaucracies with loyalists who knew fucking NOTHING about the actual function the enterprise needed to perform.  Fucking polemicists in charge of major agricultural initiatives, that kind of stuff.

It's a system that is very, very well suited to keeping authoritarians in power.  And very, very poorly suited to actually performing the actual missions of enterprises.

And yeah yeah, we hear you MAGAs, the government doesn't do anything useful, blah blah blah.  We're all about to find out how many ordinary, bland, workaday things that functional government agencies and the like play a part in.  It's actually been one of the foundations of American prosperity over the past century, running mostly in the background.  Take it away, and....FAFO.  When grandma doesn't get her social security check on time is an easy one to think of, but when applications for certain financing mechanisms fall into black holes, or regulatory approval of quite necessary (and quite necessary to regulate) items get held up for months/years, delaying projects, adding massive costs, costing people jobs, etc., that's when we're going to be able to trace it to a collapse of systems because Trump appointed Catturd to oversee government office X or Y.

There are plenty of more recent examples than Stalin USSR. Just look south at Venezuela, or really a lot of Latin America.

But then did Trump not say he would move to Caracas? Can he take MAGA with him? One nice big right wing resort along the oil sands of Maracaibo.

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Nice Guy Eddie

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It's possible that some of Trump's picks could hurt the agencies in the long run. Trump's first USPS leader pick (and still leader) has systematically destroyed the USPS. He had a stated mission to slow down mail AND raise costs which he has succeeded in achieving.

I will give DeJoy props that he recently worked with Dems to remove ridiculous USPS laws including their handcuff requirement to prefund retiree benefits. 

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bolverk

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1 minute ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

It's possible that some of Trump's picks could hurt the agencies in the long run. Trump's first USPS leader pick (and still leader) has systematically destroyed the USPS. He had a stated mission to slow down mail AND raise costs which he has succeeded in achieving.

I will give DeJoy props that he recently worked with Dems to remove ridiculous USPS laws including their handcuff requirement to prefund retiree benefits. 

Worth a read in full (https://www.propublica.org/article/video-donald-trump-russ-vought-center-renewing-america-maga), but here are some lowlights:

Vought does not hide his agenda or shy away from using extreme rhetoric in public. But the apocalyptic tone and hard-line policy prescriptions in the two private speeches go further than his earlier pronouncements. As OMB director, Vought sought to use Trump’s 2020 “Schedule F” executive order to strip away job protections for nonpartisan government workers. But he has never spoken in such pointed terms about demoralizing federal workers to the point that they don’t want to do their jobs. He has spoken in broad terms about undercutting independent agencies but never spelled out sweeping plans to defund the EPA and other federal agencies.

*****

As ProPublica and Documented reported, Project 2025 has launched a massive program to recruit, vet and train thousands of people to “be ready on day one” to serve in a future conservative administration. (Trump has repeatedly criticized Project 2025, and his top aides have said the effort has no connection to the official campaign despite the dozens of former Trump aides and advisers who contributed to Project 2025.)

*****

In his 2024 speech, Vought said he was spending the majority of his time helping lead Project 2025 and drafting an agenda for a future Trump presidency. “We have detailed agency plans,” he said. “We are writing the actual executive orders. We are writing the actual regulations now, and we are sorting out the legal authorities for all of what President Trump is running on.”

*****

Vought’s preparations for a future Trump administration involve building a “shadow” Office of Legal Counsel, he told the gathered supporters in May 2023. That office, part of the Justice Department, advises the president on the scope of their powers. Vought made clear he wants the office to help Trump steamroll the kind of internal opposition he faced in his first term.

Historically, the OLC has operated with a degree of independence. “If, all of a sudden, the office is full of a bunch of loyalists whose only job is to rubber-stamp the White House’s latest policy directive, whose only goal is to justify the ends by whatever means, that would be quite dangerous,” said an attorney who worked in the office under a previous Republican administration and requested anonymity to speak freely.

Another priority, according to Vought, was to “defund” certain independent federal agencies and demonize career civil servants, which include scientists and subject matter experts. Project 2025’s plan to revive Schedule F, an attempt to make it easier to fire a large swath of government workers who currently have civil service protections, aligns with Vought’s vision.

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can't do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so.

“We want to put them in trauma.”

 

image.png.fa41474ebb8da5cc580b112b67517886.png

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Balcones

Balcones 321

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35 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

I wonder what type of government people will get laid off? Social workers probably. You know, the ones that are needed to give all those struggling their newly needed benefits. Like SNAP.

I would imagine every DEI office in each of the cabinet departments would be first to go.

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InkaUtexas

InkaUtexas 25743

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5 minutes ago, Balcones said:

I would imagine every DEI office in each of the cabinet departments would be first to go.

And this helps how? If I had to start anywhere it would be within the government's bloated contracting system. Ya know, the ones who oversee the contracts for fast food franchises on bases and such.

Oh wait.

 

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Fudge Nuggets

Fudge Nuggets 19169

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3 hours ago, sidis said:

protip: if a video on youtube, twitter, etc... has any use of the words "DESTROYS" or "DEMOLISHES" or "WRECKS" or "DEVASTATES" or "DISMANTLES" or "ANNIHILATES" in the title (particularly if it is all caps), it can more than likely be summarily ignored.

"BOMBSHELL" is my top cue to skip it.

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hookem2010

hookem2010 2621

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36 minutes ago, Balcones said:

I would imagine every DEI office in each of the cabinet departments would be first to go.

Great, can we stop being so equitable and inclusive to mediocre white men? (As a mediocre white man, I'm allowed to say this.)

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TwiceHorn

TwiceHorn 31398

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So, Trump tried to do this before, Biden undid it and made a rule at OPM that will have to be undone before he attempts to do it again. And then there will be the court challenges as to whether he really has authority to do it.

A lot of this shit is still going to be in the air by midterms.

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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32379

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17 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

So, Trump tried to do this before, Biden undid it and made a rule at OPM that will have to be undone before he attempts to do it again. And then there will be the court challenges as to whether he really has authority to do it.

A lot of this shit is still going to be in the air by midterms.

 

I admire your belief in the legal system.

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