FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker, who has earned bipartisan respect in roughly a year on the job, said he will resign on Donald Trump’s inauguration day, Politico reports.

David Kurtz: “If the presidential appointees whose terms are longer than the president’s – precisely in order to make them more independent and less susceptible to political interference – keep resigning at the end of the president’s term, then they’re basically turning these positions into the same as those held by any other administration appointee.”

Garrett Graff: “There was some speculation in the hours following Wray’s announcement to leave before January 20^th that it was some advanced bureaucratic maneuver to forestall Kash Patel being installed as FBI director under a recess appointment or under what’s known as the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, which governs who and how someone can be appointed an ‘acting’ leader in the government.”

“And, indeed, in various ways Wray’s resignation would preclude Patel from being installed via an FRVA appointment if Trump’s plan had been to wait until day 91 of the administration to fire Wray — Patel (or anyone else named acting) needs to have been in government for 90 days in the year period *preceding* the vacancy, for instance, among other FVRA provisions — but there’s also an open legal debate about whether FVRA can even be used if a firing happens, because the president is then creating the vacancy he’s trying to fill, so legally and procedurally it feels sort of a wash in that sense…”

“But I think, practically, Wray’s decision not only doesn’t hinder Patel taking over the bureau, it accelerates it.”

Earlier for members: Washington Shrugs at Christopher Wray’s Departure

A new AP-NORC poll finds only around 3 in 10 Americans are “extremely” or “very” confident that Donald Trump will pick qualified people to serve in his administration.

However, a majority of Republicans say they do have high confidence.

“Vice-president elect JD Vance will bring Daniel Penny, a Marine veteran recently acquitted on homicide charges related to an incident on a New York City subway, to the Army-Navy game on Saturday,” Politico reports.

Said Vance: “Daniel’s a good guy, and New York’s mob district attorney tried to ruin his life for having a backbone.”

“President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming Middle East adviser, Massad Boulos, has enjoyed a reputation as a billionaire mogul at the helm of a business that bears his family name,” the New York Times reports.

“In fact, records show that Mr. Boulos has spent the past two decades selling trucks and heavy machinery in Nigeria for a company his father-in-law controls. He is chief executive of the company, SCOA Nigeria PLC, which made a profit of less than $66,000 last year, corporate filings show.”

“There is no indication in corporate documents that Mr. Boulos, a Lebanese-American whose son is married to Mr. Trump’s daughter Tiffany, is a man of significant wealth as a result of his businesses. The truck dealership is valued at about $865,000 at its current share price. Mr. Boulos’s stake, according to securities filings, is worth $1.53.”

Ron Brownstein: “Donald Trump’s support in rural America appears to have virtually no ceiling. In last month’s election, Trump won country communities by even larger margins than he did in his 2020 and 2016 presidential runs. But several core second-term policies that Trump and the Republican Congress have championed could disproportionately harm those places.”

“Agricultural producers could face worse losses than any other economic sector from Trump’s plans to impose sweeping tariffs on imports and to undertake what he frequently has called ‘the largest domestic deportation operation’ of undocumented immigrants ‘in American history.’ Hospitals and other health providers in rural areas could face the greatest strain from proposals Trump has embraced to slash spending on Medicaid, which provides coverage to a greater share of adults in smaller communities than in large metropolitan areas. And small-town public schools would likely be destabilized even more than urban school districts if Trump succeeds in his pledge to expand ‘school choice’ by providing parents with vouchers to send their kids to private schools.”