“Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer heard a consistent, urgent alarm this week from Democrats who felt ambushed by GOP attacks on transgender people participating in women’s sports,” Axios reports.
“In two private postmortem meetings attended by Schumer, Democrats said the party was caught flat-footed by the attacks, even as many campaigns aired ads pushing back.”
“The GOP spent over $77 million on ads about transgender issues in U.S. Senate races in 10 states dating back to July.”
“President-elect Donald Trump’s bid to stock his cabinet with combative loyalists is creating the first major test for the new Senate Republican majority, whose leaders must now decide how far they are willing to go to challenge nominees some of them regard as egregiously unfit,” the New York Times reports.
Wall Street Journal: Gaetz nomination seen as doomed by some Senate Republicans.
“President-elect Donald Trump still hadn’t settled on his pick for attorney general when he boarded his plane in Washington on Wednesday afternoon, bound for West Palm Beach, after spending a triumphal day in the capital meeting with President Biden at the White House and with Republicans on Capitol Hill,” the New York Times reports.
“By the time he landed in Florida two hours later, he had made an abrupt choice that stunned Washington: Representative Matt Gaetz, the firebrand congressman whose loyalty has never been in question.”
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“President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday said he would pick Jay Clayton, who was the top Wall Street enforcer in the first Trump administration, as the head federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, a critical post for an incoming president who has vowed revenge on those who pursued him in the courts,” the New York Times reports.
Politico: “Clayton served as the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first term but has no experience as a criminal prosecutor…”
“During his first term, Trump attempted to install Clayton as the U.S. attorney for SDNY in an effort to oust Geoffrey Berman, who held the post from 2018 to 2020. But Trump’s effort was met with fierce resistance in the office, including by Berman himself, who refused to leave until he was allowed to hand the reins to his deputy.”
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon won’t join President-elect Trump’s administration, The Hill reports.
Said Trump: “I respect Jamie Dimon, of JPMorgan Chase, greatly, but he will not be invited to be a part of the Trump Administration. I thank Jamie for his outstanding service to our Country!”
“The woman who was at the center of a yearslong Justice Department investigation into sex trafficking allegations surrounding Rep. Matt Gaetz testified to the House Ethics Committee that the now-former Florida congressman had sex with her when she was 17 years old,” ABC News reports.
“Over the summer, the House Ethics Committee subpoenaed the woman at the center of the probe — who is now in her 20s — and she sat for multiple days of testimony where she testified to the committee that Gaetz had sex with her when she was a minor in high school.”
“President-elect Donald Trump is expected to nominate former presidential candidate and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services,” Politico reports.
“The expected pick, which will roil many public health experts, comes after Trump promised to let Kennedy ‘go wild’ with health and food policy in his administration after Kennedy dropped his own presidential bid to endorse the now-president-elect.”
“It’s also a sign of the opening Trump sees after he scored a decisive electoral victory and Republicans won a comfortable majority in the Senate.”
Trump made the formal announcement on X.
Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV) suggested Thursday that he is open to voting for Democratic judicial nominees, even if they can’t secure any Republican support, Axios reports.
“During Donald Trump’s hush-money trial last spring, a string of top Republicans turned up at the Manhattan courthouse in a public show of loyalty. Now several are being tapped for his government,” Bloomberg reports.
“President-elect Trump announced the latest on Wednesday with his intention to nominate Rep. Matt Gaetz to be US attorney general.”
“Other trial attendees included Vice President-elect JD Vance, who attended the trial on May 13 and was chosen by Trump as his running mate two months later. Rep. Mike Waltz, of Florida, who has been tapped for national security adviser, also showed at the courthouse. As did Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur who was appointed to head a new ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ along with billionaire Elon Musk.”
“President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is planning to kill the $7,500 consumer tax credit for electric-vehicle purchases as part of broader tax-reform legislation,” Reuters reports.
“Ending the tax credit could have grave implications for an already stalling U.S. EV transition. And yet representatives of Tesla – by far the nation’s largest EV seller – have told a Trump-transition committee they support ending the subsidy.”
Jonathan Chait: “Maybe the Senate caucus really will draw the line somewhere—perhaps at Gaetz, perhaps at one or both of Gabbard and Hegseth. But there is something disconcertingly familiar in the confident yet carefully hedged assertions that the old-line GOP will stop this madness. It is exactly what Republicans said would stop Trump from receiving the nomination in 2015, from winning the presidency in 2016, and from reclaiming the party’s leadership after the ignominy of January 6. ‘I don’t think he’s a serious candidate,’ Senator Lisa Murkowski said yesterday, of Gaetz. That is almost a verbatim repetition of what elected Republicans once said about Trump.”
“At every step along the way, Republican elites have assumed that they could stop Trump later. But when the decisive moment arrived, they discovered that the cost of confrontation had gotten higher, not lower. Opening a breach with a man whom the base had come to admire, and then worship, would imperil their own ambitions, not just Trump’s.”
Politico: “House Republicans have salvaged an agreement on their internal rules… after it appeared to be on shaky ground for hours earlier on Thursday.”
“Although he’s remained involved on the periphery of Democratic politics since losing a 2022 bid for the U.S. Senate, Tim Ryan publicly had ruled out running for office again in 2026,” Signal Cleveland reports.
“He’s re-evaluating that position following last week’s election.”
Said Ryan: “I said I wasn’t. People have been calling me and saying, ‘Keep your options open.’ So I’m keeping my options open right now.”
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is keeping her options open for re-election in 2026.
“Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) plans to run for a sixth term in the Senate, buoying Republicans’ hopes of retaining her seat in 2026,” the Washington Examiner reports.
“Collins would be one of the most vulnerable incumbents heading into a less favorable Senate map for Republicans next cycle. She could also face political headwinds with President-elect Donald Trump returning to the White House.”
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) has talked with RNC co-chair Lara Trump about her interest in filling the Senate seat set to be vacated by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) — and is now pushing for her selection, Axios reports.
“Michael Anton and Sebastian Gorka are in the running to be President-elect Donald Trump’s deputy national security adviser,” Politico reports.
“With either selection Trump would elevate a firebrand loyalist who served in the incoming commander-in-chief’s first administration to one of the White House’s top roles.”
The Miami Herald confirms that the Ethics Report on former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) is “highly damaging” — and could be leaked today.
John Clune, the lawyer for the then-minor who was the focus of the Matt Gaetz sex trafficking investigation, posted: “We would support the House Ethics Committee immediately releasing their report. She was a high school student and there were witnesses.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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