“Donald Trump’s selection of Pete Hegseth as defense secretary puts the world’s most powerful military in the hands of the least experienced leader it’s had in decades,” Bloomberg reports.
“Political and military officials around the world resorted to Internet searches for details of the nominee’s record. One senior European diplomat said his lack of experience isn’t encouraging. A US defense official called it an unusual move to go for someone who had never held a senior position.”
“Elon Musk will join President-elect Donald Trump for his first post-election meeting with the House Republican conference in Washington, D.C.,” CNBC reports.
Nate Cohn: “Many of this cycle’s surprising shifts were foreshadowed in the midterms.”
“The national popular vote for president in 2024 will look eerily similar to the popular vote for U.S. House in 2022. The winner by state will be exactly the same — at least if you take the combined Republican vote in Alaska in 2022. And many of the details will be similar as well, like Republicans’ big gains in Florida and New York.”
“As a result, the 2024 presidential election results by state correlate more closely with the swings from the 2022 midterm election in the U.S. House than with the result of the 2020 presidential election.”
“This is not what anyone would have expected two years ago. Usually, midterms don’t foreshadow the next presidential election.”
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“In the first of what is likely to be several groups that sprout to resist the next Trump administration, two Democratic governors announced on Wednesday that they were forming a group to help protect state-level institutions of democracy,” the New York Times reports.
“Its leaders, Govs. JB Pritzker of Illinois and Jared Polis of Colorado, are among a group of ambitious Democrats likely to try to fill a party-wide leadership void once President Biden leaves office.”
“Melania Trump is unlikely to move to Washington full time in her second go-round as first lady once more showing signs of her willingness to buck tradition as she returns to her high-profile but unelected role on the world stage,” CNN reports.
“Since Donald Trump won a second term as president, Wall Street has been rallying and Washington has been bracing for his return — but the real action is unfolding a thousand miles south of the White House,” Bloomberg reports.
“Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s club in the wealthy South Florida enclave of Palm Beach, has been transformed into a hub for planning his transition to the Oval Office. Well-wishers, job seekers and lobbyists have been jamming the marble-lined hallways while the president-elect has been holed up in his private quarters, speaking to foreign leaders and weighing picks for top roles in his administration.”
New York Magazine: So, how’s it going at Mar-a-Lago?
“The election of Donald Trump has sparked a surge of interest in the United States in South Korea’s 4B movement, a radical feminist crusade that preaches the four B’s: bi-hon (no marriage), bi-yeonae (no dating), bi-sekseu (no sex) and bi-chulsan (no childbirth),” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“Since Nov. 5, there have been more than 500,000 Google searches for ‘4b movement,’ while on TikTok, Instagram and X, support for the cause has been trending among young women voters who are vowing to swear off men.”
House Republican leaders will be reelected “without any meaningful opposition,” Punchbowl News reports.
The House Freedom Caucus couldn’t find a candidate to run against Speaker Mike Johnson and will instead try to block his election with a voice vote.
CBS News: House GOP moves ahead with leadership elections as majority yet to be decided.
Jonathan Bernstein: “Collectively, my best guess is that the Democrats should do…nothing. At least, nothing as a direct response to the 2024 elections. Yes, they lost. Yet it appears that it will wind up being the closest presidential election since 2000 in the national vote, with Trump on his way to a lead of somewhere south of two percentage points. It turned out that this was a terrible year worldwide for incumbents (of any ideological position), with the US Democrats among the best performing incumbent parties. Between that, and the fact that the Democrats lost less ground compared to 2020 in the seven hotly contested states than in the rest of the nation, there doesn’t appear to be any good reason for the party to panic.”
“Besides, changing as a reaction to one election in order to win a future one is rarely the reason that a losing party recovers to win again. That’s not what happened for the Democrats in 1976, 1992, 2008, or 2020. Election-year recessions almost certainly had more to do with the most recent three cases, and 1976 had an earlier recession, a lot of inflation, and Watergate all going for them.”
“So change for change’s sake is probably a bad idea, as is change for 2024 electoral reasons.”
Related for members: The Unsatisfying Answer for Why Democrats Lost
Playbook: “So what’s on the agenda? As far as Biden is concerned, the meeting itself is the agenda — upholding a key governing norm and showing magnanimity, even if Trump skipped the whole ritual entirely last time around amid his denial of the 2020 election results.”
Said one Biden administration official: “At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter that they said that Trump was dangerous and all these things. It’s about continuity of the government, moving America forward. And if this is who they chose, then this is who he needs to sit next to, period.”
The person added: “On the other hand. I’m a human being and I’m like, what the fuck?”
New York Times: “What the rivals will say to each other behind closed doors is unclear, and so is what they might say publicly. They are scheduled to have a brief photo op in front of reporters after the meeting ends.”
ABC News: Biden, Trump to meet in Oval Office in post-election tradition Trump skipped in 2020.
“Democratic leaders are increasingly anxious about being left with a big bill from Kamala Harris’ campaign, which is likely to end millions of dollars in debt,” Axios reports.
“Debt beyond a few million bucks could hamper the Democratic National Committee’s efforts to rebuild the party over the next four years.”
“The intra-party tension has put scrutiny on how Harris’ team — which raised well over $1 billion in less than five months, between the campaign and outside groups — spent its money.”
“President-elect Donald Trump isn’t just upending Washington. He’s triggering a major shakeup in his adopted home state of Florida, completely reshaping the contours of the 2026 midterms in the nation’s third-largest state,” Politico reports.
“Trump plans to nominate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL.) for secretary of State and tapped Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL) to be his national security adviser. The responsibility for ensuring the seats aren’t vacant for too long will fall to Gov. Ron DeSantis, Trump’s former GOP primary rival whose own political future has been cloudy since he lost his bid for president.”
“It was a night of MAGA shock and awe that even Donald Trump’s most devoted fans might not have dreamed possible,” CNN reports.
“But the president-elect’s blizzard of Cabinet and staff picks on Tuesday, each one more unorthodox than the last, only bolstered fears among his critics that his chaotic crew is about to take the country on a dangerous ride.”
Playbook: “The bigger picture, however, is how Musk is starting to wear out his welcome with some in Trump’s orbit. After initially making a huge splash with his endorsement, made just moments after the July attempt on Trump’s life, some insiders now say he’s become almost a comical distraction, hanging around Mar-a-Lago, sidling into high-level transition meetings and giving unsolicited feedback on Trump’s personnel decisions.”
Said one insider: “Elon is getting a little big for his britches.”
“Trump, for his part, doesn’t seem to mind, relishing the attention he’s getting from the richest man in the world. Over the weekend, our colleagues Meridith McGraw and Natalie Allison reported, Trump was zipping Musk around in his golf cart, introducing him to club members and showing him the resort’s gift shop.”
“That proximity has given Musk access to some of the most intimate details of the Trump transition.”
Politico: Elon brings back “government by tweet.”
“Republican senators’ secret ballot vote Wednesday for a new leader will test how much lawmakers want to shake things up as they enter an era defined by the populist energy that propelled President-elect Donald Trump back to the White House,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The front runners for the top Republican position—open for the first time in nearly two decades—are Sens. John Thune (R-SD) and John Cornyn of (R-TX), who have both served as top lieutenants to outgoing leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and are seen as providing continuity for the party.”
“The third candidate is Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), who is close to Trump and is mounting a long-shot bid with the backing of a faction of GOP senators who have clashed with McConnell.”
CBS News: Senate Republicans to elect new leader as Trump looms over contest.
“In nearly every meeting that President-elect Donald J. Trump holds at Mar-a-Lago, alongside him is someone who has been elected to nothing, nominated to nothing and, only a few months ago, had no meaningful relationship with him,” the New York Times reports.
“Elon Musk.”
“The world’s richest person has ascended to a position of extraordinary, unofficial influence in Mr. Trump’s transition process, playing a role that makes him indisputably America’s most powerful private citizen. He has sat in on nearly every job interview with the Trump team and bonded with the Trump family, and he is trying to install his Silicon Valley friends in plum positions in the next administration.”
“The House Republicans who took a leading role defending President-elect Trump during his first impeachment trial in 2020 are reaping the benefits,” The Hill reports.
“Of the eight GOP lawmakers who were part of Trump’s team to push back on allegations he withheld aid to Ukraine for political reasons, three are set to join his Cabinet; one is Speaker of the House and a staunch ally; and one became Trump’s chief of staff in his first administration.”
Said GOP donor Dan Eberhart: “He’s showing that he remembers who stuck with him, and he wants an administration that’s really going to put America first, and he’s not going to have kind of pushback from the establishment on what he wants to achieve.”
“Jack Smith, the special counsel who pursued two federal prosecutions of Donald Trump, plans to finish his work and resign along with other members of his team before Mr. Trump takes office in January,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Smith’s goal, they said, is to not leave any significant part of his work for others to complete and to get ahead of the president-elect’s promise to fire him within ‘two seconds’ of being sworn in.”
CNN: Special counsel Jack Smith looking at stepping down before Trump takes office and is discussing how to end prosecutions.
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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