Rick Klein: “A president-elect without any apparent fixed ideology would have himself a Cabinet full of ideologues – at least according to the Democratic strategy to define them. Rather than focus their energy on sinking one or two Trump nominees, to make a statement about their potential power even in the minority, Senate Democrats have used a scattershot approach that involves going deep into briefing books on virtually all of his picks. At Education, Justice, the EPA, Health and Human Services – point by point, the focus has been on how nominees would stray policy from the mainstream. (Energy, with Rick Perry’s hearing Thursday – after reports that he thought he’d be in charge or oil exploration, and is only now learning about the nuclear stockpile – might offer a twist on this script, but not much of one.)”

“Yet with only 48 Senate votes, Democrats are unlikely to block any nominee unless questions of ethics or financial irregularities make confirmation untenable. That makes this a battle for the long haul, going at the ideological underpinnings of the incoming administration. It may pay off. But it may also misunderstand the source of Trump’s power: His base gravitated to him despite his ideology, not because of it.”

“Donald Trump enters the White House on Friday just as he entered the race for president: defiant, unfiltered, unbound by tradition and utterly confident in his chosen course,” the AP reports.

“In the 10 weeks since his surprise election as the nation’s 45th president, Trump has violated decades of established diplomatic protocol, sent shockwaves through business boardrooms, tested long-standing ethics rules and continued his combative style of replying to any slight with a personal attack — on Twitter and in person.”

“Past presidents have described walking into the Oval Office for the first time as a humbling experience, one that in an instant makes clear the weight of their new role as caretaker of American democracy. Trump spent much of his transition making clear he sees things differently: Rather than change for the office, he argues, the office will change for him.”

Politico: “At 12:01 p.m. Friday, Donald Trump’s aides will deploy a team of temporary political appointees into federal agencies to begin laying the groundwork for the president-elect’s agenda while his nominees await Senate confirmation … While the transition team has been building the so-called beachhead teams for months, they are taking on outsize importance because few of Trump’s nominees will be confirmed by the time he’s sworn in.”

“Three of Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks came under growing fire Wednesday on ethical issues, potentially jeopardizing their nominations,” the Washington Post reports.

“The most serious concerns surround personal investments by Trump’s health and human services nominee, Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), in health-care firms that benefited from legislation that he was pushing at the time.”

“Additionally, Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC), Trump’s choice to head the Office of Management and Budget, has acknowledged during his confirmation process that he failed to pay more than $15,000 in state and federal employment taxes for a household employee.”

“And Commerce Department nominee Wilbur Ross revealed that one of the ‘dozen or so’ housekeepers he has hired since 2009 was undocumented, which he said he discovered only recently. The employee was fired as a result, he added.”

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) says he turned down several jobs in the Trump administration because his wife refused to move to Washington, the AP reports.

Said Christie: “He didn’t offer me a job that I thought was exciting enough for me to leave the governorship and my family. Because Mary Pat made really clear she wasn’t coming to D.C.”

Earlier this week, Trump told the Wall Street Journal, “at some point, we’re going to do something with Chris.”

Donald Trump tweeted a photo of himself in which he says he was writing his inaugural address.

New York Magazine: “As tends to be the case with the president-elect’s social-media statements, there is much to discuss. First, there’s the fact that Trump seems to be drafting his first speech as POTUS with a … Sharpie. And second, perhaps more important, there’s the question of Trump’s desk, which… appears to be one usually occupied by an administrative or hospitality professional — a receptionist or concierge, maybe — in a public hall at Mar-a-Lago, and not in a private office.”

“So we’re not saying that Trump didn’t write his speech, in Sharpie, on a legal pad, at this desk, with its magnificent and inspirational eagle statue. Obviously he did; why would the president-elect stage such a photograph?”