Chad Chronister has withdrawn his name from consideration to lead the Drug Enforcement Administration under President-elect Donald Trump only three days after he was tapped, CNN reports.

“President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team said it had reached an agreement with the Justice Department to submit names for background checks and security clearances,” the New York Times reports.

“The deal will allow the FBI to conduct checks on people Mr. Trump intends to install as senior officials in his administration.”

Adam Serwer: “Donald Trump is most likely not trying to intentionally assemble a Cabinet chock-full of people accused either of sexual assault or of enabling it, but if he were, he’d be killing it.”

“President-elect Donald Trump offered billionaire investor Stephen Feinberg the job of deputy defense secretary, said people familiar with the matter, a decision that could elevate a longtime political supporter with investments in defense companies that maintain lucrative Pentagon contracts,” the Washington Post reports.

Garrett Graff: “It goes almost without saying that Kash Patel, whom Donald Trump picked over the weekend to lead the FBI, is supremely unqualified to direct the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency…”

“Yet the Patel selection stands out as more concretely dangerous and worrisome than many of the other questionable Trump choices. The true danger is almost less about Mr. Patel and more about what it says about Mr. Trump and his approach to his new presidency.”

“To understand the full scope of the damage Mr. Patel could inflict, you have to understand how unique, powerful and dangerous the F.B.I. can be — and why a Patel directorship would likely corrupt and bend the institution for decades, even if he only served a few years.”

Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor, launched a lengthy broadside against Robert F. Kennedy Jr., using his opening remarks at a public health conference to warn that installing Mr. Kennedy as health secretary would be “beyond dangerous,” and tantamount to “medical malpractice on a mass scale,” the New York Times reports.

“He’s absolutely unqualified for this job. He’s untrustworthy. It’s an absolute disgrace to American citizens to even consider an individual of this nature.”

— Ex-Trump deputy national security adviser Charles Kupperman, quoted by the Wall Street Journal, on Kash Patel’s nomination as FBI director

“Are soldiers sometimes wild childs? Yeah, that can happen.”

— Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), quoted by NBC News, on Pete Hegseth’s nomination of to be Defense Secretary.

Wall Street Journal: “A host of blue states are staffing up and building out legal battle plans for Trump’s return trip to the White House after their justice departments enjoyed frequent success in lawsuits arguing that some of his first administration’s policies exceeded his authority or skirted legal requirements. This time, however, Democratic states may find the Trump administration a tougher foe.”

“Instead of piecemeal actions to ease business regulations and roll back other liberal policies, the president-elect is promising an across-the-board attack on the structure of the executive branch itself, armed with legal arguments conservative lawyers have drafted asserting sweeping presidential power to control the federal workforce, cancel regulations and dismantle agencies.”

Benjamin Wittes: “The only reason to nominate someone like Patel to run the FBI is to commit impeachable abuses of power. Trump makes no secret that this is, in fact, his purpose. Patel is similarly explicit on the point. Yet the Senate might very well confirm the man once Trump removes the incumbent FBI director and nominates Patel to replace him.”

“If it actually does so, would that constitute ‘consent’ to impeachable offenses?”

“President-elect Donald Trump called in and gave GOP senators a pep talk Tuesday as they met behind closed doors on how to rapidly pass his top priorities,” Axios reports.

“Trump knows he has to work closely with the Senate to get things done. GOP congressional leaders are signaling that they are raring to go.”

Jonathan Bernstein: “Trump spent his entire first term as an unpopular president, despite something fairly close to peace and prosperity until his final year. He was then defeated. While in office, he got his way on some things, but he was frequently defeated in Congress, by the bureaucracy, and by the courts. For example, Trump was tied with Bill Clinton for the most rejected or withdrawn cabinet-level nominations, even though Clinton had eight years and a Republican majority for six of those while Trump had four years with his party in the Senate majority.”

“The mistake people are making is treating damage to a president as an all-or-nothing proposition, so that as long as the president survives in office. I blame Richard Nixon for the incorrect belief that goes back (as far as I can tell) to the Iran-Contra scandal, which broke in November 1986 and eventually sort of fizzled out, despite serious revelations of wrong-doing. But while Reagan (unlike Nixon) survived, it’s wrong to believe that it didn’t harm him. His approval rating dropped some 15 percentage points and only recovered very slowly. He lost his chief of staff and other administration officials, and lost several key fights over the next year, most obviously by having a Supreme Court nomination beaten on the Senate floor.”

“If there’s one thing that Richard Neustadt’s Presidential Power teaches, it’s that the influence of the Oval Office is limited – and that it grows or shrinks depending on how any particular president handles the job.”

Mother Jones: “Late last month, Donald Trump named Karoline Leavitt as his incoming press secretary, positioning her to become the youngest person ever to hold the job. That’s a big step up.”

“Just two years ago—following a failed congressional campaign—Leavitt was putting her name on a series of op-eds in right-wing publications lauding a fugitive Chinese mogul who has since been convicted of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from fans of his purportedly anti-communist movement.”

“The battle over President-elect Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, may become a test of loyalty for Republican stalwarts — some of whom stood at the center of a bid 10 years ago to remove Hegseth as the head of a veterans’ charity over allegations of financial mismanagement, repeated intoxication and sexual misconduct,” CBS News reports.

“One of those who led the effort to oust Hegseth as head of the Concerned Veterans of America in 2016 was Jessie Jane Duff, a Marine veteran who served as one of President-elect Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign executive directors.”

“Senate Republican leaders are signaling they’re comfortable with President-elect Donald Trump dismissing FBI Director Christopher Wray before his 10-year term expires,” Semafor reports.

“And GOP senators sound open to confirming Trump loyalist Kash Patel, a vocal critic of a bureau he claims has been captured by the ‘deep state,’ as its next leader.”

“Warren Stephens, an investment banker and billionaire who donated to President-elect Donald Trump’s rivals before eventually supporting him in the 2024 race, was tapped as Mr. Trump’s ambassador to Britain on Monday,” the New York Times reports.

“The selection of Mr. Stephens for the ambassadorship, a plum posting that often goes to one of the largest donors to presidential campaigns, was in part a nod to the American Opportunity Alliance, a big-money network of Republican donors in which Mr. Stephens plays a leadership role. Mr. Trump and the alliance had a tense relationship at times over the course of his campaign.”

Russian state TV propagandists are ecstatic about Donald Trump’s Cabinet selections, especially Kash Patel who the incoming president has appointed to be FBI director, the Daily Beast reports.