“Donald Trump’s victory promised an electoral realignment as he made heavy gains among Latinos and peeled off some Black men. His Cabinet, however, ultimately reflects the staying power of white men in Washington,” Politico reports.

“After a flurry of selections last week, the president-elect winds up with just three people of color in secretary roles, matching his first Cabinet.”

“Some of President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees were harassed by bomb threats and hoax phone calls,” Bloomberg reports.

Jim Geraghty: “After the 2016 election, Trump foes launched a serious last-ditch effort to convince the presidential electors to become ‘faithless‘ and change their votes, preventing Trump from becoming president. Celebrities and actors from The West Wing and Will and Grace appeared in commercials, urging electors to not vote for President-elect Trump. So far this year, there’s nothing like that. Democrats in and out of office are trudging in acquiescence toward Inauguration Day; Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman said he expects to vote to confirm Rubio as secretary of state, and he said he is open to voting to put his former rival, Mehmet Oz, in charge of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.”

“Trump won the second-highest number of votes for president ever cast, no one’s questioning the legitimacy of his victory, Democrats in the Senate are signing off on some of his cabinet picks, and he starts his second term with at least an initially high approval rating. Trump may not be normal, but he’s starting to look normalized.”

Bill Kristol: “There’ve been a few spectacularly bad nominees, picked to lead key departments where they would do real and dramatic damage to the nation. One of these, Matt Gaetz, nominated for attorney general, has already withdrawn. The three others—Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, Pete Hegseth at Defense, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at Heath and Human Services—should not be confirmed. And who knows—maybe they won’t be.”

“But the challenge we face over the next four years—and it is a real and difficult challenge—isn’t posed by the spectacularly bad nominees. The challenge is all the routinely bad nominees.”

“There’s plenty to say against many of these picks. They don’t know much, they’re mediocre, they’re mostly election deniers, and so on. But the core problem is they’re weak. They’ll do what Trump wants, and they’ll do it unquestioningly.”

“I was at the bottom of my class. I started doing heroin, and I went to the top of my class. Suddenly I could sit still, and I could read and I could concentrate. I could listen to what people were saying.”

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr., quoted by the Daily Beast.

The first post-election Emerson College poll finds President-elect Donald Trump’s favorability rating at 54%, a six-point increase from his pre-election favorability of 48%.

President Joe Biden has a 36% job approval rating, a four-year low for the president in Emerson polls, while his disapproval rating remains steady at 52%.

ProPublica: “If Trump were to assert a power to kill congressionally approved programs, it would almost certainly tee up a fight in the federal courts and Congress and, experts say, could fundamentally alter Congress’ bedrock power.”

“The Trump transition team said Tuesday it had reached an agreement with the Biden White House to start coordinating the handoff of federal agencies to the new administration,” the Washington Post reports.

“But the Trump team is still refusing to accept several typical trappings of the presidential transition process, including federal funding, equipment and office space — as well as official government background and security checks for his transition staff. The agreement does not include an ethics pledge for the president-elect, required by the Presidential Transition Act, stating that Trump will avoid conflicts of interest while in office.”

“President-elect Donald Trump said on Tuesday evening that he had selected Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford physician and economist whose authorship of an anti-lockdown treatise during the coronavirus pandemic made him a central figure in a bitter public health debate, to be the director of the National Institutes of Health,” the New York Times reports.

“Dr. Bhattacharya is the latest in a series of Trump health picks who came to prominence during the coronavirus pandemic and who hold views on medicine and public health that are at times outside the mainstream. The president-elect’s health choices, experts agree, suggest a shake-up is coming to the nation’s public health and biomedical establishment.”

“President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday picked Jamieson Greer, a lawyer and former Trump official, to serve as his top trade negotiator, a position crucial to Mr. Trump’s plans of issuing hefty tariffs,” the New York Times reports.

“During Mr. Trump’s first term, Mr. Greer served as chief of staff to Robert E. Lighthizer, the trade representative at the time.”

“President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday reached a required agreement with President Joe Biden’s White House to allow his transition staff to coordinate with the existing federal workforce before taking office on Jan. 20,” the AP reports.

“The congressionally mandated agreement allows transition aides to work with federal agencies and access non-public information and gives a green light to government workers to talk to the transition team.”

“Donald Trump entered the White House eight years ago with a Cabinet full of traditional conservative credentials, tapping some people he barely knew to help him learn his way around Washington,” the Washington Post reports.

“Now the president-elect has rapidly assembled a different kind of team for his second term — enlisting people deeply critical of the agencies they will lead, bucking conservative orthodoxy with some of his picks and, above all, rewarding his most loyal allies.”

“President-elect Donald Trump is said to have selected Kevin Hassett to lead the National Economic Council, a role spearheading the new administration’s tax, trade and spending agenda,” Bloomberg reports.

“A fixture of conservative economic circles for two decades, Hassett previously served as a senior adviser to Trump and the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers during the president-elect’s first administration, and he vigorously defended the Republican’s signature tax policies. He also backs the Republican’s slate of tariff proposals.”

Wall Street Journal: “The expected decision comes after Trump made clear that he is serious about imposing steep tariffs on American allies and adversaries alike.”

“Two Trump transition insiders, Cliff Sims and Kash Patel, are angling to be deputy director of the CIA — and angering others who feel they’re using their roles on the transition to undermine any would-be contenders,” Political reports.

Tara Palmeri: “The breakneck speed with which Donald Trump filled out his cabinet may have looked deliberate, but I’ve learned that the process was even more freewheeling, complicated, and downright nasty than it was during Trump’s first transition to the presidency. Back then, of course, Trump had few experienced hands around him, beyond his family (Jared and Ivanka) and a handful of operatives (Reince, Bannon, Kellyanne…). The defining battles of that era, over who was and wasn’t a ‘globalist,’ seem quaint in retrospect. Incredibly, despite the anonymous sniping in the press (much of it powered by background-quote back-channeling), Trump ultimately assembled a mostly standard-issue Republican cabinet, with appointees who wouldn’t have been out of place in a Bush White House.”

“For Trump’s second tour of duty, a decidedly more chaotic process has taken place—fueled by the triumvirate of Susie Wiles, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump Jr. in his ear, with supporting characters like Boris Epshteyn and Howard Lutnick running up and down the sidelines.”

Timothy Noah: “The pithiest summary of Donald Trump’s last presidency was by the comedian John Mulaney. He compared it to a horse being set loose in a hospital.”

Said Mulaney: “No one knows what the horse is gonna do next, least of all the horse. He’s never been in a hospital before!”

“The prevailing theory about Trump’s second term is that the horse now knows its way around the hospital. I have my doubts. Whatever practical knowledge Trump picked up in the first term is outweighed by the accelerating cognitive decline he displayed over the past year. He was a weak president before, and he may be an even weaker one this time.”

“In saying this, I don’t dispute that Trump’s instincts are dangerously authoritarian. Nor would I argue that a bumbling maximum leader is harmless—quite the opposite, in fact.”

“Donald Trump’s transition team is planning for all cabinet picks to receive sweeping security clearances from the president-elect and only face FBI background checks after the incoming administration takes over the bureau and its own officials are installed in key positions,” The Guardian reports.

“The move appears to mean that Trump’s team will continue to skirt FBI vetting and may not receive classified briefings until Trump is sworn in on 20 January and unilaterally grant sweeping security clearances across the administration.”

President-elect Donald Trump has now picked more than a dozen political operatives, lawyers and elected officials who attended his criminal trial for key roles, the New York Times reports.