Trump’s return to the White House: His cabinet choices so far
Donald Trump, fresh off an election win earlier this month that capped a stunning comeback, is quickly announcing plans for an emboldened new administration.
Trump’s first term as president between 2017 and 2021 was marked by heavy turnover, and he made strategic use at times of having people serve in an acting capacity in cabinet-level positions for several months.
Cabinet positions, along with several other administration roles, generally require Senate approval. In a social media post on Nov. 10, Trump said anyone seeking to be Republican majority leader must agree not to stand in the way of temporary presidential appointments.
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump has named Tom Homan, the former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement director, in charge of the nation’s borders. Homan was widely expected to be offered a position related to the border and Trump’s pledge to launch the largest deportation operation in the country’s history.
So-called recess appointments are a practice generally shunned since a Supreme Court ruling in 2014, and are meant to be used when the chamber has a legitimate break. At least one constitutional expert has expressed concern that Trump could be looking to circumvent challenging confirmation hearings on contentious nominees.
Upcoming Trump personnel moves will be closely watched — especially his choice for attorney-general to lead the Justice Department, as he has made generalized campaign pledges to investigate perceived political opponents.
The Justice Department also houses the FBI. While FBI Director Christopher Wray was appointed by Trump, his future may not be secure. The former president has been critical of Wray, a Republican, given the role of FBI agents in helping investigate cases that led to criminal indictments for Trump.
Here are the cabinet-level picks so far.
Pete Hegseth, secretary of defence
Trump’s announcement of his intention to nominate Hegseth, a Fox News anchor, to lead the Pentagon seemed to catch even some Republican legislators off guard, with reactions on Capitol Hill ranging from “wow” to “who?” to “interesting.”
After graduating from Princeton University in 2003, Hegseth was commissioned as an infantry captain in the Army National Guard, serving overseas in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as at Guantanamo Bay. He then lobbied on behalf of Eddie Gallagher and Mathew Golsteyn, military members accused of war crimes, leading to an unprecedented intervention by a U.S. president as military tribunals were examining the allegations.
Hegseth, who has complained about “woke” diversity initiatives within the military, has never led an organization, let alone one the size of the Pentagon and its estimated 24,000 employees. The next defence secretary confronts a tenuous geopolitical situation that includes an emboldened North Korea, Russia’s war on Ukraine and Israel’s war with Hamas and Hezbollah, which has exacerbated already poor relations between Israel and Iran.
“I lead the Senate military personnel panel. All three of my brothers served in uniform. I respect every one of our service members,” Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren said in a social media post on Tuesday. “Donald Trump’s pick will make us less safe and must be rejected.”
Kristi Noem, Homeland Security secretary
Noem grew up on a farm and interned on Capitol Hill, before serving in both U.S. and state legislatures. She was elected governor in 2019, but a memoir released this year of her life and career was criticized both for factually dubious anecdotes and her description of shooting dead a misbehaving dog.
South Dakota has one of the lowest percentages of foreign-born citizens of any state, but Noem has made asylum and irregular immigration from the southern border a preoccupation. She sent state National Guard troops for Texas’s controversial Operation Lone Star.
Noem has claimed that drugs are flooding her state due to a porous border, though federal government statistics indicate the vast majority comes through points of entry, not between them. Reporting to her could be Tom Homan, a Trump pick to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Homan has spoken enthusiastically about large-scale deportations of those in the country without legal status.
WATCH l ICE nominee Homan open to deporting longstanding U.S. residents:
John Ratcliffe, CIA director
Ratcliffe, a U.S. attorney in the George W. Bush administration serving the Eastern District of Texas, served as a congressman from the state for five years. Once rejected as a nominee for director of national intelligence (DNI) in 2019 after bipartisan Senate criticism over his lack of experience and some questionable claims on his resumé, he was confirmed by the chamber several months later.
He faced criticism just weeks before election day in 2020 for declassifying Russian intelligence alleging damaging information about Democrats while acknowledging that it was unverified. While Democrats decried the move as a partisan stunt that politicized intelligence, even former Trump defence secretary Mark Esper suggested in his 2022 book A Sacred Oath it was inappropriate.
Elise Stefanik, ambassador to United Nations
Stefanik, a Republican House member since 2014, appeared skeptical of Trump initially but over time became one of his most vociferous supporters. She was among many Republicans who objected to the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election win; she is also one of very few who have mimicked Trump’s description of defendants charged and sentenced in the 2021 Capitol riot as “hostages,” seeming to indicate they were political prisoners.
Stefanik saw her profile rise after the Israel-Hamas war for her aggressive questioning of American university presidents over antisemitism on their campuses. She has gone as far as calling last month for a “complete reassessment” of U.S. funding for the United Nations, and could be viewed with suspicion at the UN by some countries in the Middle East after helping push for the blocking of American support for United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
Lee Zeldin, Environmental Protection Agency administrator
Zeldin, who ran for governor of New York in 2022, previously served eight years in the House of Representatives and was among the Republicans in Congress who voted against certifying the 2020 election results. He did not serve on any House committees with oversight of environmental policy and had a low lifetime score of 14 per cent from advocacy group the League of Conservation Voters during his eight years in Congress.
Trump is in favour of boosting production of fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal, the main causes of climate change. He has vowed to end subsidies for wind power that were included in legislation signed by President Joe Biden two years ago.
In his first turn as president, Trump rolled back more than 100 environmental laws and regulations.
Published at Fri, 01 Nov 2024 08:11:21 +0000
Israeli forces kill 22 people in Gaza, force new displacement in the north
Israeli military strikes killed at least 22 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, as Israeli forces deepened their incursion into Beit Hanoun town in the north, forcing most remaining residents to leave.
Residents said Israeli forces besieged shelters housing displaced families and the remaining population, which some estimated at a few thousand, ordering them to head south through a checkpoint separating two towns and a refugee camp in the north from Gaza City.
Men were held for questioning, while women and children were allowed to continue toward Gaza City, residents and Palestinian medics said.
Israel’s campaign in the north of Gaza, and the evacuation of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the area, has fuelled claims from Palestinians that it is clearing the area for use as a buffer zone and potentially for a return of Jewish settlers.
“The scenes of the 1948 catastrophe are being repeated. Israel is repeating its massacres, displacement and destruction,” said Saed, 48, a resident of Beit Lahiya, who arrived in Gaza City on Wednesday.
“North Gaza is being turned into a large buffer zone, Israel is carrying out ethnic cleansing under the sight and hearing of the impotent world,” he told Reuters via a chat app.
Saed was referring to the 1948 Middle East Arab-Israeli war which gave birth to the state of Israel and saw the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their home towns and villages in what is now Israel.
The Israeli military has denied any such intention, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he does not want to reverse the 2005 withdrawal of settlers from Gaza. Hardliners in his government have talked openly about going back.
International aid groups say Israel has failed to meet a series of U.S. demands intended to improve the humanitarian crisis in Gaza by a Tuesday deadline. The U.S. said Israel could face restrictions on military aid if it did not improve the aid situation in Gaza.
It said forces have killed hundreds of Hamas militants in Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun during its new military offensive, which began more than a month ago. Hamas and the Islamic Jihad armed wing claimed killing several Israeli soldiers during ambushes and anti-tank rocket fire.
Ceasefire efforts fail to end war
Efforts by Arab mediators, Qatar and Egypt, backed by the United States, have so far failed to end the war in Gaza, with Hamas and Israel trading the blame for the lack of progress.
Speaking on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Israel “has accomplished the goals that it set for itself” by taking out Hamas’ leadership and ensuring the group is unable to launch another massive attack. “This should be a time to end the war,” he said.
“We also need to make sure we have a plan for what follows,” he said, “so that if Israel decides to end the war and we find a way to get the hostages out, we also have a clear plan so that Israel can get out of Gaza and we make sure that Hamas is not going back in.”
Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said Blinken’s comments showed: “We are facing one enemy and that the U.S. enmity against the Palestinian people is no less than that of the occupation.”
On Tuesday, the United States stressed at the UN that “there must be no forcible displacement, nor policy of starvation in Gaza” by Israel, warning such policies would have grave implications under U.S. and international law.
Attacks across Gaza Strip continue
Medics said five people were killed in an Israeli strike that hit a group of people outside Kamal Adwan Hospital near Beit Lahiya, while five others were killed in two separate strikes in Nuseirat in central Gaza Strip where the army began a limited raid two days ago.
In Rafah, near the border with Egypt, one man was killed and several others were wounded in an Israeli airstrike, while three Palestinians were killed in two separate Israeli airstrikes in Shejaia suburb of Gaza City, medics added.
Later on Wednesday, an Israeli strike on a house in western Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip killed eight people, medics said.
Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israel last October, killing some 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
More than 43,500 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza over the past year, Palestinian health officials say, and much of Gaza has been reduced to a wasteland of wrecked buildings and piles of rubble, where more than two million Gazans are seeking shelter in makeshift tents and facing shortages of food and medicines.
Published at Wed, 13 Nov 2024 14:28:21 +0000
