Friday News Roundup
Nomination Watch
After looking like the Trump Administration would fail to get Pete Hegseth confirmed as Secretary of Defense, the Trump team is now confident Hegseth will be confirmed. When anchor Greg Kelly of the right-wing news channel Newsmax said Hegseth was “blackmailable” and “hasn’t done nearly enough for MAGA,” Donald Trump made an angry phone call to Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy that led to a Newsmax ban on criticizing Hegseth. After revealing she was a survivor of sexual assault, Republican Senator from Iowa Joni Ernst previously said she was not ready to support Hegseth, but then Trump allies forced her back into line. First, Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird wrote an op-ed on Breitbart, arguing that the GOP has a duty to rubber stamp all of Trump’s nominees. Then the conservative talk show host Steve Deace called Ernst a “backstabber” and told Politico he was planning a primary campaign against her. After being punished in Trumpland for showing independent thought, Joni Ernst then quickly withdrew her objections.
Pandemic Watch
Data diva and public health expert Christina Pagel has come out with a new Substack post, “How close is a new bird flu (H5N1) pandemic?” Her verdict: “Probably not around the corner, but getting uncomfortably closer.”
Normally, when Republicans want to turn the clock back to the 1950s, they typically envision something like June Cleaver in Leave It to Beaver. But now with the rise of RFK Jr. and vaccine denialists in charge at Department of Health and Human Services, the vetting of HHS appointees is now being done by a lawyer who asked FDA to revoke approval for the polio vaccine, originally invented in 1953.
Mass Deportation Watch
Trump continues to double down on his statement that U.S. citizens will deported in his mass deportation campaign. “Send them all back,” Trump said. After Trump has vowed to reverse an ICE policy restricting immigration police from invading churches (in addition to other “sensitive locations” such as schools and hospitals), the National Catholic Reporter issued an article on “7 things Catholics need to know” about Trump’s mass deportation plan. Meanwhile, private far-right militias have vowed to do their own vigilante immigration enforcement by patrolling the border.
Other Highlights
- French president Emmanuel Macron named a new prime minister, his centrist ally Francois Bayrou, after lawmakers ousted Prime Minister Michel Barnier last week in the first successful no-confidence vote to collapse a government since 1962.
- Mark Zuckerberg donates $1 million to Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, a signal he is taking the same rightward path to the dark side as Elon Musk.
- Demonstrators heckled Secretary of State Antony Blinken as “Bloody Blinken” and “Butcher of Gaza” during a Congressional hearing on Wednesday.
- FBI director Christopher Wray announced he will resign at the end of Biden's term instead of waiting for Donald Trump to fire him. Even under Democratic administrations, the FBI has never had any permanent director that wasn’t a Republican.