November 15, 2024
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Leading the News . . .
Trump to nominate RFK Jr. as Health and Human Services secretary . . . President-elect Donald Trump announced Thursday that he would nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services. Mr. Trump said he is nominating Mr. Kennedy, a former presidential candidate and renowned vaccine skeptic who believes the U.S. food supply is causing an epidemic of childhood diseases, to lead the sprawling department charged with "improving the health, safety and well-being of America." Washington Times
Democrat commends Trump for nominating RFK Jr . . . Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis praised President-elect Trump for nominating Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be the next secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. In a lengthy social media post on Thursday, Polis praised Kennedy for helping Colorado "defeat vaccine mandates" in 2019 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Fox News
Politics
'All the options' are on the table to get Trump's Cabinet picks through confirmation: Thune . . . Incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune said "all the options" are on the table to get President-elect Trump's Cabinet picks through the confirmation process amid concern some appointees won't receive enough votes to be confirmed. Trump in recent days announced his choices for key government positions, from Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence to Matt Gaetz as attorney general and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as Health and Human Services secretary. Fox News
The only way Gaetz will be confirmed is if Thune agrees to allow a recess appointment for him. If Trump is committed enough to the nomination, and he didn't just make it to give Washington the finger, he may be able to make Thune do it. The other nominees, like Hegseth and Gabbard, should be fine, despite the turmoil.
Woman testified to Congress claiming Matt Gaetz had sex with her when she was 17 . . . A woman reportedly testified to the House Ethics Committee that Matt Gaetz had sex with her when she was 17 years old. Gaetz had been the subject of a yearslong House Ethics Committee probe for alleged drug use and sexual misconduct. She sat for multiple days of testimony where she talked about Gaetz and her having sex when she was a minor in high school. The accuser reportedly 'represented that she was an adult' on the website where she met Gaetz's friend Joel Greenberg, who in 2022 was sentenced to 11 years in prison for sex trafficking a minor. 'This false smear following a three-year criminal investigation should be viewed with great skepticism,' Gaetz said in a statement. Daily Mail
Christian conservative group presses Trump to yank Matt Gaetz's nomination . . . A Christian conservative group says President-elect Donald Trump's pick of Rep. Matt Gaetz for U.S. attorney general is a clear mistake and should be withdrawn, dubbing the Florida firebrand "neither morally nor professionally qualified." The Liberty Counsel, a nonprofit that advocates for religious freedom, said Mr. Gaetz faces an ethics investigation and only worked as a lawyer for a short time before entering politics in Florida. Washington Times
House Republicans confront math problem after Trump erodes their majority . . . So far, Trump has nominated Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Mike Waltz (R-FL), and Matt Gaetz (R-FL) to his incoming administration. That dwindles their majority to 218 — causing some in the conference to grow wary of the prospect of an even thinner majority than the one they currently hold. Part of the uncertainty comes as eight House races remain too close to call, the outcomes of which could give Republicans more or less breathing room in the next session of Congress. Washington Examiner
Rep. McCaul detained at Dulles, acknowledges mistake in mixing alcohol, Ambien . . . Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) on Wednesday acknowledged he had been briefly detained at Dulles International Airport earlier this month because airport authorities thought he appeared drunk. McCaul, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, acknowledged in a statement to NewsNation, The Hill's sister network, that he had made a "mistake" in mixing the sleep medication Ambien and alcohol. The Hill
Culture
Taylor Swift Opens Concert With Land Acknowledgment . . . Taylor Swift kicked off her Toronto concert Thursday night with a "land acknowledgment" a common practice among left-wing activists who believe they live on "stolen land." "We acknowledge that we are performing today at Rogers Centre, located on Treaty 13 lands," read a graphic projected on stage before Swift's performance. "We acknowledge the First Nations, Inuit, and Metis peoples whose original and treaty territories we stand upon." Daily Wire
And now, with that out of the way, on with the show!
National Security
How Putin outsmarted 4 US presidents, then was outplayed by Trump . . . Assorted pundits are pontificating that the president-elect will give away the store to Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, especially when it comes to resolving the almost three-year Russia-Ukraine conflict. I'm here to tell you that President-elect Trump is a gift to Ukraine and a nightmare for Putin. Trump is the first U.S. president who has been able to outsmart the Russian dictator after the latter had fooled four U.S. presidents. Yes, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and, of course, President Biden. All fell for the "former" KGB operative's chicanery, having gullibly trusted Putin that Russia could be America's friend. Rebekah Koffler for Fox News
Iran Told U.S. It Wouldn't Try to Kill Trump . . . Iran offered written assurances to the Biden administration last month that it wouldn't seek to kill Donald Trump, U.S. officials said. The Iranian message, delivered on Oct. 14, came in response to a private written American warning sent to Tehran in September. U.S. officials said it reflected the administration's public message that it considered the threats against Trump a top-tier national security issue and that any attempt on his life would be treated as an act of war. Wall Street Journal
NATO Forces Mobilized As Russian Jets Cross Lines In Baltic Sea . . . In response to repeated Russian aerial incursions, NATO forces mobilized Tuesday as Italian and Norwegian fighter jets intercepted multiple Russian aircraft straying close to NATO territories, according to NATO Allied Air Command. These interceptions, conducted under NATO's Air Policing mission, were necessary as Russian aircraft ignored international aviation protocols. Daily Caller
Smugglers Tell Migrants to Rush to U.S. Before Trump Takes Power . . . Trump's second term is creating an incentive for migrants to try to reach U.S. soil before the Jan. 20 inauguration, because many anticipate the president-elect will dismantle legal pathways to entry. Those paths include a U.S. government app that allows people to apply for U.S. asylum while in Mexico and then cross legally when they have an appointment—a system created last year that some migrants think will be upended by Trump. Wall Street Journal
Apparently, the smugglers, the acknowledged experts, disagree with Biden and Harris's claims that they were doing everything possible to stop illegal crossings.
U.S. Must Be Prepared to Expand Nuclear-Weapons Force, Biden Officials Say . . . The U.S. needs to be prepared to expand its nuclear force to deter the growing threats from China, Russia and North Korea, say senior Biden administration officials. During his first term in office, Donald Trump endorsed all of the major nuclear-weapons programs he inherited from the Obama administration and added two new nuclear systems. Wall Street Journal
International
Trump meets Argentina's Milei . . . Donald Trump has said it was an "honour" to meet Argentina's President Javier Milei in Florida ahead of a conservative investment summit. The right-wing leader is the first foreign leader to meet Trump since his US presidential election victory on 5 November. At a gala at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort on Thursday, Milei congratulated the president-elect and said it proved "that the forces of heaven [were] on our side". BBC
Money
RFK pick sends drug company shares crashing . . . Moderna stock tumbled seven percent following the announcement of RFK Jr as his most senior health chief, as Pfizer's fell three percent and Novavax saw its shares drop five percent. The idea of one of the country's foremost vaccine skeptics heading up health policy has many health experts in government nervous, but he has earned praise from the left and right for his plans to crack down on harmful food ingredients that aren't allowed abroad and emphasize exercise and healthy eating over taking pills. Daily Mail
Trump's transition team aims to kill Biden EV tax credit . . . President-elect Donald Trump's transition team is planning to kill the $7,500 consumer tax credit for electric-vehicle purchases. Representatives of Tesla - by far the nation's biggest EV maker - have told a Trump-transition committee they support ending the subsidy. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, one of Trump's biggest backers and the world's richest person, said in July that killing the subsidy might slightly hurt Tesla sales but would be "devastating" to its U.S. EV competitors, which include legacy automakers such as General Motors. Reuters
You should also know
Three-Quarters of U.S. Adults Are Now Overweight or Obese . . . The study, published on Thursday in The Lancet, reveals the striking rise of obesity rates nationwide since 1990 — when just over half of adults were overweight or obese — and shows how more people are becoming overweight or obese at younger ages than in the past. The study's authors documented increases in the rates of overweight and obesity across ages. They were particularly alarmed by the steep rise among children, more than one in three of whom are now overweight or obese. New York Times
UFOs shadowed military pilots: Pentagon report . . . The Pentagon received more than 700 reports of UFO sightings from May 2023 through June 1 of this year, with hundreds still unexplained, including at least three instances in which mysterious craft shadowed U.S. military aircraft, the Defense Department said in a major report made public Thursday. "It is important to underscore that, to date, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office has discovered no evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity, or technology," the report reads in part. Washington Times
The Pentagon has also determined that Bigfoot was aboard some of the UFOs.
Editor-in-chief of Scientific American resigns following expletive-filled rant against Trump voters . . . Laura Helmuth, the editor-in-chief of Scientific American, has resigned after receiving fierce backlash for her expletive-filled online tirade in which she called Donald Trump voters "f–king fascists" on election night. "I've decided to leave Scientific American after an exciting 4.5 years as editor in chief," Helmuth announced on her Bluesky account Thursday. "I'm going to take some time to think about what comes next (and go birdwatching)." New York Post
Sylvester Stallone labels Trump the 'second George Washington' . . . The 78-year-old Stallone described the opening scene of the first film where the camera pans down from a mural of Jesus inside an old church converted into a boxing gym as Rocky Balboa gets punched by his opponent, with the word "Resurrection AC Club" shown in the background. "At that moment, he was a chosen person and that's how I began the journey," Stallone told the crowd in West Palm Beach, Florida. "Something's gonna happen, this man is gonna go through a metamorphosis and change lives." New York Post
Whoopi Goldberg claims bakery refused her service over leftist views . . . Whoopi Goldberg claimed on "The View" that a popular Staten Island bakery refused to serve her because of her political views, but the bakery's owner has denied the allegations. "They said that their ovens had gone down, all kinds of stuff, but folks went and got them anyway, which is why I'm not telling you who made them," said Goldberg. She claimed that her order wasn't rejected because of her gender, but rather because "they did not like my politics." Fox News
Megyn Kelly calls Rachel Zegler 'a pig' after 'Snow White' star's nasty tirade about Trump voters
Eva Longoria says she and family have moved out of 'dystopian' US . . . Eva Longoria says she's anxious and nervous for Americans who can't "escape" their "dystopian country" following President-elect Trump's White House win. "The shocking part is not that he won," Longoria told Marie Claire . "It's that a convicted criminal who spews so much hate could hold the highest office," said Longoria, who campaigned for Vice President Harris and spoke at the Democratic National Convention in August. The Hill
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Guilty Pleasures
Gambling monkeys could be on Musk's chopping block in Trump administration . . . President-elect Donald Trump will find plenty to cut from federal spending, including billions of dollars doled out to states and wealthy corporations and research funding to teach monkeys how to gamble. Mr. Trump advanced his campaign promise to slash government spending and regulation by creating a commission to cut waste. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which will operate outside the government, will be led by billionaire entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Washington Times
This is an outrage. If monkeys aren't taught how to gamble, they'll get their clocks cleaned in Vegas.
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