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Welcome back to another edition of Today’s American News, your Monday-Friday evening source for news and analysis on the circus that is American politics and pop culture. We hope you’re enjoying the newsletter thus far and that you spread the word about this exciting project. Here we go…
Gaetz won’t be AG (yay!) but may return to Congress… Disgraced former Congressman Matt Gaetz is not going to head up Trump’s Department of Justice. Trump wants an Attorney General who will never hold him accountable, and he won’t get his first choice. Gaetz withdrew himself from consideration and called his nomination a “distraction.” In other words, showing videos of himself having sex with minors on the House floor was too much even for the incoming Republican majority in the U.S. Senate. However, we might not be done with Bad Quagmire just yet; rumors are circling that he may rescind quitting Congress. If that happens, will Mike Johnson resurrect the ethics investigation into Gaetz’s alleged sex trafficking?
AND WE HAVE BREAKING NEWS… Trump has replaced Gaetz, a MAGA lunatic from Florida, with Pam Bondi also a MAGA lunatic from Florida. Bondi, the state’s former attorney general, went easy on Trump’s fake university… In non-Trump administrations, AG picks have been selected for their belief in rule of law, but Bondi, like Gaetz, believes Trump is law.
Trump is hiring Project 2025 authors for big admin roles… Donald Trump spent much of the 2024 campaign trying to distance himself from Project 2025, but it turns out authors of this vile and reactionary playbook of doom are the exact people Trump wants in his administration. Embracing Project 2025 before he even takes office?? NO ONE saw that coming. Here are the folks now even closer to their goal of destroying the country: Brendan Carr, Trump’s pick to lead FCC; former Rep. Pete Hoekstra, Trump’s pick for ambassador to Canada; John Ratcliffe, Trump’s pick to lead the CIA, who was tapped for director of the CIA. Those three stooges are Project 2025 authors. Tom Homan, Trump’s pick for “border czar”, was a Project 2025 contributor.
Donald’s post on spies and journalists was terrifying… Donald Trump refers to the free press – a core American ideal since our nation’s founding – as “the enemy of the people.” This is language used by authoritarians who destroyed the free press within and beyond their borders. How did they do it? By unleashing law enforcement onto journalists critical of the regime and silencing them by intimidation – or worse. Learning our history matters. Trump’s post yesterday, in which he implored Republicans to kill a bill that would protect journalists from government spying, was not a childish rant or a typical Trump threat. Rather, it was a callback to precisely how regimes have destroyed free presses for centuries. Trump wants lackeys in his administration to spy on free-press journalists who are critical of him. Mika and Joe surrendered to the regime before the fight began. For journalists less ethically malleable, how far would Trump be willing to go to take away their ability to criticize him? It’s a terrifying question.
Today’s Buzz
Every presidential election, folks claim that if their candidate loses, they will leave the United States, but few ever make good on the threat. That may be changing. After Trump’s victory earlier this month, some big names in Tinseltown are packing up and moving to Europe. Ellen DeGeneres and wife Portia De Rossi are headed across the pond to make the UK their new home. Indiana Jones’ Richard Geere, for his part, joined Jimmy Kimmel to speak about his family’s upcoming move to Spain. The move has little to do with politics, however; Geere’s wife, Alejandra Silva, is Spanish, and their children are bilingual.
Never a dull moment in Today’s American News… Stay tuned as more agents of chaos, otherwise known as Trump’s cabinet picks, become footnotes in history.
