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November 12, 2024

Stephen Collinson, Caitlin Hu and Shelby Rose

Trump 2.0

President-elect Donald Trump's pick for deputy White House chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, at a rally on Oct. 27 in Madison Square Garden. 

Donald Trump isn’t wasting any time.

He won’t be inaugurated until January, but the president-elect’s impact is being felt with shuddering effect in Washington and around the world.

Trump’s personnel picks so far suggest he wasn’t bluffing on the campaign trail — his second administration will be more hardline than his first.

Trump’s new border czar will be Tom Homan — who promptly took his tough guy persona onto Fox News to tell Democratic governors to “get the hell out of (the) way” if they tried to block a mass deportation operation.

CNN is now reporting that Stephen Miller, a lightning rod aide from the first term who is one of the foremost proponents of Trump’s populist nationalism, is expected to be announced as deputy White House chief of staff for policy. He’ll join Homan in implementing an effort to expel millions of undocumented migrants and asylum seekers, less than a month after telling Trump’s far-right rally at Madison Square Garden that “America is for Americans and Americans only.”

Rep. Elise Stefanik is Trump's pick for ambassador to the United Nations. The New York lawmaker doesn’t have much background in foreign policy, but she is a staunch supporter of Israel’s war in Gaza. The US has sometimes used its spot at the UN to defend global democracy. But Stefanik took part in a bid to subvert it by voting not to certify President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory based on Trump’s false claims of election fraud.

The president-elect also selected former New York Rep Lee Zeldin as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, which is responsible for the protection of human health and the environment. Zeldin backs fracking and voted repeatedly against measures to fight climate change, clean up the oil industry and to protect consumers from toxic chemicals.

Expect more appointments along the same lines. Those above tell us two things about Trump: His second term will feature a far more focused attempt to implement the far-right assault on the administrative state that he failed to fully realize in his first White House spell. And loyalty to the boss will be prized above everything. The president-elect publicly announced that former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his onetime primary foe Nikki Haley will have no role in his new Cabinet. That’s an unusual step — and was probably meant to send a message to two former Cabinet members who are regarded as insufficiently loyal.

Trump’s new team looks guaranteed to turn out to be more extreme and scornful of science, elites, expertise, and the norms that have governed most presidencies. But he won swept through all seven battleground states, won a majority in a democratic election and can rightfully claim a mandate.

The world and America

Israel’s far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich has ordered preparations to annex settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says Russia has deployed nearly 50,000 troops to Kursk.

And toxic smog in Pakistan is so thick you can see it from space.

Meanwhile, gloomy Americans are "doom spending." 

Sexist and abusive attacks on women have surged across social media since Trump’s reelection.

And toy manufacturer Mattel apologized after mistakenly printing the web address of a pornographic site on packaging for dolls.

'Drill, baby, drill'

Zeldin’s appointment is sure to be followed by more new Cabinet officials dedicated to devastating global climate efforts.

Trump has promised to pull the US out of the Paris climate change agreement — after Biden rejoined, following Trump's withdrawal in his first term. And he said on his first day in office on January 20 that he will launch a “drill, baby, drill” strategy to pump more climate-harming hydrocarbons out of the ground in the United States.

Whenever he’s asked about the threat to the planet from climate change — whose effects are evident in more intense hurricanes and raging wildfires and fatal floods, the president-elect claims that America’s air and water were never cleaner than in his first term. It’s a non sequitur that suggests that no one who wants to join or stay in the Trump administration will ever talk about a warming planet. Zeldin is certainly on message; in a statement accompanying his selection announcement, he said, “We will restore US energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs, and make the US the global leader of AI. We will do so while protecting access to clean air and water.”

Trump’s win cast a pall over the arrival of diplomats at the COP29 climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, CNN’s Angela Dewan and Ella Nilsen reported. Their story points out that a U-turn on US climate policy could be disastrous for the planet, as it raises the risk that other countries will follow America’s example.

“Paris is one of those agreements where you need a critical mass of economic powers and emitters, past and present, to actually be able to address this challenge,” said Oli Brown, an associate fellow at the London-based think tank Chatham House.

Thanks for reading.

On Tuesday, Indonesia's new President Prabowo Subianto arrives at the White House for a visit with US President Joe Biden. Biden is also expected to meet with Israeli President Isaac Herzog at the White House. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte meets with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris.