Trump picks Dr Oz, Howard Lutnick for high-profile roles as cabinet picks continue

Andrew Feinberg speaks to those, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Pramila Jayapal, who have collaborated with controversial MAGA figure Matt Gaetz in the past on specific policy issues.

But there is one force that could keep some of his plans at bay — the stock market.

President-elect Donald Trump released the following statement:

I am very pleased to nominate Dr. Mehmet Oz to serve as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator. America is facing a Healthcare Crisis, and there may be no Physician more qualified and capable than Dr. Oz to Make America Healthy Again. He is an eminent Physician, Heart Surgeon, Inventor, and World-Class Communicator, who has been at the forefront of healthy living for decades. Dr. Oz will work closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake.

Our broken Healthcare System harms everyday Americans, and crushes our Country’s budget. Dr. Oz will be a leader in incentivizing Disease Prevention, so we get the best results in the World for every dollar we spend on Healthcare in our Great Country. He will also cut waste and fraud within our Country’s most expensive Government Agency, which is a third of our Nation’s Healthcare spend, and a quarter of our entire National Budget.

The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency told lawmakers Tuesday she has encouraged the agency’s inspector general to review whether an employee was acting alone when directing workers helping hurricane victims not to go to homes with yards signs supporting President-elect Donald Trump

FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said a critical function of the agency is to go door-to-door and meet with survivors to make them aware of federal resources available. The employee, she said, wrote to about 11 staffers under her supervision that they should “avoid homes advertising Trump.”

Criswell said her senior leadership team provided her with evidence and recommended that the employee be terminated. She concurred.

President-elect Donald Trump is determined to cut federal spending significantly using whatever method he can and that may include impoundment – a little-known power once given to the president to reject Congressional-appropriated funds.

Ariana Baio has the details.

Donald Trump is demanding that Republican senators block all of President Joe Biden’s judicial confirmations ahead of his own inauguration on January 20, 2025.

In the November 2020 to January 2021 period after Trump lost that presidential election, 14 of his judges were confirmed by the Senate.

Not all Republican senators are in town today as Andrew Desiderio of Punchbowl News notes.

This apparently boiled over during a closed-door Senate GOP lunch today…