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Matt Gaetz says he’s not returning to Congress next year  CNN

“Many of President-elect Donald Trump’s picks to fill his Cabinet boast resumes that are thin on the kind of subject matter the agencies they would helm oversee,” ABC News reports.
“But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re politically unqualified.”

“Texas is offering a parcel of rural ranchland along the U.S.-Mexico border to use as a staging area for potential mass deportations under President-elect Donald Trump,” CBS Texas reports.

David Graham: “Gaetz’s speedy exit shows that Senate Republicans aren’t willing to accept literally anyone Trump throws their way, and the fact that they were able to send that message so quickly suggests just how deep their reservations were. If the rejection is a sign of weakness for Trump, it is also one for his vice president–elect, Senator J. D. Vance.

Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) said that the hearings to appoint former Fox News host Pete Hegseth as secretary of Defense would be “pretty brutal,” The Hill reports.

“The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s hush money case has given his lawyers more than a week to argue that his conviction should be thrown out because he was reelected as president, and officially called off Trump’s sentencing that was scheduled for next week,” the Washington Post reports.

President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team “is turning to Project 2025 to help staff the next administration,” NBC News reports.
“Already, transition officials are taking suggestions for potential hires from the extensive personnel database created by Project 2025.”

The Economist: “Using artificial intelligence to trawl through his 38,358 posts between December 2013 and November 2024, we found that he is posting far more often and with a far more political bent. Climate change and clean energy used to be the realm of policy on which he opined the most, but he now bangs on much more about immigration and free speech.”

New York Times: “He is keeping quiet for a reason, and it is not because he does not have opinions on President-elect Donald Trump’s administration in the making. With some Republicans raising their own profound concerns about Mr.

“Sen. J.D. Vance’s election as vice president has opened up one of Ohio’s U.S. Senate seats for the third time in as many years, setting off a scramble for the appointment among the state’s ruling Republicans,” CBS News reports.