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“A thousand miles from the austere buildings where Washington runs, Donald Trump’s transition team in his Mar-a-Lago resort has begun what a close ally calls a hostile takeover of the federal government,” the Washington Post reports. “Since his victory, Trump has ignored many of the rules and practices intended to guide a seamless transfer of power and handover of the oversight of 2.2 million federal employees.

“SpaceX’s latest test flight of its Starship vehicle on Tuesday got off to a sobering start, as the company was unable to recover the enormous booster stage of the rocket, the most powerful ever built. But about an hour later, the vehicle’s upper stage was more successful with the completion of a daring maneuver to splash down in the Indian Ocean,” the New York Times reports. “The late-afternoon launch brought President-elect Donald Trump to the company’s South Texas launch site along the Gulf of Mexico for a show of solidarity with Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and the world’s richest man, who helped catapult the former president back to the White House.” Financial Times: SpaceX abandons attempt to catch Starship booster as Donald Trump watches on.

“President Joe Biden has authorized the provision of antipersonnel land mines to Ukraine, two U. S. officials said, a step that will bolster Kyiv’s defenses against advancing Russian troops but has drawn criticism from arms control groups,” the Washington Post reports. “The move comes in the wake of the White House’s recent authorization allowing Ukraine to use a powerful long-range missile system to strike inside Russia — part of a sweep of urgent actions the lame-duck Biden administration is taking to help Kyiv’s faltering war effort.”

Gabriel Sherman: “For now, Donald Trump is reportedly standing by Pete Hegseth, his embattled pick for defense secretary, but some Trump transition officials are beginning to doubt whether the Fox News host can survive the controversy.” “According to two Republicans close to Trump, the transition team is quietly preparing a list of alternative defense secretary candidates should Trump abandon Hegseth.

“Republican senators expressed frustration Tuesday with their colleagues who’ve been skipping Senate votes, arguing it effectively neutralizes their strategy to slow-walk or even potentially defeat President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees during the lame-duck session,” Punchbowl News reports. “At a closed-door lunch, GOP senators took particular aim at Vice President-elect JD Vance and Sen.

By FATIMA HUSSEIN and AMANDA SEITZ WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump is nominating the billionaire professional wrestling mogul Linda McMahon to be secretary of the Education Department, tasked with overseeing an agency Trump has promised to dismantle. McMahon led the Small Business Administration during Trump’s initial term from 2017 to 2019 and twice ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for the U.