State Department Orders Non-emergency Employees To Leave Iraq, Warns Americans Not To Travel To Country

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.” “While Project 2025’s massive book of conservative policy recommendations received most of the attention from Democrats, a central part of the effort was putting together a database that officials had framed as a conservative LinkedIn to help staff an incoming Republican administration.”

“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. Politico: “In a one-page decision, Justice Juan Merchan postponed the sentencing, which had been set for Nov.

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. Said Kinzinger: “The military’s had an issue with sexual assault that they’ve been trying to address for a number of years, and now you’re putting the guy that’s potentially guilty of that in charge of the Pentagon.

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.

“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.

“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.” “The ongoing battle on Capitol Hill over Trump’s selections underscores how outsider bona fides and shake-it-up attitudes now imbue would-be secretaries with credibility.