Survey: Weak First Half Of 2015 To Be Followed By Stronger Second Half; Overall Growth Flat

“President-elect Donald Trump’s Tuesday night surprise pick of a conservative commentator and television host as his Pentagon chief shocked Washington, which had expected the nominee to be a seasoned lawmaker or someone with defense policy experience,” Politico reports. “National security officials and defense analysts had braced for surprises from Trump after experiencing his first four years in office.

“Retiring Rep. Garret Graves of Louisiana is in talks with Donald Trump’s transition team about the possibility of him becoming secretary of transportation,” NOTUS reports.

“House conservatives are planning to force an internal vote on Mike Johnson’s speakership during Wednesday’s leadership election instead of throwing in an alternate candidate,” Politico reports.

“The incoming Trump administration is considering locations and talking to private prison companies about drastically expanding immigrant detention centers that would hold immigrants before they are deported as part of President-elect Donald Trump’s promised mass deportation plan,” NBC News reports. “The goal is to double the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention beds — 41,000 are now allocated by Congress — to hold vast numbers of migrants for short periods of time while they await deportation after their arrests inside the U.

Denver Sen. Chris Hansen, a one-time mayoral candidate who was elected to his second term in the state Senate last week, has accepted a job leading a Durango-based electric authority. But it was still unclear when he planned to resign his seat. The La Plata Electric Association confirmed Hansen as its new CEO in a statement Tuesday, and an agenda for a board meeting next week includes a “CEO welcome and introduction.” Minutes from a previous board meeting indicated the electric cooperative was prepared to offer an unnamed candidate the CEO position in mid-September. A spokeswoman for the company did not return recent messages from The Denver Post.

A few weeks ago, Vice President-elect JD Vance dubbed Donald Trump “the candidate of peace” during a blitz of Sunday morning show appearances. Vance was talking about a guy who during his last term reportedly expressed interest in firing missiles into Mexico, and mused about nuking both North Korea and hurricanes. And, less than a week after Trump’s election victory, the notion of the president-elect as anti-war, a common theme for Vance, has been badly undermined by Trump’s selection of a series of national security hawks—people who advocate using military force to solve international problems—for key administration jobs. On the campaign trail, Trump found some success in positioning himself in an anti-war lane.