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You're Hired: Tracking the Trump Administration Transition - November 23, 2016
Trump Administration (first term)  Vice President Mike Pence Cabinet • White House staff • Transition team • Trump's second term |
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| Polling indexes: Opinion polling during the Trump administration |
This is the November 23, 2016, edition of a daily email sent from November 2016 to September 2017 that covered Donald Trump's presidential transition team, potential cabinet appointees, and the different policy positions of those individuals who may have had an effect on the new administration. Previous editions of "You're Hired" can be found here.
Nominee announcements
As of November 23, 2016, two nominees to fill Trump’s 15 cabinet positions had been announced.
Nikki Haley
Today, Nikki Haley was nominated as US ambassador to the United Nations by President-elect Donald Trump, becoming the first Indian-American to be appointed to a cabinet-level post in any US administration. The announcement came one week after Haley, who was also reported to be a potential pick for secretary of state, met with Trump in New York City. During the Republican primaries, Haley initially supported Marco Rubio but later endorsed Ted Cruz after Rubio suspended his campaign.
Haley’s experience with international relations comes largely from her economic and environmental initiatives as governor of South Carolina. During Haley’s tenure, foreign direct investment has contributed to a 13.4 percent rise in employment in South Carolina; over half of those jobs were in the manufacturing sector. In a January 2013 press release, Haley commented on the role of foreign investment in the state’s economy, saying, “It is exciting to see South Carolina once again recognized as the ‘it’ place for business investment. Foreign firms have played and continue to play a key role in our state’s economy.”
She has also intervened in international arrangements to send plutonium to the state. In March 2016, she wrote a letter asking Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz to turn around a ship from Japan headed to the Department of Energy’s Savannah River site for storage. Haley remarked that the shipment, about 730 pounds of weapons grade plutonium, “puts South Carolina at risk for becoming a permanent dumping ground for nuclear materials.” The plutonium was delivered to South Carolina, but the federal government agreed to move roughly 13,000 pounds of plutonium already stored in the state to New Mexico later in the year.
Haley is the fourth person to have held the positions of both governor and ambassador to the United Nations, the other three being Bill Richardson, Adlai Stevenson, and William Scranton.
The vacancy created by Haley leaving her role as Governor of South Carolina will be filled by her lieutenant governor Henry McMaster through the end of her term, which expires in January 2019. McMaster endorsed Trump in January 2016.
Betsy DeVos
On Twitter, Trump announced that he would appoint Michigan school choice advocate and philanthropist Betsy DeVos as his next secretary of education. DeVos and her husband Dick have been longtime Republican Party donors and advocates for school choice and charter schools. For six years between 1996 and 2005, DeVos was the chair of the Republican Party of Michigan, and the DeVos Family as a whole has been an influential group of donors for conservative causes and organizations, like the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and The Acton Institute. DeVos herself described these donations as intended “to foster a conservative governing philosophy consisting of limited government and respect for traditional American virtues.”
Betsy and Dick DeVos worked to fund, endorse, and publicly campaign for school vouchers in Michigan during the 2000 election. In a 2013 interview, DeVos said she was a proponent of “as much freedom as possible” in schooling, indicating that this commitment extended beyond vouchers: “We think of the educational choice movement as involving many parts: vouchers and tax credits, certainly, but also virtual schools, magnet schools, homeschooling, and charter schools.” She is the chair of the American Federation for Children, a nonprofit that advocates for education choice at the state level.
What conservatives are thinking
Yesterday, in an interview with The New York Times, Trump indicated that he would not pursue criminal charges against Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state. He said, “I think it would be very divisive for the country.”
Conservatives have mixed opinions about this.
Noted #NeverTrump critic David French, writing for National Review, applauded the move as a “wise” one. French wrote, “The president simply shouldn’t be targeting any individual American for prosecution. Nor should he, without using his power to pardon, relieve any American from lawful investigations or prosecutions. He can and should set policy priorities, but individual prosecutions should be left to investigators and prosecutors who follow the evidence and the law to seek justice without regard for politics.”
On Wednesday morning, Newt Gingrich took the contrary position on "Fox & Friends," saying that it would be “a tremendous blow to the rule of law” for President-elect Trump to tell the Department of Justice to ignore any potential criminal wrongdoing: “I think it would be as wrong for a president of the United States to say we’re not gonna enforce the law against somebody as it would be for the president of the United States to say I’m gonna direct the Justice Department or the IRS to go after somebody. So I hope what President-elect Trump was saying is that he is not personally going to interfere or in any way suggest to the FBI and the IRS what they should be doing.”
Tom Fitton, head of the conservative group Judicial Watch, which initiated many of the lawsuits related to Clinton’s email, released a statement critical of Trump’s decision.
Read more about executive clemency and pardons here.
What liberals are thinking
Today, the day before Thanksgiving, is the deadline given by President Barack Obama for his supporters to grieve over Hillary Clinton’s loss. In a national conference call last week, he told members of Organizing for America: “It is fine for everybody to feel stressed, sad, discouraged for a while, but I’m giving you like a week and a half to get over it. By Thanksgiving, you’re going to have to be in a more positive place”.
The coming election for chair of the Democratic National Committee has been characterized as a “war for the very soul” of the party. Announced candidates to replace interim chairwoman Donna Brazile include Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and Howard Dean. Dean, who stepped into the role in 2005 as an insurgent, is now more apt to be seen as a member of the Democratic establishment. Ellison, who was once seen as the prohibitive early favorite, has run into opposition from the White House, according to the New York Times. One possible counter-candidate, Joe Biden, announced on Wednesday he would not seek the role.
See also
- You're Hired: Tracking the Trump Administration Transition
- Donald Trump presidential transition team
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