Biden Lock-Blocks Entire Trump Transition
Trump transition team rebuffed for failing to sign ethics agreements due to lack of ethics
Nov. 25: Biden locks Trump out … Bird flu … Crypto soars … So does crypto-fascism …
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It’s the feel-good story America’s been waiting for. No, it won’t matter much in the long run, but if it helps Newsfuckers make it through today, then it matters today!
RePresident-elect Donald Trump’s agency transition teams — so-called “landing teams” — are getting locked out of the federal departments they soon hope to manage/mismanage. The Biden administration reportedly is refusing to let Trump minions — including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. — into their future homes.
That’s because Team Trump has refused to sign the three federal transparency and ethics forms promising to conform to some fucking half-assed pretense of transparency and ethics. Thing is, without those forms, the feds can’t legally start showing Team Trump where the coffee-maker is and how to turn it on and what to do if it makes a weird sound when you try to dismantle it along with the entire agency.
Reportedly, Kennedy “advisers” (brrr) reached out multiple times to the Health and Human Services Department. Only to get told to take a long drive off a short bridge. Oh, wait, wrong Kennedy!1
The lockout is also virtual, meaning no agency email addresses for Team Trump’s landing teams. And the cabinet heads picked by Trump without FBI background checks also can’t request background checks of the people they want to pick. (Pretty sure that’s a feature, not a bug, for this administration, though.)
It also means Biden administration officials aren’t reading Trump’s people in on various threats and crises, let alone the normal stuff. It’s not just war shit in Ukraine and Israel and the places we ignore no matter who’s president, it’s also domestic issues.
For instance, with Trump back in the White House, we’re due another pandemic, no? Trump handed one to Pres. Joe Biden, so it seems only fair.
And Kennedy would probably wanna jump right on it, right, if, for instance, there were a bird flu outbreak…
There Were a Bird Flu Outbreak
Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday said they’ve identified the first known case of a child in the U.S. with the H5N1 virus, adding that they’ve updated their résumés if you know anyone hiring employees with experience in the public-health sector.
Two days later, California officials said that bottles of raw milk were also found to have the H5N1 virus that causes avian flu, also known as bird flu because “avian” means “bird.” The two incidents are especially troubling because it suggests someone has been milking children. (Lookin’ at you, Democrats.)
CDC officials say they’re investigating whether the infected child was exposed to wild animals carrying the virus. The child had only mild symptoms and has about two months to recover fully or risk the new administration dropping them out of an airplane over China.
Fifty-four adult cases of bird flu have been reported in the U.S. so far this year. The virus has been found in dairy cows, cats, mice, a pig, and the main cast of Charlotte’s Web.
Raw milk is unpasteurized — meaning it doesn’t undergo the heating process that kills viruses and bacteria — so that it can be fortified with nutritional supplements such as salmonella, E. coli, brucella, campylobacter and listeria.
RePresident-elect Donald Trump is expected to order the bird flu to stop spreading by Jan. 20, 2025, when it will go away “like a miracle.”2
Like a Real American, Trump Hastily Finishes Assembling Cabinet on a Friday Night
It may not be an Ikea Enköping or a Bjusdörp — guess which of those two is real! — but RePresident Donald Trump’s cabinet is pretty much done. Using only an Allen wrench and a bag full of wooden pegs — but without utilizing the recommended Senate consultation — Trump threw the leftover pieces into the thing on Friday night.
Here’s a look at the final pieces Trump jammed into place regardless of whether that’s really where they go or whether they’ve had an FBI background check.
TREASURY At last, MAGA gets its long-held dream of a Treasury Department finally run by a real, rock-solid, true American. Namely, a gay, George-Soros-funded, past-Al-Gore supporting, Wall Street hedge-fund millionaire Yale alum who’s seen as “business as usual” by Elon Musk.
Congratulations, MAGA!
Trump’s announcement that he’ll nominate Scott Bessent to run Treasury was seen as a sign that the Deep State’s piggy bank won’t get shook up too bad under Trump.
Bessent is expected to toe the line on potentially disastrous Trump policies like wholesale tariffs — until even Trump sees the danger and announces he was always going to not do all the tariffs he said he’d do. Bessent will likely go along with Trump’s attempts to politicize the Federal Reserve — beyond its existing politicized role of enriching bankers at the expense of us — but Bessent’s not so radical as to spook the markets.
The Washington Post’s Heather Long writes that Wall Street is not loving much of the Trump agenda, now that the Wall Street bros are finally — too late — doing their homework. Bessent, Long says, is meant to calm the bros, in order to delay the inevitable Trumpian crash which will somehow be Joe Biden’s fault.
Despite being a woman, Long dares to challenge Trump’s obvious masculinity: “Apparently, one thing that still intimidates President-elect Donald Trump: The markets.”
With Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., already tanking Big Pharma stocks, Bessent’s got a lot of calming to do. His “three arrows” agenda from earlier this year was:
Deregulation (which gave us the 2007-2008 global economic crash)
Drill, baby, drill (not happening, as TFN has said before and will in the future drill into (ha) deeper)
Slaying inflation (or taking credit for Biden ending inflation…and then not bringing prices back down where they were)
LABOR If there’s one thing Trump doesn’t like, it’s labor, personally or in union form. That said, he did well at the polls with workers and has spent decades pretending not to be pretending to love them. And his choice for Labor Secretary has some interesting implications for the Trump Labor Department.
Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR) may be Republican, but she’s been backed by some unions. She reportedly met with Trump on Thursday and he offered her the job right then and there, the way a good manager would. Ironically, she just lost her job — despite some labor endorsements — in her race against Rep.-elect Janelle Bynum (D-OR).
Chavez-DeRemer not only co-sponsored the PRO Act, facilitating unionization, she also backed a bill to help public-safety workers unionize.
Here’s American Federation of Teachers Pres. Randi Weingarten, bringing Chavez DeRemer an apple:
That may not be wishful thinking. Trump is obviously giddy at the prospect of peeling workers of all colors away from Democrats. And if that means sticking it to a few corporate bosses along the way, he’s already shown he’s willing to do that on trade and outsourcing.
New York Times labor reporter Noam Scheiber calls Chavez-DeRemer “a genuinely pro-labor Republican.”
Only one countermove now, Dems — Time to move to the center!
FOXES IN THE HENHOUSE Add Dr. Janette Nesheiwat to the list of former Fox personalities Trump is casting to play government officials in his administration. She’ll be Trump’s surgeon general, meaning we’ll have another four years of executive-branch officials thinking “general” in that title is a military rank.
Surgeon general’s not a policy-driving role, but at least she’s on the sane side of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., when it comes to vaccines. And it’s worth noting Trump’s vow in the announcement that Nesheiwat is “committed to ensuring that Americans have access to affordable, quality healthcare.” Of course, that’s what Dems are offering, too, even though people don’t want access to affordable healthcare, they just want healthcare. Your countermove, Dems!
HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT Former NFL cornerback Scott Turner will be in charge of not just corners but entire blocks as Trump’s Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Department chief.
Turner is the first Black component of Trump2.0’s cabinet and, just like last time around, Trump put the Black guy at the agency with “Urban” in the title. But that’s not all Turner has in common with former HUD chief Dr. Ben Carson. Turner, too, is radically unqualified.
Jesus Christ, These Trump Appointees
Remember how TFN was literally the only news outlet to alert you alert Newsfuckers that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is an insider with the Christian extremist group that uses prayer breakfasts to build right-wing networks around the world? And that Rubio, as secretary of state, will be supremely well-positioned to facilitate that work now?
Well, you may have missed TFN’s Saturday bonus story3, so a quick reminder that two more Trump appointees fall into the Christian extremist category.
Most media outlets mentioned that Turner once played for the Denver Broncos, a fact about which your focused TFN does not care, given that TFN doesn’t even know what a cornerback is.
Only Fox bothered to mention that HUD’s Scott Turner served on the board of the American Cornerstone Institute. What’s that? That’s Dr. Ben Carson’s crypto-theocratic nonprofit right-wing advocacy group. Quote: “Without faith and trust in God, we are lost. … We must ensure the Judeo-Christian values our nation was founded upon are not lost for future generations.”
There’s plenty more on Turner in TFN’s Bonus Story. And on this guy…
OMB, OMG Project 2025 co-author Russell Vought will pick up in January where he left off last time around, as director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
Trump called Vought “an aggressive cost cutter and deregulator,” two things that go together like oil and polluted water.
Deregulation actually leads to expensive things like global economic crises and global climate crises. Vought says his goal is to shred agency independence and make the remnants tools of Trump’s agenda, right up until even Trump realizes the mess he’s making and backtracks.
UNHOLY SHIT Your weekend-working TFN did that Bonus Story because virtually none of the coverage of Vought’s appointment mentioned even corporate media’s own reporting just this year that Vought was leading efforts to infuse Christian nationalism into the government if the Trump presidency were resurrected. Which it were.
Fascism’s Rise Even Lifts Crypto-Fascism!
Bitcoin came thisclose Friday to hitting a price of $100,000 per not-actually-existent coin. One reason for the irrational exuberance, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler’s announcement that he’ll step down when Trump takes office.
“Woo, Gary’s gone,” Blockchain Association CEO Kristin Smith woo-ed to Dealbook. She was complaining about Gensler even though the SEC just okayed several exchange-traded funds for Bitcoin.
Those funds, known as ETFs, essentially let traders ride broad waves instead of having to do the annoying work of figuring out whether individual equities — stocks, typically — have decent fundamentals. In other words, ETFs let you ignore fundamentals. What are ETFs based on, then? Fee-fees, obvi!
So Bitcoin ETFs had Exponential.fi co-founder Mehdi Labbar celebrating just how strongly crypto is now tied to Wall Street fee-fees. It’s called “reflexivity,” George Soros’s term for how perceptions of the market shape market realities.
Labbar credits reflexivity for creating “perfect storm” conditions for Bitcoin, which he means in a good way even though storms cause lots of damage and kill people. In reality.
Toss in new Charles Schwab CEO Rick Wurster’s plan to offer spot-trading in crypto as soon as Trump’s “regulators” turn on the faucet, and everything’s coming up Milhouse. So far, Dems have mostly been on board the crypto train, so they’ll have nothing to say when the oohs and ahhhs turn into running and screaming. And Trump blames them — not necessarily wrongly!
Your shambolic note-taking TFN needs to review its old notes on crypto regulation, but IIRC one of crypto’s goals will be new regulations for itself. That might sound good, but both the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (again, IIRC) already have rules to cover crypto. Consolidating those rules under one roof is likely to be an excuse for making sure that roof has all kinds of trillion-dollar holes in it.
Profit Margins of Terror
Not sure what the Senate will do with this, but on Thursday the House passed a bill to let the executive branch strip nonprofit status from any nonprofit group that the president decides is terrorist-ish. (Because every tool for fighting crime or terror or misdemeanors ultimately puts all of us in the crosshairs.)
Democrats supported handing over this yet-more-power to the executive branch right up until they realized that (a) “president” will soon = “Trump,” and (b) “nonprofit” = “many things Democrats like, including climate orgs.”
House Democrats dropped their past support the way they should drop their political consultants and opposed the bill, in vain.
IRAN NOT-SO-FAR AWAY For-profit terrorist organizations still have the run of the place, of course. On Friday, one of the most for-profit organizations Jesus ever created, JPMorgan Chase & Co., was revealed to be under investigation by the Treasury Department, for its alleged ties to, wait for it…
…Iran. Specifically, an allegedly Iran-ish hedge fund. Everyone denies everything, of course, but that’s why we have investigations. Until next year, anyway!
FUN FACT Just last month, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon referred to Iran as part of an “axis of evil” (with Russia and North Korea) and said “World War III has already begun.” Dimon did not specify which side he’s on.
What, MORE Bonusness?
If you missed it, I wrote a thing yesterday about the Xodus4 from Twitter and into Bluesky. It has what I hope are useful thoughts on how to achieve the social-media utopia we deserve and use it to create the government we might not deserve but should have anyway.
TCB
THE MISSION The reason I do The Fucking News, in addition to being unemployed, is to remind us of the victories, focus on how we get more of them, and make life better and more just and more fun and all the good things. That’s the mission no matter who’s in office.
TFN strives to illuminate things that help us understand how things work, so we can improve them. But TFN is also trying to imagine what journalism can look like and be. And while mainstream outlets are struggling, TFN is growing. Thanks to you. You’re a part of TFN’s success whenever you share TFN or make a donation. And if you’re a paid subscriber, you’re why we’re closer to making TFN sustainable so we can keep surfacing news the media miss and steeling all of us to do something about it. Thank you, Newsfucker!
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AHEM It is TFN’s editorial policy that the vast majority of Americans are not evil and didn’t suddenly decide to vote for evil. We just need to awaken enough good to sideline the fuckheads. Despair is not an option.
Go get ‘em, kids.
Google “Kennedy” and “Chappaquiddick,” kids!
Too soon for the Trump1.0 flashbacks?
I don’t remember who coined Xodus, but xudos.
A couple of comments...
I'm not liking this Christian nationalist crap being infused into every level of power. It scares the bejesus outta me!!
I do like that Biden's team is locking out the new "team?" until they get with the program. FBI checks needed for all!!!!
As someone who frequently visits Enköping I feel seen 😂