Donald Trump and the Legion of Noem
Donald Trump and the Legion of Noem
America will need protection from Trump's leaders on protecting America
Nov. 12: Noem to “run” Homeland [sic] Security … Miller to run nothing … Zeldin to run the environment into the ground … Former Cheney aide on national security, just to screw with MAGA suckers …
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President-elect Donald Trump reportedly has already settled on a number of top people to provide the country protection, and we will desperately need to get protection from them.
The appointees are expected to hold their positions for at least the first six months of Trump’s represidency until he realizes the best people he picked are losers and traitors.
There’s nothing to suggest that the most extreme maniacs in his orbit are getting their hands on the levers of power. In fact, these appointments are very much in line with Trump1.0. Which, obviously, not great, but also, less obviously, not the pure Proud Boys MAGA many in the media and on the left feared and, let’s be honest, predicted.
I have one Christian ton of stuff to say later today — some of it never reported — if I can get my shit together, about Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), reportedly Trump’s pick to serve as secretary of state.
That’ll be in a bonus piece later today. (If you don’t want to receive TFN bonus articles in addition to the morning newsletter, I think you can unsubscribe from Bonus Stories here.) In the meantime, let’s dive into the rest of the Legion of Doom1 that Trump’s assembling.
He’s reportedly selected the governor of South Dakota to run the Department of Homeland [sic] Security (DHS). Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) currently oversees a state government of about 10,000 employees and will now run a sprawling, international, multi-agency department of more than a quarter million people.
And, yes, even though the Republican Senate won’t be bothering to confirm Trump appointees, the transition process will allow sufficient time to repeatedly make fun of the fact that DHS has almost 3,000 dogs, most of the dogs owned by the federal government.
(Admittedly, the fact that Noem bragged in her memoir about shooting her dog as an example of her toughness may not have much bearing on her leadership of DHS, but she’s pretty young, so the incident might not make it into her obituary unless we as a society collectively commit to beating it like a dead horse.)
During Trump1.0, the seasoned manager cycled through five whole DHS secretaries, an average of 1.2 per year. As his sixth DHS secretary, Noem will now oversee the Federal Emergency Management Agency, drawing on her extensive experience preparing for and responding to South Dakota’s many hurricanes.2
As someone who doesn’t believe in human-driven climate change because “it hasn’t been proven to me” — unlike the many well-documented miracles in The Bible — Noem is poised to be mighty surprised by America’s increasing number of floods, storms, wildfires, and droughts.
But Americans shouldn’t be surprised if Noem gets stingy with funds to help the American people. Just this summer she decided South Dakotans didn’t need $69 million Congress offered them in rebates on their energy bills.
That doesn’t mean FEMA won’t be spending money. As I reported for TYT, under Trump FEMA ramped up its outsourcing, adding Invisible Hand profits to the toll of natural disasters. As I revealed, that included profits for former clients of Trump’s FEMA director. Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) similarly pushed to punish states and towns for not signing disaster contracts with private profiteers altruists.
And that’s not the only shitstorm we’re tracking for FEMA.
We can expect Trump to resume punishing disaster-stricken states for any perceived lack of self-abasement by their governors. (Right before Georgia voted for Trump2.0, your dogged-researching TFN unearthed evidence of how Trump1.0 fucked over Georgia.)
Noem will also be in charge of the Secret Service, so people better cut out this whole shooting-at-Trump shit right the fuck now.
And it turns out that America’s next Homeland [sic] Security secretary is forbidden from entering some parts of the homeland. At least eight of South Dakota’s nine tribes banned Noem from entering. Reasons ranged from lying about security issues in the tribal homelands to shitting on Indigenous parenting.
And better start popping that corruption-watching popcorn. Trump1.0 was filled with one embarrassingly gauche corruption scandal after another. Noem seems like a good candidate to provide us with more, given that she personally intervened to try to get her daughter a license to appraise people’s homelands real estate.
Perhaps most notably, Noem will be the point person for one of the most fraught issues under Trump: Immigration. Noem’s experience in the field includes securing South Dakota’s border with North Dakota.
Noem also has experience dealing with the fewer than 25,000 undocumented immigrants in her state, which is in the lowest tier of states dealing with benefiting from that population:
Noem’s appointment isn’t the only one to give us some ideas about Trump’s immigration crackdown and persecution of people who look too immigrant-y.
As your personnel-tracking TFN wrote yesterday, Trump tapped former acting Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Director Tom Homan to be his immigration czar. While Homan is scary, he’s at least knows-the-law scary, not Stephen Miller scary.
Trump’s other big immigration appointment, however, is definitely Stephen Miller scary.
Trump Appoints Stephen Miller
RePresident Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy will be Stephen Miller, perhaps the most Voldemortian anti-immigrant player in the Trump1.0 administration.
Miller has been the key architect of Trump’s plans for a mass deportation, predicting more than a million deportations a year (insufficient to fulfill Trump’s promise of deporting all 10 million undocumented immigrants).
Last week, Miller promised Fox that deportations “begin on Inauguration Day, as soon as he takes the oath of office.” This is both (a) impossible but also (b) hilarious. It’s impossible because it means Miller would have to seize the DHS chain of command and DHS would have to upend whatever previously planned stuff was going on that day and Immigration and Customs Enforcement would have to identify raid targets and plan the raid and secure the personnel needed for the raids and then conduct those raids all in the hours after noon on Inaugration Day.
It’s hilarious because what would the result be…?
The news coverage of Trump’s inauguration would be totally shoved aside by looped video of crying kids being torn away from their parents and soundbites of business owners explaining they’re going to have to shut down now without their essential, most-law-abiding workers. Which Trump might not mind too much since it’ll preclude endless debate over how much smaller his Inauguration Day crowd was the second time around.
The bad news for Miller — and potentially good news for humanity — includes the fact that Miller isn’t in charge of jack shit or jose shit or any other brand of shit. He’s in the White House, not running an agency. And he’s deputy chief of staff, under a non-zealot, future Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, a longtime Trump whisperer believed to try to shield Trump from the most radical radicals orbiting him.
The other bad news for Miller/good news for Earth thing is that Miller is deputy chief of staff…for policy. Trump’s not real big on policy! So, the upbeat way of looking at this is that Miller is number 2 of a thing Trump doesn’t care about in a place where he doesn’t run squat.
Plus, never forget the overarching conceit of any Republican White House. Once a Republican takes the oath of office, the economy is be definition great, crime is automatically down, and problems are technically impossible. With luck it’ll take Trump about a month to decide he’s fixed immigration and move on from harassing immigranty-looking people and then the media can pivot to new and more pressing matters like transgender babies latching on the wrong breast.
Trump Taps Zeldin to Zeld the Environment
President-elect Donald Trump has named former Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
RIP to the next for years for all you EPA eco-warriors inside the agency bracing to protect the environment from all the zeldin’ that Zeldin’s about to do. We see you and are fucking here for you.
Trump campaigned on a platform of letting power plants and other big companies resume polluting the poor, asthma-ridden communities where they disproportionately build their facilities.
That platform helped Trump make significant gains among the voters whose lungs are about to get zelded. They don’t know that mostly thanks to media that virtually ignore climate change because they don’t know how to get ratings doing climate change and also they’re kinda bored by climate change.
Protecting the environment was once considered so important that literally Richard Nixon created the EPA. The EPA’s mandate, as suggested by the E and the P, was P-ing the E.
And yet, of the four EPA priorities Zeldin listed last night, E P-ing came last, and the first three won’t P the E, they’ll fuck it:
“We will [1] restore US energy dominance, [2] revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs, and [3] make the US the global leader of AI. We will do so while [4] protecting access to clean air and water.”
For someone so concerned about cars, Zeldin seems to have trouble staying in his fucking lane. Just to give Zeldin a hand — because at TFN we look to the helpers! — someone should probably tell Zeldin there are actually other government offices to do Things 1-3!
Energy? How about the Department of?
Auto industry? Meet the Commerce Department!
Artificial Intelligence? See 1 and 2.
Also, look again at Thing 4. Maybe we missed it — thanks to Democrats frog-boiling us to think we want “access” to things instead of just things — but Zeldin said the EPA will protect access to clean air water. Sir, it’s not called the Environmental Access Protection Agency!
What Zeldin’s talking about is ensuring there’s just enough clean air and water for the Invisible Hand to charge us for it.
Most notably, Trump is targeting Pres. Joe Biden’s landmark climate rule on emissions, pushing automakers from fossil fuels toward electric vehicles.
Trump wants to put those plans in reverse. The problem is, he can’t. The electric-vehicle industry is racing into the future and there’s no runaway-truck ramp to stop it.
In fact, TFN’s to-fuck list includes drilling in (har har) on how oil production will likely drop next year. The same dynamic applies to cars.
Automakers are already on track toward electric. No one’s going to reverse course just because Trump’s zeldin’ to kill some Biden regulations. The future is electric. The rest of the world is electric. Same thing with wind and solar.
Does that mean Zeldin’s zeldin’ won’t matter? Unfortunately, no.
“This is bad for the climate, full stop,” Columbia Business School climate economist Gernot Wagner told Grist, TFN’s go-to source for energy/environmental news. “That said, this [stopping the shift to renewables] will be yet another wall that never gets built. Fundamental market forces are at play.”
Are there other rays of hope breaking through all this smog? Maybe a couple?
Remember that MAGA wanted EPA to RIP. Here’s a bill from Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) to eliminate the EPA, probably because it’s too old for him. But it’s not Gaetz getting EPA.
And Zeldin’s not a climate-change denier! As Politico notes, he was part of the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus and even supported some Democratic environmental bills and rules.
Obviously, he’s terrible for our environment, but he’s known-terrible. The kind of terrible Democrats at least have experience thwarting.
Look, is your grimly honest TFN sugarcoating any of this to cushion the emotional blow for you tender Newsfuckers? Totally Absolutely not.
But either way it’s worth remembering that Trump’s appointees are largely coming from a Republican establishment with records and norms and, perhaps most importantly, some degree of investment in a post-Trump reality. In other words, rather than an administration of Roger Stones and Steve Bannons and Boris Epshteyns, it seems like we’re in store for something a lot closer to a repeat of season one. Which we survived, remember?
So, the fight goes on. Only we’re smart enough this time to recognize opportunities to manipulate him and experienced enough to know that we can get through this and that on the other side lies a country that largely rejected Trumpism on every line of the ballot that wasn’t literally him.
Trump Hands National Security to…Neocon War Hawk!
RePresident Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser reportedly will be an Afghanistan combat veteran who loved the place so much he wanted more American soldiers to go there and enjoy its rustic settings, cosmopolitan cuisine, and vibrant civic life entirely purged of women.
Trump has been a critic of America’s overseas wars ever since he realized (1) Iraq wasn’t going well, and (2) it’s cheaper to wage wars here at home.
Trump negotiated with the Taliban to pull U.S. troops out and has been a skeptic of even arming Ukraine to fend off the Russian invasion. He has also told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop the war in Gaza (with the understanding that this could include killing everyone left there).
MAGA’s disgust with forever wars and American intervention was a big part of the alleged platform, especially for people desperate not to be tarred with the rest of Trump’s “platform.”
But now Trump is said to have chosen Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL) as his chief national-security aide. And Waltz is just itching for a war with Iran. Maybe even China.
In fact, Waltz opposed the withdrawal from Afghanistan. In more fact, Waltz is so neo-conny that he used to serve as a counterterror advisor to…wait for it…
…Then-Vice President Dick Cheney.
Biden May Suspend Military Support for Israel
Exactly one week after it might have mattered to the next four years, today is the deadline for Israel to make improvements in the flow non-flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza’s remaining humans — or face consequences including a possible pause in shipments of U.S. arms until rePresident Donald Trump resumes them.
Arab-American voters pissed about America’s criminal supply of war weapons for Israel’s criminal war crimes may have cost Democrats the state of Michigan in last week’s election and possibly other states, as well.
Last month, though, Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin gave Israel 30 days to ensure that non-combatants in Gaza get access to highly specialized emergency supplies. Like food.
It’s not clear how many non-combatants are still healthy enough to non-combat in Gaza given that fatalities so far amount to multiple times the entire estimated Hamas staff size.
Israel this week ensured the U.S. that they took the deadline seriously, and also that they saw Bigfoot.
MAGA Attacks America
As mentioned above, TFN is upping its newsfucking, with bonus stories in addition to the weekday-morning newsletter. If you want to receive only the newsletter (which will always have links to those bonus stories), you should go to your Substack TFN settings and unsubscribe just from Bonus Stories! But in the name of all that’s holy — specifically, our fellow humanity and at least one streaming platform with a good mix of new and classic movies — do not unsubscribe from all of TFN. Because that would be wrong.
Anyway, the first bonus TFN story went out last night. It’s about a wave of post-election threats being made online and in some cases in real life. Telling Black people to report to nearby plantations to pick cotton. Hispanic people they’re going to be deported.
And telling women they no longer have bodily autonomy. Not just abortion, it’s a rape threat. And yesterday’s article dives into the Christian origins of the misogyny behind it, and how it’s very much present not just on America’s fringes, but at the heartless heart of Republican power.
TCB
MORE NEWSFUCKING Thanks to longtime Newsfuckers and the zealotry of recent converts, TFN is continuing to grow. Like, maybe even enough for this to become a full-time thing sometime (late) next year? With resources for adding cool shit and stuff? Who knows. But we’re growing. And not just in absolute numbers, also steadily moving up the Substack Leaderboard.
Of course, in one respect this is horrible; a sad reflection of the fact that Donald Trump won ({‘m sorry, vote-deniers, but it’s true). So TFN is committed to charting a course forward that won’t flinch from the challenges we face…but in a way that fortifies Newsfuckers against feeling overwhelmed by those challenges and inspires us all to meet them.
TFN’s challenge is to keep challenging itself and you, testing the unspoken assumptions we have about everything. Exploring and elevating new, better ways of thinking about humanity and each other so we can offer not just a change from Trump but a future that’s uplifting.
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NICOLE SANDERS Ugh. Sorry about this. AGAIN. I plugged that I’d be on The Nicole Sandler Show and there was none. But, in general, you can find me here with Nicole on Mondays at 5:30pm.
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Go get ‘em, kids.
Technically not a repeat of the headline joke, more of an attempt to make sure everyone got it.
Cheap shot, couldn’t resist, sorry/not sorry; in reality, South Dakota has a lot of natural disasters.
There's streaming platform in holy alignment with humanity? : D
Going on 2 decades of loyalty & being the biggest (& best at one time) wasn't enough for the one I am ready to quit. I didn't watch broadcast TV with ads & I'm too old & ornery to watch them along with lowered quality in services I pay for now. Buying physical books (& selectively purchasing other quality content) is coming to be the best bang for the buck. I do like a good mix of movies. I'm just so done being squeezed more & more in everything. People on fixed incomes are having to make choices.
Is there any comfort to be had from Trump's history of hiring woefully incompetent people and firing just as many? Maybe it'll be too much a of shit show for the inevitable thicket of idiots to accomplish much?