Trump Picks Ukraine Envoy With Some Twisted Plans in Mind

Trump’s pick for special envoy to Ukraine wants to force Ukrainians to negotiate with Russia by holding aid hostage.

President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday announced he has selected retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg to be his special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, a position focused on ending the two-year-long war. Kellogg previously served as both national security adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence and National Security Council chief of staff during Trump’s first term.  

“I am very pleased to nominate General Keith Kellogg to serve as Assistant to the President and Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Keith has led a distinguished Military and Business career, including serving in highly sensitive National Security roles in my first Administration. He was with me right from the beginning! Together, we will secure PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH, and Make America, and the World, SAFE AGAIN!”

Last spring, Kellogg proposed forcing an ultimatum on Ukraine: Engage in peace talks in order to keep receiving aid. The plan, which was put forward with the help of Fred Fleitz, his successor as chief of staff at the National Security Council, would also force Russia to the negotiating table by agreeing to hold off on Ukraine’s admission to NATO. Under the plan, the cease-fire would take place along existing battle lines.

Kellogg’s views align well with an incoming administration that seems to have little interest in providing aid to Ukrainians, even as Russia is advancing through the country faster than ever.

Vice President–elect JD Vance is similarly opposed to more assistance. South Dakota Governor and Homeland Security secretary nominee Kristi Noem is opposed to more assistance as well, saying that the war is “Europe’s fight, not ours.”

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has come up with another conspiracy theory—that Democrats are stealing a very close election race in California. 

In California’s 13th congressional district, the votes are still being counted, and Republican Representative John Duarte fell behind Democrat Adam Gray by a narrow margin Tuesday night. To Greene, this means that something nefarious is going on. 

“Democrats are stealing another House seat! Elections nationwide should be one day, paper ballots, and require proof of citizenship with ID!!” Greene posted on X Wednesday morning. 

California has fully embraced voting by mail, instituting it statewide since 2022. As long as ballots are postmarked by Election Day, they are allowed to arrive no more than a week afterward in order to be counted, an increase from three days afterward in 2022’s midterm elections. That year, half of the state’s votes were counted after Election Day, meaning that a long wait time to count votes is not suspicious. 

In Republican-run states, though, it’s rare for such allowances to exist. In Greene’s home state of Georgia, for example, mail-in ballots aren’t universal but have to be specifically requested well in advance. Ballots have to be received within three days of Election Day, even if the voter is overseas or in the military.  

Greene and her fellow conservatives seem to hold the laughable opinion that the easier it is to vote, the more likely that Democrats and the left are fixing elections. In fact, making voting more widely accessible allows greater participation from the people who are poorer, don’t have easy access to transportation, work long hours, or are disabled, posted overseas, or any number of other valid reasons. 

Even in states like California, things could be made easier through various reforms, such as making Election Day a national holiday. But such efforts have been consistently opposed by Republicans, who have long seen higher voter turnout as a boost to Democrats. Maybe now that Donald Trump and the GOP actually won the popular vote in 2024, they will stop trying to restrict voting access.

The richest man on earth wants to eliminate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

“Delete CFPB. There are too many duplicative regulatory agencies,” Elon Musk wrote on X in response to an error-riddled clip of Trump megadonor Marc Andreessen talking about how much he hates pro-consumer regulation on the Joe Rogan show. In the video, Andreessen tells a shocked Rogan that the CFPB is debanking people and companies for “having the wrong politics.”

In reality, the CFPB has put forth measured, bipartisan policy that protects from that very situation.

Director Rohit Chopra recently stated his clear opposition to politically motivated debanking of conservatives and Christians.  

“The CFPB put out a legitimately good rule that went after banks over debanking users based on political views,” reporter Ryan Grim noted. “Now VCs and Musk who don’t like the CFPB for other reasons are straight up lying to whip people into a frenzy and defang the CFPB. The message: they think you are stupid and can’t read and are going to make your life worse in order to enrich themselves.”

Musk, along with Vivek Ramaswamy, will head the Department of Government Efficiency, and is dead set on wiping away large swaths of vital regulation, mostly to benefit people like himself. The CFPB seems to be the latest thing on this chopping block.

“You put a billionaire in charge, and shockingly he finds that an agency which fights for consumers against bank fraud is one of the first government functions that needs to go,” wrote Bernie Sanders adviser Faiz Shakir.

In a disturbing post on X, a Trump-endorsed candidate for the House of Representatives targeted and invoked an anti-Muslim trope against two Muslim members of Congress.

Florida state Senator Randy Fine, who is running to fill the vacancy in Florida’s 6th U.S. congressional district, singled out Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar on Tuesday. Quote-tweeting an endorsement from the Republican Jewish Coalition, Fine posted, “​​The ‘Hebrew Hammer’ is coming. @RashidaTlaib and @IlhanMN might consider leaving before I get there. #BombsAway.”

Tlaib and Omar are two of just three Muslim members of Congress, and the only two Muslim women.

Fine has a history of using demeaning rhetoric against Muslims and Palestinians and trafficking in Islamophobic tropes. In the past, he has said that “we have a Muslim problem in America” and that “while many Muslims are not terrorists, they are the radicals, not the mainstream.”

In August 2021, when Fine was a representative in Florida’s state House, the Council on American-Islamic Relations filed a complaint against him with the House Public Integrity and Ethics Committee, alleging that Fine “violated his duty as an elected official” by “encouraging his constituents to run over people at Palestinian advocacy protests,” “call[ing] for the annihilation of the Palestinian people,” and direct-messaging a Floridian to “blow yourself up,” among other instances of “egregious conduct.”

In September, Fine took to X to cheer the death of 26-year-old American citizen Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, an activist reportedly killed by the Israeli forces while peacefully protesting illegal settlements in the West Bank. “Throw rocks, get shot. One less #MuslimTerror ist. #FireAway,” Fine wrote.

Donald Trump threw his support behind Fine’s candidacy last week, referring to him as an “America First Patriot” in a Truth Social post.

Senior advisers to Kamala Harris’s campaign joined the liberal podcast Pod Save America this week to offer their takes on why their candidate suffered a crushing defeat this election—and seemed to have no real humility about where they went wrong.

Stephanie Cutter, one senior aide who sat down for the joint interview, said the vice president was correct in her refusal to set herself apart from President Biden during the presidential race. Cutter said that Harris “felt like she was part of the administration, so why should she look back and cherry-pick some things that she would have done differently, when she was part of it?”

Cutter added that the thinking within the campaign was that if Harris broke with Biden on a specific issue like immigration, stories would come out from administration staffers questioning why she didn’t take different stances in meetings or challenge specific policies to the president.

Eventually, Harris settled on a prevailing campaign strategy that vice presidents almost never break with their presidents, with the exception of Mike Pence with Donald Trump. Cutler and the podcast hosts, former Obama administration staffers Jon Favreau, Dan Pfeiffer, and Tommy Vietor, then laughed over a “murder” and “ripping up the Constitution” exception.

The clip has drawn indignation and vehement criticism on X for being tone-deaf to voters’ concerns.

One commentator pointed out that there was a good example of a vice president who broke with a president besides Trump and Pence: Hubert Humphrey with Lyndon Johnson in the 1968 election, amid Americans’ outrage and exhaustion over the Vietnam War.

There are many policies in which Harris could have and should have broken with the Biden administration during her campaign, whether it was over steadfast U.S. support for Israel’s war on Gaza or the flawed approach to immigration. But Cutter’s revelation about the Harris campaign’s internal discussions show that there’s also a greater problem: groupthink among Democratic staffers and party leadership. Until the Democrats can express a willingness to dump so-called “conventional wisdom” and aggressively address the issues voters care about, they won’t be able to win again. The hosts of Pod Save America don’t seem to be getting it.

Democrats forgot to read the fine print on a bill and spoon-fed a huge victory to Republicans who want to kill the IRS.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the IRS’s tax enforcement fund, which allowed the IRS to better audit corporations and the wealthiest households, is now $20 billion in the red—leaving the fund’s future up in the air.

In 2022, when Democrats had a trifecta hold over the government, they put $80 billion toward the IRS, which was supposed to help the agency hire, modernize, and enforce through the next decade. When Republicans took the House back in 2023, they started making cuts to that fund to protect their rich friends and corporate interests, placing a $1.4 billion cut and then another $20 billion cut into deals they made with Biden last year.

This year’s stopgap funding bill—meant to keep the government open through December 20—kept the same $20 billion cut in the text. Congressional Republicans noticed that the Democrats didn’t notice its inclusion and watched silently with glee as yet another massive slash was made to one of the most important agencies we have.

“Our concern right now is that because of this risk to the IRS and the uncertainty of it, the IRS is going to potentially have to make dramatic decisions about stopping hiring,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo told the Journal. “They are running low on enforcement dollars today.”

Adeyemo also noted that the cuts will force the IRS to do 2,000 fewer large corporate audits over the next five years and 6,000 fewer audits of wealthy individuals.

Donald Trump’s pick for the secretary of the Navy isn’t sitting well even with some MAGA faithful.

Trump announced Tuesday evening that he had selected John Phelan, founder and chairman of the private investment firm Rugger Management, to head the Navy. “A true Champion of American Enterprise and Ingenuity!” Trump wrote in a statement. “John’s intelligence and leadership are unmatched. John holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School, and is a truly brilliant guy! His incredible knowledge and experience will elevate the lives of the brave Americans who serve our Nation.”

Phelan is a somewhat curious choice, considering he has no military experience. Military Times reports that, if confirmed by the Senate, he “would be the first permanent Navy secretary without military experience since 2009, when Donald Winter finished up his three-year term in the role. Unlike Winter, who previously had worked within the Pentagon and on Navy contracts at major defense firms, Phelan has little public connection to the sea service.” Phelan is, however, on the board of a nonprofit “dedicated to supporting troops and diplomats worldwide.”

A detail that perhaps clarifies Trump’s decision: Along with his record as a businessman, Phelan was a Trump campaign megadonor. He reportedly donated more than $800,000 to Trump’s joint fundraising committee in April. This summer, he and his wife hosted a Trump campaign fundraising dinner at their $38 million home, “where attendees were required to donate anywhere from $25,000 to $500,000 a couple,” per The Guardian.

Online, even some of Trump’s supporters are questioning the pick and interpreting it as a display of cronyism.

One X user who sports “#MAGA” in her bio wrote: “This makes ZERO sense. NONE. How is Trump naming a hedge fund guy as Secretary of the Navy??? WTH??? I’m a huge Trump supporter, but we need MILITARY COMMANDERS running military branches.”

“Questioning the John Phelan pick,” posted another “Pro-Trump” user. “Feels like rewarding a cronie as he has no military experience. But, if his focus is going to be on making sure that the supply chain is up to stuff so that the Navy can build the ships it needs, it may be okay.”

Other conservative X users asked, “Ummm, why? He has never served in the Navy,” observed the appointment “seems like a gift,” and deemed it a “weird choice to nominate a person with no military experience to lead a branch of the military.”

“The Secretary of the Navy should be someone who served in the Navy,” posted user “Ms. Deplorable.”

Similar sentiments can be found in responses to the announcement on Trump’s Truth Social platform. One user wrote, “As a Veteran of the U.S. Navy, I want a Sailor in charge!! Not some walstreet billionaire with ZERO Military experience!! You got this wrong DJT!!!”

Another said the choice “feels like you’re rewarding a friend/donor.”

Recently released, beautifully drawn courtroom sketches are giving us a vivid depiction of just how out of control Rudy Giuliani is right now.

Artist Jane Rosenberg, who has sketched the likes of Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, and Jeffrey Epstein while they were on trial, appeared on CNN Tuesday to discuss her experience sketching Donald Trump’s embattled crony.

“His decorum has certainly changed from when I sketched him 44 years ago as a prosecutor,” Rosenberg said. “He’s losing it. He was wild. I feel bad for anyone who represents him. He blurts out orders at his lawyers who are at the podium, and he’s interrupting all the time.”

Rosenberg’s sketches show Giuliani looking absolutely incensed—brow furrowed and arms crossed in one; finger pointing sharply at someone in another.

Rosenberg’s sketch captures Giuliani’s  outburst about how broke he is right now. The former New York City mayor was ordered to pay $148 million to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two Georgia election workers he defamed after Donald Trump lost the state  in 2020. He’s already handed over his luxury watches, a diamond ring, and a 1980 Mercedes-Benz, and claims he has no cash left to fulfill the judgment.

Donald Trump’s pick to lead the National Institutes of Health has a long history of criticism of the agency.

The Washington Post reports that Jay Bhattacharya, a physician and economist at Stanford University, was described as “fringe” by the head of the NIH in October 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic for being one of the authors of the “Great Barrington Declaration,” which stated that it was time for coronavirus lockdowns to end.

Trump announced Bhattacharya as his choice to lead the agency Tuesday night, drawing on the suggestion from his adviser and pick to run the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy. The department oversees the NIH.

Bhattacharya is a favorite of many Covid-skeptical Republicans, with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis taking his advice during the pandemic. The Stanford academic also has the support of powerful figures among Trump supporters, including Silicon Valley billionaire and conservative megadonor Peter Thiel; Elon Musk, who claims Twitter suppressed Bhattacharya’s views before the tech CEO bought the platform; and podcaster Joe Rogan.

Bhattacharya claims that the NIH is shutting down alternative perspectives, saying figures in the agency such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, who led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 38 years, were too powerful.

“I would restructure the NIH to allow there to be many more centers of power, so that you couldn’t have a small number of scientific bureaucrats, dominating a field for a very long time,” Bhattacharya said in a January interview.

Trump’s choice of Bhattacharya seems to be a nod not only toward Covid and lockdown skeptics but also to those who might place economic concerns over public health. This, coupled with the appointments of people like Kennedy, suggests that if a second pandemic breaks out (which is increasingly likely), the Trump administration may handle it even worse than last time.

Donald Trump is shirking decades-old norms intended to make the transfer of power smoother, according to The New York Times.

After weeks of delays, the president-elect’s team has finally signed a standard transition agreement with the White House to start briefing staff members. But they are still refusing to sign two other key documents. One is a Justice Department agreement to let the FBI perform security clearances for transition team members. This means that the Biden administration still isn’t able to share classified information with anyone from Trump’s transition team. The Trump team also won’t sign the General Services Administration agreement, which provides secure office space and government email accounts.

Top Trump aide Susan Wiles explained the reasoning behind this refusal, stating that Trump wants his team to “operate as a self-sufficient organization. This organizational autonomy means a streamlined process that guarantees the Trump Administration is ready on Day 1.

“The transition already has existing security and information protections built in, which means we will not require additional government and bureaucratic oversight,” Wiles continued.

But Biden officials say this refusal will just make information sharing harder, as they will have to find other ways to share important, unclassified information with the incoming administration—meaning in-person-only briefings and more restrictions on how said information will be shared. The Trump team has not commented on whether it does intend to sign the agreement sometime in the near future.