Trump picks Project 2025 co-author to lead FCC: Live updates

A number of the president-elect’s nominations to his new cabinet have raised eyebrows among political observers, but none more so than Matt Gaetz, who has been tapped to become America’s next attorney general.

Gaetz, 42, is known as a MAGA firebrand on Capitol Hill who was instrumental in the ousting of previous House speaker Kevin McCarthy.

He is also known for being the subject of a Department of Justice (DOJ) sex trafficking investigation and House Ethics Committee probe.

He has never been criminally charged and denies the allegations.

Few, it seems, saw him as a likely head of the DOJ – and, it turns out, that includes Gaetz’s his own father.

Host Scott Pelley began Sunday’s show with a monologue dissecting Donald Trump’s choices for his future administration, detailing one-by-one how the likes of Pete Hegseth, Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F Kennedy Jr have “no compelling qualifications” and “no government experience” to take up the jobs they’ve been nominated for.

Trump’s incoming White House Communications Director Steven Cheung took to X shortly after to claim that Pelley’s segment was riddled with “disgusting bias” and was soon joined in his outrage by Elon Musk, Charlie Kirk and many other members of the MAGA-verse.

Here’s more from James Liddell.

Here are the latest posts from Trump’s non-Elon social media feed, which find him taking a revisionist attitude towards his first administration’s pandemic response and issuing a veiled threat to the GOP not to engage in any funny business.

Donald Trump once belittled him as “Little Marco” and a “choke artist”, only to then nominate him as his US secretary of state and describe him as “a strong advocate for our nation, a true friend to our allies and a fearless warrior who will never back down to our adversaries”.

The Florida Senator’s appointment as arguably the most powerful diplomat in the world will likely reshape American foreign policy towards allies and rivals alike – and dealing with China’s continued economic, diplomatic and military rise is set to be one of his top priorities.

That Trump moved swiftly to staff his foreign policy and national security team with China hawks is an indication that relations between the two superpowers will deteriorate further, writes Shweta Sharma.

The president-elect’s choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was pictured looking slightly awkward in the company of Don Jr, Elon Musk and Mike Johnson over the weekend as the group posed with boxes of McDonald’s junk food aboard the Republican’s private plane.

That “Make America Healthy Again” agenda already appears to be in jeopardy.

Meanwhile, this is what one of RFK Jr’s predecessors in that office, Kathleen Sebelius, had to tell MSNBC anchor Jonathan Capehart about the seriousness of the role the notorious vaccine sceptic has been nominated to:

“I think that we’re talking about magnitudes of danger beyond erroneously making legal decisions. This is life or death. The HHS affects people from birth to their grave and is intimately connected with every state in the country. So this could be very dangerous. I think it’s totally disqualifying for anyone who seeks to lead the major health agency in this country and one of the leaders in the world to just unequivocally say there is no safe and effective vaccine.

“That in and of itself, from the bully pulpit of HHS, could end up killing people, could end up harming children. My grandson is too young to get a lot of vaccinations yet, and having him exposed to unvaccinated people with polio and measles is a terrifying thought. Having eradicated those diseases as a major health initiative, Jonathan, I think this is absolutely terrifying and people should understand how serious it is.”

The House speaker defended his call for the House Ethics Committee to withhold the release of its report on the investigation into Matt Gaetz – Trump’s pick for attorney general – during a round of TV appearances on Sunday amid allegations that the former Florida congressman paid for sex with an underage girl.

“The president and I have literally not discussed one word about the ethics report,” Johnson told CNN’s State of the Union yesterday.

Here’s more from John Bowden.

The president has authorised Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles to strike hundreds of miles inside Russia for the first time, according to reports.

The decision marks a major policy shift and comes after Russia warned that it would interpret the move to permit the use of US-made missiles as an “escalation”.

With Biden leaving office in two months, President-Elect Trump has indicated he will limit American support for Ukraine and has pledged to end the war quickly.

His predecessor’s decision has already led both Donald Trump Jr and Georgia Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene to accuse Biden of attempting to start a Third World War.

Barney Davis and John Bowden have this report on a big call.

The Republican has yet to announce his choice for treasury secretary and two new candidates for the position will reportedly be interviewed at his Mar-a-Lago residence on Monday: former Federal Reserve governor Kevin Warsh and Wall Street billionaire Marc Rowan.

Howard Lutnick, co-chair of Trump’s transition team, and Key Square Capital Management founder Scott Bessant were thought to be first in the line for the role but the incoming president is understood to be having second thoughts, according to The New York Times.

Here’s John Bowden on which man Musk favors.

Donald Trump has announced his latest cabinet pick, nominating Brendan Carr to be chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the body charged with regulating the US media.

Currently a commissioner with the FCC, Carr contributed to the controversial Project 2025 manifesto and was described by the president-elect as “a warrior for Free Speech… [who] has fought against the regulatory Lawfare that has stifled Americans’ Freedoms, and held back our Economy.

“He will end the regulatory onslaught that has been crippling America’s Job Creators and Innovators, and ensure that the FCC delivers for rural America.”

The pundits are already looking ahead to his possible role in realising Trump’s threat to revoke broadcast licences and benefiting Elon Musk.

After Donald Trump attempted to distance himself from Project 2025 on the campaign trail, the organization behind it “kind of went dark,” an official admitted.

After Democrats hit Project 2025 hard in campaign ads, the organization faced widespread backlash and had no choice but to quietly back away. Trump’s campaign also publicly shunned the proposals. “We did not anticipate that,” a Heritage official told Politico’s Playbook. “And wish it didn’t happen. But you know, we had to do what we had to do.”

As Trump distanced himself from the document, the think tank also stopped touting it on social media. Their president, Kevin Roberts, even pushed his own book publication launch back from September to after the election.

Now the book, titled Dawn’s Early Light, the foreword of which is penned by vice president-elect JD Vance, has been published, and the mood seems to be changing in the group, who are creeping back out of the shadows into Trump’s sphere after months of fierce criticism.

Last week in Washington D.C, the group marked the book’s publication with a cocktail party where one Heritage official, with “a nervous laugh,” told Politico’s Playbook: “We’re so back.”