President-elect Donald J. Trump has chosen Karoline Leavitt, his campaign’s press secretary, to be his White House press secretary, one of the most high-profile jobs in his next administration. Leavitt will be the top White House spokeswoman and will be responsible for delivering the administration’s message to reporters in briefings.
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Trump turns to his personal lawyers to stock the top ranks of the Justice Department.
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For more than two years, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s lawyers did the job they were hired to do, defending him against a barrage of criminal charges with an aggressive strategy of confrontation and delay.
But in working for Mr. Trump, they also used the tools of their trade — their legal briefs and courtroom hearings — to advance a political message that ultimately helped their client get back into the White House.
Now, after fighting for Mr. Trump in case after case that they helped turn into a form of political theater, some of those lawyers are being rewarded again for their work. Mr. Trump has said he intends to nominate them to high-ranking posts in the Justice Department, which he has made clear he wants to operate as a legal arm of the White House rather than with the quasi-independence that has been the post-Watergate norm.
After the president-elect’s announcement this week that he wants Matt Gaetz, the controversial former Florida congressman and a longtime ally, to be his attorney general, he named Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, two experienced former federal prosecutors who took the lead in defending Mr. Trump at his state trial in Manhattan and against two federal indictments, to fill the No. 2 and No. 3 positions in the department.
A third lawyer, D. John Sauer, who was the Missouri solicitor general and oversaw Mr. Trump’s appellate battles, was chosen to represent the department in front of the Supreme Court as the U.S. solicitor general.
Another lawyer, Stanley Woodward Jr., who defended several people in Mr. Trump’s orbit and helped in the process of vetting his vice-presidential pick, has also been mentioned for a top legal job, though it remains unclear if he will actually receive a role.
Throughout American history, presidents have made a habit of installing lawyers close to them in powerful positions. George Washington picked his personal lawyer, Edmund Randolph, as his first attorney general, and John F. Kennedy put his brother Robert in the post.
But until now, no president had ever nominated his own criminal defense team to top jobs in the Justice Department. And Mr. Trump’s choice of Mr. Blanche, Mr. Bove and Mr. Sauer runs the risk of turning the agency into something it was never meant to be: the president’s private law firm.
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“It’s a strange move, for sure, although that’s not to say that you can’t be Trump’s defense lawyer and still be a good lawyer,” said Alan Rozenshtein, a former Justice Department official who teaches at the University of Minnesota Law School. “Still, it raises all sorts of complex conflicts of interest and raises questions about whether the Justice Department should exist to protect the president of the United States.”
At the same time, there has never been a president who entered office having experienced a criminal trial, and three other indictments in different places.
Mr. Trump’s transition office did not respond to an email seeking comment.
When Mr. Trump first came under investigation after he left office, he had a hard time finding — and keeping — lawyers to defend him.
Two of his original lawyers, James Trusty and John Rowley, stepped down from the job shortly after he was indicted in Florida in June 2023 on charges of mishandling classified documents. The month before the indictment was issued, another lawyer, Timothy Parlatore, also quit the team, citing problems with Mr. Trump’s adviser Boris Epshteyn.
After Mr. Trump was charged again in Washington, accused of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, he settled on a legal team that included Mr. Blanche, who was already representing him in the Manhattan case where he faced charges of falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal.
As each of the proceedings ground toward trial, Mr. Bove and Mr. Sauer joined the team.
Unlike Mr. Gaetz, all of the other Justice Department picks are courtroom veterans and, should they be confirmed, would bring to their jobs a wealth of experience in handling legal matters.
After attending Brooklyn Law School at night, Mr. Blanche spent several years as a prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, one of the country’s premier federal law enforcement agencies, eventually becoming a supervisor overseeing violent criminal cases. He then entered private practice and has represented people close to Mr. Trump, including Paul Manafort, the chairman of his 2016 presidential campaign, as well as Mr. Epshteyn.
Mr. Bove overlapped with Mr. Blanche in the prosecutor’s office, where he developed an expertise in classified information law and a reputation for handling complex international investigations. Among his most prominent cases was the prosecution of a South African crime lord, Paul Le Roux, and several mercenaries who worked for him, including a former U.S. soldier nicknamed Rambo.
Mr. Sauer, who once clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia, argued several appellate matters on Mr. Trump’s behalf. He challenged a gag order placed on Mr. Trump in his federal election case in Washington and appeared before the Supreme Court, ultimately winning a historic case that granted former presidents a broad form of immunity from criminal prosecution.
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In private conversations, some of Mr. Trump’s lawyers have appeared not to be engaging in spin so much as displaying a sincere sense of outrage over the indictments against Mr. Trump, which they genuinely view as flawed at best and tainted by politics against their client at worst.
Still, in the course of defending Mr. Trump, each of the men has strayed at times beyond the strict boundaries of their roles as legal advocates, often advancing in court (or court filings) what amounted to their client’s political talking points.
Over and over, they amplified Mr. Trump’s claims that the cases brought against him by the special counsel Jack Smith, or by local prosecutors, were partisan witch hunts intended to destroy his chances of regaining power.
Just last month, for instance, Mr. Blanche and Mr. Bove put their names to a motion complaining that a sprawling government document detailing Mr. Trump’s attempts to reverse the last election was “a politically motivated manifesto” that prosecutors were seeking to release to the public “in the final weeks of the 2024 presidential election.”
In reality, the document was produced by Mr. Smith’s deputies on the Supreme Court’s orders as part of its immunity decision. And the judge overseeing the election case, Tanya S. Chutkan, scolded Mr. Blanche, Mr. Bove and other members of the team for “focusing on political rhetoric rather than addressing the legal issues at hand.”
“Not only is that focus unresponsive and unhelpful to the court,” Judge Chutkan wrote, “but it is also unbefitting of experienced defense counsel and undermining of the judicial proceedings in this case.”
In April, Mr. Sauer stepped out onto his own legal limb for Mr. Trump when he appeared in front of the Supreme Court to make his immunity claims for Mr. Trump.
In a now-famous exchange, Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked Mr. Sauer whether a president’s decision to use the military to assassinate a rival should be considered an official act “for which he could get immunity.”
“It would depend on the hypothetical,” Mr. Sauer said, shocking many legal experts. “We can see that could well be an official act.”
Beyond such acts of legal loyalty, Mr. Trump’s lawyers have also seemed to recognize the importance of proximity to this particular client.
Even before the trial in Manhattan, where Mr. Trump was convicted of 34 felonies, Mr. Blanche, who was based in New York City, bought a home in Palm Beach County, Fla., near Mar-a-Lago, his client’s private club and residence. At the trial, he displayed a close relationship with Mr. Trump, sitting inches from him during long days of testimony and standing, mute, by his side each time he addressed reporters.
This summer, some of Mr. Trump’s lawyers were seen in suites at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
Daniel C. Richman, a former federal prosecutor and law professor at Columbia University, said that Mr. Blanche, Mr. Bove and Mr. Sauer could face significant conflicts of interest once they enter office.
As Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers, he said, they still have a duty to protect his interests in the cases they worked on, and that could present a problem if their responsibilities to the public pull them in a different direction.
“We can’t be sure how this will play out,” Mr. Richman said, “but it’s certainly an issue to spot.”
Questions like these already seemed to have concerned top Democrats, including Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, who will lead the party’s interrogation of the nominees at upcoming confirmation hearings.
“Donald Trump viewed the Justice Department as his personal law firm during his first term,” Mr. Durbin said on Friday, “and these selections — his personal attorneys — are poised to do his bidding.”
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Election enthusiasm subsides on Wall Street.
The stock market’s euphoria in the immediate aftermath of Donald J. Trump’s win in the presidential election has waned, with investors pondering mixed signs of what could come next for the U.S. economy.
The S&P 500 fell 1.3 percent on Friday, dragging the index down 2 percent for the week. It is still higher compared with Election Day.
The drop is a reversal from the index’s 4.7 percent gain last week, its biggest weekly rise in over a year. That relief rally was fueled by the certainty of the election result, investors’ expectations of business-friendly policies under the Trump administration and the Federal Reserve’s decision to cut interest rates by a quarter point.
But the post-election and post-rate cut enthusiasm has lost steam. Investors are weighing the economic implications of Mr. Trump’s proposed policies and his initial cabinet picks, on top of comments from the Fed’s chair indicating that the central bank may not be in a hurry to keep cutting interest rates.
Here’s what else to know about market movement during the week after the election:
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The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 3.4 percent for the week. The Russell 2000, an index of smaller companies more closely tied to the ebb and flow of the economy, ended the week 4 percent lower.
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Cryptocurrencies are still rising on expectations that the Trump administration will be a boost to the industry through softer regulations, with Bitcoin crossing the $90,000 price threshold for the first time this week.
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Yields on government bonds ticked up on Friday after the Census Bureau reported that U.S. retail sales rose in October, beating expectations and indicating continued momentum in consumer spending. Overall, the 10-year Treasury yield, which underpins borrowing costs, such as mortgage rates, ended the week at 4.4 percent, slightly higher than where it had started.
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The dollar, which started to rise in value as prediction markets placed bets on Mr. Trump’s return to the White House, continued to rise this week, hitting a new high for the year on Wednesday. Sharp moves in the value of the dollar threaten to destabilize the global economy.
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Investors are paying close attention to indications of the path forward for the Fed’s rate-cutting cycle. Inflation fears tied to Mr. Trump’s proposed policies have left them with less clarity. Economic data this week also showed that inflation ticked up slightly on an annual basis in October; the central bank cut interest rates last week for the second time this year, but expectations of another rate cut in December have fallen. Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, said during a speech on Thursday that the Fed was not in a “hurry” to lower rates.
Doug Burgum will do double duty as Interior secretary and the nation’s energy czar.
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President-elect Donald J. Trump said Friday that Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, his pick to run the Interior Department, will also serve as the administration’s point person to coordinate energy policy across the federal government.
In that role, Mr. Burgum will be charged with executing Mr. Trump’s vision of a government that drives up fossil fuel production while it demolishes environmental regulations.
Mr. Burgum will be “chairman of the newly formed, and very important, National Energy Council,” Mr. Trump wrote in a statement, “which will consist of all departments and agencies involved in the permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation, transportation, of ALL forms of American energy.”
“This council will oversee the path to U.S. ENERGY DOMINANCE by cutting red tape, enhancing private sector investments across all sectors of the Economy, and by focusing on INNOVATION over longstanding, but totally unnecessary, regulation,” he wrote.
Mr. Burgum will also have a seat on the White House Security Council, Mr. Trump wrote, given the significant role of energy in foreign policy.
The position was inspired by President Barack Obama and President Biden, Democrats who created White House “climate czars,” said people close to Mr. Trump’s transition team, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Those climate advisers drove a “whole-of-government” approach to ensure that all federal agencies advanced efforts to reduce the nation’s use of planet-warming coal, oil and gas and to accelerate the use of wind and solar power and electric vehicles.
Mr. Trump’s energy czar is expected to have similar authorities — but effectively the opposite mandate.
“The White House should have someone who oversees energy policy because it cuts across almost all federal agencies,” said Thomas J. Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, a conservative research group focused on energy that helped shape Mr. Trump’s first-term energy agenda. “Obama and Biden set a lot of precedents. It’s an effective model.”
John Podesta, the current White House climate czar, who also briefly served in that role in the Obama administration, chuckled dryly at the compliment.
He said that if Mr. Burgum truly wanted to ensure supplies of affordable electricity, he would seek to retain the Biden administration’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act. The 2022 law pumps more than $370 billion into tax incentives for wind and solar power and electric vehicles.
“The support that we have given on the manufacturing and deployment side has resulted in a boom of clean, affordable electricity generation,” he said.
Mr. Trump’s transition team is already strategizing with Republicans on Capitol Hill about how to undo portions of that law.
The energy czar’s policy directive is reminiscent of the White House Energy Task Force overseen by Vice President Dick Cheney during the George W. Bush administration, aimed at ensuring that fossil fuels would remain the nation’s primary energy for “years down the road” and that the federal government would focus on increasing the supply of fossil fuels, rather than limiting demand.
Scientists have said that the United States and other major economies must stop developing new oil and gas projects to avert the most catastrophic effects of global warming. The burning of oil, gas and coal is the main driver of climate change.
The current year is shaping up to be the hottest in recorded history, and researchers say the world is on track for dangerous levels of warming this century.
Mr. Trump has long contended that using government levers to boost extraction and consumption would lower the cost of gasoline and electricity and ripple through the economy to bring down the cost of transportation, housing, food and other commodities.
Most economists say that energy prices are determined by global markets, rather than the actions of the U.S. government.
And it’s questionable how much more oil and gas companies would produce under different policies. The United States is already producing more oil than any other country in history, despite the Biden administration’s climate efforts.
Oil producers are also wary of a glut on the market, which could lower prices and profits.
“I’m less bullish on this than they are,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who directed the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and now runs the American Action Forum, a conservative research organization, of the impact of an energy czar position. “I don’t think we’re going to notice a dramatic impact very quickly.”
Mr. Pyle noted another feature of the White House czar position that is likely to appeal to Mr. Trump: While the work and correspondence of officials in federal agencies are subject to government transparency laws, including Freedom of Information Act requests, the work of White House czars has more legal shields from those requirements.
“There is an advantage that they don’t have to be as transparent,” he said.
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Iran told the U.S. in October that it was not seeking to kill Trump, officials say.
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Iran sent a message to the Biden administration in October saying that it was not trying to kill Donald J. Trump, as Tehran attempted to ease rising tensions with Washington, according to U.S. officials, as well as an Iranian official and an analyst.
The message, sent to Washington through an intermediary, came after a note from the Biden administration in September that warned that the United States would consider any Iranian attempt on the life of Mr. Trump, then the Republican candidate for president, to be “an act of war.”
Since Mr. Trump won the Nov. 5 election, many Iranian former officials, pundits and media outlets have been publicly advocating for Tehran to try to engage with the president-elect and pursue a more conciliatory approach, despite vows from Mr. Trump’s allies to renew a high-pressure campaign against Iran.
U.S. officials have said that Iran sought to kill Mr. Trump in revenge for ordering the 2020 drone strike that killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the commander who directed Iran’s militias and proxy forces. The Department of Justice has issued two indictments that officials said were related to Iranian plotting against Mr. Trump.
American officials have also accused Iran of plotting to assassinate other Trump administration figures.
The officials interviewed for this story spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic messages.
The message exchange was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The message from Iran repeated Tehran’s contention that the killing of General Suleimani was a criminal act, the two U.S. officials said. But it also said that Iran did not want to kill Mr. Trump, according to the U.S. officials, an Iranian official and an Iranian analyst who talks with both sides.
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The Iranians said the message to the United States indicated that Iran sought to avenge the killing of General Suleimani through international legal means.
The U.S. officials said the Iranian message was not a letter from a specific official. But the Iranian official and analyst said it was from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations declined to comment on the message exchange. But it said in a statement that Iran was committed to responding to General Suleimani’s killing “through legal and judicial avenues.”
During the presidential campaign, American officials warned that Iran was plotting to kill Mr. Trump.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan said last week that Iranian plotters had discussed a plan to assassinate him, which Iran’s Foreign Ministry called baseless.
In July, Asif Raza Merchant, a Pakistani man who had visited Iran, was arrested in New York and was later charged with trying to hire a hit man to assassinate American politicians. Investigators believe his potential targets included Mr. Trump.
Intelligence about Iran’s intentions was provided to the Secret Service, which added counter-sniper teams to Mr. Trump’s protective detail ahead of the assassination attempt on him in July, in Butler, Pa., by a lone gunman with no ties to Tehran, according to U.S. officials.
Iran had considered Mr. Trump to be a difficult target because of his Secret Service protection. But after the attempted assassination in Pennsylvania and another near Mr. Trump’s golf course in Florida, U.S. intelligence agencies assessed that Iran grew more confident that the former president could be successfully targeted.
That assessment of a growing threat, combined with the attempts on Mr. Trump’s life, prompted both an intense security review and a diplomatic campaign to convince Iran that it was making a grave miscalculation, according to officials.
Elon Musk, who has become a close ally of Mr. Trump, met with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations on Monday, at Mr. Musk’s request, the Iranians said — a sign that it is not only the lame duck Democratic administration that is looking to avoid a direct clash, but also the Trump camp. The Iranians said the meeting with Ambassador Amir Saied Iravani, at a secret location in New York City, was about defusing tensions between Iran and the United States under the Trump administration.
Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
The United States and Iran have not had official diplomatic relations since Iran’s 1979 revolution, when 52 Americans were taken hostage in the U.S. embassy in Tehran, and held for more than a year.
The Swiss embassy in Tehran is the official diplomatic liaison between the two nations, but American and Iranian officials have held direct and indirect negotiations in recent years on a host of issues, including Iran’s nuclear program, regional tensions and swapping detainees.
The U.S. and Iranian messages were sent through the Swiss, according to the Iranian official and the analyst.
Donald Trump just announced that, in addition to formally naming Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota as his choice for interior secretary, he would appoint him as the chairman of a new National Energy Council overseeing American energy policy. Trump has made repeated promises to slash energy costs in half as a bid to fight inflation.
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Colorado’s Democratic governor praises Kennedy, then has to explain it.
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President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice of the vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Health and Human Services Department drew one surprising supporter: Jared Polis, the Democratic governor of Colorado.
“I’m excited by the news,” Mr. Polis wrote on X.
He praised Mr. Kennedy for helping defeat a 2019 proposal in Colorado that would have made it harder to get some vaccination exemptions, and said he hoped Mr. Kennedy would be “shaking up” the sprawling federal department that regulates food and medicines and monitors infectious diseases.
Public health groups and some of Mr. Polis’s fellow Democrats in Colorado fiercely criticized his support for Mr. Kennedy, who has pushed false claims linking vaccines to autism. Kyle Mullica, a Democratic state senator and an emergency-room nurse, told Colorado Public Radio that the governor’s support was “irresponsible and disappointing.”
Mr. Polis later clarified his views, saying in a statement that he “opposes unscientific propaganda” and pointed out that he had just gotten a new round of vaccinations against the flu and Covid.
“Science must remain THE cornerstone of our nation’s health policy and the science-backed decision to get vaccinated improves public health and safety,” Mr. Polis wrote in a separate post on X.
Mr. Polis’s support for Mr. Kennedy struck a different tone from just a few months ago, when he mocked Mr. Kennedy’s mantra to “Make America Healthy Again” by posting on X that he was “not sure how bringing back Measles and bringing back Polio makes anyone more healthy.”
Mr. Polis has a libertarian streak and has bucked some Democratic orthodoxies even as he helps lead a new group of governors opposing the incoming Trump administration.
As governor, Mr. Polis has called for eliminating state income taxes, allowing people to buy raw milk — another priority of Mr. Kennedy’s — and paying their taxes with cryptocurrency.
In 2019, he and Mr. Kennedy aligned with Colorado’s vocal community of vaccine critics in opposing a bill that was aimed at raising the state’s low vaccination rates. The measure would have required parents seeking a vaccine exemption to submit a form in person to their local health agency. A modified version of that law passed the next year.
At the time, Mr. Polis called the measure government overreach, saying, “The minute you try to have the government forcing anybody to do something with their kids, you’re going to create distrust of vaccinations.”
During the pandemic, he was an outspoken supporter of Covid vaccines, and imposed vaccination requirements on health care workers. But he also lifted a statewide mask mandate before other Democratic governors did.
Now, Mr. Polis says he hopes that Mr. Kennedy will take on powerful agriculture and pharmaceutical companies by scrutinizing the effects of pesticide use and capping prices on prescription drugs. Under the Biden administration, Mr. Polis said Colorado had tried unsuccessfully to get federal approval to import cheaper prescription drugs from Canada.
A spokesman said Mr. Polis also did not agree with Mr. Kennedy’s efforts to remove fluoride treatments from drinking water.
His support for Mr. Kennedy comes as Democrats are trying to calibrate how vigorously to oppose the second Trump administration’s policies and personnel choices. Since Mr. Trump’s re-election, Mr. Polis has also posted on social media that he would keep fighting for liberties in the “free state of Colorado.”
The chair of the Colorado Democratic Party responded to Mr. Kennedy’s nomination by saying that he “consistently undermines trust in science using his personal beliefs and conspiracy theories as evidence.”
A spokesperson for Senator John Hickenlooper, a Democrat and former governor of Colorado, said Mr. Hickenlooper would be voting against Mr. Kennedy’s confirmation. Colorado’s other Democratic senator, Michael Bennet, has not said how he will vote.
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Here’s how vacancies in Congress from Trump’s planned nominations are being filled.
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President-elect Donald J. Trump is packing his administration with Republican office holders who are set to leave behind a trail of vacancies extending from Capitol Hill to at least one governor’s seat.
Those openings are unlikely to shift the balance of power in Congress or at the state level. Still, not every vacancy will get filled in the same way, with a mishmash of arcane rules governing the processes.
It can be downright confusing. Here’s what to expect:
JD Vance: vice president
How Vance’s Senate seat in Ohio will be filled
When Mr. Trump named Ohio’s junior senator as his running mate, he did so knowing that the state’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, would get to appoint Mr. Vance’s temporary replacement if the pair was elected.
Ohio is one of 45 states that grant that power to the governor. That means Republicans, who flipped control of the Senate in the Nov. 5 election, will almost certainly keep the seat until at least 2026, when there will be a special election to determine who serves out the remaining two years of Mr. Vance’s term.
The next regular election for the seat will be in 2028. The state has turned increasingly red, and its Democratic senator, Sherrod Brown, lost re-election in November.
Marco Rubio: Secretary of State
How Rubio’s Senate seat in Florida will be filled
Should the Senate confirm Florida’s senior senator for the prestigious cabinet role, the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, would choose his replacement.
Mr. DeSantis, who endorsed Mr. Trump after dropping his own Republican presidential bid, would appoint someone to the seat, and then a special election would be held in 2026 to fill the remaining two years of Mr. Rubio’s term. The seat would be up for election again in 2028. Florida has not elected a Democratic senator in over a decade.
Matt Gaetz: Attorney General
How Gaetz’s House seat in Florida will be filled
Mr. Gaetz, selected for attorney general, has been one of Mr. Trump’s most polarizing cabinet picks. A hard-right provocateur, Mr. Gaetz cruised to a fifth term in his safely Republican House district on Florida’s panhandle this month. Vacancies in the House — where Republicans kept a slim majority in the election — are filled differently than those in the Senate.
A Florida state law says that the governor, in consultation with Florida’s secretary of state, must select the dates of a special primary election and a special election.
Mr. DeSantis said he instructed Cord Byrd, the secretary of state and a Republican, to schedule a special election immediately to fill the seat, and Mr. Byrd said he would do so soon. But a date has not yet been announced.
Mr. DeSantis’s urgency to fill the vacancy contrasted sharply with the timing of a special election after the death of Representative Alcee Hastings, a Democrat, in April 2021. Mr. DeSantis scheduled special primaries seven months later, and a special general election was held in January 2022.
Mike Waltz: National Security Adviser
How Waltz’s House seat in Florida will be filled
The former Green Beret, who received four Bronze Stars and is known for his hawkish views on national security, was re-elected with more than 65 percent of the vote in November in east-central Florida. His district, Florida’s Sixth, is one of the most Republican-leaning areas in the country.
The seat will be filled in a special election, which Mr. DeSantis has also said that he wants scheduled immediately. No date has yet been announced.
Elise Stefanik: United Nations Ambassador
How Stefanik’s House seat in New York will be filled
The No. 4 leader of the House Republicans was rewarded for her unflagging loyalty to Mr. Trump, who offered her the role of U.N. ambassador. She will leave what is viewed as a safe G.O.P. district in upstate New York.
Under state law, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York, a Democrat, will have 10 days after Ms. Stefanik resigns to call for a special election, which must take place between 70 and 80 days after that.
Ms. Stefanik has not yet resigned; it is customary for nominees to wait until after Senate confirmation before they do. That process will begin after Mr. Trump takes office.
Kristi Noem: Homeland Security Secretary
How Noem’s job as South Dakota governor will be filled
In filling all the vacancies that Mr. Trump’s nominees would create, the process of installing South Dakota’s next governor may be the simplest.
The office would be taken over by the lieutenant governor, Larry Rhoden, a Republican who has been Ms. Noem’s running mate for two election cycles.
At one point during the 2024 presidential election, Ms. Noem drew mention as a possible contender to be Mr. Trump’s running mate. Then the release of her memoir brought negative attention over her account of shooting her dog in a gravel pit and her false claims about having met with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader.
Her cabinet post requires Senate confirmation.
Trump asks Steven Cheung, his chief campaign spokesman, to lead White House communications.
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President-elect Donald J. Trump announced on Friday that he had chosen Steven Cheung, his chief campaign spokesman, to be his White House communications director.
Mr. Cheung, who once worked in communications for the Ultimate Fighting Championship, served in Mr. Trump’s administration as the director of strategic response. He will return to the White House next year in a top communications position.
Mr. Trump has long favored vocal, forceful allies, and his decision to elevate Mr. Cheung is one of several recent announcements that reinforce that preference. During the campaign, Mr. Cheung often issued provocative, at times offensive, statements attacking Mr. Trump’s political enemies and the news media.
His most vicious barbs in written statements came during the Republican primaries when he would frequently hurl personal attacks denigrating Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who was once Mr. Trump’s foremost Republican rival.
Mr. Cheung, who frequently uses hypermasculine language favored by many on the ultra-online right, seemed to take particular delight in questioning Mr. DeSantis’s masculinity, calling him a “desperate eunuch” and once saying the governor walked like a girl who “discovered heels for the first time.”
Mr. Cheung’s statements at times have provoked strong criticism from Democrats. After Mr. Trump last year likened his political enemies to “vermin” that needed to be rooted out, drawing condemnation from some liberals and historians for echoing the dehumanizing rhetoric of fascist dictators, Mr. Cheung stood firm, and issued a scathing, violent retort.
Although Mr. Cheung often traveled with Mr. Trump, he often ceded appearances on television news — which are viewed as crucial by Mr. Trump and his allies — to other members of the campaign’s communication team, including Karoline Leavitt, the campaign’s press secretary, and Jason Miller, a senior adviser. Mr. Trump later said he wanted Ms. Leavitt to be his White House press secretary.
On Friday, Mr. Trump also said he would ask Sergio Gor, who has helped run the publishing company that produces Mr. Trump’s books, to run the White House’s presidential personnel office.
The office helps vet political appointees, and Mr. Gor will likely play an important role in helping Mr. Trump, who cares deeply about whether prospective staff meet his standards for loyalty, fill positions.
“Steven Cheung and Sergio Gor have been trusted Advisors since my first Presidential Campaign in 2016, and have continued to champion America First principles throughout my First Term, all the way to our Historic Victory in 2024,” Mr. Trump said in a statement.
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Johnson says he will object to the release of the ethics report on Gaetz.
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Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday said he planned to object to the release of a damaging bipartisan investigative report on the conduct of former Representative Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican whom President-elect Donald J. Trump wants to be attorney general.
Mr. Johnson said it would be a “terrible breach of protocol” for the House Ethics Committee, which investigated Mr. Gaetz over sexual misconduct, illicit drug use and other allegations, to make public its findings because Mr. Gaetz is no longer a member of Congress.
Mr. Gaetz abruptly resigned this week after being tapped by Mr. Trump, effectively ending the investigation just days before the committee had planned to vote on releasing its conclusions.
“I’m going to strongly request that the Ethics Committee not issue the report,” Mr. Johnson told reporters on Friday at the Capitol, adding that he would contact the chairman of the panel, Representative Michael Guest, Republican of Mississippi, to make his wishes known. “That is not the way we do things in the House, and I think that would be a terrible precedent to set.”
Mr. Guest had already said he was not inclined to release the report. Senators in both parties have demanded to see the product of the yearslong inquiry as they consider Mr. Gaetz’s nomination to be the nation’s top law enforcement officer. That could lead to an extraordinary constitutional clash between the two chambers.
Intervention by the speaker in a matter before the Ethics Committee, a bipartisan panel that operates in complete secrecy and is supposed to be insulated from partisan politics, would also be a remarkable move.
Mr. Johnson insisted that he was not attempting to meddle in the Ethics Committee’s affairs. He said he had “no involvement or understanding of what’s going on” with the investigation or the report other than what he had seen reported in the news media, but was simply trying to protect a principle of how the panel does its work.
“We are not in the business of investigating and publishing a report of people who are not a part of this institution,” Mr. Johnson said. “The Ethics Committee’s jurisdiction is for sitting members of Congress. That’s an important rule.”
Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over the confirmation of an attorney general, has insisted his panel have access to the report.
And Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas and a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, said he would be open to issuing a subpoena to obtain it if necessary.
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Mike Johnson kept the speaker’s gavel but faces steep challenges atop a slim G.O.P. majority.
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When the relatively unknown Representative Mike Johnson won the speaker’s gavel last year, many rank-and-file House Republicans viewed him as a transitional figure whose chief job was to pull the party out of a funk of paralysis and dysfunction.
A year later, after barely holding on to his majority and cementing a close political partnership with President-elect Donald J. Trump, Mr. Johnson is on track to keep the gavel for a second consecutive term. On Wednesday, he won his party’s nomination for speaker unanimously, after the ultraconservatives who tormented and ultimately ousted his predecessor, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, decided not to run a protest candidate.
But the path ahead for Mr. Johnson remains fraught. Republicans are on track to hold yet another paper-thin majority in the next Congress, and despite the speaker’s entreaties, Mr. Trump has already eroded that number by choosing three House G.O.P. lawmakers for positions in his administration.
Mr. Johnson still must win a majority vote on the House floor in January to keep the speakership, a task that could be upended by just a few rebels. And should he formally win the gavel, he will face the challenge of trying to push through sweeping legislation — to suspend the debt ceiling, fund the government and rewrite the tax code — with few votes to spare.
His tricky balancing act began almost the moment he won his colleagues’ support this week to continue as speaker. In an attempt to buy himself more breathing room, Mr. Johnson brokered a handshake deal with right-wing Republicans to change a rule that for the past two years has allowed a single member of the House to force a snap vote to remove the speaker.
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The ultraconservatives said they would agree that in the next Congress, nine lawmakers would be needed to prompt such a vote. That is one more than the number of Republicans who voted to remove Mr. McCarthy as speaker last year.
In return, Mr. Johnson killed a push by more mainstream conservatives to punish hard-liners who have blocked legislation during the current Congress by stripping them of coveted committee posts.
But the rule change will not be codified until the full House votes in January, meaning that hard-right lawmakers could renege on the deal and still insist on the speaker be subject to a sudden-death vote. The haggling underscored the tenuous position in which Mr. Johnson finds himself.
“If we can’t get people to hold up their end of the bargain in January, then that’s actually a really important data point for the next 24 months,” said Representative Dusty Johnson, Republican of South Dakota, a mainstream conservative who helped negotiate the agreement. “If we can’t trust people with their word, it’s going to be hard to deliver any conservative victories.”
Mr. Johnson defied expectations last year, sidestepping political retribution even as he repeatedly steered around ultraconservatives and used Democratic votes to push through legislation they despised, including stopgap spending bills and aid for Ukraine.
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This time, with Republicans in full control of Washington and conservatives emboldened by the mandate that voters handed them, Mr. Johnson is dealing with an entirely different set of expectations.
“Last year was different,” said Representative Carlos Gimenez, Republican of Florida. “A lot of things that came out of the House, we knew it was going to go sit on Schumer’s desk, and even if they got passed, the president was never going to sign it.”
“Anything that passes this House now, we expect to get to the president’s desk and become real,” he said. “So the game is different. And we have to act in a different way.”
Whether House Republicans, a notoriously unruly bunch, can unite under Mr. Trump’s “America First” banner remains to be seen.
The scenes that played out at the Capitol this week — chief among them Mr. Trump’s appeal to Republicans to support him at a private meeting — indicated that for now at least, Mr. Johnson is riding an unlikely surge of political fortune.
“It’s clear to me that Speaker Johnson led us to victory,” Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said. “He’s led under very difficult circumstances. He and the president clearly have a tremendous rapport and can work together. Why in the world would you challenge him, and for what purpose?”
But some of Mr. Johnson’s chief antagonists have already offered muted criticism of the speaker. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who led a failed effort this year to oust him, told CNN that she blamed him for the party’s small majority in the House.
“He fully passed the Biden-Harris agenda,” Ms. Greene said.
Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, a frequent thorn in the side of leadership who voted to oust Mr. McCarthy, declined to say whether he would support Mr. Johnson’s bid for speaker, even after Mr. Trump urged Republicans to back him.
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“I appreciate President Trump coming and talking, and I of course endorse that agenda,” he said. “But for me, I’m not going to comment on where I’m going to land on the speaker.”
Republicans’ first major order of business when they officially take power in January will present Mr. Johnson with a substantial political hazard. Mr. Trump on the campaign trail promised a slew of costly changes to the tax code, including eliminating taxes on tips and on Social Security benefits. At the same time, large swaths of the tax cuts approved during the first Trump administration expire at the end of next year.
That will require the speaker to balance a smorgasbord of priorities cutting across various constituencies. It will pit ultraconservatives who are eager to include deep spending cuts and stringent border security measures in any major tax legislation against more mainstream Republicans who are more inclined to protect government services.
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Mr. Johnson, ever the optimist, remained sanguine on Wednesday shortly after winning the unanimous backing of his party, predicting that the unity would stretch into the new year.
“We had a very productive day together as a Republican conference, and the theme that you’ll hear over and over from all of our members across the conference is that we are unified and energized and ready to go,” he said. “We have to deliver for the American people beginning on Day 1 in the new Congress, and we will be ready for that.”
Maya C. Miller contributed reporting.
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Donald Trump has chosen Steven Cheung, who was his main campaign spokesman, to be his White House communications director. Cheung was known for incendiary statements bashing the news media and political opponents during the presidential campaign.
Trump also formally announced he would tap Sergio Gor, who has helped run the publishing company that produces Trump’s books, to run his administration’s presidential personnel office.
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Donald Trump will return to his golf course in West Palm Beach, Fla., today, according to people familiar with his schedule. The president-elect stopped golfing, a key stress reliever during his campaign and his legal troubles, in the face of security concerns after an apparent assassination attempt at his golf course in September.
Boris Epshteyn has quickly become one of the most powerful figures in Trump’s world.
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President-elect Donald J. Trump was flying to Washington for his first face-to-face meeting with President Biden since winning the election when a top aide offered a startling idea to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine.
The adviser, Boris Epshteyn, who coordinated the legal defenses in Mr. Trump’s criminal cases, suggested to the president-elect that he should be Mr. Trump’s special envoy for the Russia-Ukraine conflict, according to four people briefed on what took place.
Mr. Epshteyn, who was born in Russia and lived there as a child, has no experience in foreign policy. He told the group that he had family on both sides of the conflict.
Several people on the plane appeared shocked at the idea of appointing Mr. Epshteyn to a sensitive diplomatic post, according to the people briefed on the matter. In addition to his lack of diplomatic experience, he is currently under indictment in Arizona along with several other Trump allies for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election with so-called fake electors. (A fifth person with knowledge of the events insisted people on the plane reacted well to the idea and suggested thoughts on how to structure such a move.)
But none of the people with knowledge of the incident disputed one key fact: The person on the plane who registered the least shock at the special envoy notion was the only person whose opinion ultimately matters. Mr. Trump listened with apparent interest and did not dismiss the proposal, even though he did not commit to it.
Whatever comes of Mr. Epshteyn’s idea, Mr. Trump has already given his adviser extraordinary power and shown a willingness to heed his counsel above that of others. Even the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, who has been in many transition meetings in the past week, has privately remarked at how surprised he is that Mr. Epshteyn has been granted so much authority.
The people who spoke for this article were granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations. Mr. Epshteyn declined to comment, and a Trump spokesman did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Mr. Epshteyn, who left his role in the White House communications office in 2017 over what was described as an issue with his security clearance that has since been resolved, had told friends before the special envoy discussion that he intended to stay outside government as a counselor to Mr. Trump. And in Mr. Trump’s world, the lack of an official title has meant little in terms of measuring influence.
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Although there are those close to Mr. Trump who despise Mr. Epshteyn, there is nobody in the president-elect’s orbit who at this point would doubt the level of his influence. He has quickly become one of the most powerful figures in the early days of the presidential transition, despite having no formal role in it. He has become a significant gatekeeper for Mr. Trump, including shaping some of the information he receives about personnel and cabinet selections.
In rapid-fire succession over two days this week, Mr. Epshteyn assembled for Mr. Trump the Justice Department staffing he always wanted and felt he never got in his first term, even if confirmation battles loom. Mr. Trump, who has never respected the post-Watergate norm that the department should operate with independence, has a team stacked with loyal fighters and three of his personal lawyers.
Mr. Epshteyn, a physically imposing man who wears three-piece suits, has flexed his power in other ways as well.
While the incoming White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, was traveling to and from a conference featuring some of Mr. Trump’s donors over the weekend and on Monday, Mr. Epshteyn finalized a push for Mr. Trump’s eventual pick for White House counsel, William McGinley, according to two people briefed on the matter.
And he ran one of his most audacious plays yet this week. He was a key behind-the-scenes advocate for Mr. Trump’s decision to announce Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida as his choice for attorney general. Mr. Epshteyn made his case aboard the round-trip flights on Mr. Trump’s airplane from West Palm Beach, Fla., to Washington on Wednesday, according to two people with knowledge of what happened.
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Mr. Epshteyn had argued for other choices before that, including the lawyer Robert Giuffra. But when Mr. Gaetz, who himself has been investigated by the Justice Department, emerged as an option, he pushed heavily for it, according to two of the people briefed on what took place.
Mr. Epshteyn is licensed to practice law in New York, although he did not renew his attorney registration within 30 days of his birthday in August this year as required by the Office of Court Administration, according to the office’s website. That meant a roughly two-month period in which he was not in compliance with state requirements; the court system typically grants grace periods and provides warnings before taking any form of disciplinary action.
After being contacted late Thursday for comment about the registration for this article, Mr. Epshteyn appears to have filed the required renewal.
Over the years, Mr. Epshteyn has called for an aggressive legal strategy for his boss. He was among the lawyers who encouraged Mr. Trump to delay his trials as long as possible, kicking them close to or beyond the election so that they would be politically impractical.
That strategy was difficult and expensive — the costs were paid by a political action committee Mr. Trump created in 2021, and it involved swamping the system with legal briefs. But it was ultimately successful in keeping Mr. Trump from being sentenced in the one criminal trial that did take place.
Whatever title Mr. Epshteyn is eventually given — whether it is “counselor” or “adviser” or something else — his influence inside government is built to last.
The key legal posts that Mr. Trump has announced so far for his second administration look remarkably similar to a list of suggested names for top administration lawyers that was compiled by some Trump advisers outside the formal transition process with input from Mr. Epshteyn. The list was obtained by The New York Times.
Mr. Epshteyn also helped influence a proposal, captured in a memo that circulated at the top levels of Mr. Trump’s orbit, calling for using private investigators for background checks on incoming staff members, bypassing the traditional F.B.I. process, and then having the president-elect summarily grant most of them security clearances as soon as he takes office.
Officials have not said what their plan is for clearances, but several Trump advisers said they anticipated Mr. Trump availing himself of what was proposed for him to do.
One Trump adviser, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation from Mr. Epshteyn, described the overall situation as “the United States of Boris.”