Vice President Kamala Harris spent much of her failed presidential campaign warning about how Donald Trump might govern if allowed to return to the White House with no guardrails. But Americans voters gave Trump a decisive victory in both the popular vote and the Electoral College and they handed him a Republican Congress, as well, so we’re now seeing what Trump will be like without those guardrails.
We’re seeing it most prominently with a slew of recent staffing picks that are sending shockwaves through the political establishment, official Washington, D.C., and, undoubtedly, many proponents of responsible democratic governance.
Trump Picks Gaetz for Attorney General
Trump on Wednesday nominated Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, 42, to serve as attorney general. Gaetz is known as a firebrand MAGA Republican and Trump loyalist who has accused the Justice Department of being weaponized against conservatives and has spoken of abolishing the FBI and other law enforcement agencies if they can’t be reformed or brought “to heel.”
“Few issues in America are more important than ending the partisan Weaponization of our Justice System,” Trump said in a statement announcing the pick. “Matt will root out the systemic corruption at DOJ, and return the Department to its true mission of fighting Crime, and upholding our Democracy and Constitution. We must have Honesty, Integrity, and Transparency at DOJ.”
Gaetz has also faced criminal and ethics investigations himself. He has denied the allegations against him, and the Justice Department decided last year not to pursue criminal charges. The House Ethics Committee earlier this year dropped some elements of its investigations but said that some of the allegations against the congressman “merit continued review.” The committee said it was looking into allegations that Gaetz may have “engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts, dispensed special privileges and favors to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct.”
Gaetz was also the driving force behind the ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, making him even more of a divisive figure on Capitol Hill.
Given that history, it’s an understatement to say that Gaetz is a shocking pick to be the country’s top cop. “That was about as big a surprise as I’ve had in a long time,” Republican Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho told the Associated Press.
Gaetz may well face a challenging Senate confirmation fight, even as many Republicans have expressed a belief that Trump is entitled to significant leeway in choosing members of his administration and pursuing his agenda. “I have a really hard time believing he could get through the Senate confirmation process,” Simpson told the AP before adding, “You never know.”
An unnamed GOP senator told Fox News that Gaetz “will never get confirmed.” And Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware told CNN that the Gaetz pick is a “deadly serious challenge” to the Senate’s constitutionally required role. “My hope is that my colleagues in the Republican caucus will urge the president to reconsider,” he said.
Hegseth Nomination for Defense Secretary May Also Face Challenges
The Gaetz pick is not the only one to elicit surprise or draw scrutiny. Trump’s selection Tuesday of Fox News host Pete Hegseth to lead the Pentagon stunned many, both inside and outside the defense establishment and raised questions about whether the TV personality and decorated combat veteran is qualified to be secretary of defense.
“Hegseth is undoubtedly the least qualified nominee for SecDef in American history,” one veterans’ advocate told Politico.
Trump on Tuesday also announced that he has chosen former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who left the Democratic Party in 2022 and became a Republican last month, to be his director of national intelligence.
Musk, Ramaswamy to Lead New ‘Department of Government Efficiency’
Trump announced Tuesday evening that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will jointly head up a new effort to reduce waste in government, to be called the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE.
“Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies - Essential to the 'Save America' Movement,” Trump said in a statement.
Despite the grand introduction — Trump said the effort “will become, potentially, ‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time” — much about DOGE remains uncertain.
DOGE shares a name with a cryptocurrency that started as a joke in 2013, and the coin, which Musk started promoting in 2021, soared in value on the announcement. But the new cost-cutting project is still largely undefined. Trump referred to it as a “department,” but it’s not expected to become a formal agency within the federal government. Instead, it will likely function more like a blue-ribbon panel that provides analysis and suggestions but lacks the legal authority to make concrete changes.
While slashing the federal government is a long-standing dream for Republicans, and most lawmakers would be happy to improve government efficiency, pushing through enormous reductions in spending could be tricky politically for both Republicans and Democrats. Rep. Steny Hoyer, who has served as majority leader for Democrats, expressed doubts about the new effort’s ability to address government issues, given that the leaders are from the private sector.
“Getting to a more efficient place is a good thing to do,” Hoyer told The Wall Street Journal. “It’s a lot easier to do in the private sector, and the reason is you are driven by profit and you don’t do things that are nonprofitable. In the government, you do things that are nonprofitable because you need to make sure people are doing OK.”
Still, whatever the legal status of the effort, its leaders are talking up its transformative potential. Musk has stated that he could cut more than $2 trillion a year from the roughly $6.7 trillion federal budget. Most of that spending is mandatory, though, and it’s not clear how Musk could identify such large reductions without ending most government functions and cutting into programs like Social Security and Medicare.
Musk has also said the effort will focus on reducing regulations and bureaucracy. “We finally have a mandate to delete the mountain of choking regulations that do not serve the greater good,” he said on social media. Ramaswamy said they would be open to suggestions from the public and would “soon begin crowdsourcing examples of government waste, fraud, & and abuse.”
Whatever form it takes, DOGE comes with an expiration date. According to Trump’s statement, the project will cease operation no later than July 4, 2026, in honor of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
