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The Trump transition team’s approach seems to involve some combination of Yahoo! Answers, a lot of texts to White House officials that begin with, “hey, sorry to bother you again about this, but,” and sticking its head out the window and asking a street urchin what day it is. Mitt Romney will meet with Trump about a cabinet position, but given the current disorganization, we doubt the customary turkey chili will be served. And Republicans finally followed up on a suggestion from its autopsy report: take more selfies of large numbers of white people and triumphantly post them online. This is HUFFPOST HILL for Thursday, November 17th, 2016:
IT’S NEWT - J/K, the moonbase will have to wait. Kevin Hall: “Newt Gingrich said Thursday he will not serve in the Donald Trump administration in any official role.... ‘I will not be in the Cabinet,’ Gingrich, 73, said. ‘I intend to be focused on strategic planning.’ McClatchy had contacted him for comment on whether his long ties to the Washington establishment might pose a problem with a Trump team that boasts of its outsider status and its promise to ‘drain the swamp’ of Washington. He did not say whether the decision not to be in the new government was his or Trump’s. The Trump transition team did not respond to requests for comment. Since leaving Congress in 1999, Gingrich established a range of for-profit businesses that intersected with policy and politics in Washington. These included taking consulting fees from mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and speaking fees and support from the pharmaceutical industry. Those past ties to the drug industry in particular might have raised alarms given Trump’s campaign criticism of the sector.’” [McClatchy]
ROMNEY MEETING WITH TRUMP - The 2012 GOP nominee is already the leading contender for Secretary of ‘Hi, there, friend. What are you doing?” Mark Preston and Jeremy Diamond: “President-elect Donald Trump will meet this weekend with one of his fiercest critics: 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney, a senior Republican source told CNN on Thursday. The two men are set to meet this weekend to discuss ‘governing moving forward’ and potentially a role for Romney in Trump’s Cabinet, the source said. The source declined to specify for which Cabinet positions Romney is under consideration. The meeting is the latest in a series of Trump’s conversations and encounters with Republicans who did not support his candidacy in an effort to reunite the GOP following a divisive election that fractured party leaders past the Republican primary and into the general election. It also comes as Trump has a jam-packed schedule Thursday and the President-elect’s team looks to tamp down reports of disarray and infighting within the transition effort, which has been slow to ramp up following Trump’s shocking upset victory last week.” [CNN]
TIM RYAN (D - LOOK HIM UP) CHALLENGING PELOSI - Still waiting for a last-minute announcement from Heath Shuler. Daniel Marans: “Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) has announced he will challenge Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as House Minority Leader.... ‘I believe we all need to re-evaluate our roles within the Caucus, the Democratic Party, and our country,’ Ryan wrote in a letter to his Democratic colleagues announcing the decision…. Although Ryan faces steep odds against his leadership bid, his candidacy speaks to the turmoil in Democratic ranks after Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump in the presidential race and the party’s failure to retake control of the Senate…. Speaking on Monday about Ryan’s consideration of a run, spokesman Michael Zetts emphasized the congressman’s success with the kinds of white, blue-collar voters in the Great Lakes region among whom Clinton performed so poorly. Ryan, a former high school football quarterback who has served in Congress since 2003, represents a district that includes onetime manufacturing hubs like Youngstown.” [HuffPost]
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HE WENT TO JARED! Somewhere Chris Christie is reading this article with Springsteen’s “Secret Garden” playing on loop and crying profusely. Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Maggie Haberman: “Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of President-elect Donald J. Trump, has consulted with lawyers about the possibility of joining the new administration, a move that could run afoul of federal nepotism laws and would all but certainly invite legal challenges. Mr. Kushner, 35, had been planning to return to his private businesses after Election Day. But on the morning after Mr. Trump won, he began discussing a role in the White House, according to two people briefed on his discussions, who requested anonymity to describe his thinking. Mr. Trump is urging him to join, according to one of the people briefed, a sentiment shared by Stephen K. Bannon, the chief strategist for the White House, and Reince Priebus, who was named chief of staff. Mr. Kushner has consulted with at least one lawyer and believes that by forgoing a salary and putting his investment fund, his real estate holdings and his newspaper, The New York Observer, into a blind trust, he would not be bound by federal nepotism rules, according to one of the people briefed.” [NYT]
GREAT NEWS FOR WAR FANS - Jessica Schulberg: “John Bolton, a top candidate to serve as President-elect Donald Trump’s secretary of state, is publicly calling for the U.S. to help overthrow the existing government in Iran. ‘The only long-term solution is regime change in Tehran,’ the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations told SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily on Thursday morning. ‘The ayatollahs are the principal threat to international peace and security in the Middle East.’ The call for regime change is very much in line with past statements from Bolton, a hyper-hawkish Bush administration official who stands by the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. He has repeatedly urged the U.S. to help Israel bomb Iran or do it alone. Even as Iran was in the final stages of negotiating an international agreement that requires it to dramatically scale back its nuclear infrastructure, Bolton recommended a military attack.” [HuffPost]
CFPB ON GOP CHOPPING BLOCK - Ryan Grim: “Senate Republicans are gearing up for an assault on one of the trademark populist achievements of the Obama administration, vowing to take on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau...Targeting the CFPB would seem to be a strange move under President-elect Donald Trump, a populist who won the White House on the back of deep economic anxiety, promising to break the hold the rich and powerful have on Washington. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), formerly chairman of the Banking Committee, told HuffPost he wanted to see the agency eliminated. ‘My top priority is either to bring the consumer agency under appropriations’ ― which would give Congress the power to shrink its budget, or bar it from spending money on certain activities ― ‘or abolish it.’” [HuffPost]
DEMOCRATS SEEK TO LIMIT DEPORTATIONS - Elise Foley: “Democrats are pressuring President Barack Obama to do whatever he can before leaving office to protect the more than 740,000 undocumented young people to whom he granted temporary work permits from the threat of deportation under the new administration. On Thursday, Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.) and Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) asked Obama to issue pardons to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients, many of whom fear they could soon be under threat of deportation from President-elect Donald Trump. The request is a long shot. Obama created the program for so-called Dreamers using executive authority, and there’s nothing to stop Trump from taking it away using the same powers. DACA recipients who obtained a work permit under the program fear they would be under increased threat from the incoming administration, especially since it would have access to their personal information ― though Trump has said he would focus on deporting convicted criminals.” [HuffPost]
SURVEY SAYS PEOPLE PREFER ELECTION SYSTEM THAT BENEFITS THEIR SIDE - Americans earning their bachelor’s degree in “Self-Serving Studies” from the Electoral College. Ariel Edwards-Levy: “Most Democrats want to see the nation switch over to a popular vote system for electing the nation’s leader, a new HuffPost/YouGov poll finds, with about 4 in 10 also saying that they will refuse to accept Donald Trump as their legitimate president…. Democrats now favor a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College, 66 percent to 14 percent, according to the HuffPost/YouGov survey, while Republicans support keeping the current system by 67 percent to 13 percent. Independents are close to evenly split.” [HuffPost]
A+ ECONOMIC ANXIETY CURE - Alexander Kaufman: “Donald Trump promised during his campaign to bring back mining jobs to struggling workers in coal country. Now the president-elect is apparently considering for commerce secretary a Manhattan billionaire who owned a West Virginia coal mine where 12 workers died in 2006. Hedge fund titan Wilbur Ross, 78, tops Trump’s list to lead the Department of Commerce, according to a Politico report later seemingly confirmed in a tweet by financier Carl Icahn, a Trump confidant.” [HuffPost]
Using Halperin’s grading scale: Style: C, Substance: D+ Final Grade: F - “Mark Halperin and John Heilemann’s afternoon politics show on Bloomberg TV, “With All Due Respect,” will end following coverage of Donald Trump’s inauguration, according to a staff memo. Halperin and Heilemann, who joined in May 2014 and served as co-managing editors of Bloomberg Politics, will continue to host the show daily until Dec. 2. Bloomberg will produce four hourlong specials previewing Trump’s presidency and then cover the event on Jan. 20. The two journalists will cease day-to-day roles with the company, but according to the memo are in discussions to ‘play a role at Bloomberg as contributors and columnists.’” [HuffPost’s Michael Calderone]
BECAUSE YOU’VE READ THIS FAR - Here’s a helpful duck.
TRUMP RUINING ALREADY TERRIBLE AREA - Would working out of Mar-A-Lago kill the guy? Sarah Maslin Nir: “They came from as far as England, Italy and Mexico and as close by as Harlem to rarefied turf on the Upper East Side, all to take a selfie with Trump Tower’s golden sign in the background. Below it was a snarl of barricades, armored police officers, lead-footed tourists and aggrieved New Yorkers trying to go about their business. Double-decker tour buses crawled along, inching past on an avenue narrowed at points to a single lane by the police, who also scanned from above in a booth atop a cherry-picker…. Trump Tower is a mass of black glass and steel not far from Central Park, but since last week it has become New York’s White House-in-waiting. While Mr. Trump is inside fielding phone calls from world leaders and conferring with his inner circle, the surrounding sidewalks have become a cacophonous plaza, luring out-of-town visitors, curious New Yorkers, angry protesters and a scrum of reporters craning their necks to spot a potential cabinet member entering or exiting.” [NYT]
COMFORT FOOD
- A brief history of zip codes
- Metallica’s kid instrument performance on “Jimmy Fallon” might be our favorite to date.
- This year’s National Book Award winners.
TWITTERAMA
@SchreckReports: Are they floating Jeb for secretary of low energy yet?
@ashleyfeinberg: tiffany’s secret service codename is ivanka
@meganamram: Didn’t realize “breaking the glass ceiling” was going to be more of a Kristallnacht situation
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