Good morning and happy Friday! California’s still counting (shocker), so we don’t know Trump’s exact popular vote margin yet. But the post-election avalanche of staffing picks has begun, and his first hire is already a record breaker.

2025

⏭️ Donald Trump’s presidential transition begins

The process of transitioning President-elect Donald Trump back into power began in earnest this week. Vice President Kamala Harris called Trump to congratulate him on his victory. She encouraged supporters in her concession speech, saying, “America’s promise will always burn bright…as long as we keep fighting.”

President Biden spoke with Trump and invited him to the traditional post-election Oval Office sit-down. And Biden’s staff reached out to Trump’s pre-existing transition team about accessing federal office space and funding for staff salaries ahead of the coming onslaught of appointee background checks.

• Trump’s transition team, led by former Cabinet member (and first lady of the WWE) Linda McMahon, hasn’t signed on to that standard-issue plan yet. But federal law requires that the government offer the assistance via the General Services Administration (GSA).

Over the next two months, Trump will announce his picks for 4,000 officials from secretaries of State and Defense to the White House press secretary and everything in between. Via Politico, take a look at who some of those people might be.

• As always, the outgoing president’s senior staffers will be expected to resign their posts ahead of the new guy’s inauguration on January 20.

• For comparison’s sake, here’s a list of when he named major picks in 2016.

Trump named his first staff pick on Thursday when he named campaign co-chair Susie Wiles as White House chief of staff. Wiles will be the first-ever woman to serve in the role often called the “second-most powerful person” in Washington.

• The chief of staff essentially manages the entire White House and oversees all ~1,800 employees in the Executive Office of the President of the United States (EOP).

• Wiles will be at Trump’s side for every decision he makes going forward.

Vice President-elect JD Vance will soon resign his Senate seat just two years after taking office. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, will name Vance’s replacement. That appointee will serve until 2026 when a special election will be held to fill the final two years of Vance’s term through 2028.

• A member of Congress might be a typical pick here. But with control of the chamber razor-tight, House Republicans won’t want to lose a member. So expect DeWine to look elsewhere for his pick.

GOVERNMENT

🪙 The Federal Reserve cut interest rates by 0.25% on Thursday, adding to the first cut of 0.50% announced in September. This lowers the federal funds rate — the interest rate banks can charge each other for short-term loans. Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whom Trump appointed in 2018, said he would not resign when Trump takes office and reaffirmed that the president cannot legally fire him. Powell was reappointed to a second term in office by President Biden in 2022. That term ends in 2026.

⚖️ The Department of Justice (DOJ) is winding down its two criminal cases against President-elect Donald Trump. Longstanding DOJ policy forbids prosecuting sitting presidents. The two cases dealt with his alleged attempt to overthrow the 2020 election and his alleged mishandling of classified documents. Special Counsel Jack Smith, the federal prosecutor in charge, will decide the details of the wind-down. Part of that is whether to continue with charges against other defendants.

⚖️ The sweet (legal) rewards of victory continue for Donald Trump. He was convicted of multiple felonies in his “hush money” trial in New York. But the state judge in charge of that case, Juan Merchan, hasn’t yet sentenced Trump. Merchan will decide next week whether to proceed with sentencing — which could include prison time — or to toss the conviction altogether. The state case against Trump in Georgia is also on ice and unlikely to continue. But presidents are not immune from civil lawsuits. So suits against Trump will continue.

ELECTION

🏛️ The counting goes on, and on, and on

It’s Friday morning and six states still haven’t figured out who they just elected to Congress. Republicans will retain control of the House but fifteen races have yet to be called:

• 1 in each of Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington

• 10 in California

We’re not pointing fingers or anything but, notably, recreational weed is legal in all slow-counting states. Anyway, a party needs 218 seats to control the House of Representatives. Current projections have Republicans ending up with 222 seats to Democrats’ 213. In a weird twist of fate, that’s exactly the number each party won last time around in 2022.

On the Senate side, Republicans picked up 4 seats to take control of the chamber — Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. The race in Arizona has yet to be called, but Democrats are likely to hang on there.

• Down in Puerto Rico, pro-statehood Republican Jenniffer González won the governor’s race.

Future: Donald Trump won the 2024 election with 312 Electoral College votes to Harris’s 226. Since those numbers are based on state populations, they shift every 10 years with each new U.S. Census. Current projections for the 2030 Census show the states Trump won this year gaining 12 Electoral College votes, so the Republican path to the presidency might get just a bit easier in a few years.

TRIVIA

Of the nine Supreme Court justices, Donald Trump nominated three in his first term. Three additional justices, all chosen by prior Republican presidents, are on retirement watch as Trump enters office for a second time. If at least two of them retire, Trump will have handpicked a majority of the court. Who was the last president to have nominated a majority of the Supreme Court?

Hint: We’re looking for a mid-1900s president whose VP later won the big chair himself.

AFTERMATH

🗯️ Democrats begin blame game over election loss

While Spirit Christmas scopes out the old Harris HQ, Democrats around the country are trying to figure out what the heck happened on Tuesday. Every faction of the party is pointing fingers at somebody else. That tends to happen when you lose a 97% Latino border county that hasn’t voted Republican in 132 years. Or when you nearly lose Democratic strongholds like New Jersey and Minnesota. Or when New York is closer than the former swing state of Florida.

• Sen. Bernie Sanders said it’s not surprising that "a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them."

• Rep. Ritchie Torres blamed “the far left” for managing to “alienate historic numbers of Latinos, Blacks, Asians, and Jews from the Democratic Party with absurdities like ‘Defund the Police’ or ‘From the River to the Sea’ or ‘Latinx.’”

Team Harris is blaming President Biden for not stepping aside sooner. Her advisors claim she wasn’t given enough time to dig out of the “deep hole” Biden’s age and unpopularity created with voters.

• One aide went all-in, saying “Joe Biden is the singular reason Kamala Harris and Democrats lost."

Some Democrats blame Harris for picking Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as VP instead of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. Philadelphia’s Democratic Party chair piled on, hitting the Harris campaign for poor communication.

• Others think her campaign was too arrogant and that Harris pretty much just sucked as a candidate.

Biden World says Barack Obama’s at fault for helping force Biden out of the race in July. They think Biden would’ve done better winning over white, working-class voters. On the flip side, Obama World says Biden was far too old and far too unpopular and he never should’ve run for reelection in the first place.

BRIEFS

● A federal judge struck down the Biden administration’s program providing legal status to the unauthorized immigrant spouses of American citizens.

● Canada will shut down TikTok’s two offices in the country over national security concerns. But Canadian users will still have access to the app itself, eh.

● Shoe company Steve Madden announced it will slash imports from China by up to 45% next year as it braces for expected Trump administration taxes on Chinese goods.

● Unknown actors sent racist mass text messages about slavery to Black Americans nationwide this week. The FBI and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are investigating.

● Germany’s ruling liberal government is going down the tubes. Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s power-sharing agreement with two smaller parties has collapsed, so he’s likely to be replaced with a conservative in March.

● Democrats in California cleaned up as usual but voters rejected progressive ballot propositions on the minimum wage, rent control, and more. Voters in every county, including San Francisco, approved a tough-on-crime measure.

QUOTE

ANSWER

During his first term, President Dwight D. Eisenhower got to pick two justices (including the chief justice). After his 1956 reelection, he nominated three more.

A decade prior, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed a whopping eight of nine justices. Not every president is quite so lucky, though. During his single term in office from 1977 to 1981, President Jimmy Carter got to nominate… nobody.