Weekly Review
Donald Trump made more than two dozen appointments and cabinet nominations, including, for secretary of the interior, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, who earlier this year organized a private meeting at Mar-a-Lago in which Trump promised to oil and gas executives a rollback of environmental regulations in exchange for $1 billion in campaign contributions; for EPA Administrator, former New York congressman Lee Zeldin, who has backed Trump’s calls for the United States to exit the Paris Agreement and received more than $400,000 in campaign contributions from oil and gas companies; for secretary of state, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who opposed the United States’ 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, wants to intercept ships and aircraft suspected of transporting nuclear materials to North Korea, and opposes a ceasefire in the Israel–Hamas war; for U.S. ambassador to Israel, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who supports the Israeli annexation of the West Bank, believes in a “one-state solution,” and once said “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian”; for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who has taken secret meetings with the Syrian dictator and accused war criminal Bashar al-Assad, echoed Russian dictator and accused war criminal Vladimir Putin’s claim that Russia went to war to prevent U.S.-funded Ukrainian labs from developing “biological weapons,” and has no experience in the intelligence services; for secretary of defense, the Fox News host Pete Hegseth, a Christian reconstructionist with ties to the ultraconservative TheoBros movement that would see the United States subject to biblical law, who once sold grenade-shaped soap, whose book American Crusade includes passages bemoaning “Muslims’ birth rates” in the United States, and whose tattoos include an AR-15 inserted into the stripes of the American flag, the words “Deus Vult,” a rallying cry for Christian invaders during the Crusades, and a Jerusalem cross, a symbol linked to white nationalism; for secretary of homeland security, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, who is banned from all tribal land in her own state for claiming that Native Americans were prioritizing “drug cartels” over parenting their children, fabricated a story about meeting Kim Jong Un, shot a puppy she described as “less than worthless,” and gifted Trump a four-foot-tall rendition of Mount Rushmore that depicts his face carved into the mountain; for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has claimed that vaccines cause autism, promoted unapproved treatments for COVID-19, said that those “most immune” from the virus are “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese” people, blamed school shootings on Prozac, drinks only raw milk, and said a portion of his brain was eaten by a worm; and, for Attorney General, Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, who, before resigning from his House seat, was the subject of an Ethics Committee probe that reportedly investigated claims of his misuse of campaign funds, sharing of inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, use of illicit drugs, and sexual relations with a 17-year-old girl.1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 “I want to go get a big bag of popcorn and pull up a front-row seat to that show,” said Ohio Representative Max Miller of Gaetz’s forthcoming confirmation hearing.37 Trump announced the creation of a Department of Government Efficiency, whose initials apparently reference Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency named for a 2013 meme of a Shiba Inu, and appointed billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, who has pledged to “delete” entire government agencies, to run the department alongside fellow billionaire Elon Musk, who tanked the value of the social media platform he renamed “X” by at least 71% in just one year of owning it, challenged Putin to “single combat” to end the war in Ukraine, and once invited a Tesla designer to throw a metal ball at the “shatter-proof” window of a Cybertruck, which then shattered.38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 It was reported that Melania Trump will probably not live in the White House for the next four years.46
Israel launched strikes into Beirut, killing Hezbollah’s spokesperson, and into Gaza, killing at least 76 people and wounding at least 158 in a 24-hour period, and the Pope called for an investigation into allegations that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.47 48 49 President Joe Biden, who wandered into the Amazon rainforest after delivering a speech about the dangers of climate change, lifted the ban on Ukraine’s using U.S.-made long-range missiles to fire into the Kursk region of Russia, reportedly in response to North Korean troops’ joining the fighting; as a result of escalation in Ukraine, the Swedish, Finnish, and Norwegian governments distributed updated guidelines on surviving a war; “If Sweden is attacked by another country,” reads the Swedish pamphlet, “we will never give up.”50 51 52 Kim Jong Un announced a “limitless” expansion to his country’s nuclear arsenal, and in Tromsø, Norway, fishermen trawling for halibut caught the USS Virginia, a nuclear-powered submarine armed with cruise missiles.53 54
At a Georgian government meeting, an opposition politician, citing claims that a recent election result was manipulated, threw a cup of black paint into the face of the Central Electoral Commission’s chairman.55 Fans circulated the theory that the fight between heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson and YouTube star Jake Paul, both of whom were reported to have received tens of millions of dollars to participate in the bout, was rigged.56 57 In Los Angeles, the police revealed that the brown bear seen damaging luxury cars in videos that were submitted to insurance companies, which paid out over $140,000 in claims, was “clearly a human in a bear suit,” and in Chicago, more than 50 people competed in a contest to determine who looked most like Jeremy Allen White, star of the FX television series The Bear.58 59 It was reported that bricks of cocaine worth nearly $900,000 were shipped to the United States inside hot chocolate packaging, and the Swiss chocolate company Lindt admitted that its chocolate was not, in fact, “expertly crafted with the finest ingredients.”60 61 —Megan Evershed
