Sheldon Whitehouse May Do the Dumbest Thing (Vote to Confirm RFK Jr.)

While it seems likely that the lion’s share of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees are going to sail through their confirmation hearings, the fortunes of three of his picks—Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence prospect Tulsi Gabbard, and would-be Department of Health and Human Services head Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—remain somewhat cloudy. Hegseth, of late, has emerged as the likeliest of the three to get over the line.

But according to a fresh report from Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall, another may be edging closer: Kennedy Jr. And the reason RFK’s chances have slightly improved have nothing to do with the nominee sanding down his fringe ideas about vaccines and modern medicine, and everything to do with the fact that Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, while not “confirmed as voting for Kennedy” nevertheless “appears to be actively considering it.”

Naturally, the reasons why, given the high stakes, are both indescribably stupid and yet very typical of the way Washington works. As Marshall reports:

I’m told that there appear to be two reasons: One is that Whitehouse and Kennedy are personal friends. They were law school roommates at UVA and that seems to have been the beginning of a lifelong friendship. There are also specific issues with Rhode Island’s health care system that apparently need regulatory flexibility from HHS. That seems to be a real issue. But it hasn’t been enough of an issue to shift the state’s senior senator, Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), who remains firmly opposed to Kennedy’s nomination.

Why would it matter if Whitehouse bucks common sense and votes to install RFK in Trump’s Cabinet? As Marshall points out, support for Kennedy among Republican senators is fluid for all the reasons you might expect (not everyone wants to see long-conquered childhood diseases make a comeback in this, the twenty-first century). But Whitehouse’s support may go a long way toward providing some of the fence-sitters some political cover to back Trump’s man.

During his visit to North Carolina Friday, Donald Trump floated the idea of making changes to how the federal government responds to natural disasters—including getting rid of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. 

“We’re looking at the whole concept of FEMA. I like, frankly, the concept when North Carolina gets hit, the governor takes care of it. When Florida gets hit, the governor takes care of it. Meaning the state takes care of it,” Trump told reporters on the tarmac in Asheville, citing the effects of Hurricanes Helene and Milton on the southwestern U.S. last year.

Trump also said that disaster aid for North Carolina and California,  both of which happen to be states with Democratic governors, would go directly through his administration rather than FEMA. Later, meeting with local officials during his visit, Trump said he’d be signing an executive order to begin reforming or even getting rid of the agency.

“I think, frankly, FEMA is not good,” Trump said. “FEMA has turned out to be a disaster…. I think we’re going to recommend that FEMA go away.”

Eliminating the agency altogether would require congressional approval, and would result in more than 20,000 federal employees losing their jobs. Trump also discussed getting rid of FEMA on Wednesday in an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity, saying that he’d “rather see the states take care of their own problems.” 

But between 2015 and 2024, Republican-led states such as Florida, Texas, and Louisiana received the majority of federal disaster aid. Any cuts to FEMA would end up affecting states that voted for him in the last three presidential elections. Perhaps Trump sees this as an acceptable price for the power to restrict aid to other places whenever he pleases.

Trump still wants to hold California wildfire disaster aid hostage until the state government capitulates to his personal agenda.

Ahead of a planned trip to the state on Friday, a reporter asked the president very directly if he would “withhold funding to Los Angeles because of its sanctuary city policy.”

“I want to see two things in Los Angeles. Voter ID, so that the people have a chance to vote, and I want to see the water be released and come down into Los Angeles and throughout the state,” Trump responded, ignoring the actual question while adding even more conditions to federal aid. “Those are the two things. After that, I will be the greatest president that California has ever seen.”

Trump went on to ramble about the abject beauty of the California terrain before returning to his thesis.

“I want voter ID for the people of California; they all want it, right now.… People want to have voter identification, you want to have proof of citizenship, ideally you have one-day voting … but I just want voter ID as a start, and I want the water to be released, and they’re gonna get a lot of help from the U.S.”

Voter ID law has nothing to do with the wildfires, or with getting federal assistance to California—it’s just one of many demands Republicans want California to meet before they dole out the funds they’ve been dangling over the state.

When asked moments later about the requirement, Trump seemed to imply that there would be no conditions on aid to North Carolina, which is still recovering from Hurricane Helene. But California was a different story: “In California, I have a condition. We want them to have voter ID,” he reiterated.

On Trump’s desire for the water to “come down into Los Angeles”: The president has repeatedly accused the California state government of refusing to send water from Northern California to fight the fires, saying that they’re ignoring Southern California to protect the delta smelt, a kind of fish.

“Los Angeles has massive amounts of water available to it,” Trump said on Tuesday. “All they have to do is turn the valve, and that’s the valve coming back from and down from the Pacific Northwest, where millions of gallons of water a week and a day, even, in many cases, pours into California, goes all through California down to Los Angeles. And they turned it off.”

It’s nowhere near as simple as he describes it, and there is no “valve.” The hydrants were overworked, not shut off. Nor did the smelt have anything to do with the lack of water to the south—high demand and low pressure did. “There’s literally no real connection between the fires in Southern California and delta smelt protections,” said the Center for Biological Diversity’s John Buse.

While taking questions from the press at Asheville Airport, in Fletcher, North Carolina, Trump was asked to comment on the removal of the security detail charged with protecting his former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

“You know, when you work for government, at some point your security detail comes off. And you know, you can’t have ’em forever. So I think it’s very standard,” Trump said.

“If it would be for somebody else, you wouldn’t be asking the question,” Trump said. “I think the question is very fair.

“You can’t have a security detail for the rest of your life because you work for government,” Trump added.

Trump’s previous efforts to discredit and demonize Fauci give the removal of his security detail a distinctly more sinister connotation.

As recently as August, Trump shared a picture of Fauci in an orange jumpsuit, during a particularly violent tirade on Truth Social. Biden issued a last-minute pardon for Fauci ahead of Trump’s inauguration Monday, likely crushing Trump’s dreams of seeing the former health official behind bars. Taking away his safety might be the next best thing.

In the past week Trump has pettily removed the security details of his former national security adviser John Bolton and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo—two administration officials who had openly criticized Trump—despite warnings from the Biden administration that both were still receiving threats against their safety.

In Fauci’s memoir, On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service, he detailed Trump’s volatile behavior and his abusive treatment of the embattled former health official. He also exposed just how desperate the president was to reopen the country through the embrace of poorly qualified advisers pushing unproven treatments.

The Trump administration is embracing a dark loophole to justify the executive’s attempts to dismantle birthright citizenship.

Donald Trump’s Justice Department cited an archaic statute in a legal filing Wednesday, arguing that the president’s executive order ending constitutionally guaranteed birthright citizenship should be totally kosher, since the children of Native Americans weren’t historically considered citizens, either.

The department cited Elk v. Wilkins, a landmark 1884 case in which the Supreme Court ruled 7–2 that Native Americans could not vote since they owed “immediate allegiance” to their tribes rather than the United States, even if they were born on American soil. (To rectify this, Congress enacted the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924 to extend citizenship to Native Americans who had been precluded from the Constitution’s protections.)

But according to Trump’s administration, the ancient ruling opens up the possibility that some individuals born within the nation’s boundaries “are not constitutionally entitled to citizenship.”

“Indian tribes occupy an intermediate position between foreign States and U.S. States,” the Justice Department wrote in a motion opposing a temporary restraining order on Trump’s executive missive. “The United States’ connection with the children of illegal aliens and temporary visitors is weaker than its connection with members of Indian tribes. If the latter link is insufficient for birthright citizenship, the former certainly is.”

The forty-seventh president’s move to end birthright citizenship was blocked by a federal judge on Thursday, who deemed the executive order as “blatantly unconstitutional.”

“I have been on the bench for over four decades. I can’t remember another case where the question presented was as clear,” Judge John Coughenour, a Reagan appointee, said, adding that it “boggled” his mind that anyone in the legal profession would believe the order could pass muster with the U.S. Constitution.

“Where were the lawyers?” when the order was made and signed, the judge asked.

Birthright citizenship is baked into the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to everyone born or naturalized on U.S. soil.

“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,” the text of the amendment reads.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services, once pitched the idea to run an experiment on the children of Samoa to see whether vaccines actually work.

Kennedy Jr., who ran the anti-vaccine nonprofit Children’s Health Defense (from which he profited greatly), still claims the long-debunked theory that vaccines cause autism and a range of health problems. A report from NBC News published Friday shows that the man who may be in charge of America’s health agencies is more than willing to play games with public safety to test his own conspiracy theories.

In July 2018, Samoa was rocked by the death of two infants, who died after being administered improperly prepared vaccines. The scandal resulted in a 10-month pause in Samoa’s vaccine program. When the program eventually resumed, parents were slow to rejoin the line for vaccines for their children.

Less than a year later, in June 2019, Kennedy Jr. received an invitation to visit Samoa from Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, who had expressed that he’d previously lost a grandchild “under similar circumstances,” which many understood to mean due to complications relating to vaccines. Edwin Tamasese, a local vaccine skeptic, had told Malielegaoi about Children’s Health Defense, and urged him to invite Kennedy Jr. to speak with him.

Kennedy Jr. knew all about the deaths in Samoa, and Children’s Health Defense had been using it to make misinformation materials and escalate its calls for “vaccine safety science,” despite the fact that the deadly error in the case had been a human one.

It was then that Kennedy Jr. pitched his cruel experiment: to use the drop in vaccination rates as an opportunity to see if vaccines actually work (spoiler alert: They do).

He brought with him Dr. Michael Craven, the Children’s Health Defense’s new chief information officer, who could set up an information system to track the effects of vaccines, or lack thereof.

Ultimately, his pitch wasn’t convincing. “I was not interested in his ideas—he was not a medical doctor,” Malielegaoi told NBC News. “Our medical experts are more credible to me.”

But Kennedy Jr. wasn’t far from done trying to intervene. Months later, when a measles outbreak started to spread through Samoa, Kennedy wrote to Malielegaoi suggesting that there was another reason for the spate of deaths. By the end of the year dozens of children were dead.

That’s when Kennedy reached out to Tamasese, the vaccine skeptic. Tamasese said that Kennedy helped assemble a team of doctors who advised him on the real cure, a vitamin C treatment, to save the kids of Samoa from the spread of measles. Meanwhile, one of the doctors on Kennedy’s team asked Tamasese to secure a vial of the measles vaccine and send it to the U.S. for testing.

Eventually, Samoa instituted a vaccine mandate, and the Covid-19 pandemic diverted Kennedy’s efforts in Samoa. Kennedy continues to claim that the measles were not responsible for the deaths of 82 children. “Nobody died in Samoa from measles,” Kennedy said in August. “They were dying from a bad vaccine.”

The Oath Keepers involved in the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection are facing new restrictions from a federal judge, just days after they had their prison sentences commuted by Donald Trump.

On Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Stewart Rhodes and seven other members of the far-right militia can’t enter Washington, D.C., or the U.S. Capitol without the court’s permission.

Rhodes was originally sentenced to 18 years in prison, one of the toughest sentences handed down as a result of January 6, and given the heavy charge of seditious conspiracy. Unlike other January 6 rioters, Rhodes was not pardoned but had his sentence commuted, along with other defendants convicted of seditious conspiracy.

“My only regret is they should have brought rifles,” Rhodes said in a January 10, 2021, recording played at his trial in 2022. “We should have brought rifles. We could have fixed it right then and there. I’d hang fucking Pelosi from the lamppost.”

On Wednesday, following his release from prison, Rhodes was spotted in the Capitol complex, sitting down in a Dunkin’ Donuts and casually speaking to reporters. The far-right militant also met with several Republican members of Congress, drawing the ire of Democrats.

“It’s just incredibly sad that this is someone who House Republicans feel should be welcomed in this building, someone who doesn’t support the rule of law, someone who actively worked against the peaceful transfer of power in our country,” Democratic Representative Pete Aguilar told Politico.

Now, at least, Rhodes and several of his far-right compatriots will be restricted from the site of their crimes four years ago. Many of their supporters, however, will be under no such restrictions, and Trump has effectively told them that they don’t have to worry about legal trouble.

The family of the late Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. hopes to see the declassified government files on his assassination before they are made public.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday directing administration officials to make a plan to release thousands of classified government documents on the assassinations of King, as well as former President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert F. Kennedy.

“More than 50 years after the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Federal Government has not released to the public all of its records related to those events,” the order stated. “Their families and the American people deserve transparency and truth. It is in the national interest to finally release all records related to these assassinations without delay.”

The King family responded in a statement from the X account of Bernice King, Martin Luther King’s youngest daughter.

“Today, our family has learned that President Trump has ordered the declassification of the remaining records pertaining to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy, and our father, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,” the statement read. “For us, the assassination of our father is a deeply personal family loss that we have endured over the last 56 years. We hope to be provided the opportunity to review the files as a family prior to its public release.”

The assassinations of King and both Kennedys have been the subjects of speculation and conspiracy theories since they occurred. Many suspect the declassified information may implicate government agencies like the CIA or FBI in some way—as that may be why they’ve been classified for so long in the first place. There could also be personal information from the FBI’s aggressive surveillance of King in the 1960s.

Trump has ordered the director of national intelligence and attorney general to have a process to release the JFK records in 15 days, and the MLK and RFK files up to 30 days after that.

Senators are expected to cast their final vote on defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth by late Friday—but the man who appointed him doesn’t appear to be too tapped into the details of the massive Republican undertaking.

Speaking with Newsmax at Joint Base Andrews early Friday, Donald Trump insisted that Hegseth—one of his more controversial appointees—was a “good man.” But his tone, helicopters whirring in the background, more closely resembled that of a reality TV host playing both sides than an executive expressing total confidence that his appointee would ascend to the top of the Pentagon.

“I hope he makes it,” Trump repeated to the far-right network.

“I was very surprised that Collins and Murkowski would do that,” Trump continued, referring to Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, who broke ranks with Republicans by opposing Hegseth’s nomination in a procedural 51–49 vote Thursday afternoon.

“And of course Mitch is always a ‘no’ vote, I guess. Is Mitch a ‘no’ vote? How about Mitch?” Trump added. McConnell voted on Thursday to advance Hegseth’s nomination, though he could still oppose Hegseth’s appointment in the final vote.

But even if McConnell ultimately swings against Trump’s pick, Democrats would still need one more Republican detractor to keep Hegseth out of the highest echelons of the nation’s military complex. Trump, it seems, is just creating suspense around the vote, which is still expected to pass.

Hegseth, a 44-year-old former infantry officer, has been under fire since Trump tapped him to lead the Pentagon. The heat has primarily stemmed from a shocking 2017 police report that revealed the Army veteran was accused of raping an attendee at a Republican women’s conference in Monterey, California. Hegseth has also admitted to several other scandals, including five affairs that he had during his first marriage.

Hegseth’s FBI background check ahead of his Senate hearing barely touched on the scandals, failing to interview Hegseth’s ex-wives or the woman who accused him.

Since then, his former sister-in-law has also accused him of “erratic and aggressive behavior” and abuse, claiming that the TV star grabbed his second wife and made her fear for her safety, to the point that the two sisters shared a code word to communicate when she felt she was in danger.

The MAGA base is in an uproar over JD Vance giving his first interview as vice president to Margaret Brennan of Face the Nation on CBS.

“Scoop: Vice President @JDVance will sit for his first interview since being sworn in with @margbrennan to air on @FaceTheNation Sunday exclusive,” CBS’s Olivia Rinaldi announced on X Thursday evening.

Brennan and Vance famously clashed at the vice presidential debate in October over whether Brennan was allowed to fact-check Vance’s comments during the debate (she was). Those farthest to the right still seem to be pretty upset by that.

“I’ll never understand why Leftist media that tried to destroy @JDVance and @realDonaldTrump are rewarded with exclusive interviews as opposed to those who were supportive and ethical,” MAGA extremist Laura Loomer wrote on X.

“Why is Vance rewarding a corrupt Democrat partisan who tried to rig a debate with his first interview as VP?” said Sean Davis, founder of the fraudulent conservative website The Federalist.

“Why would @JDVance even do this interview, let alone as his first? Don’t resuscitate your dying enemy,” right-wing radio host Rich Baris wrote.

“VP Vance rewards a left-wing media outlet by giving them his first interview,” wrote Mollie Hemingway, The Federalist’s editor in chief.

This distrust of “legacy media” like CBS goes further back than the vice presidential debate—it’s a core tenet of Trump’s ideology. But some supporters are feeling bullish about Vance appearing on CBS.

“It’s NOT a reward. He’s going to systematically dismantle every Leftest narrative they throw at him and he’s going to take the fight to them and their small audience,” said one X user.

“They’re the fool. Vance is a master at answering questions. He’ll make a fool out of her,” said another.

Vance’s interview with Brennan will air on Sunday.