Donald Trump has nominated his attorney D. John Sauer, whom you may remember as the lawyer who argued that the president should be able to kill his political rivals with impunity, to be the country’s next solicitor general.

Earlier this year, Sauer helped Trump win his presidential immunity case before the Supreme Court, which undermined other federal legal battles against Trump, like the time he tried to overturn the government after losing the 2020 election. Now Sauer will oversee all federal lawsuits.

In a statement Thursday, Trump lauded Sauer as the “lead counsel representing me in the Supreme Court in Trump v. United States, winning a Historic Victory on Presidential Immunity, which was key to defeating the unConstitutional campaign of Lawfare against me and the entire MAGA movement.”

While representing Trump, Sauer argued that if the president ordered an assassination on his political enemies, he could not be indicted unless he had first been impeached.

When Justice Sonia Sotomayor drilled him about immunity in the case of assassinating political rivals, he replied, “It would depend on the hypothetical but we can see that would well be an official act.” When she asked if the same rule existed if the president executed people for “personal gain,” Sauer said that immunity still stood.

Ultimately, the court decided that the president had immunity for official acts.

Unlike many of Trump’s other picks, Sauer does have some experience qualifying him for the position. Sauer previously served as the solicitor general of Missouri from 2016 to 2023, under pro-Trump Senators Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt, both election deniers.

After the 2020 general election, Sauer filed a brief asking the Supreme Court to overturn the results of the presidential election in several swing states over alleged mail-in voting fraud.

Sauer left the Missouri attorney general’s office in 2023 to serve as special assistant attorney general for the Louisiana Department of Justice, where he assisted them in launching a lawsuit against members of the Biden administration, aiming to prevent government officials from contacting social media platforms over First Amendment issues.

Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is drawing opposition from former Vice President Mike Pence over Kennedy’s remarks on abortion.

In a statement, Pence said Kennedy “would be the most pro-abortion Republican appointed secretary of HHS in modern history.”

“On behalf of tens of millions of pro-life Americans, I respectfully urge Senate Republicans to reject this nomination and give the American people a leader who will respect the sanctity of life as secretary of Health and Human Services,” Pence’s statement said.

Trump’s choice of Kennedy has drawn alarm from health care professionals, who see his history of opposing vaccination as a threat to public health. Kennedy has also pledged to root out “corruption” in U.S. health agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration and National Institutes of Health, and has floated the idea of removing fluoride from the nation’s public water supply.

Kennedy’s views on abortion, though, have drawn criticism not only from anti-abortion stalwarts like Pence but also from abortion rights supporters, who point to Kennedy’s comments earlier this year vaguely supporting limits on abortion “after a certain point.” Pence’s comments suggest there could be opposition to Kennedy from the former vice president’s fellow Christian conservatives in Congress.

Pence, who served in the House from 2001 to 2013, had a falling out with Trump in 2021 after certifying the 2020 presidential election results despite Trump’s supporters attempting to violently storm the Capitol. The rioters at the time even set up a noose and gallows outside the building while chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” with Trump at the time reportedly thinking that Pence deserved the chants.

With Trump thinking so little of Pence, it remains to be seen whether the former vice president’s views on Kennedy will carry any weight on Capitol Hill. In the Senate, however, Republicans may see abortion as a more important issue than Trump’s opinion, which might doom Kennedy’s nomination. Kennedy also has other skeletons that could prevent his nomination to a Cabinet position: animal skeletons.

No one on the right seems to want to criticize Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks—even if they desperately warrant questioning.

Several major conservative politicos have ducked and weaved direct questions about Trump’s decision to tap Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—a virulent opponent of all vaccines—to front the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, effectively handing the reins of the nation’s health policies to a renowned conspiracy theorist who doesn’t believe that AIDS is caused by HIV, insists that WiFi causes cancer, and wants to remove fluoride from U.S. drinking water (fluoride was first introduced into public waterways in 1945 and has reduced cavities and tooth decay in adults and children by as much as 25 percent, according to the American Dental Association).

In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Thursday, Indiana Senator-elect Jim Banks refused to come out on the side of science, backing Trump’s anti-vaccine Cabinet pick by entertaining the notion that a “thoughtful conversation about vaccines” is warranted.

“The scientific and medical community has been clear for years that what he says about vaccines is false. They don’t cause autism, there’s no direct link. Does that bother you at all?” asked Tapper.

“Look Jake, in the election Donald Trump won the popular vote, and one of the things that he promised on the campaign trail is to have a serious and thoughtful conversation about vaccines, especially after the pandemic,” Banks said, criticizing........

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