Trump Melts Down as Another Nomination Blows Up in His Face
President-elect Donald Trump took to Truth Social Wednesday to deride The Wall Street Journal for reporting on his transition team’s travails.
The Journal had reported the previous evening that Trump’s pick to head the Drug Enforcement Administration, Hillsborough County, Florida, Sheriff Chad Chronister, had withdrawn from consideration. The paper also covered the controversy surrounding Pete Hegseth, Trump’s defense secretary pick, whose future is uncertain as he faces a raft of misconduct allegations.
“The Wall Street Journal is becoming more and more obnoxious and unreadable. Today’s main headline is: ‘Trump’s DEA Pick Pulls Out In Latest Setback,’” Trump wrote.
“With all that’s happening in the World, this is their Number One story of the day,” he complained, before challenging the Journal’s characterization of Chronister’s withdrawal, which Chronister announced on social media Tuesday.
“As the gravity of this very important responsibility set in, I’ve concluded that I must respectfully withdraw from consideration,” Chronister posted.
Trump insisted that Chronister “didn’t pull out, I pulled him out, because I did not like what he said to my pastors and other supporters”—seemingly referring to the Hillsborough County sheriff arresting and criticizing a Florida megachurch pastor in 2020 for violating Covid-19 lockdown orders. That incident led “the MAGA corner of the Republican Party” to sour on his pick this week, according to CNN.
Further, Trump chided the Journal for describing the incident as his “latest” challenge. “But, more importantly, what’s my ‘latest’ setback???” Trump wrote. “I just won the Presidency of the United States! They haven’t written a good story about me in YEARS.”
Of course, the reasoning behind the Journal’s word choice becomes evident upon reading the report in question, or any number of news items since Trump’s win earlier this month.
After all, the Journal article covers Chronister’s withdrawal but also details the numerous other scandals bedeviling “some of Trump’s high-profile picks”—such as Hegseth facing scrutiny for sexual misconduct allegations, Matt Gaetz withdrawing from consideration for attorney general “under pressure in the midst of sexual-misconduct and drug-use allegations,” and lawmakers questioning Trump’s other picks, including Kash Patel, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard.
Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barret asked a team of ACLU lawyers advocating for trans rights if trans people had ever really been discriminated against.
The court on Wednesday held oral arguments in United States v. Skrmetti, a landmark case originating from Tennessee that could decide just how far the federal government has to go, if at all, to protect the rights of trans people. In 2023, Senate Bill 1 became law in Tennessee, banning hormone therapy and puberty blockers for minors and imposing civil penalties on doctors who don’t fall in line. Skrmetti is challenging S.B. 1, but the conservative justices don’t seem to be having any of it.
“One question I have is, at least as far as I can think of, we don’t have a history—that I know of—we don’t have a history of de jure discrimination against transgender people,” Coney Barrett said during oral arguments on Wednesday morning. “You point out in your brief that in the last three years there might have been these laws, but before that we might have had private societal discrimination.… Is there a history that I don’t know about where we have de jure discrimination?”
By de jure Coney Barrett means “federally mandated,” and she goes on to note that other minority groups have experienced that kind of discrimination, while to her knowledge trans people haven’t.
U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar responded immediately. “Historical discrimination against transgender people may not have been reflected in the laws. But I think there’s no dispute that there is a broad history here and it hasn’t just been confined to private actors,” she said. “I think that if you actually looked at the facts there’s a wealth of evidence to suggest that transgender people throughout history have been subjected to violence, discrimination, and maybe lost employment opportunities, housing opportunities.”
Attorney Chase Strangio, the first transgender lawyer to argue in front of the Supreme Court, also later addressed Coney Barrett’s tone-deaf question.
“Transgender people are characterized as having a different gender identity than their birth sex. That is distinguishing,” Strangio said. “I would also point, if I could, to the history of discrimination—and there are many examples—of in-law discrimination, exclusions from the military, criminal bans on cross-dressing, and others.”
Coney Barrett has a history of judicial hostility toward LGBTQ issues, and trans rights specifically. She defended the dissenting justices on the Marriage Equality Act, has argued Title IX rights shouldn’t apply to trans people, and personally believes that marriage should be between a man and a woman.
Tennessee is just one of 26 states with laws that ban gender-affirming care for minors.
The nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services is open-sourcing cures from anyone with a song.
The FAQ for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” website features a relatively banal assortment of questions, from how to troubleshoot merchandising orders to how to stop recurring donations to RFK Jr.’s defunct presidential campaign. But among the bullet points hides a strange prompt that one wouldn’t expect from a man on the cusp of overseeing the nation’s health policies: an invitation to email him whatever medical therapies you’ve got lying around.
If you “have a cure........
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