Wednesday Briefing

Trump turned to loyalists and lawmakers to fill posts

President-elect Donald Trump is moving quickly to assemble his cabinet, naming people he expects to shift America away from the Biden administration’s agenda once he reclaims the Oval Office early next year. The appointments came as the judge overseeing Trump’s criminal case in Manhattan put a hold on the proceedings, including the sentencing.

Yet Trump’s push to stack his administration with loyal members of Congress has collided with a tough political reality for Republicans: They are running out of the bodies they need to preserve the narrow House majority they expect to hold. Trump has also demanded that Senate Republicans surrender their role in vetting his nominees, seen by many as an important check and balance.

Separately, Trump said that the billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would lead the “Department of Government Efficiency,” which he said would be the “Manhattan Project” of this era, driving “drastic change” throughout the government through major cuts to the federal budget.

Trump will nominate Pete Hegseth, a veteran and Fox News host with no government experience, to be his defense secretary. Hegseth has often defended Trump on TV. His national security adviser will be Representative Michael Waltz of Florida, a former member of the U.S. Army Special Forces, and Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, is to be the U.S. ambassador to Israel.