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November 12, 2024 the backdrop for today's news is that Republicans in the Senate will vote by secret ballot tomorrow for a new Senate majority leader. That person will control the Senate calendar, deciding what measures will be taken up by the Senate for consideration, and thus wielding power over Trump's legislative plans. Trump and his sidekick Elon Musk, along with MAGA leaders and influencers, are backing Florida Senator Rick Scott, who has signaled a willingness to do whatever Trump wants. Senators John Thune, a Republican of South Dakota, and John Cornyn, a Republican of Texas, are also staunch party members but are not as closely associated with the MAGA faction of the party. MAGA control of the Senate is at stake, and Trump and his team are pushing their extremist agenda so aggressively it will be impossible for Senate Republicans to pretend they didn't know what was at stake if they vote to empower the MAGAs. Today, the Trump transition team floated the idea that Trump could sign an executive order creating a board of retired senior military personnel that would review high ranking officers and recommend removing any they deemed unfit for leadership. Vivian Salama, Nancy A. Youssef and Laura Seligman reported in the Wall Street Journal that such a board would enable Trump Trump to purge the military of the generals whom he considers insufficiently loyal to him. Generals who refused to carry out what they considered unconstitutional orders, including using the military against US Civilians, infuriated Trump. During his first term, the chairman of Vote Vets, retired Major general Paul Eaton, warned that such a plan would turn the US Military into Trump loyalists. Eaton also warned military personnel what that would mean for the troops, suggesting that folks should take a look at Stalin's officer purges in early World War II that resulted in the Soviet army enduring incompetence and the use of its rank and file troops as cannon meat. The American military is the envy of the world's militaries. Given its efficiency for military effect and stunningly low casualty count, probably a good model to keep, transition spokesperson Caroline Levitt said. The American people reelected President Trump by a resounding margin, giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will deliver, but Trump's claims of a mandate are wrong. As vote counts continue to come in, it appears that Trump's margin of victory was actually quite slim. Trump has also vowed to eliminate the Biden administration's policies to address climate change, promising to drill, baby, drill and make the US Energy independent by increasing production of fossil fuels. In fact, the production of oil and gas hit an all time high during the Biden administration and the US Exports those products. But so long as the US Is tied to fossil fuels, it will likely always import them because the oil it exports boards is a different kind than it uses. It's not clear that even MAGA Republicans want to kill the green energy initiatives in the Inflation Reduction act that have brought new factories and good jobs to more Republican dominated states than Democratic dominated states today. Chair and chief executive officer of ExxonMobil Darren woods asked the incoming administration not to change Biden's climate policy dramatically, saying that the lack of consistency on climate change is bad for the economy. I don't think the challenge or the need to address global emissions is going to go away, he said. Anything that happens in the short term would just make the longer term that much more challenging. Exxon has invested heavily in the carbon capture industry. In 2023, woods predicted that the company's low carbon business could generate more money than its traditional oil and gas products in as little as a decade, telling investors he expects carbon capture to be a multi trillion dollar business. Trump and his team, apparently led by Elon Musk, have begun to float names for different administration posts, all of whom appear to be picked to replace nonpartisan federal experts with right wing culture warriors. For secretary of Homeland Security, Trump has proposed loyalist Christy Noem, currently governor of South Dakota. Noem had been under consideration for vice president but fell out of the running after boasting that she had shot her dog for misbehaving earlier this year. Noem appeared to suggest that Texas, which became a State in 1845, was one of the original signatories to the Constitution. She has been a Trump loyalist, focusing on the border. For US Ambassador to Israel, Trump has picked former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, an evangelical Christian who denies Palestinian rights to the west bank, instead supporting Israeli settlements in that land and saying that Israel has title deed there, calling the area by the biblical name Judea and Samaria. For secretary of Defense, Trump has tapped Fox News Channel host Pete Hegseth, a combat veteran and host of the weekend edition of Fox and Friends, a show Trump reportedly enjoys. As national security expert Tom Nichols points out, the secretary of defense has access to the nuclear command and control procedure. The secretary oversees about 1.3 million active duty troops and another 1.4 million in the National Guard and employed in reserves and civilian positions as well as a budget of more than $800 billion. Hegseth lobbied Trump to intervene in the cases of service members accused of war crimes, and he cheered on Trump's January 6, 2021 rally he became popularly known after accidentally hitting a man with an ax on the Fox and Friends show in 2015. Then in 2019, he regained notoriety when he volunteered that he had not washed his hands in 10 years because he does not believe germs are real. Hegseth has said women do not belong in combat and has been vocal about his opposition to the equity and inclusion measures in the military that he calls woke. Lolita C. Baldor and Tara Kopp of the Associated Press reported that the news that Trump has tapped the inexperienced Hegseth to run the world's largest and most powerful military stunned the Pentagon and the broader defense world. While some Republicans say they look forward to getting to know him better, others appear to share the Pentagon's concerns. But the news that Trump wants a Fox News Channel host in one of the most important positions in the United States government got overtaken quickly by Trump's announcement that the great Elon Musk, working in conjunction with American patriot Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur who challenged Trump for the presidential nomination, will lead a new Department of Government Efficiency under his administration. Their advice will, Trump announced, pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies. Their project is nicknamed Doge, an apparent reference to Musk's favorite cryptocurrency and meme coin known as dogecoin. That cryptocurrency surged after the announcement of the new Doge under Trump, adding to the gains of 153% since election day. By law, a president does not have the power to create a new department or agency, and participating in one would require Musk and Ramaswamy to get rid of their conflicts of interest. Trump's announcement said that Musk and Ramaswamy would work together to liberate our economy and make the US Government accountable to we the people. Their work will conclude no later than July 4, 2026. A smaller government with more efficiency and less bureaucracy will be the perfect gift to America on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. I am confident they will succeed. Trump appears to see himself as the founder of a new United States of America, while ironically, the real winners of the chaos he is ushering into the government will be Russia, China and the other autocratic states eager to dismantle American democracy. Trump's demonstration of his plans just before Senate Republicans have to choose their leader seems an attempt to jam those who might stand against him into his camp. And yet the framers of the Constitution believed that the Senate would be the key guardrail to stop the rise of an autocrat who would destroy democracy and install himself as a king. They expected that the determination of senators to guard their own power would protect the nation. Almost 250 years into their experiment, we're about to find out if they were right.
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Letters from an American was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dedham, Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.