HHS chief nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (far right) shows loyalty to President-elect Trump by eating a McDonald’s Big Mac. Also in this “viral” picture on Trump's jet (L-R): Elon Musk, Trump, Donald Trump Jr., House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA).

By Todd Lassa

Was Donald J. Trump joking when he said earlier this year he would be a dictator only on Day One of his second administration? There are pretty clear signs that the president-elect’s plans to transform our democratic republic into something different already is underway. Consider his four most controversial proposed appointments, announced rapid-fire only in the week after Vice President Kamala Harris’ decisive defeat. 

The president-elect wants (Ex-) Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), one of the most loyal Trumpists in Congress these last four years to be his attorney general, knowing he will investigate politicians and government officials Trump feels have aggrieved him. 

Trump’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was a key reason he lost his first re-election campaign. Anti-vaxxer/conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is his choice for secretary of Health & Human Services. 

Pete Hesgeth is a Fox News weekend host and an Army National Guard officer who is not a general who would resist any attempt to politicize the military. He is Trump’s choice for Defense secretary. 

After a private meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Helsinki six years ago, Trump told a press conference he trusted the dictator more than US intelligence about whether Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election. Trump’s choice for national intelligence director is former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), who has been supportive of Russia and has visited Syria’s strongman-president, Bashar Assad. 

‘Warrior Board’

Whether or not he will, officially, implement key planks in The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, Trump has made it clear he plans to dismantle pillars of the federal government, beginning with firing four-star generals and admirals he wants to purge from the military. Trump’s transition team is considering a draft executive order, which The Wall Street Journal has reviewed, that would establish a “warrior board” of retired senior military personnel with power to review three- and four-star officers and recommend removing those deemed unfit – i.e., those devoted to diversity, equity and inclusion. Trump has in the past made a vow to fire “woke generals.”

As commander-in-chief, Trump already will have the ability to “fire at will,” but such an outside board as outlined in the draft EO would bypass the Pentagon’s regular promotional system, and hints at a wide-scale purge, according to the WSJ.

Two purges Trump might have wanted to make years ago are his former chief of staff, retired Marine Gen. John Kelly and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during his first term, Gen. Mark Milley. Both publicly warned prior to the November 5 election they believe Trump is a fascist.

A progressive military group, VoteVets, warns that the “warrior board” in the proposed executive order would “politicize” the military, according to Newsweek, which dubs the potential plan in its headline, “MAGA Military.”

Musk and Ramaswamy

Then there’s the proposal for a Department of Government Efficiency to be led by Tesla/SpaceX/Starlink CEO Elon Musk (who apparently has become a perennial guest at Mar-a-Lago) and his fellow billionaire, pharmaceutical exec and former candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, Vivek Ramaswamy. The department would not be a government entity so to avoid Musk and Ramaswamy having to divest themselves of any corporate holdings or interest, and has been compared with President Reagan’s Grace Commission, which got nothing substantial accomplished. Musk says he wants to use the Efficiency Department to cut $2 trillion out from the $6.75 trillion federal budget. 

That sort of cut is widely considered impossible, but even managing a small fraction would have a profound effect on the federal government, not to mention on the unemployment rate and overall economy.

The Fourth Senator

Three Republican senators likely to push back against at least some of Trump’s nominees are Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska, Susan Collins, of Maine, and Todd Young, of Indiana, each of whom did not vote for their party’s leader November 5. If these three plus 47 Democratic senators vote against any Trump nominees, the incoming vice president, JD Vance, will cast the tiebreaker on a 50-50 vote. 

The Trump team also has floated the possibility of recess appointments, which the former and future president used extensively in his first term in order to fill key positions.

Meanwhile … One of the 53 Republicans making up the Senate majority is freshman Sen.-elect David McCormick. The Associated Press called the Pennsylvania senate race for McCormick over three-time incumbent Democrat Bob Casey after it concluded there weren’t enough remaining ballots left to be counted in precincts where Casey was leading. McCormick’s 29,000-vote lead is well within the 0.5% margin that triggers an automatic recount, which Casey has refused to waive. 

Pennsylvania counties have until Wednesday, November 20, to begin the recount and must finish by noon on Tuesday, November 26.

_____
MONDAY 11/18/24

CPI is 2.6% -- The Consumer Price Index was up 0.2% in October, for a 2.6% annual rate, up slightly from the September annual rate of 2.4%, which came before the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate cut by a quarter-point. The October CPI for all items except food and energy was +3.3%. [CHART: Bureau of Labor Statistics]

FRIDAY 11/15/24

Not an Onion Headline – “The Onion Buys Infowars, Alex Jones’ Site, Out of Bankruptcy.” That’s from The New York Times, so you know it must be accurate. 

Also accurate: Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion’s owner Global Tetrahedron says the purchase has the backing of Everytown for Gun Safety, the group founded in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting. A bankruptcy judge forced Infowars parent Free Speech Systems to the auction when Jones failed to pay a judgment totaling nearly $1.5 billion to Sandy Hook shooting victims’ families for their successful defamation suit. 

The sale to Global Tetrahedron is subject to approval by a bankruptcy judge. Global Tetrahedron did not reveal the amount of its winning bid, but families reportedly support a lesser purchase price in favor of turning Infowars over to The Onion’s owners.

We’re expecting an online makeover that turns Infowars into something like Stephen Colbert’s old satire of Fox News hosts on his Comedy Central spinoff of The Daily Show, called The Colbert Report.

Sandy Hook families sued Jones in Connecticut and Texas after he repeatedly spread a vile conspiracy theory on Infowars that the shooting, in which 20-year-old Adam Lanza killed six teaching staff and 20 six- and seven-year-old children on December 14, 2012, was a “staged” TV production.

Everytown backs Global Tetrahedron’s purchase of Free Speech Systems out of bankruptcy and in fact will sponsor the new Infowars under The Onion parent’s ownership. Along with Infowars, Global Tetrahedron also obtains Free Speech Systems’ production studio and Jones’ diet supplement business.

Sandy Hook families’ suit, filed in Connecticut and Texas, was never about the money but rather about putting an end to Jones’ Infowars lies, Chris Mattei, attorney for the plaintiffs, told NPR. 

When asked on NPR’s All Things Considered when Global Tetrahedron’s new Infowars would launch, CEO Collins said; “We can’t really give it away, but it’s in January.”

•••

Drill, Baby, Drill – President-elect Trump has named North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R) his nominee to head the Interior Department, which manages nearly 500 million acres of public land and vast coastal waters. Prime oil drilling locations, in other words.

Think of Burgum as the yin to Elon Musk’s yang.

Burgum made his fortune from software, real estate and venture capital before he ran for North Dakota governor in 2016 and is “particularly close” to Harold G. Hamm, the CEO and founder of one of the largest independent oil companies, Continental Resources, according to The New York Times, which notes that Hamm has given nearly $5 million to the Trump campaign since 2023.

--TL

_______________________________________________

THURSDAY 11/14/24

Bye-Bye Flouride? – President-elect Trump is expected to nominate vaccine-averse Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be head of the Department of Health and Human Services, Politico reports, citing a “person with direct knowledge” of the plan. When RFK Jr. was running for president this year on his own, he promised to “go wild” with health and food policy. His impending nomination to HHS is yet another sign of the added confidence to the incoming administration of Trump’s big win November 5 and the Republican Party’s Senate majority.

•••

Storming the Gaetz – It has only been nine or 10 days, and already President-elect Trump is testing the limits of his “mandate” with his nomination of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) to be his attorney general. That is, ex-Rep. Gaetz, as he promptly resigned from the House of Representatives after Trump’s announcement. 

Gaetz was (still is?) days away from a likely release of a “damning” House Ethics Committee report about allegations he had sex with a minor, Politico Playbook reports. His resignation effectively ended the Ethics Committee investigation, but it also “scuttled” Republican plans for a show of unity after Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) was re-elected to his House leadership role – he will remain speaker.

In the end, a majority of House Republicans might get what they want: a mostly unliked Gaetz out of the House and a Republican-controlled Senate that could use the investigation to vote against him to become Trump’s AG.

Who else? … That leaves open the question of whom Trump’s next choice for AG might be. According to the Playbook report, Gaetz was not on the president-elect’s shortlist as late as Monday, but Trump was not happy with his other choices.

 Intel for Gabbard… Equally or perhaps more troubling for what’s left of mainline Republicans, and pretty much everybody else, is Trump’s choice of former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence. Her pick was first revealed by Trump confidant Roger Stone on his X/Twitter account, according to The New York Times. 

Senate Democrats are sure in her confirmation hearing to raise questions about her decision to meet with Syrian president/strongman Bashar al-Assad and her pro-Russian talking points. It will also be a test of whether someone like lame-duck and pro-Ukraine Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) might put up some resistance to Gabbard’s nomination.

Others ... Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski (AK), Susan Collins (ME) and Todd Young (IN) said prior to the November 5 election they would not vote for Donald J. Trump. Along with someone like McConnell, or if a recount for the Pennsylvania Senate race flips for incumbent Democrat Bob Casey (see below), they could provide resistance against some of Trump's more controversial nominees.

•••

Another Red House – The Associated Press has called House of Representatives’ majority at 218 seats to Democrats’ 208 seats. Nine seats are yet to be determined after last week Tuesday’s elections.

Meanwhile… AP several days ago pegged the Senate’s final numbers at 53 Republicans to 47 Democrats. On Wednesday, the Pennsylvania secretary of state’s office said that a margin of less than 0.5% between Republican candidate for US Senate Dave McCormick and three-term Democratic incumbent Bob Casey has triggered a recount. McCormick has led Casey by as many as 40,000 votes since the elections, but Casey held off on conceding as about 100,000 mail-in ballots had yet to be counted. As of Wednesday, when the recount was automatically triggered McCormick was leading Casey by roughly 28,000 votes out of 6.9 million.

--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa

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THURSDAY 11/14/24

WEDNESDAY 11/13/24

This One -- ... will be most controversial: Trump has named Rep. Matt Gaetz as his attorney general.

UPDATE -- Senate Republicans have chosen John Thune of South Dakota as majority leader. Thune replaces Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who steps down as minority leader this year.

Majority Leader Day – Republican senators are set to choose the next majority leader Wednesday, with GOP whip John Thune of South Dakota, and Sen. John Cornyn of Texas the lead candidates. Dark horse is President-elect Trump’s preference, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida (U.S. News & World Report). 

•••

DOGE Style – The tech bro couple of MAGA dreams, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, are tipped to lead President-elect Trump’s proposed Department of Government Efficiency – yes, DOGE, for The Elon’s favored bitcoin product – according to The Wall Street Journal. DOGE’s mandate is to streamline government bureaucracy, Trump said. Good news for the world’s richest man and leader of SpaceX, X, Tesla and Starlink is that DOGE will operate outside of government – so no need for Elon to divest, even regarding NASA contracts with SpaceX.

More picks for All the Best People 2.0 … Peter Hegseth, a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and host of Fox & Friends Weekend will be Trump’s defense secretary, The New York Times reports, adding that he’s “outside the norm of the traditional defense secretary.” Which, if you haven’t been paying attention, is the point. … Mike Huckabee, talk show host on the religious network TBN, former governor of Arkansas and father of the current governor of Arkansas is Trump’s choice to be ambassador to Isreal. Huckabee has “long called himself a Zionist,” the AP notes. So, no two-state solution. Nah.

--TL

TUESDAY 11/12/24

Noem to Homeland Security – President-elect Trump has chosen South Dakota Gov. and Uber-Trumper™ Kristi Noem to lead the Department of Homeland Security, The Wall Street Journal reports. The department is key to Trump’s mass deportation plans. Noem was on the short-list to become Trump’s running mate last summer.

Gallego Beats Lake – Arizona was the seventh and final swing state to swing for Donald J. Trump in Sunday’s final count, but the president-elect’s coattails were not long enough to drag along uber-Trumper Kari Lake, who has lost her US Senate bid to Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego. With 95% of the vote counted, challenger Lake had 47.8% of the vote to Gallego’s 50%, The Wall Street Journal reports. Final count for the next Senate is 53 Republicans to 47 Democrats.

•••

Trump Appointments – President-elect Donald J. Trump has revealed a number of appointments the past few days, beginning last Thursday with his campaign chair, Susan Wiles, for chief of staff. Meanwhile …

Secretary of State: Marco Rubio, as first reported on CNN’s The Source With Kaitlan Collins. Yes, that’s right, ‘Little Marco,’ though since that ca. 2016 Trump insult, the neocon senator from Florida, a hardliner on China, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba, according to The New York Times, has come around to the Trumpian belief the Ukraine “conflict” has reached a stalemate, and “needs to be brought to a conclusion.”

UN ambassador: Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York. Stefanik was a Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan trad-conservative Republican when she first ran for her House seat in 2014, at age 30, (per NPR’s All Things Considered), but pivoted to support Trump during his first administration. By 2021, she replaced Rep. Liz Cheney (WY) as House Republican Conference Chair after Cheney’s colleagues ousted her over her repudiation of Trump’s involvement in the January 6^th attack on the US Capitol. 

EPA administrator: Lee Zeldin, another New York Republican, will be in charge of dismantling President Biden’s climate change regulations (Politico). Zeldin was a loyal supporter of the president-elect when he served as a congress member during the first Trump administration.

Border czar: Thomas Homan was acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for part of the first Trump administration (ibid). He will not need Senate confirmation to become border czar, an unofficial title the Trump/Vance campaign misleadingly attached to Kamala Harris to attack her record as vice president. Homan says Trump 2.0 will crank up workplace raids, telling Fox & Friends’ Steve Doocy; “Where do we find most victims of sex trafficking and forced labor trafficking? At worksites.”

Deputy chief of staff: Stephen Miller, the 39-year-old senior advisor to Trump during his first administration (ibid) is considered perhaps the most extreme of hardliners on immigration reform. 

Speaking of … Susan Wiles, Trump’s pick as his chief of staff and the first woman to be so-named, told a private crowd that Trump will “move quickly” to reinstate orders from his first administration that President Biden then revoked, The New York Timesreports. Wiles did not specify which orders will be reinstated.

Uninvited … Niki Haley and Mike Pompeo. Haley, who once had Stefanik’s future job reportedly patched things up with Trump after her attempt to beat him to the GOP nomination this year, but he did not take her up on her offer to campaign for him. Trump ruled out Haley and his former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, for any future in his next White House. Pompeo, a pro-Ukraine hawk, reassured Fortune’s Global Forum in New York City Monday that Trump “is not going to let Vladimir Putin run through Ukraine.”

--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa

Is Project 2025 On?

MONDAY 11/11/24

By Todd Lassa

Do you fear The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025? Or do you hope to see the incoming Trump White House quickly execute it? 

President-elect Donald J. Trump spent the vs. Harris portion of his campaign disavowing any significant knowledge of the sweeping, 900-some-page blueprint titled Mandate for Leadership – The Conservative Promise, which includes provisions to fire thousands of federal public employees and replace them with the president’s loyalists, make the nation safer for Christian nationalism, eliminate the Education Department and cut or privatize Social Security and Medicare.

On that first point, specifically, Project 2025 proposes that the next conservative president reinstate Schedule F, which Trump signed at the end of his first administration, to “dispatch at will” federal employees who are in the position to make or advocate policy, says the special interest website, Federal News Network. President Biden rescinded Schedule F on the third day of his administration. 

The Harris/Walz campaign tried to tie Trump/Vance to Project 2025 and tried to tell voters it is authoritarianism hiding in plain sight.

The Harris/Walz campaign’s warning didn’t work, convincing only voters who already were supporters.

Trump denied knowing much, if anything, about Project 2025, though “at least” 140 people who worked on it had also worked in the Trump administration, according to an investigative report by CNN.

Before JD Vance became Trump’s running mate, he wrote the forward to a new book by Heritage Foundation chief and lead architect on Project 2025, Kevin Roberts, originally titled Dawn’s Early Light: Burning Down Washington to Save America (a title whose second half seems to evoke what many Trump supporters attempted on January 6, 2021). The book was original scheduled for publication by HarperCollins on September 24, but the controversy raised by the Harris/Walz campaign prompted Roberts to call for its release date to be delayed until November, according to RealClearPolitics.

In his early-Wednesday morning acceptance speech last week, Donald J. Trump said he has an “unprecedented mandate.” Trump has since won all seven battleground states, and has even won the American popular vote, a claim he could not make eight years earlier. 

Meanwhile, the GOP has a 53-46 Senate majority (with one race yet to be called) and a 213-203 House majority likely to remain Republican when all the ballots are counted. 

Since his election victory, Trump has reiterated plans to close the southern border and start deporting undocumented aliens – at least, those deemed “criminals,” at first. He will end the Russian-Ukraine war in 24 hours, much to the dismay of Volodymyr Zelenskyy and to the delight of Vladimir Putin. 

Trump will keep his tax-cut promise, which means making the Trump Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 – set to expire next year – permanent, while also lowering the corporate tax for certain corporations to 17%, from 21% (which itself was a TCJA reduction from 35%). 

Our president-elect finds “tariff” to be the most beautiful word in the English language and has promised 10% across the board one for virtually all incoming imports. 

Conservative and liberal economists alike warn that his plans for tariff hikes and mass deportations will re-ignite inflation, so Trump might want to consider instead slow-walking these promises and take the Bidenomics gains of 2.4% current inflation and 4.1% unemployment, along with decent economic growth, as his own win.

Which gets us back to Project 2025: Will Trump pivot back to The Heritage Foundation’s radical conservative blueprint? Will he implement a few of the less-radical policy initiatives? Or will he move toward full implementation without naming it? 

Your opinion on these questions matter. Email editors@thehustings.news with your civil comments and please, indicate your political leanings in the subject line. [You’ll note a right-column commentary on this question by Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay, who is a never-Trump conservative. We welcome comments from both never-Trump and pro-MAGA conservatives, as well as liberal readers from the various degrees along the left-spectrum.]

_____
MONDAY 11/11/24

The platform of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz is called “A New Way Forward” …

Taxes:

•Cut taxes for 100 million Americans, with no income tax increases for anyone earning less than $400,000 per year.

•Restore the expanded Child Tax Credit from the early years of the Biden administration, to as much as $3,600. 

•Expand the Child Tax Credit to provide up to $6,000 in tax relief for middle- and low-income families for the first year of a child’s life.

•Raise the corporate tax rate to 28%, “still well below the rate that was in place before the Trump tax cuts,” which expire in 2025.

Affordable housing: 

•Partner with the private sector to build 3 million additional homes, via the Neighborhood Homes Tax Credit.

•Launch a $40 billion Local Innovation Fund for housing expansion.

•Offer first-time homebuyers $25,000 in down-payment assistance.

•Expand the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit for private and non-profit developers to expand the affordable rental supply by more than 1.2 million new homes.

•Crack down on large corporate landlords using equity-backed price-setting tools via a proposed Preventing the Algorithmic Facilitation of Rental Housing Cartels Act and stop Wall Street investors from buying up homes in bulk.

•Create a new Neighborhood Homes Tax Credit to support new construction or rehabilitation of more than 400,000 owner-occupied homes.

‘Opportunity Economy’:

•Spur creation of 25 million new business applications by expanding the start-up expense deduction for new businesses to $50,000 from the current $5,000.

•Reduce obstacles and red tape that “make it harder to grow a small business.”

•Invest in workers, innovation and industry to revitalize American manufacturing, strengthen the US industrial base and maintain a lead in cutting-edge technologies.

Food/Grocery Costs:

•Invest in “building resilient food supply chains” by expanding production among new suppliers and small farms, growers and processors to create broad-based supply chains.

•Crack down on “unfair” mergers and acquisitions among big food corporations. Investigate and prosecute price-fixing. 

•Assure that the federal government has the resources to identify and take on anti-competitive food and grocery industry practices.

•Call on Congress to pass a federal ban on price gouging.

Health Care:

•Expand and make permanent tax credit enhancements for Affordable Care Act (ACA, or “Obamacare”) marketplace plans.

•Extend the $35 cap on insulin and $2,000 cap on out-of-pocket drug costs to all Americans.

•Accelerate the speed of Medicare prescription drug negotiations.

•“Crack down” on pharmaceutical companies that block competition and on abusive practices who “squeeze” small pharmacies’ profits and raise costs for consumers.

Energy Costs:

•Continue to invest in a clean energy economy and cut red tape so clean energy projects are “completed quickly and efficiently.” The Harris/Walz platform says the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act has made “more than $265 billion in clean energy investments creating more than 330,000 jobs.” 

•Continue home energy technology credits from the Inflation Reduction Act and secure more than $22 billion in financial assistance for households to maintain safe and healthy indoor temperatures.

Immigration:

•Harris plans to push Congress to pass through the bipartisan border security bill drafted earlier this year. The bill, which was supported by the National Border Patrol Council (union for border agents) would add thousands of border patrol and other immigration personnel, speed up immigration decisions and make it harder to claim asylum in the US (per Time). 

Foreign Policy

•Stand up against dictators and ”defend America’s interests and democracy,” and US interests in Ukraine, South Korea, Israel and elsewhere.

Abortion:

•Supports ending the filibuster, a procedural hurdle requiring 60 Senate votes, to make it possible to reinstate Roe v. Wade, which protects abortions up to the time of fetal viability – about 20 weeks -- as the law of the land. Democrats would likely need to retain their slim Senate majority after November 5 in order to have enough votes to remove the filibuster. The platform opposes allowing states from imposing restrictions on abortion (per The Washington Post). 

_____
MONDAY 11/4/24

Republican candidates Donald J. Trump and JD Vance say the nation has been in “serious decline” since the Biden/Harris administration took over nearly four years ago. Their proposed fixes…

Tariffs and Taxes

•Trump has called “tariff” the “most beautiful word” in the English language. His policy supports “baseline” tariffs on foreign-made goods and passage of the Trump Reciprocal Trade Act, which would impose a 10% tariff on imports from all countries and a 60% tariff on Chinese imports. 

•Make permanent provisions of the Trump Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which doubled the standard deduction and expanded the child tax credit (they expire in 2025). Eliminate taxes on tips for restaurant and hospitality workers, and “pursue additional tax cuts.”

Energy

•The platform claims the US became the number one producer of oil and natural gas in the world under the Trump administration and will be number-one again by lifting restrictions on American energy production, including nuclear power, and by terminating the “Socialist” Green New Deal. 

•Trump claims lowering fuel costs for transportation of goods will bring down the inflation rate.

Affordable Housing

•Platform claims inflation-slashing will reduce mortgage rates and help new home buyers. The platform also calls for opening limited portions of federal lands for new home construction and promotes home ownership via tax incentives and support for first-time buyers. It would also cut “unnecessary” regulations that raise housing costs.

Deregulation

•Slash wasteful government spending and promote economic growth to stabilize the economy.

•Cut burdensome regulations by reinstating Trump administration deregulation policies, which the platform says saved Americans $11,000 per household.

•Lead the world in the emerging industries of crypto, artificial intelligence and space to “pave the way for future economic greatness.”

Healthcare

•Increase transparency, promote choice and competition and expand access to new affordable healthcare and prescription drug options. Also protect Medicare from the “Democrat plan to add tens of millions of new illegal immigrants” to its rolls. 

•Shift resources back to at-home senior care, overturn disincentives that lead to care worker shortages and support unpaid family caregivers through tax credits and reduced red tape.

Education

•Support universal school choice for every US state, support schools that focus on excellence and parental rights, end teacher tenure and adopt merit pay.

•Defund public schools that engage in “inappropriate” political indoctrination of our children of federal taxpayer dollars.

•Stand up to those who violate the religious freedom of American students. Champion the right to pray and read the bible in school.

Immigration

•Stop illegal immigration, secure the border, deport illegal aliens and reverse Democratic Party open border policies that the platform says have driven up the cost of housing, education and healthcare for American families. Trump has said publicly he intends to deport as much as 20 million illegal aliens.

•Complete the Trump administration’s border wall and shift “massive portions” of federal law enforcement to immigration enforcement. “We will use all resources needed to stop the invasion – including moving thousands of troops currently stationed overseas to our own southern border.”

•Restore the Trump administration’s travel ban and use Title 42 to end the child trafficking crisis” by returning the children to their home countries.

•Use existing federal law to keep “foreign Christian-hating Communists, Marxists, and Socialists out of America. … We will use extreme vetting to ensure that jihadists and jihadist sympathizers are not admitted.”

•Cut federal funding to sanctuary cities that release “dangerous illegal alien criminals” rather than turn them over to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

•Make merit-based immigration a priority so those admitted to the US contribute positively to US society and economy.

Foreign Policy

•Stop wars by ending global chaos and restoring “peace through strength” via a buildup of the American military. Trump has said he will end the war in the Ukraine in a day by negotiating with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

•Stand with Israel and seek peace in the Middle East.

Abortion

•Trump claimed victory when the US Supreme Court, including his three appointees, overturned Roe v. Wade in their 6-3 ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. After the 2022 midterm elections indicated heavy voter opposition to the Dobbsruling, Trump changed his position on the issue and now says it is a state’s issue on whether and how to restrict abortion.

_____
MONDAY 11/4/24

Democratic Ticket

Kamala Harris rally Friday at the Wisconsin State Fair Exposition Center 6-10 pm CT in Milwaukee with musical artists Cardi B, DJ Gemeni Gilly, Flo Milli, Glo Rilla, The Isley Brothers and MC Lyte.

Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff campaigns for Harris/Walz in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, time and location TBA.

Republican Ticket

JD Vance rally 1 pm ET Friday in Portage, Michigan.

Donald J. Trump rally 4:30 pm ET Friday at Macomb Community College, Warren, Michigan.

Vance rally 6 pm ET Friday at The Forum at 95, in Selma, North Carolina.

Trump rally 8 pm CT Friday at Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum, site of this year’s Republican National Convention and the first Harris/Walz rally last summer. 

Vance rally 10 am PT Saturday at the Whitney Recreation Center in Las Vegas.

Vance rally 12:30 pm PT Saturday at Dillon Precision, Scottsdale, Pennsylvania.

Trump rally 4 pm ET Saturday at Salem Civic Center, Salem, Virginia.

Trump rally 7:30 pm ET Saturday at First Horizon Coliseum, Greensboro, North Carolina.

Trump rally 10 am Sunday at Lancaster Airport, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

Email COMMENTS to editors@thehustings.news and please indicate your political leanings in the subject line.

_____
FRIDAY 11/1/24

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE STEADY AT 4.1% -- The US economy added just 12,000 jobs in October in part because Hurricane Helene made landfall September 26 and Hurricane Milton hit on October 9, both before the Labor Department’s October reference period for household and establishment surveys. The unemployment rate remained unchanged from September’s 4.1%. [CHART: Bureau of Labor Statistics]

Filters Off – If there seemed to be any limits remaining on what Donald J. Trump might say to win next Tuesday’s presidential election, they were pretty much off in his event with Putin-friendly ex-Fox News personality Tucker Carlson, Thursday in Glendale, Arizona (per NPR’s Morning Edition).

“Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her,” Trump said of former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, of Wyoming. “You know, when the guns are trained at her face.

“They’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, ‘Oh, gee, well, let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy.”

Cheney's response .... "This is how dictators destroy free nations," Liz Cheney said Friday (per USA Today).

Question … Was Trump’s speech motivated more by his isolationist philosophy or for his grievance against the ranking Republican from the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6^th Attack on the United States Capitol, who has been campaigning for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris?

‘Protect women’ … Harris responded Thursday to Trump’s comment Wednesday at a rally near Green Bay, Wisconsin, where he would “protect” women, “whether the women like it or not.”

Harris’ response … “It actually is, I think, very offensive to women in terms of not understanding their agency, their authority, their right to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies,” Harris told reporters in Madison, Wisconsin (per The Washington Post).

•••

Crux of the Biscuit – It’s the apostrophe. The Associated Press reports that sources say White House officials altered a transcript by non-partisan stenographers of President Biden’s self-inflicted reversal of the Trump/Vance campaign’s self-inflicted “island of garbage” joke from Madison Square Garden last Sunday. 

The original Biden quote, as transcribed, read: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters – his—his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”

Press official-edited: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s – his—his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”

--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa

_____
FRIDAY 11/1/24