The Hill

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is warning that President-elect Trump is putting national security at risk by refusing to sign memoranda of understanding with the Biden White House and federal departments and agencies to allow the transition power to proceed smoothly and give Trump and his team access to classified information.

“President-elect Donald Trump is undermining his own ability to effectively manage national security emergencies, urgent public health and safety threats, and corruption risks as he prepares to take office,” Warren wrote in a letter to Robin Carnahan, the administrator of the U.S. General Services Administration, which handles much of the presidential transition.

Warren pointed out that Trump has still not signed agreements with the Biden-Harris administration to guide the transition and has failed to publish an ethics plan, which she said would increase “the risk of the incoming administration governing for the benefit of special interests rather than the American public.”

The Massachusetts senator noted that under the Presidential Transition Enhancement Act, presidential candidates are required to develop and publicly release an ethics plan for their transition teams prior to the election.

She emphasized that Trump signed that very requirement into law in March of 2020, when he was president. And she pointed out the bipartisan law was led by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), a Trump ally, and passed Congress with overwhelming support.

Under the law, the Trump transition’s ethics plan was supposed to be published on the General Services Administration’s website by Oct. 1.

“Then-candidate Trump ignored that deadline and now — 16 days since the election — still has yet to publish the full plan,” Warren wrote.

The senator acknowledged that while the Trump transition has prepared its own ethics code she argued in her letter that it does not meet the requirements of the Presidential Transition Enhancement Act because “it includes nothing about how President-elect Trump will manage his own extensive financial conflicts of interest.”

“Without that plan, the public has no assurance that Trump intends to mitigate his conflicts of interest,” she wrote.

Warren said that Trump’s transition team should have agreed to a memorandum of understanding with the General Services Administration by Sept. 1 to receive administrative support services and to another agreement with the Biden White House by Oct. 1 to gain access to federal employees, facilities and documents.

“The Trump Transition has said it has ‘an intent’ to sign those MOUs, but thus far has refused to sign either one, and the Transition’s leadership has asserted that the agreements are ‘not important issues,’” she wrote.

Warren also highlighted that Trump’s team has not reached agreement with the Department of Justice to allow the FBI to conduct background checks for nominees and hasn’t sent to the FBI the names of prospective national security personnel.

“By refusing to cooperate with the outgoing administration, the Trump Transition cannot adequately prepare to govern responsibly. Asa a practical matter, without the MOUs, the Trump team will be delayed in accessing vital national security information and briefings with national security personnel,” she wrote.

She asked the GSA administrator to confirm the expectations set by the Presidential Transition Act for Trump transition team by Dec. 5 and to update her staff on the Trump transition team’s compliance with the law.

She also asked whether GSA officials have discussed these matters with Trump’s transition team and what the impact of Trump’s lack of compliance may have on transfer of power.

“If the new President and the new administration are not ready to govern on their first day in office, our nation’s adversaries may well see and take advantage of the situation,” Warren warned.

“This risk is not hypothetical. For example, the 9/11 Commission found that the delayed transition following the contested 2000 election hampered the preparations for President George W. Bush’s national security team and may have contributed to the 9/11 attack,” she wrote.  

The Biden administration added more than two dozen Chinese companies to its forced labor blacklist Friday in its latest effort to combat the exploitation of China’s ethnic Uyghur population.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) identified 29 businesses allegedly using forced Uyghur labor in the country’s Xinjiang province to produce goods for industries ranging from agriculture and pharmaceutics to bioscience. 

President Biden signed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLP), legislation that aims to punish China for its abuses against ethnic and religious minorities in the region, into law in 2021.

“Forced labor is a violation of basic human rights,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement. “The Department of Homeland Security has aggressively enforced the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, preventing goods made through forced labor from entering our country, investigating and exposing more than 100 bad actors, and helping American businesses avoid inadvertently profiting from this modern form of slavery.”

“Alongside our government, industry, and civil society partners, the United States is making progress towards the eradication of forced labor while supporting economic fairness, safeguarding human rights, and holding perpetrators accountable,” he added.

Mayorkas also shared that the agency was identifying new measures to prevent the import of goods produced as a byproduct of forced labor amid feedback on their swift approach to blocking products from entering the U.S.

“We get competing arguments about what we are doing — some will say we’re slow, and we certainly have heard from some businesses that we are too aggressive and moving too quickly,” Mayorkas said Friday in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. 

“It’s sometimes very difficult to get the granularity in the supply chain, but we have made incredible strides in our investigative capabilities, and we are looking at harnessing, increasingly, technology to assist us in that,” he told the outlet.

DHS announced additional bans to three companies in late September and two more in early October. 

Dan Scavino, a senior adviser to Donald Trump, said Friday that the president-elect is not planning to install former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) as the head of the FBI.

“Just spoke to resident Trump regarding Mike Rogers going to the FBI. It’s not happening — In his own words, “I have never even given it a thought.’ Not happening,” Scavino wrote on the social platform X.

It’s the latest tweet offering insight into Trump’s plans for the FBI, which Director Christopher Wray would otherwise be set to lead until his term ends in 2027 — but is expected to be fired by Trump.

Rogers, who was a FBI special agent for roughly five years, served multiple terms in Congress and also served as the Republican leader on the House Intelligence Committee for four years, making him a more traditional pick to lead the agency.

But speculation has been swirling that Trump could tap Kash Patel, a controversial figure from his first administration who held numerous national security posts.

“No part of the FBI’s mission is safe with Kash Patel in any position of leadership in the FBI, and certainly not in the deputy director’s job,” former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Thursday evening, adding that “The scope of authority is enormous.”

“If you enter into that position with nothing more than a desire to disrupt and destroy the organization, there is a lot of damage someone like Kash Patel could do,” he said.

Vice President-elect JD Vance earlier this week deleted a post after he revealed the transition team was meeting with prospective candidates — a sign of their plans to replace Wray.

Patel is a Trump loyalist who sparked internal battles during Trump’s first term and has echoed Trump’s arguments that the FBI is a weaponized agency that improperly investigated him.

“The Deep State can not be trusted. They have weaponized the government for their own political and personal agenda,” Patel wrote in an email last week from his foundation, calling the investigation into Trump’s Russia ties “fraud.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) reacted to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) appointment to chair a new House Oversight and Accountability subcommittee that will work in tandem with President-elect Trump’s new “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE).

Trump earlier this month tapped tech entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the advisory group, which will focus on cutting federal spending and reducing the size of the government.

“Absolutely dying at those two now getting assigned the ‘privilege’ of ‘working’ with MTG,” Ocasio-Cortez posted Thursday on the social platform X. “That is actually hilarious. Enjoy, fellas! Very prestigious post you have there.” 

A source previously told The Hill that Greene has already met with the incoming DOGE team, including Ramaswamy. 

“This is good, actually,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote. “She barely shows up and doesn’t do the reading. To borrow a phrase I saw elsewhere, it’s like giving someone an unplugged controller.” 

Greene was removed from all her committee assignments during her first term in 2021 when Democrats controlled the House, citing past social media interactions involving conspiracy theories and threats of violence against Democrats.  

The Georgia Republican will now lead the Delivering on Government Efficiency subcommittee, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) confirmed. He praised Greene as someone who is “not afraid to back down or walk away from a fight.”

In response to the appointment, Greene said her past experience running a construction company makes her a prime candidate to understand workplace protections and to handle “bad employees.”

“In the private sector, if you’re not doing a good job, you get fired,” she wrote on X. “But for some reason, in government, bad employees — whether they’re failing to do the job they were hired to do or working in roles that are no longer needed — never get fired.”

“This is incredibly unfair to the hard-working taxpayers of our country, and it’s about to change,” she added.

Anthony Scaramucci argued in a new interview that President-elect Trump’s choice of ex-Fox News host Pete Hegseth as Defense secretary is as “bad” as his first pick for attorney general, former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.).

“I think this is as bad as Gaetz,” Scaramucci, who served briefly as White House communications director during Trump’s first term, said late Thursday on CNN’s “AC360.” 

“I think this is less than 50 percent that he gets through,” Scaramucci added, referring to Hegseth.

“And I think the Republicans are taking a tack in the Senate that’s very different than the Trump transition team thought they would. Or frankly, people like us here speaking about it.”

Scaramucci, a vocal Trump critic, said he had a “good relationship “ with Hegseth. He made the comparison between Trump’s two controversial choices when discussing the sexual assault allegations against Hegseth made in 2017 by a woman who was an organizer at the California Federation of Republican Women event. Hegseth, who was an infantry officer in the Army National Guard, has denied the allegations and he was not charged.

A Trump transition team spokesperson said that a police report released this week following a public records request shows “the incident was fully investigated, and no charges were filed because police found the allegations to be false.”

Scaramucci’s mention of Gaetz came shortly after the Floridian withdrew his nomination to be the country’s top law enforcement official.

Gaetz, who was previously investigated by the Department of Justice (DOJ) as part of a broader sex trafficking probe, including allegations involving an underage woman, said his “confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition.”

The department ultimately decided not to pursue charges, and Gaetz has strongly denied any wrongdoing.

Hours after Gaetz withdrew from consideration, Trump selected former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi to lead the DOJ.

While on CNN, Scaramucci, a former investment banker, said that Republicans serving in Washington are “ready” for Trump and could eventually “push back” against him if he is a “lame duck.” 

“I think the Republicans have shape-shifted a little bit here and are ready for Donald Trump. Also remember, if Donald Trump is a lame duck, he‘s only got one more credible election ahead. And that‘s the midterms. And I think they‘re going to push back,” he said. 

Former FBI Director Andrew McCabe said the bureau would be endangered if Kash Patel, a former aide to President-elect Trump, is nominated and confirmed to lead the agency.

“No part of the FBI’s mission is safe with Kash Patel in any position of leadership in the FBI, and certainly not in the Deputy Director’s job,” McCabe told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Thursday evening, adding that “The scope of authority is enormous.”

“If you enter into that position with nothing more than a desire to disrupt and destroy the organization, there is a lot of damage someone like Kash Patel could do,” he said.

Patel has remained loyal to the president-elect after serving as a senior advisor to the then-acting director of national intelligence, and chief of staff to former acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller during Trump’s first term. But he has never been directly employed by the FBI.

Earlier in the interview, McCabe mentioned the years of experience within the agency that is required to understand its complex structure.  

“I can tell you from my own experience, there is no way I could have successfully performed in that role without having spent the first 10 years of my career doing criminal work in the FBI,” he said on CNN’s “The Source.”

Former FBI Special Agent Daniel Brunner also said Patel’s leadership would do “massive damage” to the agency. 

“Putting someone like Kash Patel in the position of director of the FBI is, I believe, extremely, extremely dangerous because … his resume isn’t traditional,” Brunner said Sunday on CNN.

However, Trump’s choice is on par with other appointments. Some have questioned the backgrounds of former Fox & Friends host Pete Hegseth, who was nominated to lead the Defense Department, and former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who was tapped as director of national intelligence.. 

The president-elect has prioritized a reformatory administration with the help of billionaire Elon Musk and biotech entrepreneur — and former primary rival —Vivek Ramaswamy, who will co-head the new Department of Government Efficiency, which was created to do away with “wasteful” federal agencies. 

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) suggested in a recent interview that the Department of Justice (DOJ) staff is worried it will become a “law firm” for President-elect Trump during his second stint in the White House. 

His claim came shortly after Trump tapped former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to lead the DOJ following former Rep. Matt Gaetz’s (R-Fla.) withdrawal from consideration. 

“So, she’s really presiding over the bureaucracy,” Raskin, the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, told MSNBC’s “Alex Wagner Tonight” in an interview Thursday. “That is where she will be the key transmission belt between Donald Trump’s orders and then making the bureaucracy move.”

“That, of course, is what everybody at the Department of Justice is so afraid of, that there will be a wholesale abandonment of the law and Constitution and it will basically become like the Donald Trump law firm,” he added. 

Gaetz halted his quest to be the nation’s top prosecutor on Thursday, after facing an uphill climb to secure enough votes in the Senate to get confirmed. Hours later, Trump announced Bondi, who served as Florida’s attorney general from 2011 to 2019, as his next pick. 

Raskin, a vocal Trump critic, said that if Bondi ends up getting confirmed for the post, she would be tasked with defending Trump’s campaign promise to deport millions of migrants.

Trump has repeatedly promised to carry out the “largest deportation effort in American history.”

“So, she would obviously be the chief lawyer in charge of that operation and defending it against everybody suing, presuming that it’s done in the way they’ve done things in the past, which is running completely roughshod over people’s civil rights and civil liberties and what the law does,” Raskin said.

Before winning the presidential election, Trump told podcast host Joe Rogan in an interview last month that one of his “biggest” mistakes was picking disloyal people to serve during his first administration.

“The biggest mistake I made was I picked some people. I picked some great people, you know, but you don’t think about that. I picked some people that I shouldn’t have picked,” he said at the time.

Veteran Democratic strategist David Axelrod criticized President-elect Trump’s new pick for attorney general, arguing she will be loyal to Trump first, not the duties of the Constitution. 

“So, he gets in her what he wants, which is he wants someone who will be responsive to him first, not the duties of the attorney general or the Constitution,” Axelrod said Thursday evening in an interview on CNN.

“He wants to have political control over the Justice Department, and she to Scott‘s point, I think she‘s fully willing, able and capable of doing that, of putting a political functionary uh, who he trusts in that office.”

His comments come less than a day after Trump tapped former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi to lead the Justice Department (DOJ).

“Now, whether the rest of the country feels comfortable about that, whether the senators do. We‘ll see,” Axelrod said. “It is a very … I think it‘s a very daunting proposition for those who care about the integrity of the Justice Department.”

Axelrod’s remarks about Bondi follow former Rep. Matt Gaetz’s (R-Fla.) withdrawal from consideration for the DOJ’s top position. The former House lawmaker was one of Trump’s most controversial nominations.

He announced he would bow out on Thursday as he faced an uphill battle to win over senators. His decision, announced on social platform X, came after he met with Senate Republicans.

Axelrod, who served as a senior advisor to former President Obama, said it was a “good move” to remove Gaetz from the nomination. 

“Clearly it was going to crash and burn, and he shouldn’t have been there in the first place,” he told CNN’s Erin Burnett on “Outfront,” calling it a “horrific choice.”

Bondi, who served as Florida’s top prosecutor from 2011 to 2019, was also part of Trump’s defense team when the then-president was facing his first impeachment. 

“Pam will refocus the DOJ to its intended purpose of fighting Crime, and Making America Safe Again,” Trump wrote in his announcement. “I have known Pam for many years — She is smart and tough, and is an AMERICA FIRST Fighter, who will do a terrific job as Attorney General!”

With Gaetz out of the way, eyes now shift to the president-elect’s other controversial choices: Pete Hegseth for Defense chief, former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

“The View” co-host Ana Navarro in a recent interview praised President-elect Trump’s tapping of former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to head the Justice Department (DOJ), after former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) stepped aside.

“I know Pam Bondi very well. Pam Bondi, like many other Republicans, is a mainstream Republican who turned MAGA,” Navarro, a CNN contributor and GOP strategist, said Thursday in an interview on “AC360.”

“I will tell you, she is not an ogre. She is not a jerk,” she continued. “She’s not a person who purposely wants to come across as being the kind of person that Matt Gaetz wants to come across as being.”

Navarro noted that Bondi was an early loyalist of Trump, backing him since the 2016 primaries — even as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush were in the running.

“I think with Pam Bondi, he gets loyalty, which matters a lot to him,” she told host John Berman.

Her remarks came the same day Gaetz withdrew from the consideration after meeting with Senate Republicans amid an uphill battle to win them over. Following his decision, Trump announced he would pick Bondi — who served as the Sunshine State’s top prosecutor from 2011 to 2019 — for attorney general.

“She is smart and tough, and is an AMERICA FIRST Fighter, who will do a terrific job as Attorney General!“ Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Bondi was on Trump’s defense team during the then-president’s first impeachment. The Florida Republican is also the chair of the Center for Litigation at the America First Policy Institute. 

Navarro contrasted Bondi to Trump’s other Cabinet picks. 

Former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, who Trump picked to be his Defense secretary, was accused of sexual assault in 2017, an allegation that he strongly denied.

Other controversial choices are anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard to serve as director of national intelligence, despite alleged ties to Russia.

Navarro said Bondi is one of Trump’s “better picks.”

“She hasn’t been accused of sexual assault. She hasn’t sawed the head off a whale or stabbed a dead bear cub,” she added, referring to Hegseth and allegations Kennedy’s daughter made against the former independent presidential candidate.