The White House News

President-elect Trump is expected to name former Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) to serve as secretary of Agriculture, a source close to the transition told The Hill.

Loeffler is currently the co-chair of Trump’s second inaugural committee, ahead of the January 2025 swearing in, along with real estate mogul Steve Witkoff.

Loeffler briefly represented Georgia in the Senate after being appointed in 2019 following the resignation of former Sen. Johnny Isakson (R). She lost an election bid to the seat in the 2020 special election to Democratic Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock.

Before serving in the Senate, Loeffler was CEO at financial services company Bakkt. She was the co-owner of the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream.

President-elect Trump again turned to a loyalist in tapping former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to lead the Department of Justice (DOJ).

Trump named his choice just hours after former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) on Thursday withdrew from consideration his nomination that was plagued by allegations that he had sexual relations with a minor, which he denies. 

The announcement about Bondi garnered immediate enthusiasm from numerous key Senate Republicans, a sign she could face an easier path to confirmation.

“For too long, the partisan Department of Justice has been weaponized against me and other Republicans – Not anymore,” Trump wrote in announcing his pick on Truth Social.

Here’s what to know about Trump’s new pick to lead the DOJ:

Long-time Trump ties 

Bondi was a senior adviser on Trump’s first impeachment defense team, a role for which she took a leave from the lobbying firm Ballard Partners. She then rejoined the firm, which was founded by Florida lobbyist Brian Ballard, the former 2016 chair of Trump Victory fundraising committee.

She is still a partner at Ballard Partners, which is also where Trump’s incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles worked. During her time there Bondi lobbied on behalf of the Qatari government.

During her work on Trump’s first impeachment, Bondi raised unsubstantiated claims that would later become central to the Republican case for impeaching President Biden, floating without evidence that he had engaged in corrupt business practices with his son Hunter Biden.

Trump and Bondi’s ties go back to even before he entered politics, when in 2013 he gave a $25,000 donation from the Donald J. Trump Foundation to a political committee supporting Bondi. Bondi was weighing joining a suit against Trump University at the time.

Bondi has endorsed Trump since 2016, doing so even as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), her home-state senator, was running for president. During the first Trump administration, Bondi served on a presidential commission focused on drug addiction and the opioid crisis.

Shortly before leaving office, Trump named Bondi as a member of the board of trustees for the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts.

Bondi also works for the America First Policy Institute, a nonprofit organization made up of many former Trump officials advocating for policies aligned with the now-incoming president.

Has backed Trump’s false election claims 

Bondi was one of numerous attorneys who stepped into the fray as Trump was challenging the outcome of the 2020 election.

Though they filed 62 lawsuits, all were unsuccessful, and in some cases spurred condemnation by judges for including false claims. 

Bondi was among those who backed Trump’s claims there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, falsely claiming Trump had won Pennsylvania and insisting they had “evidence of cheating.”

At one point she raised the possibility of “fake ballots” being counted in the state but then declined to get into specifics.

She has since been a critic of special counsel Jack Smith, who brought charges against Trump relating to his efforts to thwart the transfer of power after he lost and his mishandling of classified documents after leaving the White House.

In one recent radio appearance, she called Smith and other prosecutors who have charged Trump “horrible” people who were trying to make names for themselves by “going after Donald Trump and weaponizing our legal system.” 

And in a 2023 appearance on Fox News, she echoed Trump’s claims about a “deep state” while likewise calling for an investigation of prosecutors.

“The Department of Justice – the prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones. The investigators will be investigated because the ‘deep state’ last term for President Trump, they were hiding in the shadows, but now they have a spotlight on them, and they can all be investigated,” she said.

Long prosecutorial experience

Bondi spent roughly 30 years as a prosecutor, first working in Florida’s Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa, where she was born.

Perhaps most prominently, Bondi in that role prosecuted Mets star Dwight Gooden, who in 2006 was sentenced to a year and a day in prison for violating his probation by using cocaine.

Bondi ultimately left the office to run for Florida attorney general in 2010. After she won a competitive Republican primary bolstered by her television appearances, Bondi emerged victorious in the general election and became Florida’s first female state attorney general.

As the state’s top legal officer from 2011 to 2019, she embraced fights seeking to overturn the Affordable Care Act, including at the Supreme Court, and helped lead efforts seeking to combat the opioid crisis.

Bondi also defended Florida’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, with her office in court arguing that recognizing such marriages from other states would cause “significant public harm.” She shifted her tone after the 2016 mass shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, leading to a famously heated interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

“That was voted into our state constitution by the voters of Florida. That’s what I was defending. It had nothing to do — I’ve never said I don’t like gay people,” Bondi said in the 2016 interview.

Past controversies 

While Bondi is expected to garner a more positive reception in the Senate, she may be trailed by some past controversies during her confirmation process.

Bondi was accused of improperly accepting a $25,000 donation from Trump in 2013 when she was weighing multiple fraud accusations against Trump University. She ultimately decided not to join a suit against the school brought by the New York attorney general.

Both of them denied any connection between the donation and the office’s decision, but the donation itself was illegal because it came from a tax-exempt charity organization and Trump paid a $2,500 fine.

The fine was one of numerous improper actions cited in the decision from a New York state court shutting down the foundation in 2018.

In 2013, she publicly apologized for asking that the execution of a man convicted of murder be delayed because it conflicted with a campaign fundraiser. She said she was wrong and sorry for requesting that then-Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) push back the execution by three weeks.

Bondi also adopted a dog in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, sparking a battle with the family who originally owned the St. Bernard. Bondi initially resisted giving the dog back to the family, prompting a lawsuit from the family. Bondi later settled the suit and returned the pet.

Over half of the country approves of President-elect Trump’s plans and policies for his upcoming second term in the White House, according to a new Pew Research Center survey released on Friday. 

The poll found that 53 percent of Americans at least “somewhat” or “strongly” approve of the president-elect’s plans for the future. Some 46 percent disproved. 

The respondents have expressed confidence in how Trump will handle the economy, foreign policy, immigration and criminal justice, but not as much when it comes to abortion. 

Nearly six-in-10 Americans, 59 percent, said they are “somewhat” or “very” confident that Trump will make good decisions on economic policy. Some 54 percent said the same regarding criminal justice while 53 percent expressed belief in his handling of foreign policy and immigration, according to the poll. 

On the flip side, 45 percent were confident in the president-elect’s future handling of abortion. 

Less than half of the country, 41 percent, think that Trump is going to bring the country together following a contentious win in the presidential election over Vice President Harris. The other 59 percent had little to no confidence in the incoming commander-in-chief. 

Approximately half of Americans, 52 percent, said it is “extremely or very important” for the Republican president to reach out to Harris’s voters in order to attempt to unify the nation. Some 30 percent of respondents said it is “somewhat important” while just 17 percent said the potential outreach is “not too or not at all” significant.

Nearly two-thirds, 66 percent, argued that Trump has done a “fair or poor job” at reaching out to those Democratic voters while 31 percent said he has done an “excellent or good job.”

The survey was conducted from Nov. 12-17 among 9,609 adults with a margin of error of plus or minus 1.5 percentage points.

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.