President-elect Donald Trump rounds out Cabinet nominees | The Excerpt
On Monday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: President-elect Donald Trump over the weekend tapped Brooke Rollins for Secretary of Agriculture. Plus, Trump tapped Russell Vought, a Project 2025 architect, to lead the budget office. Tennessean State Government and Politics Reporter Melissa Brown explains how a Tennessee teenager could change transgender rights nationwide. Public faith in US institutions continues to erode, as Trump takes aim at dismantling parts of the government. Paste BN Senior National Political Correspondent Sarah D. Wire examines what the next Democratic resistance movement might look like.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson and today is Monday, November 25th, 2024. This is The Excerpt.
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Taylor Wilson:
Today we take a look at Trump's cabinet as we move deeper into the transition period, plus how a teenager in Tennessee could change transgender rights, and what does resistance look like this time around for Democrats.
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Taylor Wilson:
Incoming Trump administration enters this Thanksgiving week with a number of major positions decided. Among them, President-elect Donald Trump tapped Russell Vought, a co-author of Project 2025, to lead the Office of Management and Budget.
Vought served in the same role during Trump's first term and later founded the Center for Renewing America, an advocacy group backing Trump's agenda after his defeat in 2020. The Office of Management and Budget produces the president's annual budgets, implements the president's priorities in the executive branch, and coordinates with federal agencies and departments.
Vought wrote the chapter on executive power in Project 2025, the controversial policy blueprint created by the Conservative Heritage Foundation that Trump tried to distance himself from during the 2024 campaign. In it, he went after federal regulatory agencies that are not under control of the White House and said that there's a need for aggressive use of the powers of the executive branch. Vought's appointment requires senate confirmation.
Trump also named Sebastian Gorka, a conservative commentator, to a national security role in the incoming White House. Gorka, who was a top defender of Trump's ban on refugees from predominantly Muslim countries, will serve as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism. During Trump's first term, Gorka served in a similar position.
Trump rounded out as cabinet picks over the weekend by naming Brooke Rollins to stand for Secretary of Agriculture. Rollins is currently president and CEO of the America First Policy Institute, a conservative pro-Trump think tank she formed in 2021, alongside other members of the former president's orbit while out of office.
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Taylor Wilson:
A Tennessee teenager could change transgender rights across the country. The 17-year-old girl's fight for gender-affirming care is before the Supreme Court and Melissa Brown, a politics reporter for The Tennessean, part of the Paste BN Network, talked to her family. My co-host, Sara Ganim, caught up with Melissa for more.
Sara Ganim:
Melissa, thank you so much for joining The Excerpt.
Melissa Brown:
Thanks for having me.
Sara Ganim:
Melissa, tell me about the Williams family.
Melissa Brown:
Samantha and Brian Williams are raising L, who's 16, and L's younger sibling in their Nashville area home. They're really a typical young family. Both Samantha and Brian work, and like many working parents, they're juggling the kids' activities and getting dinner on the table every night, they got a new kitten last month. It's really a bustling warm home.
L, in particular, is like a really sharp teenager who's been thrust into this landmark Supreme Court case, but she's doing everything that the average Nashville teenager is doing. She's really engaged with her friends. She's taken a few AP classes this fall. She likes to design video games and DJ music for her friends, and she wants to be a pilot after high school.
Sara Ganim:
And how did they get thrust into the spotlight?
Melissa Brown:
So Tennessee Republicans in early 2023 passed this law that is essentially a gender-affirming care ban for transgender youth. Republicans essentially argued that treatments like puberty blockers and hormone therapy are too dangerous for transgender youth like L. But under the law, L's classmates, for example, could still access the same medications as long as they were not being treated for gender dysphoria or the treatments weren't being used as gender-affirming care.
So a few months after the law passed, L, along with Samantha and Brian, along with two other families and a Tennessee doctor, sued Tennessee. The initial filings were an effort to block Tennessee from enforcing the law, which was set to go into effect on July 1st of that year, and they were actually initially successful. In late June, a federal judge temporarily blocked Tennessee from enforcing its ban. This issue has obviously been a really partisan political issue.
But interestingly, the judge who initially ruled against Tennessee was appointed by President Donald Trump. He's not considered a particularly liberal judge. But he ruled that the law likely infringed on the constitutional rights of the Williams family, and he was quite skeptical about the medical evidence that Tennessee used to back up its case.
But then Tennessee appealed the ruling to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, and this higher court ultimately sided with Tennessee. It allowed the law to take effect, and the plaintiffs appealing that ruling is what kicked it up to the Supreme Court, and that's obviously going to be a landmark case that we're all keeping an eye on.
Sara Ganim:
Yeah. What are the stakes now that it's made its way all the way to the Supreme Court?
Melissa Brown:
This is a Tennessee case, but really the entire country will be looking on. It's the first time this high court will really consider the accessibility of these gender-affirming healthcare treatments and the ability of states to regulate them. It could have far-reaching impacts on the availability of healthcare for trans teens, trans youth across the country.
If the court rules that Tennessee does have a compelling interest in regulating these treatments and can pick and choose who can and cannot access them, that could obviously create a legal precedent for other states to follow and do the same.
Sara Ganim:
It's got to be pretty unnerving to have a case that is this personal make its way all the way to the highest court in the country. With all of this potential impact, how is the family handling that?
Melissa Brown:
Yeah, I think it's been something of a surreal experience for the family. Samantha told me this summer she could never have imagined that L and their family's journey would be essentially debated at the Supreme Court. L in particular, I think, has some anxiety, nerves that their case, should they get ruled against, could have these kind of far-reaching negative impacts for transgender youth.
But I think initially and still now, they didn't feel that it was a hard decision to choose to sue. Samantha had already been really outspoken in the state legislature trying to convince lawmakers not to pass the law. And so once the law was a reality, I think they just feel that it's the right decision for them to stand up for their family and their family's private medical journey and also stand up for other Tennessee families who might currently, or in the future, find themselves on the same path.
Sara Ganim:
The Tennessee law went into effect in July of 2023. Did L have to stop her gender-affirming care?
Melissa Brown:
No. L was able to continue her medical treatment out of state. But even though L was able to continue her care, it was a hard transition.
Her treatment plan was delayed by several months, and they actually got in with a clinic in Ohio, and within months, Ohio had passed its own form of gender-affirming care ban. And so she had to transfer to another state, North Carolina. They now drive there every few months. It's more than 10 hours roundtrip, so it's obviously a big kind of logistical burden.
And so, though she was able to continue her care, I think it has been a really stressful time, a very time-consuming experience for the family and particularly for L.
Sara Ganim:
Melissa Brown covers state politics for The Tennessean, which is a member of the Paste BN Network. Thanks so much, Melissa.
Melissa Brown:
Thanks for having me.
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Taylor Wilson:
Public faith in US institutions continues to erode. The most recent polls from Gallup in September revealed just 40% of those asked had trust and confidence in the executive branch, compared with 73% in May of 1972. Just 34% said they had trust and confidence in congress, as opposed to 71% from half a century ago. And just under half, 48%, said the same about the judicial branch.
Wesley Borucki, associate professor of history at Palm Beach Atlantic University, said Americans have suffered four major traumas in the first decade of the 21st century. They include the September 11th attacks, the Enron and Wall Street corporate scandals, the Iraq War, and the financial housing crisis, plus the pandemic.
A common denominator of those catastrophes is a failure of government to either protect the citizenry or to manage the crisis in order to shelter the public, he said. And a second Trump administration is taking aim at dismantling the government they have been elected to manage, the objective many of his supporters have pushed for.
One Trump ally, Newt Gingrich, who served as house speaker in the 1990s said, "You have much less belief that the government is honest, much less belief that it is competent and much less belief that you can trust it."
You can read more about the dynamic at play here and what it means for the country going forward with a link in today's show notes.
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Taylor Wilson:
In 2016, Democrats reacted to Donald Trump's win in a big way, but this time around the responses seemed more deflated. Sara Ganim spoke with Paste BN's senior national political correspondent, Sarah D. Wire, to learn more.
Sara Ganim:
Sarah, thanks so much for being here.
Sarah D. Wire:
Thanks for having me.
Sara Ganim:
Let's start with the numbers. It's hard to quantify how people feel, but you went and looked at the cable news outlet viewership the week after the election, and what did you find?
Sarah D. Wire:
It was really interesting because we saw MSNBC's viewership just plummet, but at the same time, we saw Fox News's viewership start to go up.
Sara Ganim:
But people are still talking about this counter movement. What are those groups saying about their numbers?
Sarah D. Wire:
You know, what they're seeing is completely different than just what we're seeing with cable news viewership. You know, they're seeing an outpouring of people who want to do something tangibly, and so they're talking about ways to fund lawsuits. They're talking about ways to get involved on the ground so that they can actually protest or write letters or make phone calls.
Sara Ganim:
I saw in your story, you talked about numbers like 40,000 people on a Zoom, a hundred thousand people on a call. Those are really big numbers.
Sarah D. Wire:
They're saying that these numbers are on par what they saw in 2017, and they're seeing them right after the election, which is different than 2016.
It's really important to remember that it's not like the resistance just existed the day after the 2016 election. It took several weeks for it to form and for people to go through their own grieving process and be ready to push back on what President Trump was doing.
And keep in mind some of those numbers include people who were already part of the movement back in 2016, 2017. They might've kind of gone dormant for a little bit during the Biden administration, but they are raring to go.
I talked to people across the country and some of them said that they are going to take a little bit of a break, but others said they thought the break was going to last longer, and they're done. They've done the rage-knitting, and they are ready to jump back into the fight.
Sara Ganim:
What is the difference between how this so-called resistance and these groups responded in 2016 and how they're going to respond now?
Sarah D. Wire:
I think they realize that this is not the Donald Trump who took power in 2017. Back then, he didn't really know how government worked, and he had a congress that wasn't sure how to handle him, either. And so there were a lot more long-serving Republicans in the house and the senate who could be swayed to maybe join with activists to vote no against some of Trump's policies.
This is a different Republican Party. The house and the senate are much Trumpier than they were back in Trump's first term. And so activists realize that congress might not be their best method for making change. So they're encouraging people to perhaps reach out to other state legislators, reach out to the governor if they live in a blue state.
Sara Ganim:
I know it's kind of crazy to ask about the next election when we're still in November of this election, but last time this movement powered the 2018 midterm elections. Those elections were very favorable to Democrats. What do you political experts think as we look ahead to the 2026 midterms?
Sarah D. Wire:
One political expert I spoke to said that these groups were really powerful in the 2018 election, but she didn't think that they would have that same amount of power this time around.
But when I spoke to the activists and the national organizations, they seem to have a very different perspective. They said that now the goal is just to survive the next two years and position themselves to take back at least some control. And so they're looking for opportunities where Trump or his administration might overreach.
And so as he starts to do things that maybe some non-MAGA Republicans don't like, activists see that as an opportunity to reach out and maybe build a coalition of progressives and also non-MAGA Republicans, and maybe get Democratic to control the house, or possibly the senate.
Sara Ganim:
Sarah, thank you so much for being here.
Sarah D. Wire:
Thanks for having me.
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Taylor Wilson:
Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your pods, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt.
I'm Taylor Wilson, and I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from Paste BN.
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