We begin today’s roundup with Julie Hirschfield Davis at The New York Times:
President-elect Donald J. Trump is expected to select as commerce secretary Wilbur Ross, a billionaire investor who became known as the “king of bankruptcy” for buying, restructuring and selling off steel makers and other fading industrial companies, officials on the transition team said on Thursday.
After choosing national security hard-liners for some of his earliest appointments, Mr. Trump is now turning to a group of ultrawealthy conservatives to help steer administration policy.
Deputy positions too:
President-elect Donald Trump is likely to pick Chicago Cubs co-owner Todd Ricketts to be deputy secretary of the Commerce Department, according to two sources.
Ricketts hails from a family of powerful conservative donors, led by parents Joe and Marlene Ricketts. He has been a prolific donor, too, running a conservative super PAC that aided Trump in the waning days of the race.
And of course, we know his pick for education secretary is just as bad. From Lee Devito at MetroTimes:
Writing of her husband, Dick DeVos, who unsuccessfully ran for Michigan governor in 2006, Metro Times' Curt Guyette deduced that the Amway Corp. heir must have had the presidency in his sights, and it appears the couple have bought their way into one. Through their Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation, the clan has given millions to GOP campaigns and conservative causes over the years, and is one of the largest contributors to the Michigan Republican Party.
They also obviously hate public education.
In 1993, they successfully pushed for Michigan's law that allowed for charter schools, privately run entities that can receive state funds as an alternative to public schools. In 2000, they unsuccessfully ran an effort to amend the state constitution to allow vouchers, or public dollars going to private schools. The next year, she established the Great Lakes Education Project, an anti-union group that this year pushed successfully to dismantle legislation that would regulate the proliferation of failed charter schools in Detroit, which compete with the city's struggling public schools.
Meanwhile, The New York Times points out that Trump’s legal battles won’t go away:
Donald Trump will take office as president facing a tsunami of litigation over his business practices and personal behavior. He may have settled the fraud suits involving Trump University, but at least 75 other lawsuits are underway against him or his companies, according to USA Today. Its investigation found more than 3,500 lawsuits over the past three decades, ranging from contract disputes to real estate battles to harassment and discrimination claims.
In short, Mr. Trump could find himself in a near-constant stream of court fights while he tries to focus on running the country. Even in advance of any decisions, there is a degree of poetic justice here, since the scorched-earth approach has long been standard practice for Mr. Trump; as a businessman, he thrived on no-holds-barred legal conflict and hauled out the heavy artillery for even minor disputes. Less than three weeks before the election, he threatened to sue at least 11 women who had recently come forward with allegations that he sexually assaulted them.
And The Washington Post focuses on Trump’s conflicts of interest:
Blithe assurances from Mr. Trump’s associates that he will scrupulously follow the law are not reassuring, because — as Mr. Trump himself noted in his meeting with the New York Times on Tuesday — conflict-of-interest laws generally do not apply to the president. Some constitutional experts argue that if he does not divest he would be at risk of violating the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which bars U.S. officeholders from taking anything of value from foreign governments. Certainly he would subject the country to four years of unseemly mingling of personal and national interests, and himself to four years of distracting accusations and second-guessing.
John Nichols points out that Hillary Clinton’s growing popular vote lead deprives Trump of any mandate:
After Trump was declared the winner, his supporters rushed to claim a mandate. Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman who is now set to serve as the White House chief of staff, announced on ABC’s Good Morning America that November 8 had produced “an electoral landslide” in which “the American people agreed that Donald Trump’s vision for America is what this country has been waiting for.” PolitiFact reviewed the chairman’s statement and concluded: “We rate Priebus’ claim False.”
That’s an understatement. As the votes continue to be counted in a process that will not be completed until mid-December, the myths of election night are giving way to the cold, hard reality that voters turned out in large numbers to reject Trump’s vision. They favored Clinton over the Republican nominee by a significant popular-vote margin. Trump is succeeding not based on the popular will but by assembling an Electoral College majority based on exceptionally narrow margins in a handful of battleground states.
On a final note, don’t miss this photo essay by Jake Rattner at The Nation on life inside Standing Rock camp.