On the menu today: A growing consensus finds Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem is the reason the administration’s immigration policies are perceived as harsh and poorly enforced. The Wall Street Journal reports that director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is investigating the 2020 presidential election. And while our secretary of labor might be a lot of fun at parties, the use of taxpayer funds is concerning. Say, anyone else feel like President Trump might be well-served by a cabinet shakeup?
Trump’s Cabinet Headaches
Tom Bevan, co-founder of RealClearPolitics, speaking on his publication’s podcast Thursday:
“It’s clear now that Kristi Noem was the worst pick, the worst mistake of Trump’s second term. She had no experience. [Border czar Tom] Homan is a professional. He’s been doing this for 35 years,” Bevan said. “Homan did a good job of balancing that this is not a retreat, but a reset, and if you let them into the jails to get these hardened criminals off the street, everyone is going to be safer. I think that was reassuring to people on the right who were worried Trump would cave.”
The question of Trump’s worst mistake in his second term — or his worst pick in his cabinet — so far is likely to generate some intense debates.
I think if you look at Trump’s cabinet, there were some folks who were selected because they were well-qualified, experienced in the issues and policies they would oversee, and had a reputation for competence.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio stands out. Regular listeners to The Editors podcast know that our Michael Brendan Dougherty and Noah Rothman see foreign policy issues in dramatically different ways. MBD wrote recently, “I genuinely think Marco Rubio is one of the most capable cabinet members. The top floor of the State Department is now, improbably, one of the best operations in our government.” Noah raves about Rubio’s “moral clarity.” (Our managing editor Jessica Hornik calls Rubio, tongue in cheek, a “font of wisdom” for restoring Times New Roman, and our staff writer Haley Strack points out that meme-king Rubio is also appreciated by Generation Z.)
Similarly, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent can take a bow on his call to help out the Argentinians; the Argentinians repaid way ahead of schedule. While the administration’s economic policies aren’t as free-market as many conservatives would like, Bessent can be counted on to make the clearest and most confident case for those policies.
You can fairly grumble about his use of Signal, but the stunningly successful Venezuela operation and the bombing of the Iranian nuclear program are reasons for confidence in the performance of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. (Yes, I know the signs at the Pentagon have changed, but check out what the appropriations bill calls it and what all the regulations in the Federal Register still call it. If the checks are still going to the Department of Defense and the rules coming out say “Department of Defense,” then it’s still the Department of Defense.)
I suspect that some of the cabinet officials we hear less about — Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin — are so much lower-profile because they’re just doing what they’re supposed to be doing and not stirring up unneeded controversies by saying or doing stupid things.
People who want to exonerate the president from the decisions that backfire or turn out badly often contend that the president is getting “bad advice.” Even if that’s excuse-making, that doesn’t mean the president is being well-served by those under him. There’s good reason to believe Trump made some cabinet picks because the individuals had been loyal to him, and he felt a need to reward them. And these are the picks that are turning out the worst.
Noem is the most glaring example now. But today’s Wall Street Journal offers an update on what U.S. director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is focusing on these days:
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, has spent months investigating the results of the 2020 election that Donald Trump lost, according to White House officials, a role that took her to a related FBI search of an election center in Georgia on Wednesday.
Gabbard is leading the administration’s effort to re-examine the election and look for potential crimes, a priority for the president, the officials said.
The national intelligence director is usually focused on ensuring the president has the best intelligence available to make national-security decisions. Gabbard has been sidelined from some of those deliberations, including the Venezuela operation earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
I had predicted that Gabbard would grow to hate the DNI job. It appears she has adapted by focusing on issues that had never previously been part of the position’s duties.
A little while ago, I offered a little praise for Gabbard for sticking around instead of resigning when several high-profile decisions didn’t go her way. I think a lot of people, upon learning that the president had said of her assessments, “I don’t care what she said,” in front of television cameras, would have quit.
But it does raise the question of whether it makes sense for the president to have a director of national intelligence who he doesn’t really think is worth listening to or heeding her advice.
A quiet contender for Trump’s worst pick is Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who likely is escaping public scrutiny in part because both the country and the Washington news media pay almost zero attention to the Department of Labor. If you’ve forgotten, when she was nominated, the editors of NR declared, “Chavez-DeRemer would make more sense as a token Republican in a Kamala Harris cabinet.” She’s the odd kind of Republican who, as a congresswoman, voted in lockstep with the American Federation of Government Employees and basically every other large labor union, and opposed right-to-work.
Many conservatives may find the notion of Chavez-DeRemer running the U.S. Department of Labor sobering, but apparently, she does not:
Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer is under an internal investigation following an explosive complaint alleging she’s been “abusing her position” by pursuing an “inappropriate” relationship with a subordinate, according to sources and documents reviewed by The Post.
Chavez-DeRemer, 57, has welcomed her alleged paramour at least three times to her DC apartment and twice into her hotel room while traveling, alleges a complaint filed with the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Office of Inspector General last week, which has since begun a probe.
The former Oregon congresswoman is also accused of drinking in her office during the workday and committing “travel fraud” by having her chief of staff and deputy chief of staff “make up” official trips to destinations where Chavez-DeRemer can spend time with family or friends on the taxpayers’ dime.
The New York Post has pictures of Chavez-DeRemer celebrating her niece’s 40th birthday party at the Red Rocks Casino Resort and Spa in Las Vegas in late October, during the government shutdown.
The allegations are serious enough for GOP Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley to start an inquiry.
You have to wonder how many bad news cycles the administration could have avoided in the past year if Attorney General Pam Bondi had not declared in February, during an appearance on Fox News Channel, that the list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients was “sitting on my desk right now to review,” and then the following month boasted on Sean Hannity’s program that she had received “a truckload of evidence.” At minimum, Bondi was misleading the public about what she and the Department of Justice had found and would be releasing. If, as figures such as former Attorney General William Barr argue, it was physically impossible for the U.S. DOJ to review and release all 2 million or so documents in its possession related to Epstein within 30 days, it would have been wise for her to have laid out the facts and logistical challenges before the president signed on to the idea and almost every Republican voted for the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Every DOJ has problems and controversies; what stands out about Bondi’s tenure is how foreseeable they are, and yet she seems to step into them anyway.
Now, I’m sure someone out there is going to call me sexist for kicking around the performances of Noem, Gabbard, Chavez-DeRemer, and Bondi. So, let’s take a moment to appreciate the recent work of Olivia Nuzzi’s favorite member of the Trump cabinet, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr..
Even the most ardent anti-vaccine activist should concede that it is a bad look for the U.S. to have a massive measles outbreak, almost entirely among the unvaccinated, just months into RFK Jr.’s tenure. From 2000 to 2024, the U.S. averaged 180 cases of measles per year nationwide. Last year, the U.S. had 2,255; so far this year, the U.S. is up to 416 cases. Last year, just 7 percent of cases were among those who had one or more doses of the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine; so far this year, it’s 6 percent.
Kennedy hadn’t been in his position long enough to make changes in the measles vaccination status of America’s youth. But he did spend the past few decades spreading just about every possible conspiracy theory about the dangers of vaccines, so you can either attribute this to him or to the 1994 Playboy Playmate of the Year, who for some reason is still hosting The Masked Singer.
Nor can we argue that under Kennedy, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services rolled into action once the measles outbreak in South Carolina began:
In a December 16 email to Mother Jones, at which time South Carolina already had more than 100 cases, a spokesperson from HHS downplayed the threat of measles in South Carolina. “CDC is not currently concerned that this will develop into a large, long-running outbreak as was seen in Texas earlier this year and whose outbreak has been declared over,” wrote HHS press secretary Emily Hilliard in bold text.
As of January 27, the state Department of Public Health reported 789 cases of measles centered around Spartanburg County; “18 people, including both adults and children, have required hospitalization for complications of the disease since the beginning of the outbreak.”
You just figure that somewhere out there, Trump could find a Health and Human Services secretary who wouldn’t accuse DARPA of creating sinister chemtrails or who could remember which one is Medicare and which one is Medicaid. You figure there’s some healthy-eating policy wonk who could get confirmed by a GOP-controlled Senate who hasn’t smoked dimethyltryptamine, which is, you know, illegal.
But apparently Trump felt like he owed RFK Jr., and that he could put Kennedy in charge of 21 percent of all federal spending and that everything would turn out okay.
Personnel is policy. But also, any given appointee is either competent or isn’t, and when they’re incompetent, the president has a lot more bad days.
ADDENDUM: In case you missed it, in Ukraine, the Russian military is advancing literally slower than a snail’s pace.