Trump nominates Dr Mehmet Oz to serve as Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator
President-elect Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he has nominated Dr Mehmet Oz to serve as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator.
“America is facing a healthcare Crisis, and there may be no Physician more qualified and capable than Dr. Oz to Make America Healthy Again” Trump said in a statement.
Trump added: “He is an eminent Physician, Heart Surgeon, Inventor, and World-Class Communicator, who has been at the forefront of healthy living for decades. Dr. Oz will work closely with Robert F Kennedy Jr. to take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake.”
Oz ran an unsuccessful campaign for senator in Pennsylvania in 2022.
Key events
The authorization would be a reversal of an Obama-era policy revived by Biden in 2022 that banned the transfer and use of US antipersonnel landmines outside the Korean Peninsula, the Washington Post reports.
An official, cited in the story, said Ukraine had committed to not using the mines in densely populated areas.
Biden to approve use of anti-personnel landmines in Ukraine – report
The Washington Post reports that US President Joe Biden, “has authorized the provision of antipersonnel land mines to Ukraine”.
It cites two unnamed US officials.
Trump expected to name Treasury pick Wednesday
US president-elect Donald Trump will name who he has picked to be Treasury secretary as soon as Wednesday, CNN reported, citing two sources familiar with the matter.
No one has been has been chosen yet for the role, CNN also reported.
The narrowly trailing Republican candidate in the race for a North Carolina Supreme Court seat formally requested a recount on Tuesday, with barely 600 votes separating him from the Democratic incumbent.
Jefferson Griffin, a Court of Appeals judge, sent the request before a noon deadline, marking the lone statewide race where a recount is poised to occur. Recounts for several single- or multi-county races also have been requested, including five General Assembly races. Ballots will be run again through tabulator machines.
Associate Justice Allison Riggs led Tuesday by 625 votes over Griffin, as election officials in all but two small counties from the state’s 100 counties have finalized their work from last Friday’s count meetings.
Griffin led after election night by roughly 10,000 votes, but the margin dwindled last week as county election boards reviewed tens of thousands of provisional and absentee ballots and added voting choices of those that qualified for counting to the totals. More than 5.5m ballots have been cast in the Riggs-Griffin race.
The State Board of Elections said in a news release that most of the 100 counties will begin their recounts on Wednesday and should be completed by 27 November. The board is slated to meet 26 November to consider final counts and certify results, but a Supreme Court race certification could be considered at a later date, spokesperson Pat Gannon said.
Vance deletes posts saying Trump is interviewing FBI director candidates
Trump is interviewing candidates for the role of FBI director, incoming vice-president JD Vance said Tuesday in the clearest indication yet that the new administration is looking to replace current director Christopher Wray.
In a social media post that was later deleted, according to the Associated Press, Vance defended himself from criticism over his absence from a Senate vote at which a judicial nominee of President Joe Biden was confirmed by saying that at the time of the vote, “I was meeting with President Trump to interview multiple positions for our government, including for FBI Director.”
“I tend to think it’s more important to get an FBI director who will dismantle the deep state than it is for Republicans to lose a vote 49-46 rather than 49-45,” he added on X. “But that’s just me.”
Vance was referring to the Senate vote Monday to confirm Embry J. Kidd, a Biden nominee to the US court of appeals for the 11th Circuit, a vote that he and several other Republican senators missed.
An FBI spokesperson declined to comment.
Who is ‘Dr Oz’, Trump’s choice to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services?
Trump announced a short while ago that he has chosen television personality and surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz to serve as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a wide-reaching agency with annual spending of $2.6tn.
Trump, who endorsed Oz in his unsuccessful run in Pennsylvania for the US Senate in 2022, said he would work closely with Robert F Kennedy Jr., who was nominated to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
Trump said the pair would take on “the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake” as well as cutting what he called waste and fraud.
“Our broken healthcare System harms everyday Americans, and crushes our Country’s budget,” Trump said in a statement.
The agency runs Medicare, the federal health insurance program for people aged 65 or older and disabled people. The office also oversees Medicaid, the state-based health insurance program for low-income people, which is jointly funded by states and the federal government. The two programs provide health insurance for over 140 million Americans.
It also handles much of the enrolment in income-based government-subsidized health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Trump and other Republicans have previously tried to repeal the law but now say they only seek to overhaul it.
Oz was a regular Fox News commentator during the Covid-19 pandemic and a proponent of unproven treatments for Covid-19 including hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug whose use against the disease was also backed by Trump.
Oz challenged the Biden administration’s Covid-19 pandemic policies on social media, including mask policies, saying they ignored the science and were based on missing data.
In 2020, he was a proponent of expanding Medicare Advantage plans in which insurers manage healthcare benefits paid for by the government to all Americans who were not enrolled in Medicaid in a column published in Forbes magazine.
News of the appointment pushed shares of insurer Humana up 1.8% at $282.75. Humana is a provider of private Medicare Advantage plans.
Trump promised during his campaign not to cut Medicare but is expected to let federal subsidies for Medicaid expire at the end of 2025.
After RFK Jr. was named to the job last week, Oz told Fox News that he knew the HHS secretary nominee personally. The position is subject to Senate confirmation.
In case you missed this news earlier: The Associated Press reports that, according to a lawyer, an unauthorized person gained access to a file containing confidential testimony from women who have made allegations about former Rep. Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump’s pick to become the next attorney general:
The Associated Press reports that attorneys involved in a civil case brought by a Gaetz associate were notified this week that an unauthorized person accessed a file shared between lawyers that included unredacted depositions from a woman who has said Gaetz had sex with her when she was 17, and a second woman who says she saw the encounter, according to attorney Joel Leppard.
Gaetz has denied all the allegations, and the Justice Department ended its sex trafficking investigation without any criminal charges against him. A lawyer who has represented Gaetz said he would not answer any questions when reached Tuesday by The Associated Press.
The apparent breach comes as Gaetz is facing intense scrutiny over the allegations threatening to complicate his path to be confirmed as the nation’s top federal law enforcement officer. Several Republicans in the Senate have expressed concern about his nomination or refused to say publicly yet whether they will support him.
The files the person was able to access are part of a defamation case filed by a Gaetz associate against Gaetz’s onetime political ally Joel Greenberg, who pleaded guilty in 2021 to sex trafficking of a minor, and admitted that he had paid at least one underage girl to have sex with him and other men.
The email notifying the lawyers about the apparent hack says a person named “Altam Beezley” downloaded the files, and when an attorney emailed the person to ask them to identify themselves, the email was returned because the email address was not found. The apparent breach was first reported Tuesday by The New York Times.
Trump says he is not reconsidering Gaetz nomination for attorney general
Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he was not reconsidering the nomination of former congressman Matt Gaetz as attorney general, Reuters reports.
Gaetz, 42, who was investigated by the justice department for nearly three years over sex trafficking allegations involving a 17-year-old girl, was tapped by Trump on Wednesday to run the agency when he returns to the White House in January.
Trump, asked if he was reconsidering the nomination, replied: “No.”
Trump did not respond when asked how far he was willing to go to get Gaetz confirmed.
Summary
Donald Trump has continued to choose loyalists for his upcoming administration, tapping TV personality and purveyor of health misinformation Dr Mehmet Oz to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Here’s where things stand:
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Howard Lutnick will be Trump’s pick for commerce secretary for his second administration, according to a report. Lutnick is the president-elect’s transition co-chair and is the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, the New York investment bank, and a longtime friend of Trump.
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Sean Duffy has been nominated to be Trump’s transportation secretary in his next administration. The former congressman is co-host of The Bottom Line show on Fox Business. Duffy served in Congress from 2011 until 2019. Before being elected to national public office, he was district attorney for Ashland county, Wisconsin, from 2002 to 2008 and previously had a reality TV show role.
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Trump is “calling senators” to pressure them to confirm Matt Gaetz as his attorney general for the incoming administration, according to a report. This is occurring as the US House ethics committee is expected to discuss next steps in its investigation into Gaetz, the now former Florida congressman, tomorrow.
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Nearly 100 House Democrats have signed a letter urging the House ethics committee to release its report into Matt Gaetz. “The United States Senate has a constitutional duty to provide advice and consent on presidential nominees, and it is critical that senators have all the information necessary to consider Mr Gaetz’s nomination,” the letter reads.
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New York prosecutors in Trump’s criminal case said they oppose dismissing the president-elect’s election hush-money case as his sentencing looms – but they expressed some openness to delaying the conclusion of the case until after his impending second term.
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The prosecutors said in a letter today that they plan on fighting Trump’s push for the dismissal of the criminal case, following his presidential election win over Kamala Harris. They said the Manhattan court should set a timeline for Trump’s expected motion to dismiss, which they “intend to oppose”. The scheduled 26 November sentencing appears poised for adjournment.
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An unidentified hacker has reportedly accessed a file shared among lawyers representing clients who have provided damaging testimony regarding Matt Gaetz, the New York Times is reporting, citing a person with knowledge of the activity. Apparently, the computer file consisted of 24 exhibits, including testimony by a woman in which she says she had sex with Gaetz in 2017 when she was 17, as well as corroborating testimony by a second woman who said that she witnessed the encounter.
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Trump has joined his new BFF, billionaire Elon Musk, for a planned rocket launch by the entrepreneur’s SpaceX company at the aerospace base in south-east Texas later today. Weather conditions permitting, this will be the sixth test flight into space for SpaceX’s Starship rocket. The test launch is planned for 5pm ET, with a half-hour window for launch.
Soon-to-be senate leader John Thune has led Republicans in the Senate in their effort to block confirmations of qualified judicial nominees proposed by the Biden administration.
On Monday, Republicans dragged out the floor process in an effort to delay the confirmation process, after Donald Trump directed his Republican senators to “show up and hold the line” against confirmations.
The White House noted that this is a reversal in stance for Thune.
“During the equivalent time under the Trump Administration – after President-elect Biden had won the most votes of any candidate in American history – Senator John Thune forcefully argued that continuing to confirm President Trump’s judicial nominees should be a ‘top priority,’ stressing that ‘confirming good judges is one of our most important responsibilities as senators’ and that ‘it’s a responsibility I take very seriously,’” said White House spokesperson Andrew Bates. “Senator Thune was correct in 2020 when he said senators have every urgent reason to continue working together in good faith to staff the federal bench. There is no excuse for choosing partisanship over enforcing the rule of law.”
Colorado governor Jared Polis on why he’s willing to work with incoming president
Rachel Leingang
Despite launching a governors’ group focused on safeguarding democracy during Donald Trump’s second term, Governor Jared Polis of Colorado said the coalition wasn’t about Trump, a president he’s willing to work with on several key issues.
In recent days, Polis, a Democrat, also praised Trump’s pick of Robert F Kennedy Jr for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, an unexpected endorsement from a governor of a blue state that bucked the national trend and largely moved to the left in the election.
Polis has some ideas as to why the state didn’t shift to the right like most of the country. The state’s Democratic-controlled government has passed policies that have improved lives, he said, and Colorado voters have a higher than average education level, tilting them toward Democrats.
Polis and the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, last week announced Governors Safeguarding Democracy, seeking to defend democratic institutions. The group has been described as an effort to oppose Trump administration policies, but Polis said it was not specifically in response to a Trump presidency.
Then on Thursday, Polis praised RFK’s nomination.
“I’m excited by the news that the President-Elect will appoint @RobertKennedyJr to @HHSGov,” Polis wrote on X after the staffing announcement. “He helped us defeat vaccine mandates in Colorado in 2019 and will help make America healthy again by shaking up HHS and FDA. I hope he leans into personal choice on vaccines rather than bans (which I think are terrible, just like mandates) but what I’m most optimistic about is taking on big pharma and the corporate ag oligopoly to improve our health.”
Polis’s office didn’t respond to questions about what Polis and Kennedy had worked on together in 2019 in Colorado.
The Guardian spoke with Polis before the RFK Jr tweets, about Colorado and what Democrats nationally could learn from a state that didn’t move toward Trump.
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