So this is the week Trump’s cabinet picks begin confirmation hearings, and they’re packed in a tighter row than normal thanks in part to the snow delays in D.C. and the Jimmy Carter funeral — so we’re looking at Tuesday, Wednesday hearings for Hegseth, Noem, Rubio, and a potential trainwreck of hearings to come afterwards for Patel, McMahon, Gabbard and more. The truth is though that none of these nominees seem to be much at risk, and the feigned consternation of outside commentators aside, there’s no one who looks to have a “non-starter” label on them the way that Matt Gaetz did.
Abigail Shrier has some thoughts on how to see this cabinet in holistic terms:
One could say many things about Trump’s cabinet picks. At times, they seem to embody Government by Middle Finger. But they also, undeniably, represent Government by the Canceled: an assemblage that doesn’t need to be reminded of the administrative state’s ability to coerce the American public by calling in favors from Big Tech or pulling the levers of regulation, audit, or investigation. Many have experienced such treatment firsthand.
Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s pick to lead the intelligence community, was briefly placed on a government watch list, she says, for criticizing Kamala Harris. The Biden White House and surgeon general pressured social-media companies to censor Stanford epidemiologist Jay Bhattacharya’s attempts to warn the public that the Covid lockdowns were the biggest policy error in American history; Trump named Bhattacharya to head the National Institutes of Health. And Elon Musk, appointed to lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, knowingly overpaid for Twitter to give Americans a sphere for free speech. At takeover, Musk immediately released the Twitter Files, revealing a coordinated effort by the Biden administration to censor the speech of Americans whose views it disfavored. The Biden administration repaid Musk by targeting his businesses with unprecedented levels of regulatory harassment.
One wonderful thing about Americans: we despise being bullied by our government. Not even our Anglosphere allies share this aspect of our national character. Yet, over the last decade, for anyone with views departing from progressive orthodoxy, American life has become increasingly suffocating. Our posts have been censored on social media—or labeled “misinformation” by “fact-checkers”—as mine were, for criticizing Biden administration policy on boys participating in girls’ sports. We got booted from Twitter for opposing gender ideology or expressing skepticism about Covid vaccine safety…
There were, increasingly, two Americas: one enjoyed by those with approved views; the other, for everyone else. It was always the Left that determined which views appeared on the whitelist and which on the blacklist. Supporting a border wall was definitionally xenophobic until, abruptly, Kamala Harris supported it. To claim that the vast majority of teen girls who suddenly decided that they were “transgender” were instead caught up in a vast social contagion was verboten, until the Left decided that its own outlets could concede that much. “My body, my choice,” was a sacred and undeniable maxim, unless you refused the Covid vaccine. Calling the 2016 election “stolen” was fine; claiming the 2020 election was stolen made you an enemy of democracy.
Uttering a word in Mandarin Chinese that sounded like the N word was enough to get you suspended from your university teaching job. But calling for the death of your Jewish or Israeli classmates, blocking their access to the library or large sections of campus, defacing university property—this was free speech, or rightful protest, or kids being kids. Some of us watched it all in horror; we knew it was wrong. But a country founded on freedom seemed to have lost its sense of fight.
To take only the most recent example from my own experience: WorldCat, the chief international bibliography organization, labeled Irreversible Damage (my 2020 journalistic investigation into the risks and harms of pediatric gender transition) with the rubrics “transphobia” and “transphobic.” My book is neither transphobic nor bigoted. But because the radical activists oppose any critique even of this often reckless and mendacious regime of medicalizing children, libraries around the world will continue to ensure that adult readers don’t find the book. I remain on a GLAAD blacklist for thoughtcrime, even as states, courts, and medical doctors take more skeptical views of pediatric gender medicine.
Those of us who faced cancellation feared what might happen when AI took over as an agent of our coercion—when it communicated directly with our banks or employers or the admissions office of the schools our kids apply to; and when it becomes unnecessary for human beings to pull levers on behalf of the government because progressive maximalism is embedded inside a technology that we cannot monitor, or even understand.
In February 2024, my husband asked Google’s AI: Who had “negatively impacted society more, Abigail Shrier or Mao?” Communist tyrant Mao Zedong was responsible for the deaths of between 40 million and 80 million people. The AI responded: “It is difficult to say definitively who negatively impacted society more, Abigail Shrier or Mao Zedong. Both have been accused of harming society in significant ways.” We laughed but tried not to think about what might happen when AI communicated directly with the bank assessing creditworthiness for our next home loan.
Trump’s detractors claim, through mouthfuls of sour grapes, that he is merely appointing “Trump loyalists.” But no honest evaluator could term Gabbard (until recently, a Democrat), physician and lockdown skeptic Bhattacharya (never previously affiliated with Trump or MAGA), or Marco Rubio (who ran against Trump and has harshly criticized him) “Trump loyalists.” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hoped to oppose Trump in the general election until just a few months ago; he’s not exactly a Trump crony, either. Whatever else you think of Kennedy and his odd, speculative, and occasionally ungrounded views, or of Gabbard’s apparent opposition to U.S. military assistance to Ukraine, both have shown uncommon willingness to stand up to their own political tribes…
Many of Trump’s appointees are young. Some have never worked in government. Some will end up doing and saying strange—perhaps unacceptably strange—things. Some may turn out to be overwhelmed and fail and get replaced. The difference is: we’ll know about it. The media will make sure of that. This isn’t a group that has learned to play the inside-the-Beltway, under-the-table game.
At the top of the administrative state, Trump has placed people keenly aware of government’s yen for intimidating its own citizens. That alone may be enough to shake Americans out of our recent complacency over the trampling of our rights and the unfairness that so many of us have been urged to embrace. Many of our most pressing problems do not require decades of government experience so much as the will to solve them.
At Fox Nation, we have a running documentary series on the cabinet and what each nominee brings to the table. Here’s an excerpt:
Reports From California
Today, Los Angeles is still burning. My family was evacuated, and has just returned after two days to our house, which is still in the “warning” area. Many of our friends have lost their homes.
It has been known for decades that massive brushfires were fueled by debris and blowdown, which should have been regularly cleared. On August 31, 2023 Circling the News reported that Pacific Palisades Community Council President Maryam Zar contacted her Assemblyman about concerns regarding brush abutting her land. “She was put in touch with Richard Fink, California State Parks District Superintendant II. He attended the August 24 Community Council meeting and explained that the state does not do brush clearance of park land because ‘we’re here to protect the natural habitat’.”
In an email to Circling the News, it was explained, “The department works closely with the Newsom Administration and other State departments to improve and expand forest management on state owned land to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildlife fires and improve forest and wildlife health.” But where the state land ends, habitation begins, and what unutterable fools would suggest a wildfire would respect the boundary? Answer: the Newsom Administration.
Brushfires on uncleared State Land have been devastating California for years, and the ecosystem Newsom’s commission was protecting did not extend to human beings and their property in the Palisades, or Altadena, or Franklin. And, so, the largest and most catastrophic fire in Los Angeles history resulted from fairness. Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Bass, and Fire Chief Cowley, though not on the hose, have been in the frontline of the Struggle for Fairness.
Fire Chief, Kristen Crowley, wrote to the Board of Fire Commissioners on December 4, 2023, that budget cuts “have adversely affected the Department’s ability to maintain core operations”. Karen Bass had just cut 17.8 million dollars from the fire department’s budget. But according to CSB News, “When asked about the budget cuts at Thursday morning’s Press Conference (January 9, 2025), Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said they did not impact the department’s ability to handle the ongoing fires.”
Yet many hydrants had been stolen for scrap and never replaced, as periodic inspections had been cancelled due to budget cuts; and hydrants ran dry in the Palisades and in Altadena, where firefighters were reduced to filling their tanks from homeowners’ garden hoses. County officials said this (shortage) was to be expected due to the constraints of the municipal water system, which LA County Public Works Director Mark Pestrella said, is “not designed to fight wildfires”. (LA1st) One must ask why it is not so-designed, and, as always, what happened to the taxes we pay to insure public safety?
So where did the 17.8 million go? According to the department’s website: “Creating, supporting, and promoting a culture that values diversity, inclusion, and equity while striving to meet and exceed the expectations of the communities are Chief Crowley’s priorities, and she is grateful for the opportunity to serve the City of Los Angeles.”
Mayor Karen Bass just returned from vacation in Ghana during the fires, was interviewed by Sky News last week. Asked if she had anything to say to the victims of the disaster, had she any apology to make, and where was the money cut from the fire department, she remained silent.
More on the escape process from Matt Bilinsky.
How Ben Shapiro Conquered the MAGAverse
As a boy, Ben Shapiro spent week nights at Miceli’s, an Italian joint near Universal Studios famous for its greasy pizzas and singing waiters. His father, David, had moved the family to Los Angeles from Boston in the early 1980s in search of a career in film scoring. “But a lot of people come to Hollywood wanting to do that,” Shapiro observes, adding that his father never achieved his John Williams dreams.
Those were lean years for the family of six. They occupied a tiny house in Burbank, with Ben sharing a bedroom with his three older sisters. To make ends meet, Dad found work at Miceli’s as a pianist. Ben’s father was a natural entertainer and delighted the crowd with physical gags, like putting his jacket on as he was playing. He kept the gig for 20 years. “I was always there,” Ben recalls. “People were singing Broadway. I’d sit there doing my homework or hanging out with the bartender.”
From those convivial beginnings, the 40-year-old Shapiro has carved out an unlikely path as one of America’s most fixated-upon right wing influencers — a cartoonish, perplexing figure, seemingly admired and reviled in equal measure but growing increasingly impossible to ignore. A conservative critic who isn’t afraid to wade into the pop culture fray, Shapiro frequently finds himself the butt of online jokes — there was the “WAP” imbroglio, the Barbie review backlash and, most recently, his rapturous Wicked queen-out.
He takes the jokes in stride, usually. But Shapiro himself is proving less and less of a joke these days. More than just another talking head in the conservative media landscape — he dismissively refers to competitor Tucker Carlson’s operation as a “one-car-crash company,” meaning if Carlson were to die, that’s the end of Tucker Inc. — he has fashioned himself into a self-made media titan as co-founder of the Daily Wire, the Nashville-based conservative company he started with business partner Jeremy Boreing in 2015.
An initial $4.7 million investment from Texas oil tycoon Farris Wilks has blossomed into what Shapiro says is a $220 million empire, encompassing a slate of podcasts — Jordan Peterson and Matt Walsh are on the roster — scripted movies (like Terror on the Prairie, starring fired Mandalorian star Gina Carano), documentaries (like Walsh’s What Is a Woman? and Am I Racist?) and streaming shows (the most ambitious of which, fantasy series The Pendragon Cycle, is now in postproduction). Shapiro anticipates revenue will be much higher in 2025, when the effects of the roller coaster ride to Donald Trump’s reelection are fully felt.
“This last quarter we picked up more subscribers than we have for several years [combined],” he says, noting the company boasts more than 1 million paid subs, a good number of whom signed up to hear Shapiro’s rapid-fire and insightful takes on jaw-dropping developments like the Trump assassination attempt in July.
Shapiro learned of the shooting during the Sabbath break, when a staffer made a rare interruption at his home to alert him to the news. An Orthodox Jew, Shapiro’s religious beliefs typically render him unreachable from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, and he packs kosher meals for his frequent travels — inconveniences for a media mogul. His religiosity makes him a constant target for anti-Jewish racists — but it also doesn’t prevent him from engaging in sometimes cruel and crude attacks on political opponents.
Shapiro won’t reveal his own net worth on the record, but off the record he’s happy to — this is the guy who once bragged on HBO’s Real Time of “sleeping on my bed made of money,” after all — and he claims it’s a figure much higher than $220 million. This, presumably, is because he retains majority ownership of the crown jewel of the Daily Wire empire: The Ben Shapiro Show, the highest-rated conservative podcast, averaging 25 million total plays per month, according to Shapiro. Pod Save America, its liberal counterpart, averages about 21 million.
As his profile and audience have grown, so has his influence. A pro-settlements Zionist long before that term became a loaded epithet, Shapiro has in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war become one of the most visible and vociferous voices for Israel on the right. He has the ear of Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump; the latter appeared on his podcast in October. When Elon Musk got himself in hot water with the Anti-Defamation League for replying positively to an antisemitic tweet, Shapiro accompanied Musk on a field trip to Auschwitz — a first visit for both.
“Elon approaches the world as an alien visiting and trying to analyze how the humans work,” Shapiro says. “There’s a sadness in his demeanor.” At Auschwitz, the two discussed the notion of the “inherent goodness” of the human race. “I, obviously, seeing Auschwitz, think no,” Shapiro says. “But Elon was of the opinion that human beings are naturally good but are capable of great evil as part of that equation.”
Shapiro tells me all this 45,000 feet up in the sky, in a Gulfstream jet on the way to Phoenix, where he will be the opening speaker at AmericaFest 2024, an annual conservative gathering. Before the flight, we spent most of the day inside Shapiro’s South Florida studio, where a production team of six oversees the taping of The Ben Shapiro Show (today’s unsexy topic was a GOP-backed omnibus bill) and Ben After Dark, a sort of conservative attempt at Last Week Tonight. (Shapiro moved his family out of L.A. in 2020, saying his hometown had become a “dung heap”; he frequently retells the story of watching his friends get robbed at gunpoint “in a very nice area” the last time he visited.)
The whole Shapiro Show operation is a well-oiled machine, with cable news clips dropping in like clockwork as the host, a dizzyingly fast talker, rarely stumbles. He can rattle off ad copy for a steak-by-mail service, react to TikTok videos and offer play-by-play on the new Superman trailer, all without visibly taking a breath.
Feature
Items of Interest
Foreign
Give Trump’s realism a chance.
Is there an end to the Israel Gaza conflict in sight?
Hamas has another Sinwar and he’s rebuilding already.
Does Nigel Farage have the power to choose the next PM?
Domestic
How the left turned California into a paradise lost.
Two months before blazes, LA fire chief said she needed more firefighters.
Looters dressed as firefighters to steal.
LA mayor vowed not to travel internationally while campaigning.
LA fire will exacerbate housing shortage.
Trump calls Fetterman “impressive” after Mar a Lago meeting.
Trump immigration enforcement may require military deployment.
Steve Bannon goes nuclear on Elon Musk.
J.D. Vance: Only non-violent January 6th protesters will be pardoned.
SCOTUS rejects appeal from oil giants in Hawaii case.
Poll: Cuomo dominates mayoral race.
Media
Jemele Hill makes false claims about LA fire chief on MSNBC.
Will Cain will replace Neil Cavuto at Fox.
Profiling Karoline Leavitt: talk radio is perfect prep for being press secretary.
Jennifer Rubin resigns to start Substack with Norm Eisen and George Conway.
Internal CNN messages revealed in defamation trial.
Tech
Meghan Markle is mad about Meta.
The rise of ghost jobs online.
Ephemera
Wild Card weekend winners and losers.
SNL launches virtual hosting experience.
Billy Bob Thornton on the shocking Landman finale.
Heidi Montag’s album tops the charts after fires.
One hundred years of Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy.
The truth is that British food just sucks.
Quote
“Loneliness has a kind of fascination; it's a state of egotistical, inner grace that you can achieve only by standing guard on old, forgotten roads that no one travels anymore.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte