President-Elect Donald Trump Selects Cabinet Officials
Georgia Rep. Tom Price: Health Secretary
WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump has selected Georgia Rep. Tom Price, a leading critic of President Barack Obama's sweeping health care law, to head the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a person familiar with the decision.
If confirmed by the Senate, Price will play a central role in Republican efforts to repeal and replace the current health care law. Trump has pledged to move quickly on overhauling the landmark measure, but has been vague about what he hopes to see in a replacement bill.
The president-elect has said he favors keeping provisions that allow young people to stay on their parents' health insurance and that prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to those with pre-existing conditions.
Trump is expected to announce Price's nomination as early as Tuesday morning. The person familiar with decision insisted on anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss the matter ahead of the official announcement.
Price, a 62-year-old six-term congressman and orthopedic surgeon, has chaired the House Budget Committee for the past two years. A bookish conservative from the Atlanta suburbs, Price has worked closely with House Speaker Ryan to assemble GOP budgets aimed at reducing the annual deficit.
Last week, Price said whatever Republicans do to replace Obama's health care law will bear a "significant resemblance" to a 2015 measure that was vetoed by the president. That bill would have gutted some of the health care law's main features: Medicaid expansion, subsidies to help middle-class Americans buy private policies, the tax penalties for individuals who refused to get coverage and several taxes to support coverage expansion. The bill would have delayed implementation for two years.
Price insisted that Republicans can keep the protections for those with existing medical conditions without mandating that all individuals carry coverage or pay a penalty to support an expanded insurance pool. Price said Republicans want to address "the real cost drivers" of health care price spikes, which he said were not necessarily sicker patients, but a heavy regulatory burden, taxes and lawsuits against medical professionals.
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Associated Press writers Bill Barrow and Donna Cassata contributed to this report.
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Betsy DeVos: Education Secretary
By Jeremy Diamond and Jim Acosta
BEDMINSTER, N.J. (CNN) -- President-elect Donald Trump tapped Betsy DeVos, a top Republican donor and school choice activist, to head the Department of Education, the Trump transition team announced Wednesday.
Trump met with the billionaire donor and conservative activist this weekend at his golf club in New Jersey, where he hosted a slew of potential cabinet appointees. Trump offered DeVos the position on Tuesday and she accepted the same day, a senior Trump transition official told CNN.
"Betsy DeVos is a brilliant and passionate education advocate," Trump said in a statement Wednesday. "Under her leadership we will reform the U.S. education system and break the bureaucracy that is holding our children back so that we can deliver world-class education and school choice to all families."
But Trump is also already drawing fire from both sides of the political spectrum for his pick. The largest teacher's union in the country slammed DeVos within an hour of the announcement for her advocacy of charter schools and school voucher programs, while conservatives quickly pointed out DeVos' association with groups supporting the Common Core education standards, which Trump has vowed to nix.
DeVos chairs the American Federation for Children, a group that promotes charter school education, and also served on the board of the Foundation for Excellence in Education, a group led by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush -- one of Trump's GOP primary opponents -- which promoted both school choice and the Common Core education standards.
And so whiele Trump vowed to eliminate Common Core, his pick of DeVos has begun to scare conservative opponents of the standards.
As speculation swirled on Tuesday that DeVos might snag the top education job, conservative opponents of Common Core began to warn Trump away from DeVos.
Frank Cannon, the president of the adamantly anti-Common Core American Principles Project, said in a statement Tuesday that DeVos would be "a very Jeb-like pick" and called it "puzzling" that Trump was considering DeVos for the post.
"He repeatedly assured parents across the heartland that he intended to return power over education to local schools," Cannon said of Trump. ""It is puzzling, then, to see reports that the Trump transition team is considering an establishment, pro-Common Core Secretary of Education -- this would not qualify as 'draining the swamp' -- and it seems to fly in the face of what Trump has stated on education policy up to this point."
After the pick was announced, the pro-Trump news site Breitbart blared the headline: "TRUMP ANNOUNCES PRO-COMMON CORE EDUCATION SECRETARY" -- noting the second apparent betrayal in as many days. The site also rebuked Trump's announcement he no longer plans to push for prosecution of his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton as a "broken promise."
DeVos did not mention Common Core in a statement Wednesday, but said broadly that "the status quo in education is not acceptable."
"Together, we can work to make transformational change that ensures every student in America has the opportunity to fulfill his or her highest potential," DeVos said in a statement.
Trump spokesman Jason Miller said Sunday that Trump's meeting with DeVos "largely focused on Common Core, setting higher national standards" and "promoting school choice across the nation."
Bush, for his part, praised Trump's decision in a Facebook post, calling DeVos "an outstanding pick."
"Her allegiance is to families, particularly those struggling at the bottom of the economic ladder, not to an outdated public education model that has failed them from one generation to the next," Bush wrote. "I cannot think of more effective and passionate change agent to press for a new education vision, one in which students, rather than adults and bureaucracies, become the priority in our nation's classrooms."
DeVos has been involved in Republican politics both as a donor and as a party official for decades and served as the state Republican Party chair in Michigan.
The National Education Association, the largest labor union in the US, was quick to slam Trump's pick, arguing that DeVos has "done more to undermine public education than support students" and accusing her of pushing "a corporate agenda."
"She has lobbied for failed schemes, like vouchers --- which take away funding and local control from our public schools --- to fund private schools at taxpayers' expense. These schemes do nothing to help our most-vulnerable students while they ignore or exacerbate glaring opportunity gaps. She has consistently pushed a corporate agenda to privatize, de-professionalize and impose cookie-cutter solutions to public education," the labor union representing teachers and school administrators said in a statement. "By nominating Betsy DeVos, the Trump administration has demonstrated just how out of touch it is with what works best for students, parents, educators and communities."
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South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley: US Ambassador to the United Nations
By Jim Acosta and Adrienne Shih
PHILADELPHIA (CNN)–President-elect Donald Trump has picked South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley to be the US ambassador to the United Nations, according to a source familiar with the decision.
An official Trump transition announcement is expected later Wednesday. The Charleston Post and Courier newspaper was the first to report this story overnight.
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Haley, who is the the daughter of Indian immigrants, has already carved out a legacy for herself, serving as her home state's first female and first minority governor.
While on the stump, Haley vocally disavowed Trump, appearing publicly on behalf of Marco Rubio and endorsing Sen. Ted Cruz after the Florida senator dropped out of the race.
Relations between Haley and President-elect Trump have been far from cordial, with both vaulting verbal jabs at each other during the race to the White House. Trump said in January that Haley's stance on immigration was "weak" after the South Carolina governor welcomed properly vetted legal immigrants into her state, regardless of race or religion.
In a video response to President Barack Obama's annual State of the Union address, Haley, who never calls Trump by name, implied that the then-presumptive GOP nominee would threaten "the dream that is America" for others.
Ahead of the South Carolina primary, where Trump ultimately beat out fellow GOP presidential hopefuls, Haley called the billionaire-turned-politician "everything a governor doesn't want in a president."
In October, however, Haley switched her position, saying she would vote for Trump even though she was "not a fan."
The-CNN-Wire & 2016 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.
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Dr. Ben Carson: Being Considered For Head of HUD
By Jill Disis
NEW YORK CITY, NY (CNN) -- President-elect Donald Trump says he's "seriously considering" Dr. Ben Carson for housing secretary.
In a tweet on Tuesday afternoon, Trump called Carson, a retired neurosurgeon and former rival for the Republican presidential nomination, "a greatly talented person who loves people!"
I am seriously considering Dr. Ben Carson as the head of HUD. I've gotten to know him well--he's a greatly talented person who loves people!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2016
The secretary of housing and urban development oversees federal public housing programs and helps formulate policy on homelessness and housing discrimination. If nominated, Carson would have to be confirmed by the Senate.
A spokesman for Carson, 65, said he could not comment.
It's unclear whether he would take the job. Last week, when Carson was rumored to be under consideration for other Cabinet posts, one of his advisers, Armstrong Williams, told The Hill newspaper: "Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience, he's never run a federal agency. The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency."
Carson told The Washington Post last week that he is "leaning" toward working "from the outside and not from the inside."
"I want to have the freedom to work on many issues and not be pigeonholed into one particular area," he told the newspaper.
The job of housing secretary became even more important after the 2008 housing crisis. President Obama's first pick for the job, Shaun Donovan, oversaw the nearly $14 billion HUD received from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, known as the stimulus.
Donovan left the job in 2014 and was replaced by Julian Castro, then mayor of San Antonio.
The housing secretary also oversees programs that administer mortgage insurance to prospective homeowners and give rental subsidies to lower-income families.
--CNN's Eugene Scott contributed to this report.
The-CNN-Wire ™ & © 2016 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.
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Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions: Attorney General
NEW YORK (AP) -- President-elect Donald Trump is offering the post of attorney general to Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, one of the Trump's closest and most consistent allies.
That's according to a senior Trump official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the conversation.
The official on Friday wouldn't say whether Sessions had accepted the job, which left open the possibility that the arrangement was not finalized.
Sessions was the first senator to endorse Trump and was a close adviser throughout the campaign.
Trump released a statement Thursday after a meeting with the senator saying he was "unbelievably impressed" with Sessions.
The Alabama Republican previously struggled with a Senate confirmation hearing when he was nominated for a federal judgeship in 1986.
He was dogged by racist comments he was accused of making while serving as U.S. attorney in Alabama.
He later withdrew from consideration for the post.
(© Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
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Congressman Mike Pompeo: Offered CIA Director
WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump has offered the CIA director job to Mike Pompeo, a conservative Republican congressman from Kansas who has heavily criticized the Iran deal and was a member of the congressional committee that blasted Hillary Clinton over the attack in Benghazi, Libya.
Pompeo is a member of the House intelligence committee, which oversees U.S. intelligence gathering efforts. In 2014, he was appointed to the House Select Benghazi Committee to probe the 2011 attack on the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi.
He enrolled as a teenager at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. and graduated first in his class in 1986. According to biographical information on his House web site, Pompeo served as a "cavalry officer patrolling the Iron Curtain before the fall of the Berlin Wall."
Pompeo is a graduate of Harvard Law School and was editor of the Harvard Law Review.
After college, he returned to south-central Kansas where his mother was from. He set up Thayer Aerospace and was its chief executive officer for more than 10 years. Later he was president of Sentry International, a company that sold equipment for oil fields and manufacturing.
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Former Military Intelligence Chief Michael Flynn: National Security Adviser
NEW YORK (AP) -- President-elect Donald Trump is offering former military intelligence chief Michael Flynn the position of national security adviser, elevating a fierce critic of current U.S. foreign policy into a crucial White House role.
Flynn's selection amounts to Trump's first signal to allies and adversaries about the course he could take in office. It's unclear whether
Flynn, a retired Army general, has accepted the job, though a senior transition official confirmed Thursday that the president-elect has made the offer. The official was not authorized to discuss the offer publicly and insisted on anonymity.
Flynn was a fierce critic of President Barack Obama's military and foreign policy long before he began advising Trump on national security issues during the presidential campaign. While the position of national security adviser doesn't require Senate confirmation, Flynn would work in the West Wing and have frequent access to the president.
(© Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
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GOP chief Reince Priebus: White House chief of staff
Breitbart executive Stephan Bannon: chief strategist and senior counselor
WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump made his first two key personnel appointments on Sunday, one an overture to Republican circles by naming GOP chief Reince Priebus as his White House chief of staff, the other a shot across the bow of the Washington establishment by tabbing Breitbart news executive Stephan Bannon as chief strategist and senior counselor.
The two men had made up the president-elect's chief of staff shortlist, and while Priebus received that job, Bannon's post also is expected to wield significant clout. The media executive with ties to the alt-right and white nationalist movement was given top billing in the press release announcing their appointments.
Trump's hires were, at first glance, contradictory, though they fit a pattern of the celebrity businessman creating a veritable Rorschach test that allowed his supporters to see what they wanted. Priebus, who lashed the RNC to Trump this summer despite some intraparty objections, is a GOP operative with deep expertise of the Washington establishment that Trump has vowed to shake up. He has close ties to House SpeakerPaul Ryan, a fellow Wisconsinite.
"I am very grateful to the president-elect for this opportunity to serve him and this nation as we work to create an economy that works for everyone, secure our borders, repeal and replace Obamacare and destroy radical Islamic terrorism," Priebus said in the statement announcing his appointment.
Bannon, meanwhile, helped transform the Breitbart news site into the leading mouthpiece of the party's anti-establishment wing, which helped fuel the businessman's political rise. Ryan has been one of his most frequent targets.
"Steve and Reince are highly qualified leaders who worked well together on our campaign and led us to a historic victory," Trump said. "Now I will have them both with me in the White House as we work to make America great again."
Neither Priebus nor Bannon bring policy experience to their new White House roles. Chiefs of staff in particular play a significant role in policy making, serving as a liaison to Cabinet agencies and deciding what information makes it to the president's desk. They're often one of the last people in the room with the president as major decisions are made.
Trump's adult children, who serve as influential advisers to the president-elect, are said to have been concerned about having a controversial figure in the chief of staff role and backed Priebus for the job.
In announcing the appointments, Trump said Priebus and Bannon would work as "equal partners" — effectively creating two power centers in the West Wing. The arrangement is risky and could leave ambiguity over who makes final decisions.
Trump has long encouraged rivalries, both in business and in his presidential campaign. He cycled through three campaign managers during his White House run, creating a web of competing alliances among staffers.
Priebus is a traditional choice, one meant as an olive branch to the Republicans who control both houses of Congress as Trump looks to pass his legislative agenda.
Ryan tweeted, "I'm very proud and excited for my friend @Reince. Congrats!" Ryan made no mention of Bannon in that tweet, but earlier told CNN that he didn't know Bannon but "I trust Donald's judgment."
The Bannon pick, however, is anything but safe.
Under Bannon's tenure, Brietbart pushed a nationalist agenda and became one of the leading outlets of the so-called alt-right — a movement often associated with white supremacist ideas that oppose multiculturalism and defend "Western values."
John Weaver, a Republican strategist who worked for Ohio Gov. John Kasich's presidential campaign, tweeted, "The racist, fascist extreme right is represented footsteps from the Oval Office. Be very vigilant, America."
Bannon, who became campaign CEO in August, pushed Trump to adopt more populist rhetoric and paint rival Hillary Clinton as part of a global conspiracy made up of the political, financial and media elite, bankers bent on oppressing the country's working people — a message that carried Trump to the White House but to some, carried anti-Semitic undertones.
An ex-wife of Bannon said he expressed fear of Jews when the two battled over sending their daughters to private school nearly a decade ago, according to court papers reviewed this summer by The Associated Press. In a sworn court declaration following their divorce, Mary Louise Piccard said her ex-husband had objected to sending their twin daughters to an elite Los Angeles academy because he "didn't want the girls going to school with Jews."
A spokeswoman for Bannon denied he made those statements.
The appointments came after a day in which Trump's tough-talking plan to rein in illegal immigration showed signs Sunday of cracking, with the president-elect seemingly backing off his vow to build a solid wall along the southern U.S. border and Ryan rejecting any "deportation force" targeting people in the country illegally.
Though Trump told CBS' "60 Minutes" in an interview that aired Sunday night that his border wall might look more like a fence in spots, one thing didn't change from his primary: the combative billionaire took to Twitter to settle some scores.
During a four-hour spree, Trump savaged The New York Times for being "dishonest" and "highly inaccurate" and gloated about the GOP stalwarts lining up to congratulate him, bragging that staunch critics and GOP rivals Kasich, Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush had sent attaboys.
Trump also told "60 Minutes" he would eschew the $400,000 annual salary for the president, taking only $1 a year.
Lemire reported from New York. AP White House Correspondent Julie Pace contributed to this report.
(© Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
