Op-Ed denotes an article that may be opposite to views of the editorial. Thus, this article may not reflect the official views of The Stork, or the personal views of The Stork’s Editorial Team.
As the U.S. President-elect Donald Trump prepares to enter the Oval Office, he has spent the past few weeks announcing his cabinet choices. To say his choices are concerning is only the beginning of a long analysis.
When looking at the announced nominations, it is evident that Trump is not so worried about the expertise which his nominees have to offer but rather about their loyalty to him. Each person who has been appointed by him is a known, typically avid supporter of him and his policies. Rather than filling his cabinet with politicians who are competent to run administrative departments, he is filling it with loyalists. This poses a dramatic danger to the integral functioning of the executive branch. A president’s cabinet is meant to advise them via their expertise to make the best decision, not to agree with them unconditionally.
Trump announced that, under his new administration, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will run the Department for Government Efficiency. Both Musk and Ramaswamy are known for their outspoken support of Trump in this election. Musk donated $119 million to Trump’s campaign during the previous election. When Ramaswamy announced his withdrawal from the 2024 presidential campaign, one of the first things he did was endorse Trump. Additionally, the two are incredibly wealthy businessmen, setting them up to reap the most, and possibly the only benefits that could come from Trump’s presidency. Placing two wealthy businessmen with little to no political career experience in charge of a completely new administrative department is a recipe for favoritism towards the rich in policy creation and application. And the rich are a very small portion of the American people.
Linda McMahon, the founder and currently a minority owner of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), was selected by Trump to be the Secretary of Education. McMahon has been avidly criticized for profiting off the promotion of “violence and sexualization of young women” in WWE. McMahon is not only someone who has had no role in education but also someone who has furthered the normalization of violence and sexualization across youth in the U.S.. According to the New York Times, “a lawsuit filed in October accused the McMahons of willfully ignoring the sexual abuse of young boys by a W.W.E. ringside announcer, echoing claims made years ago.” It is frankly unfathomable that someone with no visible concern for the protection of children could be placed in such a pivotal role for them.
Pete Hegseth has been a dedicated supporter of Trump since his first presidential term. Hegseth is a Fox News host and war veteran, and Trump has chosen him to be the U.S. Secretary of Defense. In this position, he will be in charge of the Pentagon and 1.3 million active-duty troops. Hegseth holds a master’s degree in public policy, making him technically educated for the job. It is important to note that a multitude of Trump’s appointees are people who have received incredibly high-quality education from world-renowned universities, yet they have still managed to enhance Trump’s actions and threats to the nation. Education does not equate to qualification when it comes to leadership. Leadership requires perspective, empathy, and open mindedness – all things that Trump’s administration has hugely and explicitly lacked while in office before.
A subject of great importance to Trump’s rising administration is immigration policy and policing. The current list of appointees to the executive branch is all but short of names pushing for more extreme measures of deportation and border security. For example, Trump named Thomas Homan “border czar” for the U.S., placing Homan in charge of border control at the federal level. Homan has expressed extreme rhetoric about what constitutes appropriate policing of immigration; he said in an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes that worksite raids will resume under Trump’s new administration. In the same interview, Homan said the way to deport immigrants without separating families was simply to deport them together, marking his ruthless and callous ideology.
In all three of his presidential runs, Trump ran highly anti-immigration campaigns. In reality, immigrants are of great benefit to the U.S. economy and the nation as a whole. And, according to the Center for Migration Studies, Trump’s immigration plan “could cost over $500 billion to implement and would sacrifice billions in tax revenue per year. It also would lead to labor shortages and reduce the GDP.”
Another point of concern is the health sector under Trump’s future administration. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK) was chosen by Trump to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services. In short, the issue here is that, “He is a vocal vaccine skeptic and critic of the C.D.C., and has promoted theories that suggest H.I.V. is not the true cause of AIDS”. Not to mention Trump’s announcement of Dr. Martin A. Makary for F.D.A. commissioner, who spoke against vaccine mandates during Covid-19. In this position, Dr. Makary would be answering to RFK, who has “been outspoken in his desire to overhaul the F.D.A.,” according to the New York Times. Moreover, Dr. Mehmet Oz, celebrity and former television host, was nominated to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. During the pandemic, Dr. Oz “promoted the malaria drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine to ward off the coronavirus”. Now, he’ll be in charge of the government programs which regulate health insurance and prices in the health industry, despite having no previous experience in insurance policy. Fret not, as their joint distrust of vaccines is bound to keep the administration together and America just as healthy! (Wrong – any worries are well founded.)
Just as worrying is Elise Stefanik’s nomination by Trump for U.N. Ambassador. Stefanik is “an outspoken supporter of Israel, and had a high-profile role in the congressional hearings that led to the resignations of several university presidents over their handling of campus unrest following the terror attack by Hamas on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza”. Stefanik has additionally called to defund the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestine Refugees in the Near East and also criticized the Biden-Harris administration for sending funds to the UNRWA.
In Palestine, tens of thousands of innocent women and children have died at the hands of Israeli violence in the last 13 months. More specifically, as of December 16th, 2024, 17,492 children have been killed. A majority of Gazans are displaced, as 87% of housing units have been damaged, leaving conditions unlivable. Almost all schools are damaged, and 17 out of 36 hospitals are only partially functional. Not to mention, more than 150 journalists have been killed since October 7, 2023, most of them Palestinian.
In defending the actions of Israel over the course of the past year, Stefanik is not defending a state’s right to self-defense but rather the active genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. This is the person Trump wants to send to the U.N., to the global organization chartered to maintain world peace and the protection of human rights –the same rights being violated in Gaza. But as established, this is not an issue for Trump, since his primary concern is whether she holds unwavering support for him.
The idea that loyalism is more important than competence in political positions is very unconventional for a president and highly unprofessional. Though, it is altogether questionable whether these appointees will last in their positions when looking at how many of Trump’s previous staff have left their positions in his administration. The turnover rate under Trump’s previous administration was dramatic. But, this is an issue reaching beyond the cabinet. His “A Team” – composed of executive office members excluding the cabinet – had a 92% turnover rate by the end of his first administration, higher than any other president preceding him in contemporary times.
It seems that each nomination Trump makes comes with its own oxymoronic description: a vaccine skeptic for health secretary, the owner of an entertainment company that profits off violence and sexualization for secretary of education, a doctor who opposed Covid vaccine mandates for F.D.A. commissioner, a politician who supports the violation of human rights in Gaza for the U.N., and more. The trouble here lies not only in the individual competence of all these figures but also in the power they hold to intensify Trump’s impulsive and harsh executive choices. If it happens, these administrators will be the reason Trump goes through his presidency unquestioned, and he’s the one who set it up this way.
Featured image provided by the New York Times.
