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This is what 4 of Trump’s cabinet picks think of the agencies they would lead.
As President-elect Donald J. Trump prepares to return to Washington, his picks for high-ranking cabinet positions have put into sharp relief his vow to shake up the establishment: Many of his would-be nominees have fiercely criticized the very agencies they are seeking to helm.
But some of the claims they have leveled are faulty to start.
Among the more radical candidates are Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, Kash Patel as F.B.I. director and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary for health and human services.
Mr. Hegseth, a former Fox News host and veteran, wrote a book decrying the “cultural chaos and weakness” inflicted by top military brass obsessed with “woke” ideologies.
He has said that women should not serve in combat and suggested that top officials involved in the withdrawal of Afghanistan should be removed.
And he has accused the Biden administration and the news media of inflating extremism in the military.
Fox News, Jan. 5, 2024
He was referring to, and imprecisely describing, the findings of a study commissioned by the Pentagon and released in December 2023. The study found “no evidence that the number of violent extremists in the military is disproportionate to the number of violent extremists in the United States as a whole.” But it did find that among veterans, the rate of participation in “extremist ideologies and behaviors” was “slightly higher and may be growing.” It also noted that “racism and sexism continue to be problems in the military.”
In other instances, Mr. Hegseth has singled out what he calls “poisonous ideologies” of climate change and gender parity.
Fox News, June 2, 2024
“Our military is pumping out electric tanks. China is building a military specifically designed to defeat us and our defense industry, because of our generals who’ve given into ideologues, is focused on climate change.”
The Army does have a goal to incorporate hybrid tactical vehicles by 2035, and fully electric ones by 2050. But those are not tanks. Moreover, the impetus has more to do with concerns about fuel supplies in combat and the tactical advantage of silence that an electric vehicle confers.
Ms. Gabbard is known for her outlier positions, especially on foreign policy. Once aligned with the Democratic Party as a congresswoman from Hawaii, she is now a Trump loyalist who has drawn particular scrutiny for embracing talking points that echo disinformation from Russian state media.
If confirmed, Ms. Gabbard would oversee more than a dozen spy agencies and have access to highly sensitive intelligence.
Ms. Gabbard has been critical of the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine in its war against Russia.
Fox News, March 14, 2022
Ms. Gabbard appeared on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” to rebut criticisms that she had repeated an unfounded claim, promoted by Russian state media, that the United States was funding bioweapons laboratories in Ukraine. She argued that she had said “no such thing” but rather that she had merely warned that laboratories conducting biological research could be compromised in a warzone.
Officials had said that the labs in Ukraine may contain pathogens once used for Soviet-era weapons programs, but that the labs did not have the ability to manufacture bioweapons. A United Nations official said the organization was also not aware of any biological weapons program in Ukraine.
A spokeswoman for the Trump transition cited comments that Victoria Nuland, then the under secretary for political affairs at the State Department, had made in congressional testimony in 2022. Ms. Nuland said that Ukraine had biological research facilities and that the government was working with Ukraine on how to prevent materials from falling into Russian hands.
But Mr. Carlson mischaracterized Ms. Nuland’s remarks as an admission of the existence of bioweapons labs — and Ms. Gabbard concurred, despite her earlier precision.
Ms. Gabbard has also accused the “security state” of targeting perceived political enemies.
Fox News, Aug. 11, 2022
“You are not allowed to disagree with the F.B.I. That is the new message. The security state will label you an extremist for daring to challenge or disagree with the regime’s weaponization of law enforcement.”
Ms. Gabbard was referring to and mischaracterizing remarks made by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland about the F.B.I.’s court-approved search of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s Florida estate, earlier that month. She played a clip of Mr. Garland saying: “Let me address recent unfounded attacks on the professionalism of the F.B.I. and Justice Department agents and prosecutors. I will not stand by silently when their integrity is unfairly attacked.”
Ms. Gabbard portrayed the remarks as a “stark warning to anyone who dares to disagree” with the Biden administration and the Washington establishment.
But Mr. Garland was speaking specifically about the search, which occurred in early August 2022 as part of an investigation into whether Mr. Trump had improperly retained classified documents after he left office.
For days, Mr. Garland stayed silent about the search as Mr. Trump advanced numerous false and unsupported claims. Three days later, Mr. Garland announced that the Justice Department would seek to unseal the warrant.
Mr. Patel, a right-wing pugilist, has promised to reshape the F.B.I. by firing its top officials, closing its headquarters in Washington and going after Mr. Trump’s rivals.
His statements reflect a suspicion of the institution he would be in line to run, undermining its work as biased and marginalizing the F.B.I.’s efforts to hold to account members of the pro-Trump mob who threatened the transfer of power.
He has cast the agency as corrupt and its inquiries as politically motivated by mischaracterizing agency procedures and laws.
Shawn Ryan’s podcast, Sept. 2, 2024
Mr. Patel was referring to, and mischaracterizing, several elements of the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago and the federal case against Mr. Trump for mishandling classified documents.
By “bogus WhatsApp warrant,” Mr. Patel appeared to be referring to the disclosure that an F.B.I. agent had procured the warrant by making a sworn statement before a judge using WhatsApp.
The F.B.I. did not “leak” the warrant, as Mr. Patel said; rather, the Justice Department sought to unseal it and a judge approved the request — after Mr. Trump encouraged its release. And it is standard practice for the F.B.I. to take photos of evidence obtained in searches.
The Presidential Records Act of 1978 does not allow departing presidents to “take what they want,” and it is not true that other presidents have done the same thing as Mr. Trump. The law gives the National Archives and Records Administration ownership and control of presidential records. The agency has said that it “assumed physical and legal custody of the presidential records” from every one of Mr. Trump’s predecessors dating to Ronald Reagan.
A spokesman for the Trump transition cited a case in which a conservative legal group sued former President Bill Clinton for access to audiotapes of interviews between Mr. Clinton and a historian. But that case is not particularly relevant to Mr. Trump’s, as a federal judge ruled that the audiotapes were personal records. Mr. Trump was accused of taking classified documents and presidential records.
He has sought to rewrite the history of the Capitol attack, falsely pinning blame on Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the violence.
“War Room,” Oct. 7, 2024
This exchange on a podcast by the right-wing strategist Stephen Bannon referred to footage captured for a documentary about Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker. In multiple clips, released by House Republicans this summer, Ms. Pelosi is seen on the day of the riot huddled with other lawmakers in a secure room, walking briskly down a hallway surrounded by security guards, and sitting in a moving car, all the while expressing frustration about security lapses. She was not actively filming a movie, unbothered by the riot unfolding, as Mr. Patel suggested.
The clips do include Ms. Pelosi saying, in an apparent reference to the Capitol Police’s lack of preparation: “They clearly didn’t know and I take responsibility for not having them just prepare for more because it’s stupid that we should be in a situation like this” and “Oh my god, I can’t believe the stupidity of this. And I take full responsibility.”
But securing the Capitol is the job of the Capitol Police and a three-member governing board that includes the architect of the Capitol, one official appointed by the speaker and one appointed by the Senate leader. Moreover, it is the president who is authorized to deploy the D.C. National Guard, not Ms. Pelosi.
The Trump transition spokesman also cited a letter Mayor Muriel Bowser wrote to Trump administration officials. But that letter was dated and posted on Jan. 5, 2021, a day before the riot, stating that the city had not asked for additional law enforcement for planned protests and requesting that federal agencies coordinate with the city police for further deployments. The letter does not contain evidence that Ms. Bowser turned down Mr. Trump’s authorization of additional National Guard troops.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination before endorsing Mr. Trump and joining his transition team, is a leading vaccine skeptic whose views on medicine and health swerve far outside the mainstream.
Like the president-elect, Mr. Kennedy is prone to sharing baseless theories based on little evidence.
In voicing skepticism of vaccines, he has promoted misinformation.
Testimony to Louisiana House, Dec. 6, 2021
“It confirms that this is the deadliest vaccine ever made.”
Mr. Kennedy, in testifying before state lawmakers during the coronavirus pandemic, pointed to a chart that purported to show “19,000 deaths reported from Covid vaccines, more than from all other vaccines combined in 30 years,” citing data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.
But the database allows anyone to post a report, and is not verified. A disclaimer on the vaccine reporting website cautions that “no proof that the event was caused by the vaccine is required in order for VAERS to accept the report.”
At the time of Mr. Kennedy’s comments, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had confirmed that six deaths had been caused by the vaccine, out of more than 450 million doses and a far cry from the 19,000 figure, PolitiFact reported.
Mr. Kennedy has advanced a groundless theory that elicited accusations of antisemitism and racism.
Video published by The New York Post, June 15, 2023
On social media, Mr. Kennedy defended his remarks by citing a 2020 study that he said showed the structure of the virus was “most compatible with Blacks and Caucasians and least compatible with ethnic Chinese, Finns and Ashkenazi Jews.”
But scientists dismissed his claims about the study, which did not say that Chinese people were less susceptible to the virus. The study did say that one receptor for the virus did not appear to be present in Amish or Ashkenazi Jewish populations.
Now-former Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks at his primary election night event on June 9 in Blue Hill, Maine. Platner officially dropped out of the race July 10 following rape allegations from a former romantic partner that he denies.
CJ Gunther/Getty Images
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CJ Gunther/Getty Images
Graham Platner, Maine’s Democratic nominee for Senate, is officially out of the race.
The Maine Secretary of State said Platner filed the necessary paperwork to withdraw his candidacy two days after he announced he planned to do so following an accusation of rape by a former romantic partner. Platner denies the allegation.
The Maine Democratic Party has until July 27 to pick Platner’s replacement.
In his withdrawal notice, Platner said “people are desperate for change” and that’s why they voted “for a new kind of politics” by making him the Democratic nominee. He expressed gratitude for those who supported his campaign and said that he will continue to fight for “the movement we have built together and the future we believe in.”
He ended his notice with a strong statement aligned with the progressive platform.
“F*ck ICE. Free Palestine. Up the Hearts.”
Platner announced his plan to withdraw from the race in an 11-minute video he posted to social media on July 8. He said he had no choice but to suspend his campaign, citing it was no longer viable financially.
“We are going to lose our ability to fundraise. We are going to lose our ability to access voter data. We are going to lose all of the things that any campaign needs on the basic level simply to function,” he said.
Platner added that dropping out was not an admission of guilt. Rather, the decision, he said, is to keep the progressive movement in Maine alive to defeat Republican Sen. Susan Collins in November. Platner blamed the “political establishment” for his downfall and argued the goal was to force him out of the race.
“We built a campaign. We engaged in electoral politics. We motivated people. We banded together. We did it the way that we were told we are supposed to make change and we won. And now they are not going to let us have it. Not if it’s me,” he said.
Many powerful Democrats and progressives, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent, urged Platner to step down.
Platner has had to answer to a waterfall of scandals since he launched his Senate bid. Despite those, he ran away with the nomination in the June 9 primary, securing more than 150,000 votes — more than any other Democratic Senate candidate in Maine’s history.
Platner ran on a progressive platform centered on affordability, universal health care and getting corporate money and influence out of politics. During his campaign, he generated an undeniable amount of enthusiasm, something the Maine Democratic Party will have to harness if it hopes to beat Collins in the general election.
Multiple people have already launched campaigns to replace Platner, including former state Sen. Troy Jackson and former CDC official Nirav Shah, who both ran unsuccessful bids for governor.
Platner called on the replacement process to reflect “the Mainers who on June 9 turned out and showed that they are desperate for a different kind of politics.”
“We were asking for real democracy, and we did it the right way. And we won. But now the ball is in the court of the Democratic establishment,” he added.
The Maine Democratic Party said that it intends to hold a new nominating convention where around 600 delegates will select Platner’s successor. Candidates have until July 15 to declare their intent to seek the nomination and gather signatures from at least 8 of Maine’s 16 counties. Party leadership added they will make the nomination process public and transparent.
A Waymo robotaxi drives in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood this week.
Heather Diehl/Getty Images
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Police in San Mateo, Calif., posted Monday on social media that they had apprehended a pair of teenagers from a Waymo driverless robotaxi after the company alerted authorities to suspected criminal activity. It’s the latest incident involving video surveillance of passengers and others by autonomous vehicles — raising questions about the limits of privacy in such vehicles.
The Facebook post by the San Mateo County Police said: “Parents do you know where your teens are? @waymo does!”
The 15-year-olds were allegedly drinking alcohol and shooting toy guns from the car, according to the police. They said Waymo’s systems detected behavior that then triggered a safety response, after which the company disabled the vehicle and contacted police.
Waymo’s cars, equipped with an array of cameras, microphones and other sensors to monitor passengers and other nearby vehicles, are becoming more common in cities across the United States. Experts say the detention of the two teens in San Mateo highlights a potential — but not inevitable — trade-off between privacy and convenience. It also questions the extent to which companies similar to Waymo are required to hand over private data, including audio and video of passengers, in situations where a crime is suspected.
NPR reached out to Waymo, which is owned by Alphabet, the parent company of Google, for comment on the details of the San Mateo incident and how the company responded, but did not hear back. But on its website, the company says that as many as 29 cameras in its autonomous cars provide an all-around view and “are designed with high dynamic range and thermal stability, to see in both daylight and low-light conditions, and tackle more complex environments.”
“There already exist laws that govern duty to report or even duty to protect” for carriers such as Waymo, according to Alessandro Acquisti, a professor of information technology at the MIT Sloan School of Management. “The privacy problems arise when and if driverless carrier companies used such laws or ethical obligations as a pretext for blanket, indiscriminate accumulation of identifiable data for unspecified future purposes.”
That includes not just monitoring people inside the cars, but outside too. Take, for example, a hit-and-run investigation last year in Los Angeles. Media reported that the police inquiry was aided by video captured by a Waymo taxi that had a clear view of the crime. Critics suggested at the time that authorities were using the company’s vehicles as a mobile surveillance platform. And during 2025 protests in Los Angeles against Immigration and Customs Enforcement crackdowns, demonstrators vandalized Waymos, apparently angry that video recorded by the vehicles could be used by police, although there is no evidence that happened.
In a transparency report, Google says it received nearly 290,000 requests from governments worldwide in the first six months of 2025 for disclosure of user information across all its platforms, including Waymo. The company says that in more than 80% of the requests in those six months, some information was disclosed. “Google carefully reviews each request to make sure it satisfies applicable laws. If a request asks for too much information, we try to narrow it, and in some cases we object to producing any information at all,” the company says.
In an email to NPR, San Mateo Police Department spokesperson Jeanine Luna said that detaining the teens in the Waymo on Monday was “wholly appropriate” under the circumstances. “We received the call of a ‘firearm’ being shot from a moving vehicle,” she said. “Furthermore, the occupants were described as being possibly ‘intoxicated.’” she said.
“Being that the vehicle was disabled (the occupants had every right to exit the vehicle before police arrival, but they did not), a high-risk traffic stop was conducted to ensure the safety of all involved,” Luna added. “They were not arrested and were released to their parents, however, potential charges are still pending dependent on what the video from inside the vehicle shows.”
Autonomous taxis represent an ethical gray area
Robotaxis began to roll out across the U.S. in December 2018, when Waymo launched in Phoenix. These services have been used for less than a decade — so the norms surrounding them aren’t settled, experts agree.
The Facebook post may make Waymo passengers wonder what triggers a police intervention, says Irina Raicu, director of the Internet Ethics program at Santa Clara University. She has used Waymo’s driverless taxis and says ethically, the privacy issues surrounding them sit in a gray area. “There’s something about being in a car without another person that makes you think it’s private.”
“With all these recording devices, we don’t see them, [and] they’re not these obvious things being stuck in our faces,” Raicu adds.
That brings up a key issue: informed consent, Acquisti says.
“It is not clear the extent to which passengers … are reminded that when they step into the car, that they are being monitored, and most likely they are not told in its entirety how the data will be used,” he says.
Bruce Schneier, a cybersecurity and privacy expert and professor at the Munk School at the University of Toronto, believes that Waymo does have a compelling interest in protecting its vehicles. He compares monitoring a robotaxi via cameras to a human taxi driver keeping an eye on passengers in the rearview mirror.
“Maybe the driverless car comes back … and it has all of its cushions slashed, and it’s like, ‘Who the hell did that? Let’s go and look at the tape,’” Schneier suggests. “You can’t have sex in the back of a taxi, right? Someone would say, ‘Stop it.’”
He concludes that some supervision makes sense. In an Uber rideshare, he notes, “most of the time there’s a camera recording the back seat.” (Uber says on its website that it allows drivers to install such cameras for the purpose of “fulfilling transportation services.”)
Waymo robotaxis, while a fairly common sight in the San Francisco Bay Area, are still a novelty in much of the country. And many people are hesitant to ride in one, according to a Pew Research Center poll published this month. The survey found that only 5% of Americans had ever ridden in a driverless car. Meanwhile, 71% of those polled said they would feel uncomfortable in one, with only 7% saying they would be “extremely or very comfortable” riding in one.
For that reason, experts who spoke with NPR said they were optimistic that it’s not too late to shift gears on privacy norms and policies surrounding these vehicles.
Acquisti doesn’t see why privacy measures can’t be built into driverless vehicles.
“I would immediately challenge the notion that people have to be monitored,” he says, noting that privacy-preserving technologies exist and can be installed.
“Driverless cars are coming, but they don’t have to come in this particular incarnation,” Raicu says. “They’re still being designed and redesigned. It’s early days.”
Donald Trump has terminated the remaining members of the independent, federal commission that assists election administration officials nationwide just a few months before the midterm elections, multiple outlets reported Thursday.
The remaining three commissioners of the four-member bipartisan commission were forced out on Thursday in different ways. The one Republican appointee resigned and the other two, Democratic appointees were notified of their terminations via email from the White House presidential personnel office.
“On behalf of President Donald J Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as Commissioner of the Election Assistance Commission is terminated, effective immediately. Thank you for your service,” the email, seen by Reuters, said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Election Assistance Commission serves as a “national clearinghouse of information on election administration”, accredits testing laboratories and certifies voting systems, and maintains the national mail-voter registration form developed by the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, according to the commission’s website. The terminations follow Trump and top administration officials’ advocacy to change vote-by-mail requirements and investigations into the 2020 election outcome, which Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
“It is irresponsible and dangerous that this Administration remains dead set on causing chaos for our election officials across this country,” Arizona secretary of state Adrian Fontes said in a Thursday statement. “This move undermines the integrity of nonpartisan election administration.”
The 2002 law that established the commission, the Help America Vote Act, states the president can appoint replacements to the commission.
It is unclear how Trump will move ahead with the commission.
Reuters contributed reporting
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