Thune Faces Early Test as Incoming Republican Majority Leader

Happy Friday! The new Department of Government Efficiency is starting out strong, putting out a tweet—famously the best way to hunt for qualified job applicants—looking for “high-I.Q., small-government revolutionaries” to cut costs in the U.S. government for no pay. 

We also consider Dispatch interns “high-I.Q., small-government revolutionaries,” but at least we pay a stipend. 

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• Lebanese authorities said Thursday that at least 12 rescue workers were reportedly killed in the northeastern Lebanese city of Baalbek in an Israeli strike, though the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) did not immediately comment on the allegation. Meanwhile, the IDF on Thursday struck targets in Damascus, Syria, which it said were associated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The move was part of what the IDF called an effort to prevent the transfer of weapons from Syria to Lebanon. 
• President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday selected two of his personal defense lawyers to serve in his administration. He said he planned to nominate Todd Blanche and Emil Bove to the Department of Justice to serve as deputy attorney general and principal associate deputy attorney general, respectively. Meanwhile, he also selected Dean John Sauer, the former Missouri solicitor general who argued before the Supreme Court on Trump’s behalf regarding presidential immunity, to be the solicitor general, the nation’s top lawyer. 
• Trump on Thursday selected former Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs. Collins, who serves as chaplain in the Air Force Reserves, was a top Trump defender in the House during the first impeachment hearing against Trump. 
• Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody sued the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Thursday, alleging that the government agency discriminated against Florida residents who supported former President Donald Trump. The complaint comes after the agency acknowledged that one of its employees was fired after instructing a canvassing team to skip houses displaying Trump campaign signs in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton. 
• The Department of Justice said Wednesday that a California teenager pleaded guilty to making hundreds of “swatting” calls targeting “religious institutions, schools, government officials, and other innocent victims.” The teen also made hoax threats and emergency calls to prompt a significant law enforcement response for profit. He will likely face up to 20 years in prison. 
• In a joint statement on Thursday, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said China has undertaken “a broad and significant cyber espionage campaign” against commercial telecoms infrastructure. Hackers from the Chinese Communist Party have successfully stolen customer call records from compromised telecommunications companies, accessed the phones of people associated with politics and the government, and lifted surveillance data meant for U.S. law enforcement agencies. The agencies said they are continuing to investigate. Last month, officials said that Chinese hackers had targeted the phones of Sen. J.D. Vance, former President Donald Trump, and Vice President Kamala Harris. 
• ABC News reported Thursday the House Ethics Committee investigating former Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida heard testimony from a woman who said that Gaetz had sex with her when she was 17 years old and in high school. According to the allegations, Gaetz was a member of Congress at the time. The Florida congressman resigned on Wednesday after President-elect Donald Trump named him as his nominee for attorney general, just days before the House Ethics panel was reportedly set to vote on whether to release its report. The woman, now in her 20s, reportedly met Gaetz through Joel Greenberg, the former Seminole County, Florida, tax collector who is serving an 11-year sentence related to sex trafficking. Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, said he wants to see the results of the ethics probe as part of Gaetz’s confirmation hearing.  
• President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday named Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees agencies responsible for public health like the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It’s also the agency that administers Medicare and Medicaid. RFK Jr. is a leading anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and ran for president as an independent on a platform focused on overhauling the food and health infrastructure in the U.S. “Mr. Kennedy will restore these Agencies to the traditions of Gold Standard Scientific Research, and beacons of Transparency, to end the Chronic Disease epidemic, and to Make America Great and Healthy Again!” Trump said in a post announcing RFK Jr.’s nomination. 

The Senate’s New Boss

Senate leadership just got a little taller. 

John Randolph Thune, the senior senator from South Dakota, won the Senate Republican conference leadership election on Wednesday. The former high school and college basketball star stands at a cool 6 feet, 4 inches. But with Sen. Tom Cotton, a 6-foot-5-inch Arkansas Republican, becoming conference chair—the No. 3 position in the majority—Thune is the runner-up in the leadership team’s height rankings. 

Still, if the conference chose leaders via pickup basketball games instead of secret ballots, the results probably wouldn’t have been too different. 

Thune defeated Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida in two rounds of voting this week to succeed Sen. Mitch McConnell … 

As a non-paying reader, you are receiving a truncated version of The Morning Dispatch. Our 1,516-word item on John Thune’s election as Senate majority leader is available in the members-only version of TMD.

Worth Your Time

• The Ivy League’s 1950s move toward “meritocratic” admissions broke … almost everything, David Brooks argued in The Atlantic. “In some ways, we’ve just reestablished the old hierarchy rooted in wealth and social status—only the new elites possess greater hubris, because they believe that their status has been won by hard work and talent rather than by birth,” Brooks wrote. “The sense that they ‘deserve’ their success for having earned it can make them feel more entitled to the fruits of it, and less called to the spirit of noblesse oblige. … James Conant and his colleagues dreamed of building a world with a lot of class-mixing and relative social comity; we ended up with a world of rigid caste lines and pervasive cultural and political war. Conant dreamed of a nation ruled by brilliant leaders. We ended up with President Trump.” 
• What happened to basketball uniforms? “Nike’s tenure as league outfitter has reduced the raw number of jerseys teams have, but has scrambled who wears what, when — and introduced the ‘City Edition,’ giving space for teams to dress as different teams entirely,” Tyler Machado wrote for The Pudding. “Turning on a random NBA game can now be a disorienting experience to the casual or even the diehard fan. The viewer may ask themselves: which team is which, again? Who’s this team in black and neon green, or a brown and teal?” Scroll through the beautiful visuals to see how basketball fashion for your favorite team has evolved. 

Presented Without Comment

Associated Press: Satire Publication The Onion Buys Alex Jones’ Infowars at Auction With Sandy Hook Families’ Backing 

In the Zeitgeist

If you’ve ever wondered what enormous wealth and a deep love of your wife can get you, now you know that it’s Mark Zuckerberg collaborating with T-Pain on an acoustic version of Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz’s “Get Low.” We listened to it; so must you. 

Toeing the Company Line

• In the newsletters: Will argued that there are lots of ways to make government better even if Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk are unlikely to eliminate trillions in spending, and Nick doubled down on his position that as bad as Trump’s Cabinet picks are, they should be confirmed—even Matt Gaetz. 
• On the site: Kevin puts Marco Rubio on the “Mount Rushmore of Putzes,” Drucker reports on the Senate’s deference to Trump, and Joe Polidoro explains the actual risks behind fluoridation.