The images and videos were hard to miss in the days leading up to November 5. There was Donald Trump with the chiseled musculature of Superman, hovering over a row of skyscrapers. Trump and Kamala Harris squaring off in bright-red uniforms (McDonald’s logo for Trump, hammer-and-sickle insignia for Harris). People had clearly used AI to create these—an effort to show support for their candidate or to troll their opponents. But the images didn’t stop after Trump won.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s movement has repeatedly been written off as a farce, a stunt, a distraction. Now Donald Trump has nominated him to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, where, if confirmed, he’ll oversee a life-and-death corner of the federal government.
RFK Jr.’s operation had been building toward this moment for months.

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Over the years, the cryptocurrency industry has made many lofty promises, but any meaningful application for the technology—besides for scams and crimes—has largely failed to materialize.

Is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s improbable nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services, actually such a crank? Short answer: yes. But two opinion pieces published in just the past few days argue that although Kennedy is often taken as unhinged, some of his ideas may very well be sound. Take the call for removal of fluoride from the nation’s drinking water. “It’s not an entirely crazy idea,” wrote Leana Wen, the former Baltimore health commissioner, in The Washington Post.

In 2022, Democrats defied the political history of poor midterm-election results for the party holding the White House by running expectedly well in the seven key swing states—most crucially, the former “Blue Wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—despite pervasive dissatisfaction with the economy and President Joe Biden’s performance. That success, ironically, may have helped seal the party’s fate in the 2024 election.

Yesterday, when Donald Trump announced that he wanted Representative Matt Gaetz to lead the Department of Justice, virtually all Democrats—and even some Republicans—were aghast. The man who was the subject of a federal sex-crimes investigation will now be America’s chief prosecutor? they wondered, eyes wide. Attorney General Matt Gaetz?
They may have to get used to it. “It’s the absolute perfect pick,” Steve Bannon, the former Trump campaign strategist, told me last night.