November 13, 2024: Trump Taps Musk, Ramaswamy, Hegseth, and Others. Plus Your Questions About the Future of LGBTQ Rights Under Trump's Administration Answered, and More.
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Welcome back to Unbiased. Today is Wednesday, November 13th, and this is your daily news rundown. Today we are going to cover a few more of Trump's picks, and then we'll get into the future of LGBTQ rights, which was the biggest topic request over the last week or so, and we'll finish with quick hitters. So let's get into it. Starting off with a few more of

Trump's picks. If you haven't already listened to yesterday's episode, I do highly suggest you do that because not only will you hear about five of his other picks, but you'll also get a lay of the land as far as the differences between the executive office of the president and the president's cabinet. They're two different things. And these people being picked fall into one of these two buckets. So it's just good to have that background and know which is which.

But let's start today with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who will lead what Trump has called the Department of Government Efficiency. The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOJ, is a new department, so we don't really know too much about what it'll be responsible for aside from what Trump has said, which is in part, quote, "...together these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy,"

slash access regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies. The Department of Government Efficiency will provide advice and guidance from outside of the government and will partner with the White House and the Office of Management and Budget to drive large-scale structural reform and create an entrepreneurial approach to government never seen before."

End quote. I'm not sure if you caught that, but in Trump's statement, he did say they'll be providing advice from outside of the government, which suggests that Musk and Ramaswamy will not take formal roles as federal officials. But, you know, obviously we'll instead work from outside the government. Trump has also said that there will be an end date to the department. He said their work will conclude no later than July 4th, 2026.

He said a smaller government with more efficiency and less bureaucracy will be the perfect gift to America on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. I'm confident they will succeed. End quote. Promises of transparency have also been made by Musk. He wrote on X, quote, all actions of the Department of Government Efficiency will be posted online for maximum transparency.

At a rally last month, Musk was asked how much he could cut out of the nation's $6.5 trillion budget. Musk responded he thought he could at least cut $2 trillion. On the flip side, the former chairman of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisors in the Bush administration said that it would be mathematically impossible to find $2 trillion and said that it would be very challenging to slash that much spending if interest expenses, entitlement programs, and defense were off-limits.

So time will tell what happens there. A little bit about each of these men personally. Elon Musk is, of course, a well-known entrepreneur, having started SpaceX, becoming the CEO of Tesla, co-founding OpenAI, and currently owning the platform X.

He is 53 years old, originally from South Africa, and became a naturalized American citizen in 2002. He has never really dabbled much in politics until this election, but has shown strong support for Trump in many ways, including by donating millions of dollars to Trump's campaign, making public appearances with him, and starting that $1 million a day giveaway for those that signed that petition to protect the first and second amendments of the Constitution.

As for Ramaswamy, he is also an entrepreneur known for starting a pharmaceutical company in 2014 called Rovant Sciences, but more widely known now after running for president in this election. He is 39 years old, originally from Ohio, and was actually being considered to take J.D. Vance's place in the Senate, but has since said that this new position means he will withdraw from consideration. Moving on to John Ratcliffe.

Trump said he will nominate John Ratcliffe to serve as his director of the CIA. And this is a position that requires Senate confirmation. If confirmed, Ratcliffe's role would include supervising the agency's analysis of foreign threats, running sensitive spy operations abroad, and overseeing covert action campaigns.

The director of the CIA reports to the director of national intelligence, which is actually a role that Ratcliffe previously held at the end of Trump's administration, Trump's last administration, that is. So essentially, his previous role was a broader role where he oversaw the whole U.S. intelligence community, whereas this new role is specifically focused on the CIA.

And then finally, Pete Hegseth. This is Trump's nominee for secretary of defense. If confirmed by the Senate, Hegseth would oversee the Defense Department and act as the principal defense policymaker and advisor overseeing a workforce of nearly three million civilian workers and military service members, many of whom are deployed around the world.

Hegseth is 44 years old. He has a long record in the military, serving in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, and received two bronze stars and a combat infantryman's badge. For the last decade, he has been a commentator on Fox News, starting there as a contributor in 2014, and then was named the co-host of Fox & Friends Weekend in 2017. He is the author of a book called The War on Warriors,

behind the betrayal of the men who keep us free, which was published earlier this year. He has in the past discussed removing wokeness from the military as well as women's roles in the military. He said this in an interview last week. You don't like women in combat? No. Why not? I love women service members who contribute amazingly because everything about men and women serving together makes the situation more complicated.

and complication in combat means casualties are worse. And when you actually go into the hood,

Again, and I've got response. I've got 99% positive response to this. A few, a little bit of pushback. But when you actually break down what they did in the studies to open the door for women in combat, I mean, they just ignored them. I'm okay with the idea that you maintain the standards where they are for everybody. And if there's some, you know, hard-charging female that meets that standard, great, cool. Join the infantry battalion. But that is not what's happened. What has happened is the standards have lowered.

In a post announcing this pick, Trump wrote, quote, Pete has spent his entire life as a warrior for the troops and for the country. Pete is tough, smart, and a true believer in America first. End quote. Critics and those surprised at the pick have pointed to Hegseth's lack of experience for the position, especially amid the current global crises that he would be facing if confirmed. This includes the war in the Middle East and Ukraine, the expanding alliance between Russia and North

Korea and the growing competition with China. So those are some of Trump's more recent picks. And now we can move on to a new topic.

I said yesterday that I was going to try to slowly chip away at some of the most frequently requested topics as the week went on. So that's what I'm going to try to do. The two most frequently requested topics were, or at least the topics that I haven't really covered in depth yet, were the future of LGBTQ rights under a Trump administration, as well as the future of the Department of Education and

and what dismantling that would look like. There's a lot of fear right now centered around both of these topics, so I do want to try to offer some substance. I'm going to cover the LGBTQ questions first today, and then I'll focus on the Department of Education tomorrow. The best way to do this is through questions submitted by all of you, so let's get into them. First question, what specific rights are LGBTQ people afraid of losing?

Well, the rights that LGBTQ people are afraid of losing include same-sex marriage, being able to live and work without discrimination, and then specifically for trans people, they are concerned about losing their access to gender transition treatments like surgery, hormones, puberty blockers, etc.,

Now, I'm just going to say at the outset, I could probably do a whole episode on this, but I am going to try to keep it as brief as possible for time-saving purposes. Let's address the same-sex marriage issue first. And I did address this in last week's November 7th episode, so please tune into that if you haven't already. But the fear about same-sex marriage being overturned comes from one, Project 2025, and two, a dissent by Justice Thomas in the case that overturned Roe v. Wade.

Now, as far as Project 2025 goes, I'm not going to spend any time on that, really, because I have an entire episode dedicated to it. Actually, two episodes, July 9th and 10th of this year. Go listen. I cover Project 2025 there and Trump's relation to it. But let's talk about Justice Thomas's dissent.

In that dissent, he essentially said that because the court overturned Roe v. Wade on the basis that the right to privacy doesn't extend to the right to abortion, that the court should reassess every right to privacy case they've decided. And this includes the right to same-sex marriage and interracial marriage. Side note, Justice Thomas himself is in an interracial marriage. But here's the thing, and I said this in last week's episode. The same-sex marriage case, it's called Obergefell v. Hodges.

It was not decided solely on a privacy basis. It was also decided, yes, it was decided in part on a privacy basis, but also on an equal protection basis, which gives it a much stronger foundation than Roe. So even if the Supreme Court did get a case about same-sex marriage, they couldn't simply overturn it based on the right to privacy. They'd also have to address the equal protection issue. And like I said, that's a much stronger foundational argument. The

The reason Roe was so susceptible to being overturned is because it was based solely on the right to privacy. So it's a bit different of a situation. Now, in light of Justice Thomas's dissent, Congress enacted the Respect for Marriage Act. And I should have been more clear about this in last week's episode. But essentially, the Respect for Marriage Act says that federal and state governments

have to recognize same-sex and interracial marriages, as well as the validity of those marriages that are performed in jurisdictions where such marriages are legal. And I'll read directly from the law. It says, quote,

pertaining to a marriage between two individuals on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin of those individuals.

End quote. So here's the thing. The law does not mandate that every state has to perform same-sex, interracial, etc. marriages. It just says that every state has to recognize the validity of same-sex, interracial, etc. marriages if those marriages were performed in a jurisdiction that legally allows them. So let's say, hypothetically,

Alabama outlaws same-sex marriages because certain counties in Alabama, Texas, Kentucky, and I think Tennessee have actually, I know Tennessee have raised issues in the past with this. But let's just say a county in Alabama refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. A same-sex couple could then go to another state, say Colorado, get married, and Alabama would have to recognize that marriage under the Respect for Marriage Act or

Or another option, a same-sex couple could sue their county. And that's possibly how this issue would make it back to the Supreme Court. But we'll address that in more detail in the next question. So yes, while the Respect for Marriage Act says that all states and the federal government have to recognize same-sex marriages, it doesn't mandate that all states and counties have to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Now, we also have to talk about the odds that the federal government does away with same-sex marriage or repeals the Respect for Marriage Act, right? We don't know the final numbers in the House and Senate, but it's looking like it's going to be something like 221 to 214 with Republicans having the majority in the House. That's a rough number. The Senate is looking like it'll be either 53 to 47 or 52 to 48. Either way, Republicans have the majority in the Senate, too.

But here's the thing. For any bill to even get to a vote in the Senate, you need 60 votes. It's called the cloture rule. So let's say a bill comes up either repealing the right to same-sex marriage, you know, as established in Obergfeld, or repealing the recent Respect for Marriage Act. That bill first has to get past a cloture vote. 60 senators have to send it to a vote.

Assuming all Democrats would vote against sending it to a vote, because the Democrats obviously wouldn't even want to chance this bill being voted on, you would need all Republican senators,

plus seven or eight Democrats to pass that cloture vote. And I'm not sure in what world all Republican senators and seven or eight Democrats would do that, which would mean this hypothetical bill would likely never, ever get to a vote in the Senate. But let's just say somehow, some way for purposes of carrying on this hypothetical, the bill passes the cloture vote in the Senate and gets to the House. For it to pass in the House, you need a simple majority, 218 votes.

Almost all Republicans would need to vote in favor of this bill. And there are many Republicans in favor of same-sex marriage. But let's play out the numbers. So all Democrats would vote no. Let's just say 214 Democrats, right? Again, we don't know final numbers. But that would mean that roughly all but three Republican representatives would need to vote in favor of a bill repealing same-sex marriage. And again, that's somehow assuming the bill also passes the Senate despite the cloture.

And then once those two things were to happen, the president would have the chance to sign it into law. It's not clear what Trump would do in that situation. He has gone back and forth a bit over the years. Back in 2016, he said he was fine with gay marriage, that it was settled law. That same year, he held up a pride flag at one of his rallies with LGBTs for Trump protests.

written on it. He then went on to appoint Peter Thiel to his transition team, who's an openly gay co-founder of PayPal. However, he has also said in years past, specifically in 2000 and 2011, that he supports quote unquote traditional marriage. And in 2016, he also stated that he wished the issue of gay marriage would have been left to the states rather than the Supreme Court granting that right in Obergefell.

So it's unclear what he would do if the bill landed on his desk. But again, the bill would have to get there. And as we've talked about, that is not probable. Okay, so I just spent a ton of time on that one question. So let's take a quick break here. And when we come back, we'll touch on some other issues related to LGBTQ rights.

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All right, so we've talked about same-sex marriage. Now let's quickly talk about the other issues, discrimination, gender transition treatments, and healthcare. Trump has repeatedly said that he would ban gender transition treatments for minors. He has not shied away from that.

However, when it comes to gender transition treatments for adults, he has never talked about a ban. And even if he did, I'm not sure that a law or rule, you know, whatever process it goes through like that would be constitutional under the due process clause or equal protection clause. I don't see how you could successfully ban that.

consenting adults from living, you know, the life that they want to live. But again, I would never say never. I suppose one avenue might be banning, let's say, hormone treatments outright. But again, this stuff hasn't been talked about by Trump when we're talking about adults. Minors, different story. He's been very clear. He does want to ban those treatments for minors.

When it comes to discrimination, I discussed this a bit last week, but Trump will probably roll back Biden's Title IX update. Biden updated Title IX to say that schools could not discriminate on the basis of not just sex, but also gender identity and sexual orientation.

This change raised a lot of questions about genders in sports, in schools, the use of bathrooms, locker rooms in schools, etc. So Trump will likely roll that back. In fact, at his Madison Square Garden rally just before the election, he talked about getting, quote, end quote.

Now, that rollback would not require Congress like a lot of things do. Biden made his change to Title IX through the rulemaking process, and Trump would likely do the same. The rulemaking process lies specifically within the executive branch, whereas the lawmaking process lies specifically with Congress. There's a difference between rules and laws, but that's for another time. There are two different things.

Moving on, Trump's administration also enacted a ban on transgender people from serving in the military. That was reversed by Biden, but it could very well be reinstated once Trump takes office.

On the topic of health care, Trump enacted a final rule during his administration on Section 1557 non-discrimination regulations under the ACA, the Affordable Care Act. And that rule prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, and sex in health programs and activities that receive federal funding. This was the first federal civil rights law to prohibit discrimination in health care based on sex.

And just after that final rule was published, the Supreme Court actually ruled in a case and held that sex discrimination includes sexual orientation and gender identity in the employment context. So while the Supreme Court ruling didn't necessarily extend to health care, the precedent is there if the question did arise in the health care setting. Now, you might be thinking, oh, well, Trump finalized this rule that for the first time ever prohibited discrimination in health care based on sex.

He did. But the reason that he has received criticism on this front is because that same rule significantly narrowed the scope of a rule issued in 2016 by Obama.

Under Obama's rule, there was a general prohibition based on gender identity and sex stereotyping and specific health insurance coverage protections for transgender individuals. There was also a prohibition against discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation in 10 other health care regulations outside of Section 1557. So Trump's federal civil rights rule

eliminated these general prohibitions put in place by Obama, but did include sex discrimination for the first time. Okay, so we have to sort of move on from this first question for time's sake. I have spent a lot of time here. So let's move on to the second question, which is, since the right to gay marriage was codified into law, would it take a lawsuit challenging that law to bring it back to the Supreme Court? Another user asked a similar question, which is, what sort of Supreme Court case could upend the Obergefell ruling?

So as I briefly touched on in the last question, there are a few things that could potentially bring this issue to the Supreme Court. But all of those things, yes, center around lawsuits. It just depends why the lawsuit was filed, you know, what it's based on. So maybe, like I said, a county refuses to issue a same-sex marriage license and a couple sues, and that case makes its way to the Supreme Court.

Maybe Congress enacts a same-sex marriage law. Again, highly unlikely, as we talked about earlier. Let's just assume for hypothetical purposes. And a state sues challenging that law, and that makes it to the Supreme Court. But at the end of the day, it would have to be some sort of lawsuit. And...

it would not only would it have to make its way up to the Supreme Court, so through a district court, through an appeals court, and then to the Supreme Court, but also the Supreme Court would have to agree to hear the case. The Supreme Court has discretion when it comes to hearing and not hearing cases.

To answer the second part of that question, which is what sort of Supreme Court case could upend over Chappelle, it just has to revolve around same-sex marriage. So Dobbs, which was the case that overturned Roe, was actually challenging a state's 15-week abortion ban. It wasn't challenging the right to abortion generally, but rather than just answering that 15-week ban issue, the Supreme Court went ahead and reversed Roe completely and returned the issue of abortion to the states.

So to upend Obergefell, it would just have to be a case that centered around same-sex marriage in some way. And from there, the court could take it in whatever direction the majority of justices saw fit. They could issue a more narrow ruling specific to that specific issue in that case or a more broad ruling dealing with the right to same-sex marriage generally.

The third question is related to the second question, and that is, does the Constitution protect gay marriage? No, not directly, right? We have the Equal Protection Clause, which I touched on earlier, and that essentially says all people are afforded equal protection under the law. So one could argue and did successfully argue in Obergefell that if straight people can marry, then all people can marry. So same-sex marriage is not in the Constitution explicitly, but there are certain amendments of the Constitution that could certainly apply.

And the final question, what has Trump stated that he will change in reference to LGBTQ rights? Again, as far as what he has explicitly stated, we are talking about a ban on transgender people serving in the military, a ban on gender transition treatments for minors specifically, and then rolling back those Title IX protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools.

But as far as that last one, please keep in mind that the Supreme Court held that discrimination on the basis of sex also applies to sexual orientation and gender identity. So Title IX, as it has existed since its creation, prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex.

That is Title IX's whole purpose, and it's not going away. So if Trump does roll back the sexual orientation and gender identity language, Title IX would still likely protect against that sort of discrimination in schools due to the Supreme Court's interpretation of the word sex.

And no, the Supreme Court won't reverse that interpretation, you know, of the word sex because it was the same justices currently sitting on the bench that issued that sex ruling. So that is what you need to know about LGBTQ rights and their future, or at least that's the extent of what I could cover today. Again, like I said,

I could do a whole episode on this. I basically did today. There's just so much to talk about. But tomorrow we'll dive into your questions about the Department of Education and maybe just maybe we'll be back to a regular daily news recap by next week. But before we end this episode, let's do some quick hitters to get you caught up on some other things that we haven't had time to talk about. Senate Republicans have elected Senator John Thune of South Dakota to become the Senate majority leader.

After this election, Republicans regained control of the Senate, which meant that they had to elect a new leader to replace Democrat Chuck Schumer. The

Thune was running against Senator John Cornyn and Senator Rick Scott for the position. And people close to Trump, like Elon Musk, RFK Jr., and Tucker Carlson, had endorsed Scott for the position. Trump himself did not endorse a candidate. Scott was defeated in the first round, receiving the fewest number of votes. And in the second round of voting, Thune beat Cornyn in a 29 to 24 vote. Democrats will hold their leadership contest for the minority leader position in December.

And Jack Texera, the former information technology specialist with the Massachusetts Air National Guard, who uploaded classified U.S. military documents to users on a Discord server, was sentenced yesterday to 15 years in prison. Texera's attorneys initially argued that he did not mean to harm the United States, but was instead keeping his friends aware of world events.

However, Texaro ultimately did plead guilty to six federal counts of willfully retaining and transmitting national defense information. And in exchange, he was relieved of additional charges under the Espionage Act.

President Biden and former and now president-elect Donald Trump met today in the Oval Office. President Biden extended the invitation to President Trump in the days after the election, which Trump accepted, though in 2020, Trump did not extend that same offer to Biden. The meeting of the outgoing and incoming president is a ceremonial tradition here in the United States. It's meant to signal the desire for a smooth and peaceful transition of power.

Okay, so for this next one, I believe it was last week, maybe the week before, I told you inflation was down as per the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index. And it is. That has not changed. But now we have a new reading from the Consumer Price Index, which shows consumer prices rose significantly.

0.2% last month and 2.6% from last October. Now this tracks with the idea that just because inflation is down doesn't necessarily mean prices are down. We all know prices are up, but this new index reading is further proof of that and further proof that prices don't seem to be coming down, but rather slightly increasing.

Also worth noting that there are many factors that go into this consumer price index reading, including food prices, gas prices, and housing. In fact, housing-related inflation accounted for half of the monthly rise.

And finally, special counsel Jack Smith and his team plan to resign before Trump takes office in January. For those that don't know, Jack Smith is the special counsel prosecuting Trump in the federal election interference case as well as the classified documents case. But Smith's office has reportedly been evaluating the best path forward for winding down these two cases.

The DOJ's longstanding position is that it cannot charge a sitting president with a crime. So obviously now that Trump is the president-elect, it would go against their policy to continue pursuing charges. That is what I have for you today. Now, look, these episodes lately have been really long. Ever since I went to four days a week in April, I said the episodes were going to be anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes long.

Clearly, that's just not happening for me. So just be aware that going forward, once I kind of get ahead of all of this election stuff and I kind of, you know,

have a better grasp on everything and feel like I've covered a good amount of ground, I will be going back to the shorter episodes, 15 to 20 minutes. But I just wanted to give you a heads up because I know I have a lot of new people here who might think my episodes are anywhere from 25 to 30 minutes all the time. That's not the case. So yeah, so just be aware of that. But I hope you have a fantastic night and I will talk to you tomorrow for your final news rundown of the week.

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