The Headlines - The Trump Transition’s Secret Funding, and a Campus Crackdown

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

Plus, payouts for finding pandemic fraud.   Tune in every weekday morning. To get our full audio journalism and storytelling experience, download the New York Times Audio app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. Tell us what you think at: [e-mail]. On Today’s Episode:Trump’s Cabinet: Many Ideologies Behind the Veil of ‘America First,’ by David E. SangerTrump Is Running His Transition Team on Secret Money, by Ken Bensinger and David A. FahrentholdOn the Outskirts of Beirut, a Crowd Watches the War, and Waits for Its End, by Christina GoldbaumHow Universities Cracked Down on Pro-Palestinian Activism, by Isabelle TaftThey Investigated Pandemic Fraud, Then Earned Thousands, by Madeleine Ngo

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Monday, November 25th. Here's what we're covering. Donald Trump is continuing to race forward, making picks for his cabinet. In just the past few days, he tapped the billionaire hedge fund manager, Scott Bessent, to serve as Treasury Secretary. He picked Brooke Rollins, a conservative lawyer and head of a pro-Trump think tank, to run the Agriculture Department. And he named former pro football player and Texas state representative Scott Turner to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development. My colleague David

Sanger has been looking at all of Trump's choices and what their goals may be. When I look across President-elect Trump's appointees, I see at least three different factions. To start with, there's a revenge team led by nominees with instructions to rip apart the Justice Department, the intelligence agencies, parts of the Defense Department, and basically to hunt down anyone who participated in the prosecution of Mr. Trump over the past four years. Then there's a comma markets team, which Mr. Trump hopes very much will be led by Scott

Besant. He's got one big job, make sure that the market surge that followed President Trump's reelection continues and also to make sure that Mr. Trump's more extreme ideas, including tariffs, don't trigger the kind of inflation that ended up being such trouble for President Biden. And then of course, there's a government shrinkage team. It's led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. They want to carve out what Mr. Musk says will be at least $2 trillion from the federal government.

Now, think about that figure for a minute because the federal government's entire budget is about $6.75 trillion. If you fired every federal employee so that you could save money on their salaries, you wouldn't get halfway to the goal. So where they think they're going to come up with this money is one of the great mysteries. As Trump prepares to take office, he's keeping the names of the donors funding his transition effort secret. It's a break in tradition that set off alarm bells among ethics experts. Unlike past presidents-elect, Trump has declined to sign an agreement that's designed to make

the handover transparent. It would give Trump's transition team about seven million dollars in federal funds to pay for staff, office space, and travel before they take over in January. But it comes with strict limits on fundraising. Since Trump hasn't signed the agreement, he can raise unlimited amounts of money from donors and doesn't have to disclose where it came from. And unlike with campaign contributions, foreign nationals can give money to this effort too. Anyone chipping in could be trying to influence the next White House. Trump's team has repeatedly said they plan to sign the agreement, but they blew past

deadlines to do so in September and October. Over the weekend, Israel carried out widespread strikes in and around Beirut, including one in the center of the city that killed 29 people, according to Lebanese officials. Attacks in the city proper are rare, but Israel's been carrying out more of them as its war with Hezbollah intensifies, and the Israeli military is continuing to target the city's southern suburb of Dahia, which is effectively controlled by Hezbollah. On this hillside that overlooks the area, people have started to gather nearly every night to watch the strikes rain down on the area. There are some local journalists who are there to get their live shots, but there's also a lot of residents from Dahia who have come to watch what's happening in their neighborhoods.

My colleague Christina Goldbaum is reporting from Lebanon. So at the top of this hill when you're looking down, you see the Dahia in front of you. Behind it is Beirut's International Airport, and there's often planes landing and taking off even as these strikes are happening. Over the past couple of weeks, I've gone up to this hillside many times to talk to people there and see what they're seeing. Oftentimes there's groups, especially of young guys, who are kind of looking out, and just before there's an airstrike,

you typically hear this kind of thunderous roar of a warplane overhead, and then you can see bits of smoke beginning to rise from wherever has just been hit, that usually becomes this massive kind of cloud and plumes of smoke that rise up into the air over that part of Dakhia and When you're on the hillside you are around people who are you know discussing what might be hit who are kind of pointing to These plumes of smoke to try to figure out what building it was What street is that what neighborhood is that to just have a better sense of what's actually being destroyed in their neighborhood that right now is too dangerous for many people

to go in and check in on. Analysts say Israel's ramped up attacks over the last few days are intended to pressure Hezbollah into accepting a ceasefire deal. Hezbollah, however, has shown few signs of backing down. Yesterday, the group launched one of its largest aerial attacks of the last year, firing about 250 projectiles into Israel. Both sides have said they will continue fighting while the ceasefire negotiations are taking place.

At colleges and universities across the country, many administrators went into this school year hoping to avoid a repeat of the last one, where pro-Palestinian protests and encampments rocked campuses. This semester, they've tightened rules against protests and handed down stricter punishments, even at schools that once celebrated student activism. Just a few examples, Harvard temporarily banned dozens of students and faculty from the libraries after they sat silently at library tables with signs opposing the war in Gaza. Indiana University Bloomington students at a candlelight vigil were referred for discipline

under a new rule banning expressive activity after 11 p.m. And at Montclair State University in New Jersey, police often outnumber participants in a weekly demonstration where protesters hold signs with photos of children killed in Gaza. Overall, the crackdowns seem to be working. In the spring, there were thousands of protests. This fall, by one count, there were about 900. And while over 3,000 people were arrested in the spring, there were thousands of protests. This fall, by one count, there were about 900. And while over 3,000 people were arrested in the spring, there have been about 50 arrests

this school year. Some Jewish students who felt targeted by last year's protests tell the Times they appreciate the new rules. Other students say they feel the increased restrictions are about control and censorship. And finally, armchair detectives are taking on pandemic fraud. When the federal government distributed billions of dollars during the COVID-19 crisis, it did so in a giant rush with little oversight. It wanted to get money to people ASAP to keep businesses open and keep people on the payroll. The whole thing was ripe for

fraud, and there ended up being so much of that that federal investigators have struggled to look into it all. But under the False Claims Act, private citizens can file lawsuits against anyone who may have defrauded the government. And if the government recovers any of the money, those private citizens can file lawsuits against anyone who may have defrauded the government. And if the government recovers any of the money, those private citizens typically get 15 to 30 percent of it. The Times spoke with one lawyer in Oregon who helped the government claw back $3 million, earning $400,000 for himself along the way. He said he relied on information available on the internet to build his cases, combing

through government websites, Yelp pages, news articles, and LinkedIn profiles. Now there are signs that the big payouts are catching people's attention, potentially inspiring more people to do their own sleuthing, whether they're skilled in the area or not. One former Justice Department official said that may not help the situation. The DOJ has to investigate every lawsuit to some extent, so a new flood of citizen-led cases could strain government resources even more. Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, Moscow bureau chief Anton Troianovsky on what he calls a dangerous new phase

in Russia's war with Ukraine. That's next in the New York Times audio app, or you can listen wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford, we'll be back tomorrow.