President-elect Donald Trump named his nominees for several key roles in his second term, including the controversial selection of Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who was recently under investigation by the House Ethics Committee, for attorney general.
Among the picks are Catholics, but one of them is being opposed by Trump’s former running mate on account of his pro-abortion record. Meanwhile a Georgetown University panel examined the aftermath of the 2024 election, particularly regarding voters who supported Trump and abortion access on the ballot.
First round of Trump nominees include some Catholics and also controversy
Trump has named several of his selections for top positions in his administration, including Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., as national security adviser, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., for secretary of state, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota for the Interior Department, and Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., as U.S ambassador to the United Nations.
In a Nov. 13 statement, Trump said it is “my Great Honor to announce that Senator Marco Rubio, of Florida, is hereby nominated to be The United States Secretary of State.”
“Marco is a Highly Respected Leader, and a very powerful Voice for Freedom,” Trump said. “He will be a strong Advocate for our Nation, a true friend to our Allies, and a fearless Warrior who will never back down to our adversaries. I look forward to working with Marco to Make America, and the World, Safe and Great Again!”
Rubio, who is Catholic and the son of two Cuban immigrants, said, “Leading the U.S. Department of State is a tremendous responsibility, and I am honored by the trust President Trump has placed in me.”
“As Secretary of State, I will work every day to carry out his foreign policy agenda,” he said. “Under the leadership of President Trump, we will deliver peace through strength and always put the interests of Americans and America above all else. I look forward to earning the support of my colleagues in the U.S. Senate so the President has his national security and foreign policy team in place when he takes office on January 20.”
Stefanik, who currently chairs the House Republican Conference, is Catholic and became a staunch ally of Trump during her tenure in the House. She became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress at the time of her first election in 2014, however, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., later claimed that title in 2018.
But some of his selections could set the stage for contentious Senate confirmation battles, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Catholic and scion of the famous Kennedy political clan, as his pick Nov. 14 for secretary of Health and Human Services; Pete Hegseth, a combat veteran and Fox News host, for defense secretary; Tulsi Gabbard, a former House Democrat turned Trump supporter, for director of national intelligence; and Gaetz, for attorney general.
Although a yearslong Justice Department investigation into sex trafficking allegations surrounding Gaetz did not result in criminal charges, he was still under investigation by the House Ethics Committee until his Nov. 13 resignation made him a former member of Congress, placing him outside the committee’s jurisdiction. But ABC News reported that the woman at the center of that investigation told the Ethics Committee the now-former Florida congressman had sex with her when she was 17 years old. Gaetz denied that allegation in a statement to the network.
The nonpartisan National Center on Sexual Exploitation urged the Senate not to confirm Gaetz as attorney general “while there remain serious, credible allegations of engaging in sex trafficking of a minor and prostitution,” Dawn Hawkins, that organization’s CEO, wrote in a Nov. 14 letter to lawmakers.
“As the nation’s highest law enforcement officer, he would be responsible for enforcing our nation’s laws prohibiting sex trafficking, child sexual abuse material, prostitution, and obscenity,” Hawkins wrote. “The victims and survivors we serve deserve no less, and the people of this country deserve assurance that their leaders are committed to justice without exception.”
Hawkins added Gaetz’s resignation from Congress “should not prevent the House Committee on Ethics from releasing its report, which is relevant to his potential qualifications to be the U.S. Attorney General. If the House will not release the report, we call on the Senate to conduct a full investigation before moving forward. His candidacy for this position cannot be fully vetted absent a full and transparent investigation.”
A Nov. 14 report by The Wall Street Journal suggested that Gaetz might not have enough Republican support to get confirmed to the role by the upper chamber, and several Republican senators and senators-elect have stated they want to see the report’s contents during their vetting process.
Trump has also named Gov. Kristi L. Noem of South Dakota as his pick for homeland security secretary.
Pence urges Senate to reject RFK Jr. nomination
Former Vice President Mike Pence Nov. 15 urged the Senate to reject Kennedy’s nomination as HHS secretary due to his views on abortion.
“The Trump-Pence administration was unapologetically pro-life for our four years in office,” Pence said in a rare public statement issued through his organization Advancing American Freedom. “There are hundreds of decisions made at HHS every day that either lead our nation toward a respect for life or away from it, and HHS under our administration always stood for life.”
Kennedy’s nomination to HHS, he argued, “is an abrupt departure from the pro-life record of our administration and should be deeply concerning to millions of Pro-Life Americans who have supported the Republican Party and our nominees for decades.”
“For the majority of his career, RFK Jr. has defended abortion on demand during all nine months of pregnancy, supports overturning the Dobbs decision and has called for legislation to codify Roe v Wade. If confirmed, RFK, Jr. would be the most pro-abortion Republican appointed secretary of HHS in modern history,” Pence said. “The pro-life movement has always looked to the Republican party to stand for life, to affirm an unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed.”
HHS, the top health agency in the U.S., has a budget of nearly $2 billion and enormous regulatory power over federal health programs including Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, as well as federal regulations concerning abortion, such as conscience protections for health care workers who decline to participate in certain procedures to which they have an objection.
Pence added, “On behalf of tens of millions of pro-life Americans, I respectfully urge Senate Republicans to reject this nomination and give the American people a leader who will respect the sanctity of life as secretary of Health and Human Services.”
Advancing American Freedom previously circulated a memo about Kennedy calling several of his policy positions, including those on abortion, as “antithetical to conservatism.”
Panel examines contrast in jurisdictions that voted for Trump and abortion protections
At a virtual panel discussion Nov. 12 hosted by Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University, panelists analyzed the outcome of the 2024 elections, including on state-level ballot initiatives.
Seven of 10 states with abortion-related ballot referenda voted to enact or expand abortion protections, and several of those states also voted for Trump, like Arizona and Missouri.
Panelist Ryan Burge, an author and data analyst on religion and politics as well as an associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, observed that a comparison of county-level vote counts shows “even in places that love Donald Trump where he got between 50 and 65 percent of the vote, over half those people voted for abortion access.”
“So there were a whole lot of people who went to the polls last week and voted for Donald Trump and also for either enshrining abortion access or expanding abortion access in their state,” he said.
Early data, he said, suggests “economics matters more than anything else in times like this.”
“You know, it’s almost like a luxury, when everything is going well, we can care about things like the death penalty and the environment and abortion and all the ‘values voters’ things,” he said the data suggests of voter behavior.
Moderator John Carr, founder of the initiative, said that at the same time, early data suggests “an abortion-focused campaign on the left wasn’t very persuasive either.”
“They built their campaign around that and thought it would make a huge difference,” he said. “And the data shows that it didn’t really in some places.”
