--:-- [Upbeat music fades out, and the host, Tracy Mumford, speaks]
--:-- Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Monday, November 25th. Here's what we're covering.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: 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 Besant, 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.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: My colleague David Sanger has been looking at all of Trump's choices and what their goals may be.
--:-- David Sanger: 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.
--:-- David Sanger: Then there's a calm the markets team, which Mr. Trump hopes very much will be led by Scott Bessent. 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.
--:-- David Sanger: 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.
--:-- David Sanger: Now think about that figure for a minute because the federal government's entire budget is about $1 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.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: 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's set off alarm bells among ethics experts.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: 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 $7 million 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.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Since Trump hasn't signed the agreement, he can raise unlimited amounts of money from donors, including from foreign nationals, who can't give to campaigns but can give to the transition. None of the names have to be disclosed, so anyone trying to curry favor with Trump by donating can do so without having their name become public.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Trump's team has repeatedly said they plan to sign the agreement, but they blew past deadlines to do so in September and October.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: 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.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And the Israeli military is continuing to target the city's southern suburb of Dahia, which is effectively controlled by Hezbollah.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: My colleague Christina Goldbaum is reporting from Lebanon.
--:-- Christina Goldbaum: 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.
--:-- Christina Goldbaum: 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.
--:-- Christina Goldbaum: That usually becomes this massive kind of cloud and plumes of smoke that rise up into the air. And when you're on the hillside, you are around people who are discussing what might be hit, who are kind of pointing to these plumes of smoke to try to figure out what building it was, which street is that, what neighborhood is that, to just have a better sense of what's actually being destroyed in their neighborhood.
--:-- Christina Goldbaum: Analysts say Israel's ramped-up attacks over the last few days are intended to pressure Hezbollah into accepting a ceasefire deal.
--:-- Christina Goldbaum: 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.
--:-- Christina Goldbaum: Both sides have said they will continue fighting while the ceasefire negotiations are taking place.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: At colleges and universities across the U.S., many administrators went into this school year hoping to avoid a repeat of the last one, where pro-Palestinian protests and encampments rocked campuses.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They've tightened rules against protests and handed down stricter punishments, and it appears to be working as intended.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In the spring, there were thousands of protests. This fall, by one count, there were about 900.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And while over 3,000 people were arrested in the spring, there have only been about 50 arrests this school year.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Notably, the tighter restrictions have led to crackdowns on even small-scale protests.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: 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.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And at Indiana University Bloomington, students at a candlelight vigil were referred for discipline under a new rule banning expressive activity after 11 p.m.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Some Jewish students who felt targeted by last year's protests tell The Times they appreciate the new rules.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Other students say they feel the increased restrictions are about control and censorship.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And finally, armchair detectives are taking on pandemic fraud.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: When the federal government distributed billions of dollars during the COVID-19 crisis, it did so in a giant rush with little oversight.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It wanted to get money to people ASAP to keep businesses open and keep people on the payroll.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: 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.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But under the False Claims Act, private citizens can file lawsuits against anyone who may have defrauded the government.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And if the government recovers any of the money, those private citizens typically get 15 to 30 percent of it.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Times spoke with one lawyer in Oregon who helped the government claw back $3 million, earning $400,000 for himself along the way.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: 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.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: 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.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: One former Justice Department official said that may not help the situation.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The DOJ has to investigate every lawsuit to some extent, so a new flood of citizen-led cases could strain government resources even more.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are the headlines.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Today on The Daily, Moscow bureau chief Anton Trojanovsky on what he calls a dangerous new phase in Russia's war with Ukraine.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That's next in the New York Times audio app, or you can listen wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.
