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<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/11/13/senate-republican-majority-leader-election-john-thune/?itid=lk_inline_manual_2" target=_blank>What the pick for Senate majority leader means</a>

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/11/13/trump-senate-advice-consent-appointments-satire/?itid=lk_inline_manual_3" target=_blank>Make separation of powers great again</a>

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/11/13/donald-trump-elon-musk-federal-spending/?itid=lk_inline_manual_4" target=_blank>Time for Elon Musk to learn government math</a>

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2024/space-trash-debris-spacex/?itid=lk_inline_manual_5" target=_blank>The growing problem of space junk</a>

Craig Hudson

Our columnists, along with many others at home and abroad, are trying to figure out what the Trump II era will look like, with clues to the new order coming thick and fast, though not always pointing in the same direction. On Wednesday, we learned that, despite pressure to make the Senate a rubber stamp for <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/donald-trump/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Donald Trump</a>, Republicans in that chamber had on a secret ballot chosen current Minority Whip John Thune (South Dakota) to be majority leader in the next Congress.

Thune is no RINO, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/11/13/senate-republican-majority-leader-election-john-thune/" target=_blank>as Jim Geraghty writes</a>. During the first Trump administration, he voted with the president’s positions 91.4 percent of the time, and he has said he is committed to executing Trump’s agenda. But he is not Rick Scott, the even-more-in-line senator backed for leader by the likes of Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk. The fact that this is what happened when ballots were anonymous, rather than exposed to public MAGA-world pressure, is no accident. Maybe, Jim says, that’s a sign: “Not every established rule, custom and norm in Washington will be revoked as Trump returns to the Oval Office.”

Alexandra Petri shares her colleagues’ concerns about Trump’s strategy to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/11/13/trump-senate-advice-consent-appointments-satire/" target=_blank>let his appointees skip the “advice and consent” stuff from the Senate</a> by doing recess appointments. As she writes, satirically: “Look, the Constitution was much too hung up on this separation of powers thing, on the grounds that you didn’t want one branch of government acting without checks and balances from the others, lest it start abusing its power and eroding the people’s rights and freedoms. But who needs the people’s rights and freedoms?” And as Ruth Marcus pointed out this week, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/11/11/trump-senate-recess-appointments-powergrab/" target=_blank>Thune is not objecting</a>; he promised that “‘all options are on the table’ to get Trump administration officials in place, ‘including recess appointments.’”

Elon Musk, learning math and dropping junk

As less conventional parts of the Trump transition take shape, meanwhile, George Will’s head seems liable to explode as the old-school conservative watches a lot of newbies try to figure out the basics in real time. While we don’t wish that for him, it’s truly something to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/11/13/donald-trump-elon-musk-federal-spending/" target=_blank>see George exasperatedly try to explain basic governmental math</a>.

On the task before Elon Musk, new co-leader of a Trump advisory group very cleverly called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE): “Debt service (13.1 percent of fiscal 2024 spending) is not optional and is larger than defense (12.9 percent), which Trump wants to increase. Entitlements (principally Social Security and Medicare) are 34.6 percent, and by Trumpian fiat are sacrosanct. So, Musk’s promise is to cut about 30 percent of the total budget from a roughly 40 percent portion of the budget, politics be damned.” We’ll keep you posted on how that goes.

Of course, figuring all this out is merely one task before the overextended Musk, a piece of whose SpaceX Dragon capsule recently plummeted out of the sky and into the field of a farmer in Saskatchewan. In a piece enhanced with cool interactive graphics, the Editorial Board takes a look at <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2024/space-trash-debris-spacex/" target=_blank>the growing problem of space junk</a>. Though it hasn’t really caught up with us yet, “over time, the planet could be surrounded by a cloud of tiny pieces of junk that make important areas inhospitable to human activity and the space-based devices that enable modern life,” the board writes. “People and their machines could be trapped on Earth until the debris field clears, which could take decades.” Good luck, kids!

Josh Rogin looks at <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/11/13/trump-ukraine-zelensky-russia/?itid=lk_inline_manual_23" target=_blank>the forces battling it out within Trumpworld on Ukraine</a>, and why the incoming president should think hard before going with a solution that looks like capitulation to Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Karen Tumulty writes about what you might call <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/11/12/trump-cabinet-picks-january-6-riot/?itid=lk_inline_manual_24" target=_blank>“the January Seventh Test” for Trump administration hopefuls</a>: How do they handle that little matter of him having instigated an insurrection to try to overturn the results of the previous election? That used to be considered uncool (and possibly illegal).

The Editorial Board is sunnier than Karen on Marco Rubio — speaking of people who have shifted their stance on Jan. 6 — as a reported pick for secretary of state, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/11/12/rubio-trump-state-china-hawk/?itid=lk_inline_manual_25" target=_blank>seeing the choice as “reassuring”</a> compared with some of the alternatives.

Matt Bai, for some reason, believes <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/11/13/america-first-woman-president-possible/?itid=lk_inline_manual_26" target=_blank>a woman could still be elected president of the United States</a>. I hope he’s right!

On the local front, Marc Fisher wonders whether Trump might want to get credit as a dealmaker for <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/11/13/trump-commanders-nfl-stadium/?itid=lk_inline_manual_27" target=_blank>a new football stadium in Washington</a>.

It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.

Have your own newsy haiku? <a href="mailto:amanda.katz@washpost.com?subject=Opinions+Newsletter+Feedback" target=_blank>Email it to me</a>, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!

Amanda Katz is a senior assignment editor for Opinions, where she has worked since 2022. She was previously an editor at CNN, the Boston Globe and Bloomsbury Publishing, and has written for the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Slate and other publications.

Amanda Katz

Today’s Opinions: MAGA, meet DOGE. Musk, meet math. Thune, meet Constitution.

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