5 Huge (And Under-Reported) Problems With Trump's Cabinet

Being chosen to serve in the Cabinet of the United States, which houses the heads of the federal executive departments, puts you under a lot of scrutiny. In the past, candidates could be disqualified because they hired undocumented workers as nannies (even when it wasn't against the law), or for suggesting that "perhaps" schools should teach students about masturbation to combat the spread of AIDS, which got a Surgeon General in the 1990s fired. But that almost seems adorable in 2017, when we're faced with the kinds of candidates who appear so implausibly misinformed or downright villainous that they make Donald Trump's cabinet seem more like the cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Jeff Sessions, Trump's Attorney General Pick, Has Spent Decades Opposing Civil Rights

We don't know how much you've been paying attention to the news about Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (who is incidentally named after a Confederate general), but he's a man with few prejudices, provided you aren't a member of the black or LGBTQ community. But we're sure that wanting to undermine the civil rights of just about everyone he hasn't gone golfing with won't have a negative impact on him being Attorney General, the position for which Trump has tapped him.

his official Congressional photograph somehow looks like a fifth-grade yearbook photo. When he was a district attorney in Alabama in the 1980s, essions prosecuted three people for the crime of dropping the absentee ballots of elderly black voters off at the post office, charging them with mail fraud and conspiracy, for which they faced over 100 years in prison. Clearly, he was trying to send a message to someone, and we're guessing that someone was "black people trying to vote in Alabama." During a confirmation hearing for his appointment to a Reagan judgeship, several people testified that he had made racist comments in front of them, including calling a black man "boy," declaring a white civil-rights lawyer a race traitor, and liberally using the n-word in private. The testimony ultimately kept him from a federal judgeship. That's right: he was too racist for 1980s Congress, but not for the 2017 White House.

someone get Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney to do another duet. Then there were his attempts to screw over poorly funded school districts (and the disabled children who attended them) in Alabama. After half a century of the state depriving children the right to a public education through unbalanced funding, a Circuit Court Judge deemed the practice unconstitutional and demanded a change. Sessions then spent most of his career as Alabama attorney general to discredit the judge, maintaining he was defending the State School Board (the School Board quickly declared that Sessions did not actually represent them or their views). Sessions continued the fight until the Alabama Supreme Court upheld the ruling and told Sessions to go away.

 Finally, Sessions outright fought against giving equal funding to LGBTQ student groups because of their promotion of "illegal, sexually deviate activities defined in the sodomy and sexual misconduct laws," which was actual law in Alabama at the time. He hasn't shown any signs of mellowing out either, vocally opposing same-sex marriage and voting twice against including sexual orientation into hate crime legislation. Then again, it must be pretty hard to vote for something you yourself are probably guilty of.

But that was ages ago. Surely, the serial racist, sexist, elitist homophobe has had to change his ways in order to join the Trump cabinet. After all, Trump said transgender people can use whichever bathroom they want! He must be appointing Jeff Sessions in the same way Quentin Tarantino casts aging character actors -- he knows they deserve another chance.

Trump's Pick For Commerce Secretary Was Responsible For The Deaths Of Several Workers (And Committed SEC Fraud)

You probably don't hear a lot about the Department of Commerce, but it's actually pretty important. They're in charge of invigorating the economy and creating jobs. That might lead you to think that the Secretary of Commerce should be both a scholar and a paragon of good business practices, which is not something often said about Trump's Commerce pick, Wilbur Ross, who was involved in the Sago mine disaster which left 12 miners dead.

See, Ross purchased the Sago mine, which was notorious for its safety violations, about seven weeks before the disaster happened. It might seem unfair to hold him responsible, were it not for this excruciating interview in which he admits that he totally knew that the mine was wildly unsafe and decided to keep it open anyway. Ross justified his decision by insisting that "you have to put it in the context of the industry," which is asshole talk for "sometimes workers get killed in your mine, and you just have to roll the dice." Someone with a general nonchalance about the lives of workers probably isn't the guy you want in charge of improving "standards of living for Americans."

It's also safe to say that Wilbur Ross doesn't much care for government being involved in businesses, which makes him an odd pick. His investment firm got their asses fined by the Securities and Exchange Commission for taking $10.4 million from investors in bogus fees. He has also gone on record saying that one of the major problems businesses face is all this pesky government regulation, which includes safety regulations for workers -- you know, like the dozen people who died in the Sago mine. How effective can you be at a government position you personally believe shouldn't exist? Maybe he could form a little club for anti-government bureaucrats with Rick Perry and Ron Swanson.