It’s been a week now, and what a glorious week at that.

Now comes the hard part: Donald Trump must put together the right team to implement the America First policies that the American people resoundingly voted for. And then they need to execute in the face of what will certainly be fierce resistance from the Democrats and their Leftmedia brethren.

On the bright side, he’ll have a mandate for doing so this time around — courtesy of a 312-226 Electoral College landslide and a likely three-million-vote popular-vote victory. Want another metric for a mandate? Trump outperformed nearly every Republican on the ballot anywhere, so his fellow Republicans will be inclined to work with him this time around rather than thinking they know better.

This allegiance bears watching in the soon-to-be Republican-controlled Senate, where one staunch Trump supporter, Florida Senator Rick Scott, is running against two hand-picked establishment get-alongs, South Dakota’s John Thune and Texas’s John Cornyn, to replace leader Mitch McConnell.

In addition, Trump’s Republican Party will have control of both houses of Congress, as Decision Desk HQ last night called the House for the GOP. The importance of this victory can’t be overstated. A second Trump term would’ve been entirely, radically different if the Democrats had wrested control of the House and, with it, the legislative agenda and the power to convene hearings and subpoena witnesses — in short, the power to obstruct.

Beyond that, Trump now understands The Swamp far better than he did eight years ago when he assembled his cabinet largely on the advice of Beltway insiders. Trump took his lumps then, and he’s better for it. This time around, there’ll be no globalists like Rex Tillerson and James Mattis. And we can be certain that Trump’s next attorney general won’t be a milquetoast like Jeff Sessions, who recused himself when the going got tough during the Obama administration’s Russia collusion hoax. Indeed, we expect one of Trump’s first firings — if he doesn’t resign first — will be FBI Director Chris Wray, who consistently meted out two-tiered justice during his tenure, and who is now seven years into his 10-year term but only at the pleasure of the president.

The 2024 cabinet that Trump is assembling has history as its teacher. They remember what happened the first time around, and they’ll be on guard against the deep state and the unelected bureaucracy, which will no doubt resist the Trump agenda to whatever extent they can.

Trump’s first pick was his chief of staff, and his choice of a woman, Susie Wiles, is a historic first. “I’m told Mark Cuban needs help identifying the strong and intelligent women surrounding President Trump,” Wiles posted recently. “Well, here we are!” Wiles, 67, is the second woman in American history to lead a successful presidential campaign (the first was Trump’s first campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway). She’s the daughter of former NFL linebacker and longtime broadcaster Pat Summerall, and she worked for both Ron DeSantis and Rick Scott in Florida and as a scheduler for Ronald Reagan. We expect her to stick around longer than any of Trump’s four previous chiefs of staff, and we can guarantee she won’t undermine the president by slow-walking his initiatives and spreading rotten lies about “suckers and losers” and “fascists” and such.

Yesterday, Trump chose three-term Florida Republican Congressman and retired Green Beret Mike Waltz as his national security adviser. Waltz, like Wiles, is an inspired pick. He’s a China hawk who’s aligned with Trump on foreign policy, and he understands the mission. Waltz will have his hands full with China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran and its terrorist proxies, in addition to the 350 or so known terrorists who are in our country now thanks to the Biden-Harris regime’s open borders policy.

As RealClearPolitics’s Philip Wegmann said of the Waltz choice: “What this signals from the get-go is that there’s no JV team this time around. Donald Trump’s coming to Washington, DC, and he’s not relying on some of the regular, run-of-the-mill Republicans who might be skeptical or apathetic about his agenda. Instead, he’s falling back on folks who are bought in from Day One, and I think that this pick, as well as some of the others that we heard of today, really reflects that new reality.”

Trump chose yet another strong and intelligent woman, New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, to be United Nations ambassador. As the AP “reports,” “Elected to the House in 2014, Stefanik was selected by her GOP House colleagues as House Republican Conference chair in 2021, when former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney was removed from the post after publicly criticizing Trump for falsely [sic] claiming he won the 2020 election.” Stefanik shone brightly during a House hearing about Jew-hatred on college campuses, and she’ll have her hands full fighting against the rampant anti-Semitism within the UN, especially in its so-called aid agencies.

As Trump said of Stefanik, “Elise is an incredibly strong, tough, and smart America First fighter.”

In a surprise pick sure to enrage the Green Left, Trump chose former New York Congressman and gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin as EPA administrator — a pick that should help Trump pursue his policy goal of lowering energy costs and increasing American energy dominance. Trump said Zeldin would “ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses while at the same time maintaining the highest environmental standards, including the cleanest air and water on the planet.”

On the domestic policy front, Trump chose 39-year-old Stephen Miller as deputy chief of staff for policy. Miller is a longtime Trump adviser and a sharp-elbowed speechwriter, especially on matters of illegal immigration. Miller, as the AP writes, “has served as the president of America First Legal, an organization … challenging the Biden administration, media companies, universities and others over issues such as freedom of speech and religion and national security.”

It might be, however, that the most consequential Trump appointee of all won’t even be a traditional cabinet-level appointment. That honoree may be Tom Homan as border czar, who was Trump’s second pick after Susie Wiles as chief of staff.

Homan, a former acting ICE director during the first Trump administration, is a boots-on-the-ground border warrior. He has a mission, and, more importantly, he has a mandate. As improbable as it might’ve seemed during Trump’s first term, the American people are not only in favor of a border wall, but they’re also in favor of mass deportation of illegals. This clip will give you a sense of Homan’s toughness and resolve.

Border Czar Kamala Harris: “Don’t come.”

Border Czar Tom Homan: pic.twitter.com/nu2F2L0Rm6

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) November 11, 2024

Homan first came to prominence during a congressional hearing on July 12, 2019, when he schooled Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on border policy. AOC had barely blurted out the open-borders Left’s talking point, “Seeking asylum is legal,” when Homan shot back, “When you want to seek asylum, go through a port of entry and do it the legal way.”

“I’ve got a message,” Homan said on July 17 during his speech at the Republican National Convention, “to the millions of illegal aliens that Joe Biden released into our country in violation of federal law: You’d better start packing now.”

Here, it’s hard to imagine a greater contrast between the cartoon character Kamala Harris as border czar and the competent and deeply committed Homan. And in terms of morale among our border personnel, what a difference an election makes. Said one ICE agent after hearing of Homan’s appointment, “It’s been a total 180. … Troops are finally feeling like the sun is coming out after a very long storm.”

Homan no doubt already knows this, but the 13,000 murderers, the 15,000 rapists, and the 350 people on the Terror Watch List — all of whom were let into the country illegally by the Biden-Harris administration — would be a good place to begin Trump’s mass-deportation regime.

Late yesterday, Trump named Florida Senator Marco Rubio to be his secretary of state. This is an interesting pick because Rubio’s foreign policy has tended to be more hawkish and interventionist than Trump’s. He’s a proponent of NATO, for example, so we might see some good-cop bad-cop behavior between Rubio and Trump, especially when it comes to making Europe pay its fair share. Rubio is a smart and serious man, however, and he seems a good fit for the role — so long as he buys in fully to Trump’s America First foreign policy.

“Trump and Rubio’s relationship began with animus in 2015,” the Washington Examiner reports, “when they ran against each other in the Republican presidential primary. Rubio was seen as a top rival, leading to a lengthy exchange of insults that saw Trump get the better of him. After dropping out of the race in 2016, the two became allies, a bond that has remained ever since.”

The Rubio appointment also means that the GOP will have to backfill a vital Senate seat eventually, although we can be sure that Republican Governor Ron DeSantis will appoint a suitable replacement in the meantime.

Noticeably absent from Trump’s list of possible appointees are former presidential contender Nikki Haley and former Trump CIA Director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, of whom Trump said via Truth Social:

I will not be inviting former Ambassador Nikki Haley, or former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to join the Trump Administration, which is currently in formation. I very much enjoyed and appreciated working with them previously, and would like to thank them for their service to our Country. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

I couldn’t care less about the former, but the latter seems too talented and too patriotic a public servant to be left on the sidelines. Perhaps Trump and Pompeo can reconcile at some point.

Meanwhile, on the Democrat side, we’re getting the sense that they still haven’t grasped the magnitude of their electoral repudiation by the American people. A prime example of this comes from Seattle-based Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, who said, “Progressive power is still growing. We have our first trans member of Congress.”

UPDATE: Trump is expected to name second-term South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem to head the sprawling Department of Homeland Security. Noem, 52, is a Trump loyalist once considered as a possible 2024 running mate, but dog-shooting and résumé-padding tarnished her star.