On November 14, President-Elect Donald Trump said he will nominate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., for Secretary of Health and Human Services. This is not the usual type of news posted at this blog, but it is relevant because Kennedy was an independent candidate for president during most of the calendar year 2024. Never before had an independent or minor party presidential candidate been appointed to a cabinet post immediately after the election, or perhaps not even for any period afterwards.

Kennedy had suspended his independent campaign on August 23, 2024.

As of Thursday, November 14, Claudia De la Cruz has more votes for President than Chase Oliver in California. California won’t certify its results until early December, and has millions of uncounted votes, so this might change. But the total on November 14 is 60,929 for Claudia De la Cruz, and 58.477 vote Chase Oliver. See the Secretary of State’s website here.

The last time the Peace & Freedom presidential nominee outpolled the Libertarian presidential nominee in California was 2008, when Ralph Nader on the PFP line got 108,381, and Bob Barr of the Libertarian Party got 67,582.

The U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether to hear Upstate Jobs Party v Kosinski, 24-503, at its December 6 conference. This is the case challenging New York state law that lets individuals bigger campaign contributions to nominees of qualified parties than they may give to independent candidates or the nominees of unqualified parties. Here is the Upstate Jobs Party’s cert petition.

The state has already told the U.S. Supreme Court that it doesn’t plan to file a response.