Think of President-elect Trump's top Cabinet and West Wing officials in two big buckets, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write in a "Behind the Curtain" column:

• The Creators are charged with stoking a booming, AI-enabled economy, including a low jobless rate — the "golden age of America" that Trump promised after he won.
• The Destroyers are the more controversial picks — wired to disrupt existing institutions, and acting on smoldering grievances against the organizations they've been picked to lead.

Why it matters: This creators-plus-destroyers dynamic dominates the behind-the-scenes jockeying for jobs and influence. Expect jarring swings between popular, pro-growth moves and ruthless government gutting and payback. It's the Trump Way.

🧱 The Creators are concentrated on Trump's economic team, including Treasury nominee Scott Bessent, a hedge-fund veteran with Wall Street cred.

• Trump wants to spur economic growth via lower taxes and pro-business policies. Howard Lutnick — chair & CEO of the Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald, and co-chair of Trump's transition — was named to a souped-up version of Commerce secretary, as leader of Trump's tariff and trade agenda. Kevin Hassett, who'll be director of the National Economic Council — in Trump I, he chaired the Council of Economic Advisers — is popular on the Hill. Trump's trade representative will be Jamieson Greer, who was chief of staff to Robert Lighthizer — the pro-tariff, China-hawk trade representative in Trump I.
• Trump needs a massive surge in energy production, and greater capacity in adjacent businesses. His pick for Interior secretary, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, will also chair a new National Energy Council, with purview over "ALL forms of American Energy." Joining him on the council will be his choice for Energy secretary, Chris Wright, a Denver-based energy entrepreneur and fracking proponent.
• Trump needs to juice the AI boom to super-boost growth — and provide more wiggle room for other economic policies. He's creating the new role of AI and crypto czar for David Sacks, who became a tech-bro hero as one of the four "Besties" on the "All-In" podcast.

🧠 The working theory: Remember, Trump treats the markets as his approval rating. To have the leverage to carry out his economic plans, he needs markets to continue booming, as they have under President Biden.

• So the most savvy companies are finding ways to show how they help Trump boost growth — while keeping quiet on his harder-edged moves.

💣 The Destroyers are out for revenge — sometimes for Trump, sometimes for themselves, sometimes born of ideology. Then they'll rebuild in MAGA's image. These are picks where Trump has gone with this gut.

• Trump is hellbent on retribution against the FBI for investigating him. Thus the aggressive pick of hardliner Kash Patel for FBI director.

Trump would be happy to return the Pentagon, the biggest bureaucracy of them all, to its roots — center it around the needs of warfighters, and tear down and rebuild a broken procurement system. A transition source says Trump told Pete Hegseth, his choice for SecDef: "I expect you to do more with less. They're spending too much money, and we're not getting anything for all that money."

• So Trump fought back when Hegseth's confirmation chances looked shaky after a series of damaging articles last month. But a ferocious operation by Trump's inner circle now has Hegseth on track for confirmation, barring damaging new information.

Column continues below.

You can see Trump's deep mistrust of the intelligence community in his selection of former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, Jim and Mike write.

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would bring radically new instincts and priorities to HHS — and, some public-health critics contend, undermine the mission.
• Trump is stacking destroyers in some jobs that don't need Senate confirmation. These include two hard-line appointees announced over the weekend: Ric Grenell, a presidential envoy to world hot spots, and former House Intelligence chair Devin Nunes, who'll chair the President's Intelligence Advisory Board while remaining head of Trump's Truth Social.

Between the lines: Some of Trump's picks have been given the delicate charge of both creating and destroying. Hegseth, for instance, is expected both to shake up the "defense industrial complex," while building up a "powerful military that the president can use as a tool for deterrence," a second transition source said.

• John Ratcliffe, who has been tapped for CIA director, is expected to both destroy what Trump sees as "the Deep State" lurking within the agency, while also building an intelligence apparatus that "won't be caught off guard," and will "give the president the best intelligence in the world," the source said.

👂 What we're hearing: Trump is sticking with his destroyers because they're his people. We're told that this time around, he's vastly less inclined to second-guess his instincts when senators or advisers warn him to be more cautious.

• Trump controls the party. Republicans are only going to pick so many fights — and Trump's likely to get his way most of the time.
• Transition sources tell us that if a senator votes against more than a nominee or two, that lawmaker or their allies could wind up with a Trump-backed primary opponent.

What we're watching: Now that once-skeptical senators are signaling they'll vote to confirm Hegseth, the most vulnerable nominees are Gabbard, who faces skepticism on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Kennedy.

• RFK's past support for abortion rights is an increasingly clear danger zone with Republican senators who have been strongly anti-abortion for their whole careers.
• So Trump insiders are quietly wondering whether the anti-abortion movement will flex its muscle to try to sink Kennedy's nomination.
• By contrast, Trump's natural allies haven't been voicing concerns about Patel.

👀 The intrigue: RFK Jr. had pushed his daughter-in-law, former CIA officer Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, for deputy CIA director, as Axios first reported. We also scooped that RFK Jr. wanted her in the job partly to get to the bottom of whether the CIA was involved in the assassinations of his father and uncle.

• We're told Fox Kennedy has been ruled out for the CIA job because of opposition on the Senate Intelligence Committee. But she could well wind up in another administration job — perhaps as part of Gabbard's team, or in a White House position.

The bottom line: A Mar-a-Lago source tells us that after last week's spree of love from tech moguls and his victory lap at the New York Stock Exchange, TIME's Person of the Year is feeling "unassailable."

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is launching a preemptive strike against the isolationists in his own party, warning of the "price of American retreat" in a new essay for Foreign Affairs.

• Why it matters: McConnell is putting Trump — and the entire Republican party — on notice that he plans to be an active combatant in the looming GOP civil war on foreign policy, Axios' Hans Nichols writes.

What he's saying: "America will not be made great again by those who simply want to manage its decline," McConnell writes in a 5,000-word piece posted this morning.

• "Trump would be wise to build his foreign policy on the enduring cornerstone of U.S. leadership: hard power."

🖼️ The big picture: McConnell has said he will feel "liberated" once he leaves leadership to criticize Democrats and Republicans alike. As chair of the Defense appropriations subcommittee, he'll have a powerful perch.

• But his essay is full of appeals to Trump, who he once called "stupid" and "despicable." McConnell, a master negotiator, is leaving plenty of room for a productive relationship with the next president.

"Donald Trump will inherit a world far more hostile to U.S. interests than the one he left behind four years ago," McConnell writes. "But the response to four years of weakness must not be four years of isolation."

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Eric Schmidt, the former chairman and CEO of Google, warned on ABC's "This Week" that when an AI system reaches a point where it can self-improve, "we seriously need to think about unplugging it," Axios' Avery Lotz writes.

• Why it matters: "I've never seen innovation at this scale," Schmidt told George Stephanopoulos. While Schmidt celebrated "remarkable human achievement," he warned of the unforeseen dangers of rampant development.

Schmidt continued: "The power of this intelligence ... means that each and every person is going to have the equivalent of a polymath in their pocket."

• "We just don't know what it means to give that kind of power to every individual," Schmidt added.

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President-elect Trump's advisers are hoping to get bipartisan support for at least some of his less controversial nominees — starting this week with Scott Turner, Trump's pick for Housing and Urban Development secretary.

• The Trump team is arranging meetings for Turner with key Democrats to discuss housing and other issues where they might find common ground, Axios' Sophia Cai writes.

We're told Turner is scheduled to meet with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), incoming ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee.

• Turner's meeting with Warren will be among the few between a Senate Democrat and a Trump Cabinet pick. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) broke the ice last week by chatting with two of Trump's picks.

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Today's N.Y. Times Quote of the Day is from Rahm Emanuel, the blunt outgoing U.S. ambassador to nicety-bound Japan, who made bold diplomatic moves that he says nudged the crucial ally forward:

"If you only want to do big things that nobody disagrees with, they're not going to be very big."

As Emanuel prepares to leave Japan, The Times' Motoko Rich writes that the 65-year-old former congressman, chief of staff to President Obama and Chicago mayor "was initially seen as an unorthodox appointment. But maybe, he suggests, he was just what Japan needed":

• "I think on a lot of things, Japan was ready to go," Emanuel says, referring to a recent cascade of bold revisions to the country's defense policy. "While I was here, they did more, went faster and farther and deeper than I think they themselves originally thought ... Did I contribute to that? Uh, yeah."

💡 Our thought bubble: Emanuel took a job that could be mostly ceremonial — and dove into it in the relentless Rahm style familiar to former colleagues, underlings and competitors in Washington and Chicago.

• Working on both Japan and U.S. time, Rahm was always plotting creative, aggressive ways to push U.S. messages to his hosts and around the globe.

🔮 What's next: Emanuel is already being mentioned as a potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate.

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A new real estate platform gives buyers easy access to the political affiliations of their future neighbors, Axios Miami's Martin Vassolo writes.

• Why it matters: Tech startup Oyssey is betting that social data — including age, education and income demographics — is influencing buyers more than the physical conditions of a home.

The platform — soft-launching this month in South Florida and New York City — gives users block-by-block consumer and political data pulled from election results, campaign contributions and commercial data.

• Keep reading ... Get Axios Miami.

What do you buy the keeper of the flame who has it all? High-end logs, Axios Atlanta's Thomas Wheatley writes.

• Why it matters: There's nothing wrong with using sticks and logs lying around the backyard. But premium, kiln-dried firewood allows people to tailor the mood and experience of their blazes.

Firewood enthusiasts care more about the flame, aroma, and crackle of oak and apple orchards than pure heating power.

• A quarter cord of kiln-dried oak firewood — for "the burner who's ready to take their wood game to the next level" — can run $275 for "up to 25 fires."

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