Nothing captures the dramatic ideological transformation of the Republican Party more vividly than President-elect Trump's proposed cabinet, Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei write in a "Behind the Curtain" column:

• A pro-abortion-rights Kennedy running HHS (RFK Jr.).
• A pro-union centrist running Labor (U.S. Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon).
• A former elected Democrat as director of national intelligence (Tulsi Gabbard).
• A former George Soros adviser, who now promises Trumponomics will turn around the economy, running the Treasury (Scott Bessent).

Why it matters: Lost in the noise of Trump's most controversial picks is the simple, undebatable fact that this might be the most ideologically diverse cabinet of modern times.

• As Axios' Zachary Basu told you, Trump's Cabinet increasingly resembles a European-style coalition government, staffed with a dizzying array of ideological rivals united — for now — by a grand MAGA vision.

💡 Between the lines: It's Trump's team of (ideological) rivals.

• The team represents the Trump worldview: Traditional conservatism is dead — and its biggest, lifelong advocates neutered to the point of irrelevance.

A Trump transition source told us most of the picks are "a version of Trump in their thinking and approach":

• "They're fearless disrupters who can walk into these buildings, and know they have a mandate for reform and change."

👂 What we're hearing: Trump's earlier hostile takeover of the Republican establishment is now morphing into a fast-forward "hostile takeover" of the federal bureaucracy.

• Trump insiders tell us they're confident RFK will get confirmed — possibly with the help of at least one Democratic senator.

The big picture: In just under a decade, Trump, once a donor to Democrats, has transformed the GOP of George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney into a populist party with radically different views on trade, immigration and spending.

• In policy, tone and personnel, this is the MAGA Party — not a GOP that any of the party's past legends would recognize.
• "The GOP establishment is now Trump's team of populists," a behind-the-scenes Republican power broker told us. "The old Bush establishment are the outsiders."

📱 Zoom in: This phenomenon was apparent in last night's fusillade of transition announcements, when Trump announced nine major picks in 66 minutes, starting at 6:55 p.m. ET. They included:

• For Treasury, Scott Bessent will bring deep knowledge of bond and currency markets and a close relationship with Trump — as well as a surprising connection to hedge fund manager George Soros, megadonor to liberal causes and bogeyman to the political right. Go deeper with Axios' Neil Irwin & Courtenay Brown
• For Labor, Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.), who lost her reelection bid this month, has a pro-labor record that unions like. She backed the PRO Act, a President Biden priority that would make it easier to unionize on a federal level. Go deeper.
• For FDA, Dr. Marty Makary, a surgeon and author who gained prominence on Fox News for his contrarian COVID views. Go deeper.
• For HUD, Scott Turner, a Texan who is the highest-ranking Black person Trump has yet selected for his administration. Turner — a motivational speaker and former NFL cornerback for Washington, San Diego and Denver — ran the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council during Trump's first term. Go deeper.

Axios Cabinet tracker.

Chinese hackers have spent more than a year lurking inside the corners of America's telecommunication networks — and pulled a nearly complete list of phone numbers of individuals the Justice Department is monitoring for espionage.

• "[T]he penetration almost certainly gave China a road map to discover which of China's spies the United States has identified and which they have missed," The New York Times' national security team reports from Washington.

🔎 Zoom in: America's communications system is "built on a mishmash of aging systems, which made it far easier for the Chinese to break into upward of 10 telecommunication companies." The hack, which officials believe was orchestrated by a group closely linked to Chinese state security, could have covered calls, texts and emails.

• Targets included President-elect Trump, Vice President-elect JD Vance, and senior national security officials.

🔒 Officials emphasized that encrypted messages, such as those sent via WhatsApp, Signal or iMessage, were safe.

The latest: Top leaders from telecommunication companies, including Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile, met at the White House yesterday to discuss the problem.

• The message from top U.S. national security officials: Help us find a permanent way to keep Chinese spies out.

More from The Times (gift link).

Axios CEO Jim VandeHei inspired and energized a National Press Club gala with a passionate, ad-libbed defense of free and fearless reporting, warning that "everything we do is under fire."

• "I hate this damn debate about: Oh, we don't need the media," he said Thursday night as he and co-founder Mike Allen accepted the Fourth Estate Award for lifetime achievement. "It's not true."
• "I love this country," Jim added. "I'm a beneficiary of this country. Some dipsh*t from Wisconsin can come and start two companies, be up here, win an award."

"There's something about freedom, capitalism, the animal spirits of democracy," VandeHei said, echoing themes from his book on life and leadership, "Just the Good Stuff."

• "But at the core of that is maybe transparency, maybe a free press, maybe the ability to do your job without worrying about going to jail, maybe the ability to sit in a war zone and tell people what's actually happening ... The work that we do matters."

VandeHei said being a great reporter "is really, really hard":

• "You have to get up every single day and say: I want to get to the closest approximation of the truth — without any fear, without any favoritism. You don't do that by popping off on Twitter. You don't do that by having an opinion. You do it by doing the hard work."

Watch a 1-min. clip ... Full speeches by Jim & Mike (beginning 2:19) ... Jim's famous memo on how to be a great reporter.

A prototype of Tesla's robotaxi, the Cybercab, is on display at an auto show in L.A. this week.

The two-seater has butterfly doors and a large screen up front. Note the lack of steering wheel!

Hostage families and deal-minded Israeli officials are now placing their hopes in President-elect Trump to succeed where President Biden has so far failed: convincing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the war in Gaza in exchange for freeing the hostages held by Hamas.

• The big picture: With less than two months before Trump's inauguration, a hostage-release and ceasefire deal looks unlikely to happen anytime soon, Axios' Barak Ravid reports.

Instead, Trump will very likely inherit the crisis and the responsibility for the seven Americans held by Hamas, four of whom are believed to be alive.

• Trump's incoming White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Axios he will restore stricter sanctions against Iran, fight terrorism, and support Israel.
• "President Trump will serve as America's Negotiator in Chief and work to get innocent civilians held hostage home," she said.

☎️ Behind the scenes: When Israeli President Isaac Herzog called Trump to congratulate him on his election win, he told the president-elect that securing the release of the 101 hostages is "an urgent issue," according to three people briefed on the call.

• "You have to save the hostages," Herzog told Trump, who in response said almost all of the hostages have most likely died.
• The Israeli president then told Trump that Israeli intelligence services believe half of them are still alive.
• "Trump was surprised and said he wasn't aware of that," one source told Axios. Two other sources briefed on the call confirmed that Trump said he thought most of the hostages were dead.

During Herzog's meeting with Biden at the White House on Nov. 11, he asked the president to work with Trump on the issue between now and Jan. 20 when Trump takes office, a source with knowledge of the meeting told Axios.

• Two days later, when Biden hosted Trump for a two-hour meeting at the Oval Office, the president discussed the hostages and proposed they work together to push for a deal.
• "I don't care if Trump gets all the credit as long as they come back home," Biden told the families of the American hostages in a meeting a few hours after his conversation with Trump, according to two sources with direct knowledge.

Read on.

When President-elect Trump moves from Mar-a-Lago to Pennsylvania Avenue, he'll bring a gaggle of fellow Floridians with him.

• Why it matters: Florida has become the epicenter of Trump's political movement and the state that is shaping the modern Republican Party, Axios' April Rubin and Jeff Weiner write.

👀 Driving the news: After Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) withdrew from consideration as attorney general on Thursday, Trump's next choice was another Sunshine State ally, former Florida AG Pam Bondi.

• Trump's nominee for secretary of state, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, was born in Miami, the son of two immigrants from Cuba.
• The incoming chief of staff, Susie Wiles, has long been a power player in Sunshine State politics: She helped Ron DeSantis win his first race for governor and was a partner at Ballard Partners, a powerful Florida-based firm that expanded in Washington during Trump's first term.
• Trump's pick for national security adviser, Rep. Michael Waltz of (Wait for it!) Florida, grew up in Jacksonville.
• Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) was the Trumpworld favorite for majority leader, though he didn't receive Trump's endorsement and his bid fell short.

🖼️ The big picture: During his four years out of office, Trump turned Mar-a-Lago into the MAGA mecca, with the movement's top figures making regular pilgrimages.

• DeSantis has turned Florida into a test kitchen for policies that have become national conservative priorities and led a rightward shift that has stocked the state with ascending GOP talent.

Helped by an influx of conservative-leaning voters, Trump and DeSantis turned a pivotal swing state MAGA red. Registered Republicans now outnumber Democrats by a million.

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The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped more than 400 points yesterday, closing at a new record high.

• The big picture: The Dow added 2% over the week, and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq each added 1.7%, signaling a continuation of the post-election rally that had stalled last week, CNBC notes.

Go deeper: How the stock market could perform under a unified GOP government

The New York Times Style Magazine compiled a list of the 25 most influential cookbooks of the last century.

• Why it matters: "Despite its millions of recipes, the internet hasn't killed cookbooks. Instead, the genre's fans seem more motivated than ever to collect and use them," The Times reports.

Inside the list:

• "The Joy of Cooking" by Irma S. Rombauer "was groundbreaking, less for its content than for its intended audience: middle-class women who cooked for their families without hired help." Now, it's perhaps the most well-known American cookbook.
• "Jubilee" by Toni Tipton-Martin contains recipes gleaned and adapted from some 400 American cookbooks by Black authors over the last two hundred years.
• "The Art of Fermentation" by Sandor Ellix Katz starts with the iconic line, "By some estimates, as much as one-third of all food eaten by human beings worldwide is fermented."
• "How to Cook and Eat Chinese" by Buwei Yang Chao, a Beijing doctor who settled in the U.S. in the 1930s, coined the terms "stir-fry" and "potsticker."

Read on (gift link).