This morning, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson , will go before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Historical precedent suggests that most nominees will be confirmed, but in polls Tillerson stands out as the least popular of Trump’s cabinet nominees. What are his chances? Still very good, it appears.
[ Who is Rex Tillerson? ]
In partnership with the forecasters at Good Judgment, we have launched a forecasting tournament for Trump’s first 100 days in office. This follows on our election forecasting tournament , where the Good Judgment forecasters were among the most accurate of the many election forecasts. Overall, the track record of this kind of “crowdsourced” forecasting is quite good.
Below is the trend in the forecasters’ beliefs about whether Tillerson will be confirmed before April 30.
Since the outset, forecasters have given Tillerson an 80 percent or better chance of confirmation. The most recent estimate is 90 percent. This could reflect the sense that the historical norm of successful confirmations will apply to Tillerson’s case. It may also reflect the sense that, whatever Tillerson’s potential challenges — such as his stance on Russia — they are not substantial enough to seriously threaten his nomination.
The forecasting tournament also includes questions about various policies, such whether the United States will withdraw from NAFTA, or whether legislation will pass that repeals the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate. You can join and make your own forecast here.
For more on this topic:
If Rex Tillerson is nominated Russia could get some very unfortunate ideas.
US-Venezuela relations will probably deteriorate under Trump. Ask ExxonMobil why.

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US President-elect Donald Trump has reacted furiously to allegations that Russia has compromising material on him, saying Moscow has “never tried to use leverage on me”.
Mr Trump condemned US intelligence agencies for allowing “fake news” to “leak” into the public, asking: “Are we living in Nazi Germany? ”
The claims say his election campaign communicated with Moscow and also contain suggestions of prostitute use.
Russia also angrily denied the claims.
Dmitry Peskov, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, said the allegations were “pulp fiction” and a “clear attempt to damage relations”.
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In a series of tweets, Mr Trump said: “Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA – NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!
“I win an election easily, a great “movement” is verified, and crooked opponents try to belittle our victory with FAKE NEWS. A sorry state!
“Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to “leak” into the public. One last shot at me. Are we living in Nazi Germany? ”
Mr Trump is due to hold his first news conference as president-elect later on Wednesday.
Last week, US intelligence agencies reportedly presented the new claims – in the form of a two-page synopsis – to the president-elect, to President Barack Obama and to congressional leaders, CNN said on Wednesday.
The 35-page dossier of memos was published in full by Buzzfeed.
In the same briefing last week, US intelligence agencies released another unclassified report saying Russia ran a hacking campaign to influence the US presidential elections.
The latest allegations say Russia has damaging information about the president-elect’s business interests, and salacious video evidence of his private life, including claims of using prostitutes at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Moscow.
Other claims included in the 35-page dossier suggest Trump aides were involved with the alleged Russian hack of the Democratic Party of his rival Hillary Clinton.
Michael Cohen, a lawyer to Mr Trump named in the memos, has denied a specific claim that he went to Prague in August or September 2016 to meet Kremlin representatives to talk about the hacking.
“I’ve never been to Prague in my life. #fakenews,” he tweeted .
Reince Priebus, Mr Trump’s chief of staff, called the dossier report “phoney baloney garbage”.
US media suggest the videos were prepared as “kompromat” – compromising material collected about a politician or public figure in order to create a threat of negative publicity, if needed.
The allegation that Mr Trump was vulnerable to blackmail and was being manipulated financially or otherwise is astonishing, says the BBC’s Paul Wood in Washington.
In a campaign that was unprecedented, this goes to new extremes, our correspondent adds.
The allegations began circulating in political and media circles in recent months.
The BBC understands they are based on memos provided by a former British intelligence officer for an independent organisation opposed to Mr Trump in Washington DC. Sources say the CIA regards them as “credible”.
The original intention was to derail Mr Trump’s candidacy, reports say.
The BBC first saw the documents in October but has been unable to verify the claims included. Several material inaccuracies have been highlighted in them.
However past work by the British operative was considered by US intelligence to be reliable, US media say.
The existence of the documents was first reported by Mother Jones in October.
US spy agencies say Russia was behind the hacking of Democratic Party emails during the presidential campaign.
They say the order came from the Kremlin to sway the election for Mr Trump and away from Mrs Clinton.
But so far Mr Trump has failed to explicitly agree with the conclusions of the intelligence services. And he has condemned those who oppose good relations with Russia as “fools”.
Russia has denied any involvement in the hacks and accused the US of conducting a witch-hunt.

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A gibbon living in the tropical forests of south west China is a new species of primate, scientists have concluded.
The animal has been studied for some time, but new research confirms it is different from all other gibbons.
It has been named the Skywalker hoolock gibbon – partly because the Chinese characters of its scientific name mean “Heaven’s movement” but also because the scientists are fans of Star Wars.
The study is published in the American Journal of Primatology.
Dr Sam Turvey, from the Zoological Society of London, who was part of the team studying the apes, told BBC News: “In this area, so many species have declined or gone extinct because of habitat loss, hunting and general human overpopulation.
“So it’s an absolute privilege to see something as special and as rare as a gibbon in a canopy in a Chinese rainforest, and especially when it turns out that the gibbons are actually a new species previously unrecognised by science. ”
Hoolock gibbons are found in Bangladesh, India, China and Myanmar. They spend most of their time living in the treetops, swinging through the forests with their forelimbs, rarely spending any time on the ground.
But the research team – led by Fan Peng-Fei from Sun Yat-sen University in China – started to suspect that the animals they were studying in China’s Yunnan Province were unusual.
All hoolock gibbons have white eyebrows and some have white beards – but the Chinese primates’ markings differed in appearance.
Their songs, which they use to bond with other gibbons and to mark out their territory, also had an unusual ring.
So the team carried out a full physical and genetic comparison with other gibbons, which confirmed that the primates were indeed a different species.
They have been given the scientific name of Hoolock tianxing – but their common name is now the Skywalker hoolock gibbon, thanks to the scientists’ taste in films.
Dr Turvey said the team had been studying the animals in the Gaoligongshan nature reserve, but it was not easy.
“It’s difficult to get into the reserve. You have to hike up to above 2,500m to find the gibbons. That’s where the good quality forest usually starts – everywhere below there has been logged.
“Then you have to wake up really early in the morning and you listen out for the haunting song of the gibbons, which carries in the forest canopy.
“And when you hear it, you rush through the mud and the mist, and run for hundreds of metres to try and catch up with these gibbons. ”
The researchers estimate that there are about 200 of the Skywalker gibbons living in China – and also some living in neighbouring Myanmar, although the population size there is currently unknown.
The team warns that the primates are at risk of extinction.
“The low number of surviving animals and the threat they face from habitat loss, habitat fragmentation and hunting means we think they should be classified as an endangered species,” said Dr Turvey.
In response to the news, actor Mark Hamill – the original Luke Skywalker – said on Twitter that he was so proud to have a new jungle Jedi named after his character.
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The nonpartisan Pew Research Center questioned at least 8,000 officers from departments with at least 100 officers between May 19 and Aug. 14 last year – most of it ahead of the fatal shootings of five officers in Dallas and three officers in Baton Rouge.
What it found was a significant fear among police about their safety and about carrying out some of the everyday acts of policing.
It also shows a stark difference in how white and black officers view the protests that have taken place after some of the high-profile shootings of black suspects in the past several years, with black officers believing the protests are genuine acts of civil disobedience designed to hold police accountable, while white officers are more skeptical of the protesters’ motives.
“White officers and black officers have very different views about where we are as a country in terms of achieving equal rights,” said Kim Parker, the director of social trends research for the Pew Research Center.
Some of the key findings:
In 2014, a white officer in Ferguson, Missouri, shot and killed black teen Michael Brown, setting off a movement drawing greater scrutiny of police use of force, particularly against black citizens. In the years since, other fatal encounters with police in such cities as Baltimore, Baton Rouge, Milwaukee, Chicago and New York have put officers under the microscope, especially as video has captured more of these events.
Bill Whitaker reports on Chicago’s surge in murders and discovers an alarming situation that may be contributing to the rise in violence
CBS’ “60 Minutes” obtained data from inside the Chicago Police Department revealing that as killings in the city rose, police activity fell. In August of 2015, cops stopped and questioned 49,257 people. A year later, those stops dropped to 8,859, down 80 percent. At the same time, arrests were off by a third, from just over 10,000 to 6,900.
There has been a concern, largely shared in anecdotes, of officers holding back on stopping suspicious people or other policing out of concern that they’d be cast as racist. But the Pew survey provides the first national evidence that those concerns may be having a real impact on how officers do their jobs.
Data obtained by 60 Minutes shows that as gun violence spiked in Chicago, police activity dropped in all 22 police districts
“Officers are concerned about being the next viral video and so that influences what they do and how they do it and how they think about it,” said Darrel Stephens, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association. He added that he doesn’t believe it’s rampant or that officers are turning a blind eye, “but I still have to believe it may be in a marginal-call situation where there’s a reasonable suspicion on the bubble… that those are the ones they pass up.”
The survey also suggested a divide between police and the communities they serve on some social issues of the day.
For example, two-thirds of all officers say deadly encounters with blacks are isolated incidents, but 60 percent of the general public said they believe they are signs of a broader problem between police and blacks.

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