Effective Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security will be led by an acting secretary, Kevin McAleenan. He will join acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, acting U.N. Ambassador Jonathan Cohen, and acting Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vough in President Trump's Cabinet. When Linda McMahon steps down Friday, the Small Business Administration will have an acting administrator, too.

The FAA, FDA, FEMA, ICE, and Secret Service are among the other agencies with no Senate-confirmed leader, and when McAleenan becomes acting DHS secretary on Wednesday, Customs and Border Protection administrator will be vacant, too. Shanahan, who is under investigation by the inspector general, has been acting defense secretary since Jan. 1, a record tenure for an acting Cabinet-level official, The Wall Street Journal reports. Trump hasn't even nominated a permanent candidate.

Trump seems to prefer this arrangement, telling reporters in January: "I like 'acting.' It gives me more flexibility." But the glut of acting officials in Trump's Cabinet is "prompting concerns from lawmakers in both parties about their accountability to Congress," the Journal reports. Congress isn't alone.

Trump's preference for "acting" appointees, "presumably because unconfirmed appointees are more likely to be loyal to him personally rather than to the Congress or Constitution," is yet "another assault on the law," Max Boot argues at The Washington Post. America's founders specifically "ordered George Washington to send nominations to the Hill at a reasonable pace," New York University professor Paul Light tells The New York Times, because they "rightly worried that presidents might use acting appointees to evade oversight and institutional prerogatives."

For Trump, "the real difference is avoiding Senate confirmation — either because the individuals he wants running these agencies can't be confirmed even by a Republican-controlled Senate, or because he's worried about the kinds of questions they'd have to answer and or concessions they'd have to make in order to be confirmed," adds University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck. And Congress, he notes, isn't powerless here. Peter Weber

It's fashion week for NASA.

Tuesday afternoon, the space agency revealed two new spacesuits to be worn by astronauts during Artemis missions, with the goal of landing the first woman and next man on the moon by 2024.

The full suit, named xEMU, is designed for use on the surface of the moon, and features red, white, and blue elements. The main goal for the design was to increase mobility and flexibility, enabling astronauts to move and pick up objects, like lunar rocks, with ease, reports TechCrunch. This marks a major improvement from the suits worn in the Apollo mission, which required astronauts to "bunny-hop".

The suit can also withstand temperatures ranging from -250 to 250 degrees Fahrenheit, per NASA. It features interchangable parts, allowing the suit to be worn on the International Space Station, in lunar orbit, on the moon, or on Mars, and can be upgraded to "keep crew warm in the Mars winter and prevent over heating in the summer," according to NASA.

The second suit is bright orange and meant to be worn during take-off and landing, and is dubbed the "Orion Crew Survival Suit."

The new suits feature inclusive sizing, per TechCrunch. This comes after the first all-women spacewalk was canceled earlier this year for lack of a proper-sized suit. Kristine Davis, an advanced space suit engineer at NASA, said they will fit men and women of all sizes.

"We want every person who dreams of going into space to be able to say to themselves, that yes, they have that opportunity," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine during the unveiling. Read more at TechCrunch. Taylor Watson

Fox News could soon have some new competition on its hands.

Shari Redstone, vice chair of CBS and Viacom, is "quietly exploring a plan to launch a conservative TV outlet meant to square off with the Fox News Channel," The Hollywood Reporter wrote Tuesday.

Amid this exploration, the Reporter reports Redstone has been speaking with current and former Fox News personalities, including Megyn Kelly, who departed Fox in January 2017 to join NBC News, where her show was later canceled; Kelly will return to Fox with an interview on Tucker Carlson Tonight Wednesday. Redstone has also met with President Trump in the White House in recent weeks.

A spokesperson for Redstone denied the report, and a spokesperson for Viacom did as well. Redstone's spokesperson did, however, confirm she met with Trump.

An existing Viacom channel could be potentially be rebranded into this conservative network, the Reporter says, though further details about the reported plan are unclear. This is all coming as Trump continues to rail against his once beloved Fox News, telling his supporters in August, "we have to start looking for a new News Outlet."

Amid these complaints, the Reporter writes that "Redstone sees an opening as the audience for TV news grows older and more conservative and Trump and some of his fans express disenchantment with ratings giant Fox News." Redstone reportedly sees Fox as having "gone crazy." Brendan Morrow

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) has some thoughts about the race he ruled out.

Brown, a progressive who easily won re-election while the rest of his state went red in 2018, opted out of a presidential run despite even his barber encouraging him to do it. Yet he has a word of caution for the Democrat he eventually wants to win his state, and it's a rule several of the candidates have already violated, he tells CNN.

"I think it's a terrible mistake if the Democratic nominee would publicly support Medicare-for-all," Brown told CNN ahead of Tuesday's Democratic primary debate. He said that promise would scare off voters who fear losing their health care, and instead encouraged the eventual nominee to promise Affordable Care Act expansion instead. Backing the progressive policy could cost the eventual nominee Ohio, Brown said — a state he emphasized went to the winner in every election since former President John F. Kennedy's.

Of course, Brown's advice is already worthless to some of 2020's top contenders. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has already made it clear that she's "with" Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on the Medicare-for-all bill he wrote. Former Vice President Joe Biden, on the other hand, is very blatantly with Brown on this one. Kathryn Krawczyk

Cuba Gooding Jr. has pleaded not guilty to a new misconduct charge as prosecutors now say as many as 12 accusers could testify against him.

The Oscar-winning actor, who is charged with forcible touching and sexual abuse in the third degree, entered his plea Tuesday after being charged over two incidents, USA Today reports. Gooding was initially charged in June after a woman accused him of groping her at a nightclub in New York.

But prosecutor Jenna Long said Tuesday that as many as 12 accusers could testify against the actor during his trial, The Associated Press reports, with misconduct allegations reportedly stretching back to 2001. These are in addition to the two accusers in the cases the actor is being charged over, with the newest one relating to a woman who alleges Gooding pinched her on the behind at a nightclub in October 2018, The New York Times reports.

The New York Daily News reported Monday that three more accusers have shared their misconduct allegations against Gooding with police, and after Gooding's arrest in June, the New York Police Department said a woman who alleges he groped her at a Manhattan club in 2008 had filed a police report.

Gooding has maintained his innocence, with his lawyer claiming Tuesday this is all a "distorted overreaction pandering to the current hypersensitive climate where innocent commonplace gestures are now misperceived and mischaracterized as offensive." The indictment alleges Gooding's behavior "shows that he routinely approaches women while at bars or nightclubs with whom he has limited or no prior interaction, and touches them inappropriately." Brendan Morrow

Another woman has come forward to accuse Matt Lauer of sexual misconduct in Ronan Farrow's new book.

Ahead of the Tuesday release of Catch and Kill, excerpts last week revealed that Lauer was fired in 2017 after an NBC News employee accused him of rape, a detail that had not been previously reported. But Farrow's book also describes an allegation from Melissa Lonner, a former booker on Today who accused Lauer of exposing himself to her in an empty office at a company party in 2010, The Hollywood Reporter writes.

Lonner alleges she attempted to get away but that Lauer became angry, calling her a "tease" and telling her, "You led me on," Deadline reports. Although she did not make a formal complaint at the time, Farrow reports Lonner told Ann Curry, who then told two senior executives that Lauer had a "problem with women." Lonner upon leaving NBC News in 2013 reportedly signed an agreement that prevented her from filing a legal claim, and she was reportedly reminded by an NBC lawyer in 2018 about the "enforceability of her pact."

Lauer's attorney denied the allegation in a statement, saying "Matt never exposed himself to anyone" and calling the claim "ridiculous."

NBC has denied knowing anything about Lauer's alleged misconduct prior to his firing in November 2017, with NBC News President Noah Oppenheim writing in a letter to staff this week that the agreement Lonner disclosed was "standard for departing employees at the time" and was "not drafted to prevent an employee from reporting misconduct." Oppenheim has also accused Farrow of being "clearly motivated not by a pursuit of truth, but an axe to grind." Farrow stands by his reporting, saying it's "indisputable" that "there was a chain of secret settlements at this company that were covered up." Brendan Morrow

If the term "self burn" was in the dictionary, Donald Trump Jr.'s face would be the only definition.

Former Vice President Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden has been the subject of Trump family taunts ever since his work with a Ukrainian energy company indirectly sparked an impeachment inquiry into the president. Yet Donald Trump Jr. saved the family's most self-unaware attack for Hunter Biden's Tuesday interview with ABC News, somehow thinking it was a good idea to grill Biden for admitting he'd benefited from his family name.

Biden on Tuesday apologized for the way his serving on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma had hurt his father's career, saying it was "poor judgment" for him to take the job. After all, Biden said, "I don't think there's a lot of things that would have happened in my life if my last name wasn't Biden." Donald Trump Jr., blatantly ignoring his own last name, tweeted that quote from Biden and said it indicated there's a "dumpster fire at Biden HQ!"

Trump Jr. failed to mention that his entire life and career is built around his father's — and by extension his grandfather's — last name and real estate business, and that's he's still working for and profiting off those businesses to this day. Kathryn Krawczyk