Senators bracing for confirmation battles over unorthodox Trump Cabinet picks
CNN
Republicans avoided a confirmation firestorm when former Rep. Matt Gaetz withdrew from consideration as attorney general, but lawmakers on Capitol Hill are already bracing for how they’ll navigate the next slew of unorthodox Trump picks — and they have warned the president-elect’s choice to lead the Pentagon, who faces controversy over his past comments and history, that the confirmation process is a long and invasive process.
Republicans avoided a confirmation firestorm when former Rep. Matt Gaetz withdrew from consideration as attorney general, but lawmakers on Capitol Hill are already bracing for how they’ll navigate the next slew of unorthodox Trump picks — and they have warned the president-elect’s choice to lead the Pentagon, who faces controversy over his past comments and history, that the confirmation process is a long and invasive process. Some of Trump’s Cabinet selections, including Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for Secretary of Defense, and Tulsi Gabbard, his pick for director of national intelligence, could force Republicans to choose between their allegiance to Trump and their growing concerns that some of his nominees might not be up for the job or might not be possible to confirm in a narrowly controlled Senate. Hegseth on Thursday huddled with a handful of Republican senators, many of them seen as close allies of Trump, for a series of meetings. Lawmakers who emerged included Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, who called it “a great meeting,” and Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, who called Hegseth “very qualified to do the job.” Earlier on the morning of those meetings, new details had emerged about a police report from 2017 in which a woman alleged that Hegseth blocked her from leaving a hotel room, took her phone, and then sexually assaulted her even though she “remembered saying ‘no’ a lot,” CNN reported. Police declined to press charges, and Hegseth has maintained the encounter was consensual. But while some members of the party signal support for the nomination, other Republicans on the Hill warn that there are mounting concerns about Hegseth. Although many senators have known Hegseth, a Fox News host, for years, the process of vetting him to be the secretary of Defense will force them to examine him and his views in a new light.
The two men killed as they floated holding onto their capsized boat in a secondary strike against a suspected drug vessel in early September did not appear to have radio or other communications devices, the top military official overseeing the strike told lawmakers on Thursday, according to two sources with direct knowledge of his congressional briefings.
As Chad Curry busily ferries his teenage children through the streets of their Chicago neighborhood of West Ridge, he eyes passing vehicles with a skepticism he didn’t have just a few months ago.
Speaker Mike Johnson is a political survivor, weathering crisis after crisis since his unlikely ascent two years ago.
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Brian Walshe on Thursday came face-to-face for the first time with the man who had been having an affair with his wife before her death, as he took the stand to testify in Walshe’s murder trial.
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The US military carried out a strike Thursday on a suspected drug boat in the Eastern Pacific, killing four people on board, according to a social media post from US Southern Command.
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National Guard troops deployed to Washington, DC, can remain there for now, after a federal appeals court on Thursday temporarily froze a judge’s ruling that would have soon required them to leave the city’s streets.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s bad week just got worse. That’s after the long-awaited release Thursday of an inspector general’s report on his sharing of highly sensitive military attack plans on the unclassified app Signal earlier this year.
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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth risked compromising sensitive military information that could have endangered US troops through his use of Signal to discuss attack plans, a Pentagon watchdog said in an unclassified report released Thursday. It also details how Hegseth declined to cooperate with the probe.