The Senate battle to confirm President-elect Trump’s Cabinet picks will begin in earnest on Tuesday, as his controversial pick to lead the Pentagon, former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, meets the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Trump himself will take the oath of office on Jan. 20, and he’s hoping to have some of his team confirmed and in place that day.
Hegseth initially was to be accompanied by former Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), who is nominated to serve as secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, and former North Dakota Gov. Doug Bergum, Trump’s nominee to serve as secretary of the Interior Department.
But both of those hearings have been postponed.
Here’s what you need to know about Tuesday’s initial confirmation hearing.
Pete Hegseth
Hegseth has long been seen as one of the biggest potential confirmation fights of Trump’s Cabinet picks.
That partly reflects the importance of the Pentagon, which employs roughly 27,000 people, making it one of the largest and most complex federal departments.
Hegseth has faced questions about his qualifications to lead such an agency.
He’s a veteran who completed tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and served as an infantry captain in the Army National Guard, earning two Bronze Stars. He served as a co-host of “Fox & Friends Weekend” on Fox News for about seven years before leaving after Trump announced his nomination in November.
But he’s never led an apparatus anywhere near the size of the Pentagon.
He has also faced other controversies, many of which are likely to come up during the Senate Armed Service Committee hearing.
A 2017 police report in which a woman accused Hegseth of sexual assault surfaced soon after his nomination. Hegseth denies the allegations and has said the encounter was consensual.
But the accusations received even more attention following a New York Times report that Hegseth’s mother sent him an email in 2018 accusing him of “routinely mistreating women for years” and using women “for his own power and ego.”
His mother said in response to the report that she later apologized for sending the email, that what she said wasn’t true and that it was sent “in anger, with emotion” as Hegseth and his wife were going through a divorce.
Hegseth also received widespread pushback for comments he made in November in which he called men more “capable” than women in the armed forces and said women should not serve in combat roles.
He later changed course following meetings with Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), a veteran and an influential vote on the Senate Armed Services Committee, calling women who serve “some of our greatest warriors.”
Hegseth has also faced accusations of excessive drinking, which reportedly worried colleagues of his at Fox and was a factor in his stepping down from two nonprofit advocacy groups. He also reportedly left those organizations as a result of mismanagement of funds and sexual impropriety.
Several GOP senators have said Hegseth promised them to stop drinking if confirmed as Defense secretary.
Despite all of that controversy, Hegseth’s prospects for confirmation have been on an upswing for weeks.
After the Times story was published, there were reports that Trump was considering replacing Hegseth with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).
Hegseth survived those rumors, and a number of GOP senators have expressed their support as Trump told him to “keep on fighting.”
If all Democrats oppose his nomination, Hegseth could afford three GOP defections and still survive.
Doug Collins
Collins, a close ally of Trump during his first term in office, was supposed to have his initial confirmation hearing on Tuesday but it was postponed late Monday.
Collins served on the then-president’s impeachment defense team in early 2020 when Trump was accused of withholding aid from Ukraine in exchange for political favors.
Representing Georgia’s 9th Congressional District from 2013 to 2021, Collins served as vice chair of the House Republican Conference from 2017 to 2019 and ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee from 2019 to 2020.
Trump noted Collins’s time in the military in his announcement of the nomination. Collins served as a Navy chaplain for two years in the 1990s and later joined the Air Force Reserve in 2002, being deployed to Iraq in 2008.
“We must take care of our brave men and women in uniform, and Doug will be a great advocate for our Active Duty Servicemembers, Veterans, and Military Families to ensure they have the support they need,” Trump said.
Collins was an unsuccessful candidate in a special election for Georgia’s Senate in 2020 and has more recently served as a legal counsel to Trump, particularly advising on the false claims that the 2020 election was stolen in Georgia because of illegitimate ballots.
Doug Burgum
The former North Dakota governor and GOP presidential candidate was supposed to have his initial hearing to become secretary of the Department of the Interior on Tuesday, but it has been pushed until Thursday.
The decision is not without some controversy.
Burgum’s hearing was set to be held before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Tuesday at 10 a.m., but the panel’s top Democrat said Republicans scheduled it without the minority’s consent.
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) said last week that he’s objecting to the hearing being scheduled because he hasn’t yet received key information from Burgum for the nomination, including a disclosure form, evidence of an FBI background check and approval from the Interior Department’s ethics office.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), the chair of the committee, said Burgum sent his paperwork to the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) and accused Democrats of trying to delay the hearing. Lee, in announcing the postponement on Monday, said OGE had not completed its review, criticizing a bureaucratic delay.
Coming later this week
Wednesday
9 a.m., South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, nominee for secretary of Homeland Security, appears before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
9:30 a.m., former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R), nominee for attorney general, appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
10 a.m., Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), nominee for secretary of State, appears before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
10 a.m., former National Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe, nominee for CIA director, appears before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
10 a.m., former Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.), nominee for Transportation secretary, appears before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.
1 p.m., former Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought, nominee for OMB director, appears before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
Thursday
10 a.m., former Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.), nominee for Environmental Protection Agency administrator, appears before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
10 a.m., Scott Turner, nominee for secretary of Housing and Urban Development, appears before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.
10:15 a.m., former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R), nominee for attorney general, appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
10:30 a.m., Scott Bessent, nominee for Treasury secretary, appears before the Senate Finance Committee.
