| | | | |  | | By Calder McHugh | |  Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump's nominee to be secretary of Defense, testifies during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill today. | Francis Chung/POLITICO | ADVISE AND CONSENT — The first — and at one time, the most troubled of Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees — entered the Senate crucible today. Entering his confirmation hearing to become secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth had been dogged by questions about his alcohol use, sexual assault allegations levied against him and his lack of experience at leading a complex government bureaucracy. His views on the prospective use of the military against Americans and on women in combat needed to be further explained. But today we learned only one thing: after decades of smash mouth Senate confirmation hearings, they’ve become all but useless as a vetting exercise or a check on presidential power. Little that’s new about the former Army National Guard officer and Fox News host surfaced as Democrats predictably hammered away at him and Republicans steadfastly defended and praised him. The political stakes are too high to do otherwise — the Democratic base will tolerate nothing less and most of the GOP Senate lives in fear of the incoming president and the primary election challenges he might unleash on them. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, took his opportunity to butter up Trump, arguing in his statement, “The nominee is unconventional, just like that New York developer who rode down the escalator in 2015 to announce his candidacy for president. That may be what makes Mr. Hegseth an excellent choice.” His fellow Republicans on the committee found other ways to avoid addressing the thin spots in Hegseth’s resume. “I just want to say for all the talk of experience and not coming from the same cocktail parties that permanent Washington is used to, you are a breath of fresh air,” said Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.). “And, again, if you weren’t paying attention to what this election was all about, it was about the disruptors versus the establishment.” “Thank you for your strong, unapologetic proclamation of faith in Jesus Christ,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D). Even Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), a veteran and sexual assault survivor who had previously signaled she didn’t yet support Hegseth to lead the Pentagon, kept her questioning pleasant and focused in large part on a Pentagon audit. The modern hearing format itself, however, doesn’t lend itself to anything more. Senators have a limited amount of time, and there are only so many ways to make a big splash or produce a standout social media clip. Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) pressed Hegseth on whether he would resign if he drank in office (he declined to answer directly) and Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) gave the former Fox host a pop quiz, asking him to name nations in ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations), which he failed to do. These moments popped on cable news and on X, where various liberal influencers called questioning from some Democratic senators “mic drops” or argued that they “put the hammer down,” but the day ended essentially where it began — with Hegseth maintaining a narrow but seemingly secure path to confirmation based on the Senate partisan math, and little illumination of his character or qualifications to lead the Pentagon. The only real news of the day may have come from outside the hearing room, when Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) said that he remained undecided about Hegseth’s nomination, something of a surprise revelation given the ferocity of the attacks against GOP colleagues who, weeks ago, also admitted to being uneasy about Hegseth’s qualifications. Just today, prominent conservative activist Charlie Kirk warned that “If anyone in the Senate GOP votes against confirming Pete Hegseth after his stellar performance today, there will be a primary challenge waiting for you.” This is the nature of the modern confirmation hearing process. They are useful in forging future political stars, speaking to the party base and advocacy groups or signaling fealty to the White House. They rarely are for the rest of us. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at cmchugh@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @calder_mchugh.
| | — Biden removes Cuba from list of state sponsors of terrorism: President Joe Biden is removing Cuba from a U.S. government list of state sponsors of terrorism today, according to administration officials. That move, and a number of other conciliatory actions, are being taken in the hope of securing the release of political prisoners on the island, the officials told reporters in a briefing ahead of the announcement. It could be a significant breakthrough in the bilateral relationship between the U.S. and Cuba, though President-elect Donald Trump may choose to reverse the decisions. — Johnson backs away from go-it-alone debt ceiling plan: Speaker Mike Johnson today backed away from a plan to address the approaching federal debt cliff in a party-line reconciliation package, acknowledging several major challenges that may force Republicans to deal with the borrowing limit in bipartisan talks with Democrats. Those obstacles include fractious House conservatives and ongoing strategic disputes with the Senate. Addressing the debt limit in reconciliation is not “completely foreclosed,” Johnson said at a POLITICO Live event, but he said House leaders were “looking at all options.” — House passes bill restricting transgender athletes from women’s sports: The House passed a measure to restrict transgender students from playing on women’s sports teams on a 218-206 vote today, with two Democrats joining Republicans and one voting present. The legislation — H.R. 28 — is a cornerstone of the GOP’s education agenda and would deliver on a priority for the incoming Trump administration. It bans transgender women from competing on teams consistent with their gender identity and amends Title IX, the federal education law that bars sex-based discrimination, to define sex as based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth. Transgender students, however, would be able to practice or train with a program designated for women or girls.
| | MICHELLE’S A NO — Former First Lady Michelle Obama won’t be attending Monday’s inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, according to a statement. “This is obviously not the outcome we had hoped for, given our profound disagreements with the Republican ticket on a whole host of issues,” former President Barack Obama said in a statement announcing Michelle’s decision not to attend. “In a country as big and diverse as ours, we won’t always see eye-to-eye on everything. But progress requires us to extend good faith and grace – even to people with whom we deeply disagree.” The news follows the former first lady declining to attend former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral, an event that would have sat her next to Trump. BLANK SHEET — Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) shared pointed concerns today about one of President-elect Donald Trump’s top national security nominees — saying at a POLITICO Live event that former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard had not done enough to win his vote for confirmation as director of national intelligence. Curtis separately said he remained undecided about Pete Hegseth’s nomination as Defense secretary, saying he was closely monitoring his hearing today and the results of a FBI background check done for the Senate Armed Services Committee. But he sharply noted that Gabbard, unlike Hegseth, had not yet met with him and compared his views on her nomination to a blank sheet of music. “The biggest problem for me is she’s been so low-profile,” he said. “The others have come to my office and so if you go back to that analogy of a sheet of music, her sheet’s pretty blank for me. I need more information to start filling that in, and, look, if I can’t fill that in, I can’t vote for her.” GROWING GOVERNMENT — President-elect Donald Trump said today he will create a new agency called the External Revenue Service to collect tariffs and other forms of revenue that come from foreign sources, The “birth date” of the agency is January 20, Trump said, which is the same day he will be sworn in to become the 47th president of the United States. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection, an agency overseen by the Department of Homeland Security, currently collects tariffs, which are paid by importers (not foreign countries).
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Protesters in Tel Aviv hold signs and photos of hostages during a demonstration today calling for the return of hostages held by Hamas. | Amir Levy/Getty Images | AGREEMENT CLOSE — Hamas has accepted a draft agreement for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and the release of dozens of hostages, two officials involved in the talks said today, according to The Associated Press. Mediators the United States and Qatar said Israel and the Palestinian militant group were at the closest point yet to sealing a deal to bring them a step closer to ending 15 months of war. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the proposed agreement, and an Egyptian official and a Hamas official confirmed its authenticity. An Israeli official said progress has been made, but the details are being finalized. “I believe we will get a ceasefire,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a speech today, asserting it was up to Hamas. “It’s right on the brink. It’s closer than it’s ever been before,” and word could come within hours, or days. The United States, Egypt and Qatar have spent the past year trying to mediate an end to the war and secure the release of dozens of hostages captured in Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack that triggered it. Nearly 100 people are still captive inside Gaza, and the military believes at least a third are dead. Any deal is expected to pause the fighting and bring hopes for winding down the most deadly and destructive war Israel and Hamas have ever fought, a conflict that has destabilized the Middle East and sparked worldwide protests. TICKET OUT — The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has sparked a firestorm in Germany after a local party chapter in the southwestern city of Karlsruhe distributed thousands of fake plane tickets to migrants to be deported to their “safe country of origin.” “In your home country, it’s also nice,” read the flyers, which were labeled with a departure date of Feb. 23, the day of Germany’s national election. The stunt comes as the party’s national leaders increasingly embrace radical proposals to deport migrants en masse. During a party convention over the weekend, AfD chancellor candidate Alice Weidel said the party would enact “large-scale repatriations” if it comes to power.
| | | | | | | THE GREAT MIGRATION — With a TikTok ban looming, users in the United States are searching around for a potential replacement. The obvious ones, which already have significant bases of users and operate similarly to TikTok, are Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. But this week, a new competitor has emerged, dominating app store downloads — the Chinese-owned app Xiaohongshu, referred to in English as RedNote. It’s somewhat ironic, given that the TikTok ban is largely due to the company’s inability to assuage regulatory concerns about its own ownership. If RedNote truly catches on, it will immediately face many of the same issues. But for now, the rise in downloads has resulted in users in America interacting directly with those in China, leading to an interesting cultural exchange. Andrew R. Chow reports in TIME Magazine.
| | | |  On this date in 1989: Police arrest anti-abortion demonstrators during a protest in New York. As many as 500 protesters were arrested as anti-abortion groups defied a federal judge's order to stop blocking entrances to abortion clinics. | Mark Lennihan/AP | Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
