Welcome to the online edition of From the Politics Desk, an evening email that provides you with the most recent coverage and commentary from the campaign trail, Capitol Hill, and the White House by the NBC News Politics team.
After covering Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearing to become defense secretary, Sahil Kapur and Garrett Haake share their conclusions in today’s program. Additionally, Steve Kornacki examines the data to explain why it is becoming less frequent for presidents to receive bipartisan votes for their Cabinet selections.
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Pete Hegseth gets a friendly GOP reception and other takeaways from his confirmation hearing
By Sahil Kapur
At his hearing before the Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, Senate Republicans showed their support for Pete Hegseth, the troubled nominee for defense secretary under President-elect Donald Trump.
Hegseth’s nomination was shrouded in controversy when he arrived at the hearing. Hegseth, a former Fox News personality and Army combat veteran, was questioned for more than four hours, but Republicans left with hope that he would be confirmed as the Pentagon’s leader.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he will move swiftly to have Hegseth confirmed, saying he behaved himself very well and presented a compelling case for why he should be the next secretary of defense.
Here are some conclusions drawn from the hearing.
Joni Ernst doesn’t cause a stir:Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, a war veteran and sexual assault survivor, has long been viewed as a key figure in Hegseth’s run for 50 votes because of her prior worries about him. She did little to oppose him on Tuesday.
She started by recording their extremely fruitful and candid discussions and adding a letter from a Hegseth supporter to the file. Hegseth responded in the yes, just as you mentioned, when she questioned if women should be allowed to serve in combat situations. He responded that he had already assured her that he would designate a senior officer devoted to sexual assault prevention, saying, “As we have discussed, yes, I will.”
Trump supporters have put a lot of pressure on Ernst, who is up for reelection in 2026, to support Hegseth. She hasn’t been particularly eager to oppose Trump lately.
Culture war rhetoric predominates: Using language from the MAGA movement, Hegseth frequently praised Trump and attacked President Joe Biden’s administration during the session.
He claimed to be the target of a smear campaign and spoke out against left-wing media in America as well as left-wing woke universities.
Democrats press Hegseth on women in combat: Of all the issues Hegseth has encountered, Democrats appeared most keen to criticize his previous statements that women shouldn’t fight.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., who lost her legs in battle after her helicopter was shot down in Iraq, said, “You can’t seem to grasp that there is no U.S. military as we know it without the incredible women that we serve, women who earn their place in their units.” You are not deserving of the position of secretary of defense.
Hegseth has moderated his stance against women in the military. He claimed that his opinions, both recently and before, and based on his own experience, have been influenced by situations in which he has witnessed standards being reduced.
See more of Sahil’s conclusions.
Haake’s View: Democratic senators generally found it difficult to make Hegseth’s personal debts into the kind of injury that can put a Cabinet ambition on hold.
Tim Kaine of Virginia, who is known for being a friendly man, was the only legislator to continuously ask Hegseth about a sexual assault accusation from 2017 and to acknowledge the evidence that supported it in a way that would unnerve GOP senators who were on the fence more over two hours into the hearing. Details on tax returns pertaining to prior positions or Hegseth’s comprehension of the world issues the next SecDef will encounter were shallow.
Haake, Garrett
Bipartisanship is on the decline in Cabinet confirmation votes
By Steve Kornacki
In the past, it was unclear if the Senate would oppose the Cabinet choices made by the next president. The question now is how much resistance Donald Trump’s choices will encounter as their confirmation hearings get underway.
Consider it a byproduct of the party divide that has been growing since 2000 and intensified following Trump’s election in 2016. Senators from the opposing party, who were previously mainly subservient to the president’s choices, now have far greater motivation to attempt to block them, or at least to appear as though they are.
Up until Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009, Cabinet nominations were frequently approved with unanimous or nearly unanimous votes. Nine of his candidates passed the Senate with no opposition at all, and five more did so with barely little Republican resistance. However, there was a dramatic decline in this kind of bipartisan agreement under the past two presidents, Joe Biden in 2021 and Trump in 2017.
Cabinet conflicts were not nonexistent prior to the Trump administration. However, they were few and remote.
For example, Democrats were furious with John Ashcroft, who was confirmed as attorney general only after a protracted debate in which 42 Democrats voted against him. Twelve of George W. Bush’s candidates were unanimously confirmed. (Gale Norton, another Bush choice for interior secretary, also received a scattering of no votes.)
Additionally, even though no vote was eventually cast against any of Bill Clinton’s choices, Zo Baird, his first choice for attorney general, withdrew during her confirmation hearings due to growing opposition. (She had acknowledged that she had not paid Social Security taxes for the undocumented worker she had hired.)
However, in general, the Senate felt that a new president should be able to put together the team he desired, with no votes set aside for symbolic objections or outlier situations.
Trump changed that perspective; six of his nominees received over 40 no votes in 2017, and just one, David Shulkin, a former Obama appointment, was unanimously confirmed as the nominee for Veterans Affairs Secretary. It was Vice President Mike Pence’s tiebreaking vote—the first ever for a Cabinet nomination—that allowed Betsy DeVos, Trump’s nominee to lead the Education Department, to survive.
Republicans reciprocated when Biden won the 2020 election. Three of Biden’s other nominees received at least 40 no votes, but Xavier Becerra was confirmed as health and human services secretary by a straight party-line vote.
As has only happened nine times, most recently in 1989 when John Tower was voted down to lead the Pentagon under George H.W. Bush, neither Biden nor Trump (the first time) had any of their choices rejected by the entire Senate. Tower was accused of drinking too much, and as Democrats at the time held a large majority, they had the numbers to prevent him from being nominated.
In the ongoing battle over Trump’s most vulnerable nominee, Pete Hegseth, whose candidacy to head the Defense Department has been hampered by accusations similar to those in the Tower case, there could be a crucial distinction. However, Trump’s party has a Senate majority, unlike Bush had at the time.
Today s top stories
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Report card:
Special counsel Jack Smith defended his 2020 election interference investigation in a report that was made public early Tuesday, saying a jury would have convicted Trump.Read more
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Report card, cont.:
In another report that was released Monday, special counsel David Weiss criticized President Joe Biden for pardoning his son Hunter.Read more
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Inauguration RSVPs:
Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerbergwill attend
Trump s inauguration Monday, while
Michelle Obama
won t.
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Out of office:
Minnesota s Democratic state representatives declined to show up for the first day of the legislative session to deny the state House a quorum amid a fight over how to manage a chamber that’s set to be equally divided.Read more
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Fueling up:
Forget coffee, soda and Red Bull: Celsius is the drink members of the U.S. government are increasingly turning to for a caffeine fix, The Washington Post reports.Read more
For now, that’s all from the Politics Desk. Adam Wollner and Scott Bland put together today’s newsletter.
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