The Battles Over Donald Trump’s Cabinet Nominees Are Finally Here

WASHINGTON ― President-elect Donald Trump’s personnel plans for his second term have consumed Washington since the November election, but the confirmation process for top administration officials is only now getting underway with a slate of high-profile Senate committee hearings beginning this week.

Starting Tuesday morning, 12 nominees will appear for potentially explosive televised hearings with senators who’ll grill them on their backgrounds and vision for their jobs. Expect the process to consist of Republicans attempting to push through some of Trump’s most contentious nominees amid strong objections from Democrats, who lost control of the Senate in November but who are expected to support some of Trump’s picks.

The nominees slated to appear in Congress this week include former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, tapped for interior secretary; South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, for homeland security secretary; former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, for U.S. attorney general; former U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy, for transportation secretary; former National Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe, for CIA director; Sen. Marco Rubio, for secretary of state; former Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, to lead OMB again; former White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council director Scott Turner, for housing and urban development secretary; former Rep. Lee Zeldin, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency; and investor Scott Bessent, for treasury secretary.

On Tuesday, Senate panels will consider one of Trump’s most controversial nominees — former Fox News host Pete Hegseth for defense secretary.

Hegseth has been accused of sexual misconduct and alcohol abuse, charges the former Army National Guard officer has denied. He’s also been accused of financial mismanagement as the head of a Veterans Affairs nonprofit in 2016, prompting concerns about his ability to manage the nation’s largest government agency.

“If there’s any Cabinet position that ought to have a steady and drama-free individual, it is certainly secretary of defense,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Monday. “Unfortunately, Mr. Hegseth’s background is deeply troubling.”

Some Republican senators, including several women, have yet to announce their support for Hegseth, including military veteran Joni Ernst of Iowa, who’s faced a pressure campaign on Hegseth’s confirmation from Trump’s allies. Losing at least four GOP votes would block Hegseth’s nomination from going through.

Hegseth, for his part, has promised to give up drinking if confirmed ― a pledge that will likely draw scrutiny during the hearing. He’s also recanted his long-held view that women shouldn’t serve in combat roles.

“[He needs to] explain how someone who has spent 12 years declaring that women have no role in active-duty military and combat can completely, reasonably be trusted to run America’s military,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Monday.

Here are several of Trump’s nominees you’ll see this week and how they’re likely to fare:

On the other end of the confirmation spectrum, Sen. Rubio (R-Fla.) is expected to have a relatively breezy time in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday.

As a vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee and member of the Foreign Relations Committee, Rubio is considered qualified to become the top U.S. diplomat at a time of major upheaval in the Middle East and Ukraine. Rubio is seen as tough on two of the nation’s main economic and geopolitical rivals, Iran and China, while sharing Trump’s less-unwavering support for Ukraine amid its conflict with Russia. If confirmed, Rubio would be the first Latino to serve as U.S. secretary of state.

A U.S. senator since 2011 (and a formerly harsh critic of Trump during the 2016 presidential primary), Rubio may also get confirmed with a large degree of support from across the aisle. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) has called Rubio a “strong choice” for secretary of state and said he “looks forward to voting for his confirmation.” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has also said he’ll back Rubio.

Vought may not be a household name, but you’re likely familiar with his work: Vought previously led the Office of Management and Budget, the position for which he’s being renominated. The office is broadly in charge of implementing the president’s vision for the government across its agencies.

Vought was in charge of OMB at the tail end of Trump’s first term. Between then and now, Vought has worked on shaping the Republican National Committee’s policy platform.

Vought is also a co-author of the controversial Project 2025 blueprint for a second Trump term from the conservative Heritage Foundation, which calls for a consolidation of power in the executive branch and the reclassification of rank-and-file government workers as political appointees.

On Wednesday, expect members of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee to grill Vought on Project 2025 — from which Trump sought to distance himself during the 2024 election — and his plans for a second Trump White House.

Bondi, Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Justice as the nation’s top prosecutor, will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday and Thursday. Bondi was Florida’s attorney general from 2011 to 2019 and later served on the defense team for Trump’s first impeachment in 2020.

Democrats are likely to raise concerns about Bondi’s paid lobbying work on behalf of several foreign governments, as well as her commitment to the rule of law and the Justice Department’s independence in light of Trump’s threats to use the agency to go after his political rivals.

“The American people deserve an Attorney General who will protect their fundamental rights, demonstrate independence and integrity, and remain faithful to the Constitution, the country, and the rule of law above all,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said in a statement after meeting with Bondi.

The former North Dakota governor, Trump’s pick to oversee 500 million acres of federal land as head of the Department of the Interior, will appear before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on Thursday.

The billionaire software entrepreneur and two-term governor briefly ran against Trump for the 2024 presidential nomination but dropped out and endorsed Trump. If confirmed, Burgum would play a key role in advancing Trump’s vision for boosting fossil fuel drilling and other extraction across federal lands and dismantling environmental protections.

Burgum is likely to face tough questions from Democrats about his vision for managing public land, his state’s support for a Utah lawsuit aimed at taking control of millions of acres of federal land, and his personal financial ties to oil billionaire and Republican megadonor Harold Hamm.

Burgum’s confirmation hearing was initially scheduled for Tuesday but was postponed due to a delay in senators receiving the nominee’s required financial disclosure and ethics paperwork.

The South Dakota governor appears to be headed to a relatively easy confirmation to head the Department of Homeland Security but could face tough questions at her Wednesday hearing with the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee over how she’ll oversee the Federal Emergency Management Agency, considering Trump’s longstanding threats to withhold emergency aid and a spate of Republicans threatening to keep disaster relief from California following devastating fires in Los Angeles County.

She would oversee immigration and border enforcement at DHS, though it’s clear much of the policy on those matters will come out of the White House, where top Trump adviser Stephen Miller and immigration czar Tom Homan will work.

Though she may not pick up any Democratic votes, there’s been no sign of GOP dissent on her nomination. Noem is perhaps best known nationally for writing about shooting her dog in her memoir.

Trump’s pick to lead the EPA is a former GOP congressman from New York who mounted a surprisingly competitive campaign for governor in a deep-blue state in 2022.

Zeldin, who used to represent eastern Long Island in the U.S. House, is set to appear before the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works on Thursday.

In Congress, Zeldin repeatedly voted to cut funding to the agency he is now seeking to lead. The country’s largest environmental groups oppose his nomination, but he won the endorsement of Mandy Gunasekara, a controversial former EPA official from Trump’s first term who authored a key section on the agency in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 plan.

Like Scott Pruitt, who was Trump’s first EPA administrator during his first term, Zeldin’s personal financial dealings could draw blowback. Last week, Business Insider reported the former congressman earned $120,500 from unnamed clients for writing opinion pieces and giving speeches.

Wright, Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Energy, is set to appear before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resource on Wednesday. The oil and gas executive served until recently at the helm of Liberty Energy, the Denver-based fracking company he founded in 2011 at the dawn of a drilling boom that vaulted the United States into the ranks of the world’s top hydrocarbon producers.

Wright’s nomination has generated less controversy than Trump’s other candidates to lead agencies that, under the Biden administration, formed the spear tip of U.S. efforts to transform the nation’s energy systems.

Last year, Wright posted a video online in which he said “there is no climate crisis,” insisting “we’re not in the midst of an energy transition.” Citing atmospheric data in a company report he authored as Liberty’s chief executive last year, Wright acknowledged that “climate change is significant” but said that “prioritizing” the issue over supplying affordable, reliable energy risked inflaming what he called the more urgent crises of malnutrition, disease and air pollution.

Despite its name, the Energy Department has limited purview over the U.S. oil and gas industry. Spun out from the former Atomic Energy Commission in 1977, the agency oversees the country’s nuclear arsenal and the national laboratories testing new civilian reactor designs, and it loans money to cutting-edge energy companies.

The drama is just getting started.

Other nominees facing tough confirmation battles, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for secretary of health and human services; former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, for director of national intelligence; and former federal prosecutor Kash Patel, for FBI director, will have their hearings in the coming weeks.

Those appearances will be a chance for senators, especially Democrats, to make the nominees answer for past controversies and give the party the opportunity to press Trump nominees on the president-elect’s legislative agenda.

“Democrats see the confirmation process for Trump nominees as the first foray for Senate Democrats to hold Republicans accountable and get the nominees on the record,” a Senate Democratic source told HuffPost.

Patel, one of the nominees most likely to face a contentious grilling, has promised to wield the government as a weapon to “go after” Trump’s enemies in government and the media.

Patel has dubiously claimed his words were taken out of context; Republican senators have told HuffPost that, based on their conversations with Patel, they don’t think he would actually go after people in the manner he’d previously suggested.

Asked about the prospect of Patel launching a criminal investigation of former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) ― whom House Republicans recently said should be investigated by the FBI ― Senate Judiciary Committee chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) declined to get into it.

“You’re speculating,” Grassley told HuffPost last week. “I don’t want to answer speculative questions.”