Morning Report — Trump team blitzes Senate

In today’s issue:

Trump pushes to get his team
California fires rage as death toll climbs
Trump’s deportation faces tricky math
Global leaders uneasy about Trump’s expansionism

The Cabinet nominees are officially going under the Senate’s microscope.

Starting Tuesday, senators will hold hearings to confirm President-elect Trump’s picks to lead the executive branch. For weeks, the nominees have undergone rigorous preparations for their appearances, CNN reports, including mock hearings and coaching from Republican senators to sidestep tough questions anticipated from Democratic colleagues and tips about demonstrating loyalty to the president-elect.

“This time, people view the nominees as an extension of Donald Trump and his agenda,” Sean Spicer, Trump’s first White House press secretary, told CNN. “They’re not there to defend their own views; they’re there to defend Trump’s policies.”

NBC News: The Senate braces for a “train wreck” as hearings kick off for Trump Cabinet picks.

One of the first to go: Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News host nominated for secretary of Defense. Hegseth is one of Trump’s most controversial nominees; the former officer in the Army National Guard has come under scrutiny for allegations of sexual assault and excessive drinking, as well as his views toward women in the military.

Senate Armed Services Committee Democrats are fuming as Hegseth is set to head back to Capitol Hill on Tuesday for his confirmation hearing before the panel. While Hegseth has met with multiple Republican senators, Democrats say he has refused to make himself available to them in the same way, and has failed to provide certain vetting information as they look into a series of scandals and scathing media reports.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said he was “deeply concerned” that the panel is considering Hegseth for such a critically significant position “without full information regarding his capacity and experience to lead our military and steward a budget of nearly $850 billion.”

Hegseth can only afford three GOP defections to still be confirmed, should every Democrat and Independent senator vote against him. But Republicans, who hold the majority in the chamber, are expected to back Trump’s pick, CBS News reported last week.

What is the Trump team’s rebuttal to Hegseth’s lack of management experience? As incoming White House chief of staff Susie Wiles told The New York Times last week, “That’s what staff is for.”

“It’s our obligation to give him people that understand the business of national defense,” Wiles said, adding that the president-elect “would rather have a disrupter at the top and buttress the disrupter with people who know the business or the agency. That’s the idea. And so if you think of it that way, it explains all of them.”

The Wall Street Journal: Among Republicans, Sen. Joni Ernst (Iowa) has pressing questions for Hegseth. Thehearing will force Ernst, who is up for reelection in 2026, to balance loyalty to Trump with her long-running effort to combat sexual assault and support women serving in the military.

Hegseth’s nomination may have turned a corner, but that might not be good news for former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii), Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence.

“The question is, do they have more gas in the tank to drive her across the finish line?” a source close to the Trump team told The Hill. “That’s the issue to be determined.”

Democrats are insisting on delaying Gabbard’s confirmation hearing, saying they still don’t have the full slate of background checks, ethics disclosures and paperwork on a candidate whose overall qualifications have sparked their concern. Lawmakers have pointed to Gabbard’s lack of experience in the intelligence field, and perhaps more significantly, have pointed to her relationships with U.S. adversaries.

“I’m reserving final judgment on Gabbard, but the two predominant concerns I have about her is, first, her complete lack of experience — never even served on the Intel Committee, had an intel role in the military that I’m aware of,” said Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who previously served as chair of the House Intelligence Committee. “The second: She’s shown very erratic and poor judgment on things like Bashar al-Assad and echoing Kremlin talking points, and I have great concerns about someone who is whispering [in] the president’s ear during national security crises having no experience and poor judgment.”

On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) appeared to highlight Gabbard’s turnabout from a previous controversial position on a key surveillance tool in law, saying, “she is now of the mind and the position that is consistent with the chairman of the [Senate Intelligence] committee and Republican members of the committee.”

Politico: Mouaz Moustafa went to Syria with Gabbard. He has some big concerns.

Who will have easier confirmations? Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Trump’s nominee for secretary of State, is expected to sail through the Senate. One caveat for a potential U.S. diplomat: Rubio’s criticism of Chinese “genocide” led the country to forbid his entry.

▪ The New York Times: Trump told Republicans from New York, New Jersey and California Saturday to come up with a plan for increasing the state and local tax deduction — a move that would benefit their constituents. One problem: House Republicans are divided.

▪ The Hill: House Republicans face a massive federal debt problem.

▪ The Hill: Trump is frustrated with GOP lawmakers over the nation’s debt-limit quandary.

▪ The Hill: House lawmakers are bracing for what could be a contentious battle over emergency federal spending in the wake of the California wildfires.

▪ The New Yorker: Rep. Lauren Boebert’s survival instincts. The 37-year-old Colorado Republican is a case study in how difficult it will be for Democrats to gain ground in rural America. Nearly defeated for reelection in 2022, she’s back in the House after switching districts, poised to become the senior member of her state’s GOP delegation.

SMART TAKE with NewsNation’s BLAKE BURMAN

Close your eyes.

That’s if you care about the massive deficits Washington is running up. Buried amid the news in the last few days is a report from the Congressional Budget Office that shows a $710 billion deficit from October, November and December, or the first fiscal quarter of this year. Just three months!

This will fall into the legislating lap of Republicans come Jan. 20. Consider this: In Trump’s first two full fiscal years before COVID, deficits hit $779 billion in fiscal 2018 and $984 billion in fiscal 2019.

We will see by a March 14 government funding deadline how Republicans plan to handle spending.

Burman hosts “The Hill” weeknights, 6p/5c on NewsNation. The Hill & NewsNation are owned by Nexstar Media Group.

3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY

▪ The risk of nuclear conflict enters a new age as arsenals expand, alliances shift and treaties dissolve.

▪ Election math looks like it’s just going to get easier for the GOP.

▪ A new federal rule could slash nicotine levels in tobacco products.

LEADING THE DAY

The death toll in California this morning from the still-burning wildfires is at least 24. At least 14 are reported missing. The response to Los Angeles’s worst fire crisis in history has been complicated by Santa Ana winds and dry, combustible terrain. It will take years and an untold price tag to recover in a state whose risks of fire, earthquakes and mudslides do not abate.

Also ceaseless are the politics of blame and a search for answers that can help thousands of residents whose homes, schools, churches and communities are destroyed. Thousands of small businesses are upended. More than 40,000 acres of Southern California has burned thus far. Insurance companies had begun to flee California before the current disaster and property owners will face hurdles to find insurance after the crisis.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) issued an executive order aimed at reducing lags and red tape ahead of rebuilding. “One thing I won’t give into is delay,” he told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “Delay is denial for people: lives, traditions, places torn [apart], torn asunder.”

How have some houses survived the infernos while others are reduced to rubble? Experts have said it takes luck, “hardened” structures and landscaping devoid of combustible vegetation.

Trump and Republicans continue to blast Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) as “incompetent” in their handling of the disaster. California Democrats argue there will be plenty of time to investigate the possible causes of multiple fires and state and local disaster responses and complications, such as hurricane-force winds.

Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell, speaking to CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday, countered the suggestion that state and local firefighters were ill-prepared for blazes in heavily populated areas.

“I think that they were very prepared. This is something that they are very used to. They fight fires all the time,” Criswell said. “But they have never seen 100-mile-an-hour winds that are fueling the fire.”

The winds continue to complicate response efforts after a week. Officials say adequate water supplies and sufficient electrical power to pump water on the ground overcame early challenges during the emergency. Federal and state firefighting efforts are operating from the air as long as wind conditions permit safe flights.

Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) told CNN on Sunday that Trump, after the inauguration, will ensure Californians receive federal funds and support needed after the wildfires. “And we will be ready to act,” Britt said of the GOP majorities in Congress, “and so I know that President Trump certainly stands for the people across this nation and will make sure that the people of California have what they need.” Other GOP senators predicted there will be “strings attached” to new federal funding for the state.

▪ The Hill:Five questions about California's devastating wildfires.

▪ The Hill: Climate change parches western U.S., providing fuel for fires.

▪ The New York Times: “We’re in a new era”: How climate change is supercharging disasters.

WHERE AND WHEN

The House meets at noon. The Senate convenes at 3 p.m.
President Biden will deliver a foreign policy speech at 2 p.m. at the State Department. He will meet with White House and administration officials in the Roosevelt Room at 5:15 p.m. to discuss the ongoing federal response to California’s wildfires. On Wednesday, Biden will deliver his final remarks to the nation as he ends his presidency.
Vice President Harris, whose home is in Los Angeles,will participate in the White House briefing about her state’s most recent natural disaster.
First lady Jill Biden will travel to San Francisco in advance of an event on Tuesday.
The White House daily press briefing is scheduled at 12:15 p.m and will include White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

ZOOM IN

TRUMP’S ALLEGED EFFORTS TO OVERTURN AN ELECTION: The Justice Department continued to press over the weekend for the release of special counsel Jack Smith’s final report on his investigations into Trump. Smith resigned Friday, according to a Saturday court filing..

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon last week temporarily blocked the release of both volumes of the report, which covers the classified documents case in Florida and Smith's Jan. 6, 2021, election interference case against Trump. Attorney General Merrick Garland, who is seeking to release the Jan. 6 volume of the report to the public, said in a Justice Department court filing Sunday that the department does not believe anything in the Jan. 6 volume has any direct or indirect bearing on the evidence or charges related to Trump's two former co-defendants as laid out in the classified documents volume.

In a letter this month after reviewing DOJ’s report on evidence dealing with alleged efforts by Trump and allies to block the 2020 election tally, Trump’s lawyers indicated that the election interference report submitted to Garland characterized Trump as being “engaged in an unprecedented criminal effort” and described Trump as “the head of the criminal conspiracies” who harbored “criminal design.”

TRUMP’S METHOD MEETS MATH: Incoming White House immigration czar, Tom Homan, has a message for Republicans who anticipate some shock and awe public dramas in Trump’s first days and weeks. It costs a lot of money to round up and eject millions of undocumented migrants living in the United States, which was a Trump campaign promise. Those bold pledges, which require cooperation from Congress, state and local governments and nations that agree to receive deported migrants, were conspicuously devoid of policy details when Trump uttered them.

“It’s not a question of a price tag,” Trump told NBC last year. “There is no price tag.”

Actually, there will be.

Homan has privately told conservatives to temper their expectations, CNN reported.

Republicans are weighing their big ambitions, limited time and narrow House and Senate majorities. That means most of their border overhaul measures are unlikely to be included in Trump’s initial gargantuan budget bill, given strict rules around a congressional process they plan to use known as reconciliation, which involves proposals to either increase revenue or reduce spending, not change policy.

“Many members are only now beginning to understand that,” one GOP lawmaker told CNN.

Trump vowed to expel up to 15 million to 20 million immigrants without legal status. The revised numbers may shrink to 1 million to 2 million — new math based on limited federal resources as Trump takes the reins. Republicans vow to slash federal spending, not add to the red ink.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Homan said he spoke from experience as a former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “I’ve seen what policies worked and what policies don’t work,” he said.

“I keep getting asked the question: How many people are we going to remove in the first 100 days? I don’t know,” Homan said. “I don’t know what resources I’m going to have, what Congress is going to give me for funding.”

Many on all sides of the debate anticipate some kind of showy, TV-explainable immigration event soon after Trump is inaugurated as a way to signal to supporters and to migrants without legal status that President Biden’s successor means business.

NBC News reported that Trump and allies are considering a high-profile workplace raid in the Washington, D.C., metro area. If true, it would suggest the incoming administration is focused on assessing legal status as a potential crime, not just a deportation focus on migrants without legal status who are accused of committing violent crimes.

Some Republican governors, including in Idaho and Oklahoma, said last month they’re eager to help the Trump administration deal with immigrants accused of “dangerous” crimes, including those serving sentences in state prisons, presumably to expel them from the country. Details have been vague.

Soon after Trump’s inauguration, “you’ll see those executive orders come out to stem the flow [of migrants] and impact that flow that’s coming during that time. The immediate focus is about who’s already here,” a source told CNN. “Those are the first two things prioritized in the first few days.”

ELSEWHERE

WORLD LEADERS ARE ON THE DEFENSIVE as Trump talks of territorial expansion at an already precarious time in global politics. The incoming president doubled down last week on his suggestions that the U.S. buy Greenland, take control of the Panama Canal and make Canada “the 51st state.” He declined to rule out “military or economic” coercion against either Greenland or the canal, and he said he was open to using “economic force” on America’s neighbor to the north.

Leaders in the targeted regions and elsewhere have pushed back against the suggestions, even as experts are still largely undecided about how much stock to put in the threats. But that kind of guessing game, they say, isn’t good for global security.

“Uncertainty is bad in international affairs,” said Peter Loge, a political science professor at George Washington University and a senior Food and Drug Administration adviser during the Obama administration. “You want to know that your allies are with you, and your enemies need to know that you’re resolute against them. … You want to know, more or less, what the world is going to look like in the morning.”

Greenlandic Prime Minister Múte Egede said he is “ready” to talk with Trump, who has recently expressed ambitions for the U.S. to acquire Greenland, the world’s largest island. At a Friday press conference in Copenhagen, Egede emphasized that “Greenland is for the Greenlandic people. We do not want to be Danish, we do not want to be American. We want to be Greenlandic.”

PEACE IN GAZA? Ceasefire and hostage release talks between Israel and Hamas have made significant progress overnight, according to negotiators from Qatar and the U.S. Qatari negotiators said they had passed a “final” draft of the deal to both sides. Three officials acknowledged the progress and said the coming days would be critical for ending more than 15 months of fighting that has destabilized the Middle East. Over the weekend, CNN reports tensions remained between the two sides concerning the Philadelphi corridor — a narrow strip of land along the Egypt-Gaza border — and the presence of the Israeli military in Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who met with Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff on Saturday, is facing pressure from both the current and incoming administrations to reach a deal by Jan. 20.

▪ CBS News: Biden spoke with Netanyahu on Sunday to discuss ongoing negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage release deal with Hamas.

▪ The Washington Post: Israel moves to make heavy bombs, but U.S. reliance hard to shake, experts say.

▪ The New York Times: Netanyahu’s order for Israeli troops to “take over” a buffer zone with Syria upended decades of relative calm along the de facto border between the two countries.

SYRIA: European foreign ministers have agreed to meet at the end of January to discuss lifting sanctions on Syria after the fall of President Bashar al-Assad last month. As European and Middle Eastern diplomats met to discuss Syria in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia urged top EU diplomats to lift sanctions to boost rebuilding the country.

▪ The Hill: South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol will not attend the first day of his impeachment trial this week, according to his lawyer, who cited concerns for the suspended president’s safety.

▪ The Hill: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that his military has captured two North Korean soldiers fighting on the Russian side in the Kursk region.

▪ Reuters: Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba asked Biden to allay concerns in the Japanese and U.S. business communities over the status of Nippon Steel's planned acquisition of U.S. Steel. Biden recently delayed an order for Nippon to abandon its bid to buy U.S. Steel.

OPINION

■ Who will rebuild Los Angeles? Immigrants, by León Krauze, columnist, The Washington Post.

■ I’m a federal employee. This is what we need most in the Trump era, by Stacey Young, guest essayist, The New York Times.

THE CLOSER

And finally … 🐼 It’s panda-monium at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. Preparations are underway for the debut of Qing Bao and Bao Li, the zoo’s giant panda pair who arrived from China last year.

Before the public gets to meet the 3-year-old pandas on Jan. 24, the zoo is getting ready for the crush. The bears are being prepared for exposure to crowds, with small groups allowed in for previews. The black-and-white bears succeed the zoo’s last giant pandas, Mei Xiang, 26, a female; Tian Tian, 27, a male; and their male offspring, Xiao Qi Ji, 4, all returned to China.

“Bao Li and Qing Bao have already won the hearts of our staff and volunteers,” the zoo’s director, Brandie Smith, said in a statement. “And we are excited to welcome panda fans back.”

Ahead of their public debut, the roly-poly pandas have been entertained indoors this month with their favorite toy balls and new plastic tubs (video).

Stay Engaged

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