Skip to content
Project 2025
Search

Latest Stories

Follow Us:
Top Stories
​U.S. President Donald Trump is shown on television monitor.

The Contradictions at the Heart of Trump’s Iran War Narrative

Trump Fed Pick Kevin Warsh Could Shake Up the Central Bank With His ‘Family Fight’ Model

Trump Fed Pick Kevin Warsh Could Shake Up the Central Bank With His ‘Family Fight’ Model

Wisconsin Lawmakers Propose Ranked Choice Voting for All Elections

Wisconsin Lawmakers Propose Ranked Choice Voting for All Elections

A protestor holding a sign that reads "Hey Congress Do Your Job."

Congress Isn’t Failing—It’s Choosing Not to Govern

The U.S. Built a Blueprint to Avoid Civilian War Casualties. Trump Officials Scrapped It.

The U.S. Built a Blueprint to Avoid Civilian War Casualties. Trump Officials Scrapped It.

Contentious Senate Hearings Begin

News

Contentious Senate Hearings Begin

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks during a Senate Armed Services confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill on January 14, 2025 in Washington, DC.

(Photo by Chen Mengtong/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images)
The Fulcrum
By The FulcrumJan 15, 2025
The Fulcrum
The Fulcrum staff.
See More Writings by author

President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Pete Hegseth as defense secretary set the stage for a series of confirmation hearings ahead of the inauguration on January 20.

During Tuesday’s hearing, Democrats raised concerns about Hegseth’s qualifications, particularly regarding his experience in managing nonprofit finances and his personal conduct. They argued that he does not meet the expected standards for a leader at the Pentagon.

Meanwhile, Trump’s allies have been actively working to sway Republican senators, including potential threats to support primary challengers against those who oppose the nomination.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune has expressed optimism about Hegseth’s chances for confirmation. "I think he's got a [confirmation] path," he toldFox News ' Laura Ingraham.

Here’s the schedule:

Wednesday, Jan. 15

9 a.m.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, picked to lead the Department of Homeland Security, is slated to appear before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee

9:30 a.m.

Pam Bondi, picked for attorney general, is slated to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee

10 a.m.

Sen. Marco Rubio, secretary of state pick, is set to appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Former Rep. John Ratcliffe, pick for CIA director, is set to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee

Former Rep. Sean Duffy, pick for transportation secretary, will appear before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee

Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright, pick for energy secretary, is scheduled to appear before the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee

1 p.m.

Russell Vought, pick to be director of the Office of Management and Budget, is set to appear before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee

Thursday, Jan. 16

10:00 a.m.

Former governor of North Dakota Doug Burgum, Interior Department pick, appears before members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee

Former NFL player who ran the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council in Trump's first term, Scott Turner, Housing and Urban Development Department pick, appears at a hearing before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee

Former New York congressman Lee Zeldin, Environmental Protection Agency pick, appears before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee

10:15 a.m.

Pam Bondi returns before the Senate Judiciary Committee

10:30 a.m.

Billionaire money manager, Scott Bessent, Treasury Department pick, takes questions from members of the Senate Finance Committee.

What is the Cabinet?

Presidents guide the federal government with the support of a team of close advisers and the leaders of various federal agencies, such as the Department of Justice and the Pentagon.

While certain positions, like the vice president and the White House chief of staff, do not require Senate approval, most cabinet positions do. Some roles, such as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations or the CIA director, have been considered at the Cabinet level in some administrations but not in others.

Why does the Senate get a say?

Article II is the section of the Constitution that deals with the executive branch. Section II, it makes clear that while the president is the executive, he hires certain positions spelled out in the Constitution and others established by law with the “advice and consent” of senators.

How does the process work?

A president-elect nominates his picks for top officials after winning the election.

Oversight committees in the Senate can conduct confirmation hearings before Inauguration Day on January 20. They can refer nominees to the full Senate or quick votes when the new president takes the oath of office.

Some reporting for this article was curated from the Associated Press, NPR, and NBC.


Latest news

Close-up of the petrol station's gasoline pumps and fuel nozzles.
Economy

With Oil Prices Rising, Is Dreaded Stagflation Making a Comeback?

Government Cyber Security Breach
Media & Technology

AI Has Put Humanity on the Ballot

The Cracks in the Nonprofit System Are Built into Its Foundation
Economy

The Cracks in the Nonprofit System Are Built into Its Foundation

Concerns Rise as States Opt In to National Voucher Plan
Education

Concerns Rise as States Opt In to National Voucher Plan

Read More

Trump’s Anti-Latino Racism is a Major Liability for Democracy

Close-up of sign reading 'Immigrants Make America Great' at a Baltimore rally.

Trump’s Anti-Latino Racism is a Major Liability for Democracy

Donald Trump’s second administration has fully clarified Latinos’ racial position in America: our ethnic group’s labor, culture, and aspirations are too much for his supporters to stomach. The Latino presence in America triggers too many uneasy questions (are they White?), too many doubts (are they really American?), and too much resentment (why are they doing better than me?).

Trump’s targeted deportations of undocumented Latinos, unwarranted arrests of Latino citizens, and heightened ICE presence in Latino neighborhoods address these worries by lumping Latinos with Black people. Simply put, we have become yet another visible population that America socially stigmatizes, economically exploits, and politically terrorizes because aggrieved White adults want to preserve their rank as our nation’s premier racial group. The cumulative impacts are serious: just yesterday, an international panel of investigators on human rights and racism, backed by the U.N., found that such actions have resulted in “grave human rights violations.”

Keep ReadingShow less
People waving US flags

People waving US flags

LeoPatrizi/Getty Images

Democracy Fellowship Spotlight: Joel Gurin on Trustworthy Data

Earlier this year, the Bridge Alliance and the National Academy of Public Administration launched the Fellows for Democracy and Public Service Initiative to strengthen the country's civic foundations. This fellowship unites the Academy’s distinguished experts with the Bridge Alliance’s cross‑sector ecosystem to elevate distributed leadership throughout the democracy reform landscape. Instead of relying on traditional, top‑down models, the program builds leadership ecosystems: spaces where people share expertise, prioritize collaboration, and use public‑facing storytelling to renew trust in democratic institutions. Each fellow grounds their work in one of six core sectors essential to a thriving democratic republic.

Recently, I interviewed Joel Gurin, who founded and now leads the Center for Open Data Enterprise (CODE) and wrote Open Data Now. Before launching CODE in 2015, he chaired the White House Task Force on Smart Disclosure, which studied how open government data can improve consumer markets. He also led as Chief of the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau at the Federal Communications Commission and spent over a decade at Consumer Reports.

Keep ReadingShow less
Kristi Noem facing away with her hand up to be sworn in as she testifies.

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem is sworn in as she testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on March 03, 2026 in Washington, DC. The Department of Homeland Security has faced criticism over it's handling of immigration enforcement leaving the department unfunded.

Getty Images, Andrew Harnik

Kristi Noem is a Criminal. They Fired Her Because She’s a Woman

Kristi Noem deserved to get axed. After ignoring thousands of stories of officers detaining American citizens in violent, indiscriminate, unconstitutional roundups, posing for a gleeful photo-op at a hellacious El Salvadoran prison, labeling American protesters as domestic terrorists, and lying under oath multiple times, Democrats and even many Republicans lauded her exodus. Still, in what was a brief, volatile tenure as Secretary of Homeland Security, Noem transformed the agency charged with the protection of the American people into a theater for performative cruelty. Now, as the door hits Noem on the way out, it is important to note that her ouster was not a triumph of ethics or the law or even a sudden recollection of what competence looks like. Despite no lack of legitimate grounds for dismissal, most sources say the final straw was a $220 million ad blitz, possibly complicated by an alleged affair with her adviser. But who among Trump’s inner circle doesn’t come with a laundry list of wasteful spending and personal embarrassments? The rest of the Cabinet is chock full of unqualified Trump-loyalists demonstrating incompetence so regularly that in any other era they would have all resigned or been canned long ago. Given the purported reasons Noem was ultimately fired, and where the conversation has lingered since, to the untrained eye, it seems like Noem may have been the first to get the boot, at least in part because she’s not a man.

There’s nothing Noem did that another member of the cabinet or Trump himself couldn’t top. Consider the shameful tenure of our Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, who engaged in intimate business deals with Epstein years after Epstein’s first conviction, and even planned family vacations to his private island. While Noem is fired for a $220 million ad buy, Lutnick remains the face of American business, despite once being in business with a convicted sex trafficker and lying about it. And our wannabe-fraternity-pledgemaster Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is, if possible, an even greater liability. Hegseth breached security protocol in his second month on the job and oversaw a record $93 billion of spending in a single month, $9 million going to king crab and lobster tails, and $15 million to ribeye steaks. More gravely, in his zeal to project “lethality," Hegseth gutted civilian harm mitigation programs by 90 percent; shortly thereafter, on his watch, in what is the most devastating single military error in modern history, the U.S. fired a Tomahawk missile into a school full of children, killing at least 168 children and 14 teachers. Noem may have turned federal agents against American civilians (which is not why she was fired), but Hegseth is committing war crimes around the globe.

Keep ReadingShow less
A balance.

A retired New York judge criticizes President Trump’s actions on tariffs, judicial defiance, alleged corruption, and executive overreach, warning of threats to constitutional order and the rule of law in the United States.

Getty Images

A Pay‑to‑Play Presidency Testing the Limits of Our Institutions

Another day, another outrage, and another attack on the Constitution that this President has twice taken a vow to uphold. Instead of accepting the Supreme Court decision striking down his imposition of tariffs, the President is now imposing them by executive order and excoriating the Justices who ruled against him. His disrespect for the Constitution and the judiciary is boundless.

To this retired New York State judge, all hell seems to have broken loose in our federal government. Congress lies dormant when it is not enabling the chief executive’s misuse and personal acquisition of federal funds, and, notwithstanding its recent tariffs ruling, a majority of the Supreme Court generally rubber-stamps the administration’s actions through opaque “shadow docket” rulings. In doing so, SCOTUS abdicates its role as an independent check.

Keep ReadingShow less
© Copyright 2026