Live Updates: Trump nominees grilled by senators; Turner ouster draws bipartisan ire

Outgoing Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said he spoke with his likely successor, former Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wisc.), and told him he is “going to be picking up the best job in the federal government.”

“We had a very nice conversation. I let him know that he’s going to be picking up the best job in the federal government, and he’s going to be working with some of the best civil servants I’ve ever met — that I want the agency to succeed,” Buttigieg said in an exit interview with Politico that was published on Thursday.

Asked if Duffy, who President-elect Trump tapped to head the Department of Transportation in November, is qualified for the post, Buttigieg said “there’s one qualification for a job like this that matters above the rest, and it’s the confidence of the president of the United States.”

“He’s certainly somebody who, I think, has a very healthy amount of support coming into this,” he added.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Thursday selected Rep. Rick Crawford (R-Ark.) to chair the House Intelligence Committee, elevating the veteran panel member to the role after he removed Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) from the top job.

The shift was a surprise on Capitol Hill, where Turner’s ouster sparked an outcry from Democrats and some Republicans who were given no advance warning of the move — and suspected that the “America First” wing of the party helped push Turner out.

But Johnson’s selection of Crawford, the most senior GOP lawmaker on the panel, could help calm concerns from national-security focused Republicans.

“Our intelligence community and its oversight must maintain the highest levels of trust. The House Intel Committee will play a pivotal role in this work in the new Congress, and Rick Crawford will provide principled leadership as its chairman,” Johnson said in a statement. “He has earned the respect of his colleagues through his years of faithful service on the committee and his steady approach to the challenges facing our country.”

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After more than three hours of questioning, Bessent’s confirmation hearing ended shortly before 2 p.m. ET.

Burgum acknowledged the existence of climate change during questioning by Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), saying, “I believe that climate change is a global phenomenon for sure.”

King went on to bring up Burgum’s 2021 goal as governor to make the state carbon-neutral by 2030 and to ask him if he agreed that “renewable resources, solar and wind for example, can be developed if they are can be integrated into the grid in a safe and reliable way.” Burgum replied in the affirmative.

“In a former life I, developed both baseload and intermittent resources — I don’t want ‘baseload’ to be code for ‘no renewables,'” King responded, noting the amount of renewables in North Dakota’s grid.

Burgum expressed agreement but said, “We not only want to have it be reliable, we also want it to be affordable, and so that’s part of what we need to look at as a nation — what costs are we willing to take on?” He added it should be “looked at” whether decarbonizing fossil fuels is a more cost-effective option than renewables.

Bessent said he’ll work on getting rid of the U.S. debt ceiling, if that’s something Trump is interested in doing.

“Once President Trump takes office and if I’m confirmed, if he wants to eliminate the debt limit, I will work with him and you on that,” he told Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

Trump has expressed frustration in recent weeks at having to deal with another debt ceiling increase as he works to pass his legislative agenda.

Republicans used the debt ceiling to win concessions from Democrats in 2023, and Democrats are expected to do the same this year amid a Republican trifecta.

“Why do Republicans want to raise the debt ceiling? Because their plan is to shovel new tax cuts to billionaires, and that would increase the debt by more than a trillion dollars just in the next four-year period,” Warren said.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) urged Bessent to support a 10 percent cap on credit card interest rates proposed by Trump.

“I happen to think that that is a very good idea, and I will soon be introducing legislation to do just that,” said Sanders, an often vocal critic of the incoming president.

When Sanders asked Bessent if he would support the cap, the Treasury secretary nominee said “we can both agree that many credit card companies have been bad actors” but said he “will get back to you.”

Pressed by Sanders to provide a yes or no answer, Bessent said, “If I am confirmed, I will follow what President Trump wants to do.”

Burgum’s confirmation hearing has wrapped. He appears on track to be confirmed as Interior secretary.

Bessent said he didn’t think the U.S. needed to have a digital currency issued by the central bank (CBDC), something the Biden administration had been looking into and other countries have been exploring.

“On CBDCs, I see no reason for the U.S. to have a central bank digital currency,” he said, arguing they were better suited for countries with more limited investment options.

Bessent said countries such as Saudi Arabia, China and Singapore were pursuing CBDCs “out of necessity,” whereas the U.S. dollar allows ownership of more diverse assets.

Zeldin’s confirmation hearing has ended.

While Democrats grilled him on climate change, he is still expected to be confirmed, given the GOPs 53-47 majority in the upper chamber.

Zeldin said he has not read a controversial conservative policy playbook known as Project 2025.

Asked about a proposal in it to eliminate the EPA’s enforcement office, Zeldin says he does not support that idea.

Project 2025 proposes to move law enforcement officials from that office to the agency’s office of general counsel.

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) expressed concerns Thursday about foreign retaliation from expected Trump tariffs.

“I do think we’re going to see retaliatory tariffs,” she said, noting the Evergreen State dealt with commercial retaliation during Trump’s first term.

“We saw them in our state. It hurt us in our agriculture. What happened is that you lose more farms,” she said.

Cantwell pressed Bessent on gaining more international market access for U.S. companies, a traditional feature of “free trade” deals that Bessent pushed back on.

“I agree with you that opening markets is going, but free trade must also be balanced against fair trade,” he said. “Trade has not been fair. That has fallen on the American workers.”

Bessent told senators Thursday he would be “100 percent on board” with increasing sanctions on Russia’s major oil companies if President-elect Trump supports that strategy as a way to end the war in Ukraine.

“If any officials in the Russian Federation are watching this confirmation hearing, they should know that if I’m confirmed and if President Trump requests as part of his strategy to end the Ukraine war, that I will be 100 percent on board for taking sanctions up, especially on the Russian oil majors, to levels that would bring the Russia Federation to the table,” Bessent said when asked by Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) about Russia sanctions.

Bessent called the war in Ukraine “one of the greatest tragedies of my adult life.”

“And ending that as soon as possible, and any role the Treasury can play in that — if confirmed, I would like to do,” he said.

Bessent argued the Biden administration’s sanctions on Russia “were not fulsome enough.”

And he suspects Biden’s team was reluctant to raise sanctions on Russian oil until recently because it didn’t want to impact domestic oil and gas costs during the 2024 election.

“I believe that the previous administration was worried about raising U.S. energy prices during an election season,” he said.

“And I am perplexed to see that national security advisor [Jake] Sullivan on his way out the door is raising the sanctions level on Russian oil companies, and indeed the oil prices in the U.S. are up about 9 percent this month,” he said, citing recent sanctions action by the Biden administration.

Warner applauded Bessent’s answer on Russian sanctions.

“I think it’s important that we don’t take these tools out of the tool kit,” he said.

Burgum addressed the missing and murdered Indigenous women crisis in response to questioning from Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), calling for an improved approach to the issue and suggesting a double standard in how it was addressed.

“If we lose a college student on spring break, she’s a Netflix series, and the whole nation knows her name personally, and then we have these same individual tragedies that happen over and over again in Indian country, and people aren’t even aware that it’s going on,” Burgum said. “So we’ve got to change our entire approach to this.”

The Bureau of Indian Affairs estimates there are more than 4,000 unresolved cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

Bessent said he supports the independence of the Federal Reserve, a target of frequent attacks and criticism by President-elect Trump during his first term.

“On monetary policy decisions, the [Federal Open Market Committee] should be independent,” he said, referring to the panel of Fed officials responsible for setting interest rates.

Bessent slammed a Wall Street Journal report from last year asserting a group of Trump allies were devising ways to relegate the independence of the central bank and give Trump more power over it.

“There was, I believe, a highly inaccurate Wall Street Journal article saying … that [Trump] believed he should be in the room,” he said.

Bessent skirted questions from Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) about whether he would advise against Trump policy proposals that would increase prices.

“I would speak to President Trump about it. It is his decision,” Bessent said. After Hassan pressed him again, he said he was unable to answer the question because it was a “hypothetical.”

Inflation soared in the wake of the pandemic to a peak of 9.1 percent in June 2022. Amid a two-decade-high rate hike by the Federal Reserve, inflation has fallen significantly, clocking in at 2.9 percent in December, according to the latest reading released Wednesday by the Labor Department.

The central bank said it was moving cautiously on further rate cuts, however, citing in the December meeting policy uncertainty related to trade and immigration once Trump takes office, although it did not call him out by name. Economists have warned Trump’s tariff proposals could send prices rising again.

Bessent did not shy away from blaming Biden policies for price increases during his meeting with Hassan, the senator said, characterizing his response as a “double standard.”

“At the end of the day, what you’re articulating is a double standard, and it’s disappointing to me,” Hassan said.

Bessent signaled support for a research and development tax deduction and bonus depreciation, two tax breaks that business lobbies have been pursuing.

He said his inclination is that a research and development tax deduction something he’d support, hedging that he is not fully versed in it.

Asked about bonus depreciation, he said he supported the idea of “increasing the after-tax return on capital for U.S. companies.”

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), invoking the fires that have ravaged Southern California this month, asked Burgum if he would “commit to responding to every disaster with as much support and resources possible, regardless of which states or jurisdiction the disaster is in.”

Several Republicans, including Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Padilla’s fellow committee member Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), have suggested Congress will not pass disaster aid for the fires without conditions.

Burgum said he would “absolutely” commit to that but criticized what he said had been a scattershot federal response to the fires that hit parts of Hawaii in 2023.

Zeldin said he’s not aware of any plans to move the Environmental Protection Agency’s headquarters out of Washington, D.C.

The New York Times reported members of the Trump transition were discussing moving the headquarters out of the capital, sparking fears of brain drain at the agency.

The prior Trump administration moved the headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management to Colorado.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Thursday he was “flabbergasted” by the decision to remove Rep. Mike Turner (Ohio) as the Republican chair of the House Intelligence panel.

Warner expressed his dismay over Turner’s removal from the panel, praising his “bipartisan” leadership of the committee that oversees the nation’s intelligence community.

“I don’t have the foggiest idea why he was removed. Maybe because he was such a stalwart supporter of Ukraine and be[ing] willing to push back against [Russian President Vladimir] Putin,” Warner told reporters.

“I know it’s up to the Speaker’s decision, but Mike Turner was the kind of guy who brought the House Intelligence Committee back to the kind of bipartisan respect that I think it lost in the past,” he said. “I wish Mike well.”

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Senate Energy Committee Chair Mike Lee (R-Utah) briefly spoke before recognizing Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) to address the question raised earlier in Burgum’s hearing of drilling in the Bears Ears national monument, which is located in Utah.

“There is no significant oil in the Bears Ears. There is no plan to drill for oil, and I’m not aware of any significant oil reserves,” Lee said. “I don’t know who came up with this idea.”

Lee did not name Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), who had broached the subject and was not present in the room when he made the remarks.

Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, pressed Bessent on the differences between taxing wages and wealth, reviving an argument about the U.S.’s “two-tiered tax system” that was a hallmark of the Biden administration.

“Do you believe the tax code should treat wages differently than it treats wealth?” Wyden asked.

Bessent ducked the question, saying every tax code has advantages and disadvantages.

“It is a decision that was made when the tax codes were written, and so every tax code involves trade-offs and distortions in favor of other gains,” Bessent said.

Zeldin says he believes the EPA is authorized, but not necessarily required, to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the EPA can regulate greenhouse gases as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, but left it up to the agency to determine whether they are a harm to public health.

Since that time, the EPA has published an “endangerment finding” that it needs to regulate greenhouse gases due to the threat they pose to public health

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) pressed Zeldin on the issue, asking him whether the fires threatening Los Angeles pose a threat to the public. Climate change has made the Western U.S. drier, and dried vegetation can help fuel fires.

The Massachusetts Democrat also chastised Zeldin, saying his job is to be a “watchdog” rather than a fossil fuel “lapdog.”

Bessent promised to offer the government’s free tax filing system for the upcoming tax season.

The IRS rolled out its direct tax filing service in select states shortly before the end of the 2024 tax filing season. The first question ranking member Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Bessent was, “Will you commit to keeping direct file up and running?”

“I will commit that for this tax season, that direct file will be operative, and the American taxpayers who choose to use it will,” Bessent said.

He also said he would “consult and study the program.”

Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) pushed back on Democrats’ criticisms that extending the Trump-era tax cuts amounts to a huge giveaway to millionaires and billionaires, arguing that many middle-class families would benefit from Trump’s tax rates.

“There will be a $4-plus trillion tax increase if we do not extend this law,” he said of the expiring Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which Congress passed during Trump’s first term.

“It’s not just going to be something that impacts the wealthy. It is $2.6 trillion of it — the majority of it — falls on people who make … under $400,000 per year,” he said.

Crapo highlighted the $400,000 income mark as the one President Biden picked as the cutoff for Americans who should not see their taxes increased.

“This is not a tax cut for the wealthy that we’re talking about. It is a tax increase on all Americans, the majority of them are in the lower- and middle-income category,” he argued.

Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) phone rang while he was questioning Zeldin. “That was the fossil fuel industry,” the senator quipped.

Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) noted that during Burgum’s tenure as governor, more than 30 percent of North Dakota’s electricity was derived from wind power, and asked if he would convey to Trump that “wind power isn’t all bad.”

Trump has frequently attacked wind as an energy source and has suggested he will end all new offshore wind construction by executive order upon taking office.

King also asked Burgum if he would commit to the continuation of planned offshore wind projects in the Gulf of Maine, to which Burgum replied, “I’ll certainly be taking a look at all of those, and if it makes sense and they’re already law, they’ll continue.”

In his opening statement, Bessent called on senators to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts.

Several provisions are set to expire in 2026, putting pressure on lawmakers to pass a new bill before the end of the year.

“We must make permanent the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and implement new pro-growth policies to reduce the tax burden on American manufacturers, service workers and seniors,” Bessent said.

Trump also made several promises on the campaign trail, such as eliminating taxes on tips, that lawmakers are expected to incorporate.

Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) warned that allowing the existing provisions would lapse would result in a $4 trillion tax increase, which Bessent called a “gigantic middle-class tax increase.”

“This is pass-fail. If we do not fix these tax cuts, if we do not renew and extend, then we will be facing an economic calamity,” Bessent said.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Thursday joined the chorus of Democrats bashing Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) over his decision to replace Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) at the top of the House Intelligence Committee. 

Jeffries characterized the move as “shameful,” warning it will only empower America’s leading adversaries.

“Mike Turner is a serious, thoughtful and highly-principled leader, whose work as Chair of the House Intelligence Committee has been extremely impactful,” Jeffries said in a brief statement.

“Throughout his time in the House of Representatives, Chairman Turner has upheld his oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies and championed our national security interests,” he continued. “Mike Turner has robustly promoted the safety of the American people and the Free World and his unjustified ouster is likely being applauded by our adversaries in Russia and China.”

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Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) asked Zeldin about his prior campaign donations from the oil and gas industry, which the senator said totaled around $270,000.

Zeldin said no prior donations will influence any decisions he makes.

Wyden criticized Bessent in his opening statement for using “a tricky legal maneuver to opt out of paying into Medicare,” referring to a Democratic claim that Bessent avoided taxes by classifying himself as a limited partner of Key Square Group.

“It’s a tax loophole that hurts Medicare but benefits Mr. Bessent to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.”

Wyden noted the Treasury Department has gone to court to argue that taxpayers who avoid taxes by claiming to be limited partners are “violating tax law.”

“It’s really an awfully big conflict of interest if Mr. Bessent is confirmed,” he said.

“This is exactly the kind of abusive scheme that leaves Americans feeling disgusted with our tax system. They feel it every spring when they go to file their taxes through the big software companies, too,” he added.