Pete Hegseth is a combat veteran and a former Fox News host who is nominated to be secretary of Defense. (Senate Armed Services Committee)
WASHINGTON —Some senators tossed softballs to the nominee to lead the Defense Department.
“Tell me something about your wife that you love,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., said during his seven-minute opportunity to question Pete Hegseth.
Others, like Sen. Tammy Duckworkth, D-Ill, played interrogator.
“Yes or no?” she demanded repeatedly, talking over Hegseth. “Yes or no? Did you lead an audit? I will take that as no.”
Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, played from his album of greatest hits.
“Now for the most important question you will receive all day,” Sullivan said, straight-faced. “In 1935 before the Congress, the father of the United States Air Force General Billy Mitchell …”
Even casual observers of hearings in this committee knew which Mitchell quote was coming.
“‘’In the future, whoever holds this place will control the world. This location is the most strategic place in the world.’ What place was Billy Mitchell talking about?” Sullivan asked. “And let me give you a hint: It wasn’t Greenland.”
“I believe he was talking about the great State of Alaska,” Hegseth said.
With that, Hegseth aced Sullivan’s favorite Armed Services hearing question.
Hegseth is one of Trump’s most controversial nominees. Democratic senators grilled him about allegations of sexual assault and mismanaging the budgets of veteran organizations he ran. He denied all of it, and disavowed his prior declarations that women have no place in combat. It made for a contentious hearing.
But confirmation hearings are never just about the nominee. They are also a chance for senators to make their own points — to a potential cabinet member, to fellow senators, and in a high-profile hearing like this one, to the nation at large. Sullivan, as is his practice, used the opportunity to make the case for more military investment back home.
“Mr. Hegseth, if confirmed, will you work with me, this committee and the incoming commander in chief on continuing to build up our military assets and infrastructure in Alaska, to reestablish deterrence in the Arctic and in the Indo Pacific?” he asked.
With pleasure, Hegseth said.
Sullivan has enthusiastically endorsed Hegseth, and all 14 Republican members of the committee sounded inclined to give him a thumbs-up when the committee votes, likely next week.
That would clear the nomination for the Senate floor. One of the few Republicans who sounds on the fence about Hegseth is Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
“If you’re going to be managing an operation as significant as the Department of Defense, okay, this is, this is big, right? You want to make sure that you do have a level of of management expertise,” she said.
Murkowski isn’t on the Armed Services Committee but she said she’d listen carefully to the recorded hearing. And she met with Hegseth privately last month and asked him about the two veterans organizations he is accused of mismanaging. She said she’ll likely have follow-up questions for him.
Murkowski isn’t ready to say how she’ll vote on Hegseth, or even whether he’s the most difficult confirmation decision for her. But she acknowledged, he’s the one drawing the most constituent attention.
“I was quizzing the staff that work the phones. ‘Who are we hearing the most incoming about?,” she said in an interview in her Senate office suite. “And it certainly is the secretary of Defense nominee right now.”
It’s a huge week for confirmation hearings in the Senate, with the nominees to lead the CIA, the EPA and the departments of Energy, Interior, Justice, State, Transportation and Treasury all on the schedule.
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter takes questions from the media during a news conference at the Carter Center in Atlanta on Aug. 20, 2015. (John Amis/Reuters)
Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States, died Sunday at age 100. The Carter Center announced he died in his hometown of Plains, Ga.
Carter was president from 1977 to 1981, but he was perhaps more famous for the life he led after leaving office. Carter was one of the biggest advocates for peace, democracy and international human rights.
James “Jimmy” Earl Carter Jr. was born in Plains, Ga., on Oct. 1, 1924, and spent his childhood on a farm just outside that tiny southwest Georgia community. His father was a peanut farmer; his mother, “Miss Lillian,” was a nurse. He was the first president of the United States to be born in a hospital.
“Other than Jimmy Carter, no person from the Deep South since the American Civil War had been elected president,” said Steven Hochman, a longtime assistant to the former president who works for the Carter Center.
A lifelong Democrat like most Southerners at the time, Carter was a political unknown when he began a national campaign in 1974 and was first referred to as “Jimmy Who?”
But a grassroots effort changed that, Hochman said. “He would campaign on the street corners and go to radio stations. Nobody knew who he was except that he was running for president.”
Carter’s friends and family from Georgia, called the Peanut Brigade, traveled to New Hampshire, Iowa and all over the country talking to voters and campaigning for Carter, the dependable Southerner who wanted to be president.
During the campaign, Carter told audiences, “I’ll never tell a lie. I’ll never make a misleading statement. I’ll never betray the trust of those who have confidence in me, and I will never avoid a controversial issue.”
Carter was elected when the mood of the country was bitter and cynical in the wake of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. The man from Georgia struck out on a different course on his inauguration day: Carter and his wife, Rosalynn Carter, stepped out of the bulletproof limousine and walked to the White House to demonstrate their connection with the American people.
“It was mainly an attempt to draw a distinction between what he saw as the people’s presidency and the more imperial presidency of Richard Nixon,” said historian Dan Carter (no relation to Jimmy Carter).
The Carter White House
Among Jimmy Carter’s accomplishments were the Camp David Accords, which brought together the prime minister of Israel and the president of Egypt in 1978. They signed peace agreements on the White House lawn, and Carter spoke about the dedication and determination of the leaders who had been enemies for so many years.
The accords led to a peace treaty, but the relationship between the two Mideast countries remained tenuous. While in office, Carter also worked on the SALT II nuclear weapons agreement and signed the Panama Canal treaties, giving control of the canal to Panama.
But Carter’s most difficult challenge was the Iran hostage crisis. Militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Iran in 1979 and took dozens of Americans hostage. People were glued to reports on the crisis for more than a year, as Carter continued to negotiate for the release of the hostages. In 1980, a failed rescue attempt led to the deaths of eight American servicemen.
The administration also battled domestic problems, including an energy crisis and double-digit inflation. Carter held a series of meetings among his Cabinet members that resulted in a blunt television address in 1979 that came to be known as the “malaise” speech.
“It’s clear that the true problems of our nation are much deeper — deeper than gasoline lines or energy shortages, deeper even than inflation or recession. And I realize more than ever that as president, I need your help,” Carter pleaded.
Carter established a federal energy policy. He created the departments of Energy and Education. Still, he lost his bid for reelection by a landslide to Republican Ronald Reagan. And it wasn’t until moments after Reagan was sworn in as president on Jan. 20, 1981, that the 52 remaining hostages were released. Carter was allowed to welcome them home.
“I had received word officially for the first time that the aircraft carrying the 52 American hostages had cleared Iranian airspace on the first leg of the journey home and that every one of the 52 hostages was alive, was well and free,” Carter said as his voice broke.
Life after Washington
After leaving office, Carter became dedicated to promoting democracy, monitoring elections, building homes with Habitat for Humanity and eradicating disease in some of the world’s poorest countries. In 1982, the president and his wife opened the Carter Center in Atlanta.
In an interview with NPR in 2007, Carter talked about his experiences. “And for the last 25 years, my life could not have been more expansive and unpredictable and adventurous and gratifying,” he said.
In 2002, Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize, an honor some said he had earned a quarter century earlier when he negotiated the Camp David Accords. He ended his acceptance speech with a plea for peace.
“War may sometimes be a necessary evil, but no matter how necessary, it is always evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children,” Carter said.
The former president continued international peace missions throughout his lifetime, meeting with the leaders of countries that some U.S. presidents refused to acknowledge, including North Korea, Nicaragua and Cuba. In 2008, he met with the exiled leader of the militant Islamist group Hamas, despite harsh criticism from the U.S. government.
Historian Dan Carter said that the former president did prove to be a kind of honest broker for peace in many cases and that as Jimmy Carter grew older, he was less afraid of speaking out.
“And his meeting with Hamas, sure it was a provocative thing, but he felt it was the right thing to do,” said Dan Carter.
Jimmy Carter wrote more than 20 books, the most controversial titled Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. He was a religious man, attending a Baptist church and teaching Bible school for many years. And he was a statesman — hardworking and plain talking.
The Carter Center’s Hochman said the 39th president was one of the most remarkable leaders in U.S. history. “I think he’ll be remembered as a champion of human rights and peace, both as president and as a former president,” Hochman said.
A traveler makes their way into the Nashville International Airport, Friday, Dec. 20, 2024, in Nashville, Tenn. (George Walker IV/AP)
Millions of people have started traveling for the holiday, braving cold temperatures, snow showers and wet roads as wintry weather snarls traffic across the country.
More than 119 million people are expected to travel for Christmas and Hanukkah, which both fall on the same day this year, through the New Year, a figure that would break a travel record set in 2019 before the coronavirus pandemic, according to AAA.
Here is what you need to know about holiday travel.
Rain and snow is making travel messy for some
Rain and snow showers have impacted the Pacific Northwest since Saturday, while in the Northeast and areas around the Great Lakes, cold air from the Arctic has sent temperatures plunging, according to the National Weather Service.
Travelers at several airports have already been experiencing delays heading into the holidays. On Friday, heavy fog caused hundreds of delays at San Diego International Airport, according to KPBS. Those flying in and out of Boston Logan International Airport have also seen delays because of ice and snow.
On Sunday, heavy snow is expected across the northern Cascades in the Pacific Northwest and the Rockies, while flooding could take place along coastal parts of northern California.
Rain will continue across the Pacific Northwest on Monday, the NWS says. Western parts of the Great Lakes could also see more snow.
On Christmas Eve, travel will be messy in many parts of the country as thunderstorms are forecast in the southern Plains. Rain is expected to slow travel on the West Coast and in the Ohio Valley as well. There is also likely to be snow in the Northeast, where some places could see 1 to 3 inches of snow, potentially waking up to a white Christmas.
This graphic of the U.S. shows areas that are most likely to have snow on the ground on Christmas Day. (NWS/weather.gov)
Parts of the West Coast — including Washington, Oregon and northern California — the Midwest, areas around the Great Lakes and northern New England could also wake up to a white Christmas, according to the NWS.
Be prepared for delays
If traveling for the holiday, be prepared for long lines at airports and long drive times.
Arrive at airports early and allow for extra time to check luggage as well as go through airport security, said David Pekoske, administrator of the Transportation Security Administration.
“We’ve recently added over 600 new officers to support the surge, but it’s still going to take time to make your way through the airport,” Pekoske wrote in a social media post on Friday.
More than 43,000 flights are expected to take off Sunday and around 43,500 are expected to fly on Monday as well, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. At least 10,000 flights in and out of the U.S. were delayed Friday and over 9,500 were delayed on Saturday, according to FlightAware. Around 3,500 flights in and out of the U.S. have been delayed as of Sunday afternoon.
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are expected to have the least amount of travelers by air, with a little over 30,000 flights taking off each day, the FAA says. And if traveling by car, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day may be better days because of minimal traffic impacts, according to AAA.
If you’re riding the rails, Amtrak is warning travelers of “lengthy delays” in the Northeast because of single tracking and overhead wiring, which has led to cancellations at some stations.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Friday in a public service campaign also urged travelers to prepare by creating alerts in the FEMA app and following TSA for updates. It also cautioned drivers to make sure they have an emergency car kit.
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum on Friday was tapped by President-elect Donald Trump as both Interior secretary and head of a new National Energy Council. In this photo Burgum, center, and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., right, and Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., left, watch as Trump walks towards the courtroom for his hush money trial at Manhattan Criminal Court on May 14, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement Friday afternoon that his pick for Interior secretary, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, would also coordinate a new council on energy policy is a sign the incoming administration will make energy production a core part of its domestic policy.
Few details of the new National Energy Council were available Friday, as activists and lawmakers processed the surprise 4 p.m. Eastern announcement. But the move likely reflects a focus by Trump and his next administration on energy production, including fossil fuels.
“They’re signaling ahead of time that this is one of their priority areas,” Frank Maisano, a senior principal at the energy-focused law and lobbyist firm Bracewell LLP, said in an interview.
Burgum “will be joining my Administration as both Secretary of the Interior and, as Chairman of the newly formed, and very important, National Energy Council, which will consist of all Departments and Agencies involved in the permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation, transportation, of ALL forms of American Energy,” a written statement from Trump said.
“This Council will oversee the path to U.S. ENERGY DOMINANCE by cutting red tape, enhancing private sector investments across all sectors of the Economy, and by focusing on INNOVATION over longstanding, but totally unnecessary, regulation.”
Trump said the council’s objective to increase U.S. energy supply would benefit the domestic economy and allies overseas and help power “A.I. superiority.”
“The National Energy Council will foster an unprecedented level of coordination among federal agencies to advance American energy,” Burgum said in a written statement. “By establishing U.S. energy dominance, we can jumpstart our economy, drive down costs for consumers and generate billions in revenue to help reduce our deficit.”
It was unclear what the role of the Department of Energy would be in such an arrangement. The current secretary in the Biden administration is Jennifer Granholm, a former governor of Michigan.
‘Drill, drill, drill’
Throughout the presidential campaign, Trump frequently pledged to expand oil and gas production. The issue was one of two he told Fox News host Sean Hannity he would seek to address as a “dictator” on the first day of his administration.
Trump told Hannity during an Iowa appearance in December that he would not be a dictator, “except for day one. I want to close the border, and I want to drill, drill, drill.”
Comments like that foreshadowed something like a new council to oversee energy policy, said Lisa Frank, executive director of the advocacy group Environment America.
“President Trump has been very clear that one of his top priorities is to ‘drill, baby, drill,’” Frank said. “I’m not surprised. It was such an important part of his campaign, and it is the case that energy decisions are made by all sorts of different agencies in different ways, and that can be kind of a difficult thing to manage if you’re trying to drive an agenda.”
Under outgoing President Joe Biden, the administration promoted an “all-of-government approach” to climate change, with several departments and agencies across the federal bureaucracy tasked with addressing the issue. White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi was tasked with coordinating a consistent climate approach across the executive branch.
Burgum’s role could be similar, though the aim likely will be much different.
“This is similar to what the previous administration did, but the previous administration focused on climate,” Maisano said. “It’s just energy instead of climate.”
Another key difference is that Burgum will also be tasked with running an entire, separate Cabinet-level department with a nearly $18 billion annual budget.
Balancing the priorities of the Interior Department — which includes public lands management, protecting endangered species, maintaining national parks and overseeing tribal relations — with an initiative to vastly expand fossil-fuel production could be difficult, Frank said.
“The really tough decisions about balancing those two agendas will lie, to some extent, with Secretary Burgum, if he’s confirmed,” she said. “Do we want more drilling at our national parks? Do we want it on our families’ ranches? Do we want it where you want your kids to hunt? Do we want fracking near the best trout streams? Those are going to be very difficult questions for both him and the American public.”
All of the above
Burgum is seen across the political spectrum as favoring an all-of-the-above approach to energy, meaning he wants to expand both fossil-fuel and sustainable-energy sources. Environmental groups see his record on climate as mixed.
His state ranks ninth in wind-energy production, Frank said, but also last in reducing carbon emissions over the last two decades.
“He’s familiar with all aspects of energy, because as governor of an all-of-the-above energy state, he has to be,” Maisano said.
Some Democrats and left-leaning groups voiced immediate opposition to the selection of Burgum. The U.S. House Natural Resources Committee Democrats sent a series of tweets Friday dubbing the governor “Big Oil Burgum” over ties to the oil and gas industry.
But others were more tempered in their reaction to Burgum’s selection as Interior chief than some of Trump’s other picks for Cabinet positions.
Patrick Donnelly, the Great Basin director for the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity, tweeted Thursday evening that it did not seem likely the Trump administration would roll back expansion of renewable energy.
Trump’s first term saw an expansion of clean-energy projects, Donnelly wrote. Burgum is “not a climate denier” who doesn’t have a record of stifling renewable energy, he added.
“Burgum sucks but he’s not a complete lunatic that I’m aware of,” Donnelly said in an earlier tweet. “Could have been worse.”
Governor of North Dakota Doug Burgum speaks during the final campaign rally for former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump before election day at Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on November 4, 2024. (Photo by KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI / AFP) (Photo by KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
President-elect Donald Trump said Thursday night that he will nominate North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum to be secretary of the Department of the Interior.
“He’s going to head the Department of Interior, and it’s going to be fantastic,” Trump said in a speech during an America First Policy Institute dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort. He said there will be a formal announcement on Friday.
“We’re going to do things with energy and with land interior that is going to be incredible,” Trump said.
As secretary, Burgum will play a key role in pushing Trump’s agenda to increase oil, gas and coal production on public lands.
Interior is a sprawling department responsible for managing 20% of U.S. surface land, as well as federally owned mineral rights. This gives Interior control over nearly a quarter of all energy development in America, on- and off-shore.
Burgum is known as a big booster of oil and gas drilling, though his state’s boom has mostly occurred on private land such as the Bakken oil field. Historically, Interior secretaries have generally come from Western states with large tracts of federal public land, while North Dakota is only about 4% federally owned.
The Trump administration is expected to reverse President Biden’s focus on conservation and renewable energy policy enacted by current Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the nation’s first Indigenous Cabinet member.
Haaland also has been implementing a controversial and first of its kind rule that will allow public land to be leased for conservation, not just drilling.
“In this era of this really terrible climate crisis, those are considerations that need to be made when we’re managing our public lands,” Haaland told NPR last month.
Interior is also in charge of U.S. national parks, monuments and wildlife refuges. It also oversees relations with 566 federally recognized Native American tribes, including Alaska Natives, Hawaii Natives and affiliated Island Communities.
Burgum was elected governor in 2016 on a campaign focused on anti-establishment politics. Before that, he led a software company that he sold to Microsoft for $1.1 billion in stock in the early 2000s.
Leveraging his other entrepreneurial success in his real estate development firm and software venture capital group, Burgum ran a largely self-funded campaign in the 2024 Republican presidential primary and focused on energy and taxes before dropping out of the race last December. He then became a vocal supporter of Trump and hosted fundraising events for him while being shortlisted for the Republican vice presidential nomination.
Restoring and expanding fossil fuel energy development should be priority one at Interior in the coming Trump term, former Interior official William Perry Pendley wrote in Project 2025, a blueprint for the new administration published by the the Heritage Foundation.
Emissions from burning and extracting fossil fuels from public lands and waters account for about a quarter of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Trump’s previous Interior secretaries became embroiled in ethics scandals. He dismissed Ryan Zinke, a Republican congressman from Montana, after 21 months as Zinke was facing multiple ethics investigations. An investigation by Interior’s inspector general found Zinke had misused his position to advance a development project in his Montana hometown.
Trump then elevated former oil industry lobbyist and Deputy Interior Secretary David Bernhardt to the top of the agency. Nine months after his appointment, the Government Accountability Office found Bernhardt had twice violated the law at Interior when he directed the National Park Service to use park entrance fees for maintenance to keep parks open during the 2019 government shutdown.
Republican former President Donald Trump, joined by, from right, Melania Trump and Barron Trump, arrives to speaks at an election night watch party. (Alex Brandon/AP)
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Former President Donald Trump will return to the White House, according to a race call by the Associated Press.
Trump won the key states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, with a combined 29 electoral votes to clinch the 270 necessary to win the presidency. As of 5:34am ET Wednesday, Trump had 277 electoral votes total.
Prior to the race call for Wisconsin, and before the Associated Press had called the race in his favor, Trump spoke at Palm Beach Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Fla., where he stood flanked by family and staff and spoke to a crowd of supporters.
“We overcame obstacles that nobody thought possible,” Trump said.
“Every single day I will be fighting for you and with every breath in my body, I will not rest until we have delivered the strong, safe and prosperous America that our children deserve and that you deserve. This will truly be the golden age of America,” he said.
“We’re going to help our country heal, help our country heal,” Trump said.
Trump said that he won the popular vote, but those results have not been fully tabulated.
Republicans say Trump won the election for one simple reason. Voters felt that they were better off four years ago than they were today.
“Voters have really short memories,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist who helped lead Senator Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign in 2016. “And while I think everyone is appalled by what happened on January 6, they’re also appalled by what they have to pay for eggs today. People think about inflation every single day when they’re buying gas, when they’re going to the grocery store.”
The former reality star and real estate magnate weathered crisis after crisis, each one career ending for most any politician. But he maintained steadfast and unwavering support among his base and convinced just enough Americans to send him back to the White House.
The results were a blow not only to Vice President Harris, but also to the legacy of President Biden whose administration struggled with border challenges, high inflation and increasing uncertainty around the world.
This story has been updated.
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