Reporter’s Note­book: Peo­ple are pol­i­cy

It is that in pol­i­tics, peo­ple are pol­i­cy. 

So Pres­i­dent-elect Trump’s “poli­cies” descend­ed on Capi­tol Hill this week. 

Thus begins the qua­dren­ni­al tra­di­tion of var­i­ous Cab­i­net nom­i­nees parad­ing around the Sen­ate. They’re here to meet with sen­a­tors, answer ques­tions, press the flesh, get a sense of what sen­a­tors want to know about them in a con­fir­ma­tion hear­ing – and where the pit­falls lie.

We got a sliv­er of this before Thanks­giv­ing. That’s when for­mer attor­ney gen­er­al nom­i­nee and for­mer Rep. Matt Gaetz, R‑Fla., hud­dled with a hand­ful of Repub­li­can sen­a­tors. Then Gaetz bowed out, so it was on to Trump’s sec­ond pick for attor­ney gen­er­al – Pam Bon­di.

Bon­di arrived at the Capi­tol Mon­day to meet with incom­ing Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee Chair­man Chuck Grass­ley, R‑Iowa, but her first meet­ing was post­poned because Grassley’s flight was delayed. They final­ly chat­ted lat­er in the after­noon.

“I look for­ward to work­ing with you and lead­ing your nom­i­na­tion through the Unit­ed States Sen­ate,” said Grass­ley once he final­ly made it to his office in the Hart Sen­ate Office Build­ing.

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“Should I earn the trust and the nom­i­na­tion from all of the sen­a­tors, I will do my best every day to work tire­less­ly for the Amer­i­can peo­ple. And I will make you, the Pres­i­dent and our coun­try proud,” added Bon­di.

“Is this going to be eas­i­er than Mr. Gaetz?” asked yours tru­ly.

“No ques­tions. No ques­tions,” ordered Grass­ley.

Bon­di soon head­ed to the Rus­sell Sen­ate Office Build­ing to cau­cus with the cur­rent top Repub­li­can on the Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee, Sen. Lind­sey Gra­ham, R‑S.C.

“She’s a great choice. Been a long time friend. I think right per­son at right time,” said Gra­ham.

Bon­di may have an eas­i­er path to Sen­ate con­fir­ma­tion than the oth­er nom­i­nee roam­ing the Sen­ate cor­ri­dors, Defense Sec­re­tary pick Pete Hegseth.

He met with Sens. Bill Hager­ty, R‑Tenn., Tom­my Tuberville, R‑Ala., and Dan Sul­li­van, R‑Alaska.

“We’re tak­ing it meet­ing by meet­ing,” said Hegseth.

Hegseth faces a host of ques­tions about whether he’s qual­i­fied to lead such a mas­sive orga­ni­za­tion as the U.S. mil­i­tary. There’s been a blan­ket of alle­ga­tions lodged against Hegseth.

“Were you ever drunk while trav­el­ing on the job?” asked Nikole Kil­lion of CBS.

“I won’t dig­ni­fy that with a response,” replied Hegseth.

He then pro­ceed­ed to a series of ses­sions with Sens. Ted Cruz, R‑Tex., Cyn­thia Lum­mis, R‑Wyo., Rick Scott, R‑Fla., and Mike Lee, R‑Utah. Hegseth appears to have earned the sup­port of some of the most con­ser­v­a­tive mem­bers of the Sen­ate.

“We don’t need a gen­er­al offi­cer, admi­ral or a per­son of high com­mand,” said Tuberville. “We need a drill sergeant in the mil­i­tary. We need some­body to straight­en the mil­i­tary out. Get the woke, the DEI affil­i­a­tion out and go from there.” 

Hegseth was back at it Tues­day morn­ing, meet­ing with Sens. Deb Fis­ch­er, R‑Neb., Shel­ley Moore Capi­to, R‑W.V., Ted Budd, R‑N.C., Jim Risch, R‑Idaho, and Eric Schmitt, R‑Mo. 

Wednes­day meant meet­ings with Sen. Joni Ernst, R‑Iowa, incom­ing Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader John Thune, R‑S.D., and the next chair­man of the Sen­ate Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee, Sen. Roger Wick­er, R‑Miss. 

Hegseth has also expressed reser­va­tions about women serv­ing in com­bat. 

Col­league Aishah Has­nie pressed Hegseth on this very point as he tog­gled between Sen­ate offices. 

“We have amaz­ing women who serve in our mil­i­tary. Amaz­ing women,” said Hegseth. 

“Do you think they should be in com­bat?” asked Has­nie.

“I think they’re already in com­bat,” replied Hegseth.

Amid all the focus on Bon­di and Hegseth, Unit­ed Nations Ambas­sador nom­i­nee and Rep. Elise Ste­fanik, R‑N.Y., snuck in a meet­ing with Grass­ley. And Trea­sury Sec­re­tary nom­i­nee Scott Bessent is also slat­ed to meet with Thune and new­ly tapped Sen­ate Major­i­ty Whip John Bar­ras­so, R‑Wyo. 

Out of the mid­dle of nowhere, Edu­ca­tion Sec­re­tary nom­i­nee Lin­da McMa­hon mate­ri­al­ized for a ses­sion with Sen. Mark­wayne Mullin, R‑Okla., Tues­day. 

You think things are hit­ting a fevered pitch now? Wait until FBI pick Kash Patel and Health and Human Ser­vices Sec­re­tary nom­i­nee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. begin mak­ing their office calls. 

And we haven’t even got­ten to the prospec­tive con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings of Hegseth, Kennedy and Patel in ear­ly Jan­u­ary. Cable TV chan­nels will like­ly car­ry those hear­ings wall-to-wall. And depend­ing on the day, it may be a chal­leng­ing pro­gram­ming deci­sion on which hear­ing to take live – espe­cial­ly if two or three all come around the same time. 

A dynam­ic duo arrives at Capi­tol Hill lat­er this week – who don’t require con­fir­ma­tion. And in fact, their vis­its may com­mand more atten­tion than any of the nom­i­nees for the next cab­i­net. 

Pres­i­dent-elect Trump tapped for­mer Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk to run the Depart­ment of Gov­ern­ment Effi­cien­cy, or DOGE. They’re set to meet with House and Sen­ate Repub­li­cans about their plans to pare back the gov­ern­ment. They begin with meet­ings with Sen. Joni Ernst, R‑Iowa, who is lead­ing the Senate’s DOGE Cau­cus.

“We have a lot of waste that exists in the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment,” said Ernst. “We have over $1 tril­lion of sav­ings already iden­ti­fied for the DOGE.”

Even Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D‑Fla., became the first Demo­c­rat to join the House DOGE Cau­cus. 

“I believe that stream­lin­ing gov­ern­ment process­es and reduc­ing inef­fec­tive gov­ern­ment spend­ing should not be a par­ti­san issue,” said Moskowitz. “The cau­cus should look at the bureau­cra­cy that DHS has become and include rec­om­men­da­tions to make Secret Ser­vice and FEMA inde­pen­dent fed­er­al agen­cies with a direct report to the White House.”

When it comes to con­fir­ma­tions, Democ­rats insist that Repub­li­cans do things by the book. They want back­ground checks on nom­i­nees, and they’re also implor­ing the GOP not to allow Trump to bypass the Sen­ate if there are prob­lems and install peo­ple tem­porar­i­ly via recess appoint­ments. 

Sen­ate Major­i­ty Whip Dick Durbin, D‑Ill., took issue with the speedy meet­ings Repub­li­can sen­a­tors had with nom­i­nees. Some of those ses­sions result­ed in GOP sen­a­tors then pro­claim­ing they would vote to con­firm.

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“You can’t do a speed dat­ing process for the Cab­i­net of the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States with­out end­ing up embar­rassed and with things that are dis­cov­ered only through a deep inves­ti­ga­tion by the Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion,” said Durbin, “I can tell you pri­vate­ly, many Repub­li­cans sen­a­tors have spo­ken to me and said ‘For good­ness sakes, we can’t do away with the FBI check.’ That is some­thing that’s just inte­gral to the sys­tem.”

Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Chuck Schumer, D‑N.Y., wrote to Thune, implor­ing him to pre­serve the Sen­ate cus­toms for con­firm­ing nom­i­nees.

“The advise and con­sent author­i­ty is a cor­ner­stone of the Sen­ate’s con­sti­tu­tion­al man­date. A pow­er cen­tral to pre­serv­ing Amer­i­ca’s sys­tem of checks and bal­ances. The Found­ing Fathers knew first­hand the great dan­ger of allow­ing unchecked exec­u­tives to appoint indi­vid­u­als to posi­tions of pow­er with­out any guardrails,” said Schumer. “Hope­ful­ly this does­n’t become an issue. But nev­er­the­less, it will be the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the incom­ing Repub­li­can major­i­ty to pro­tect the Sen­ate against any attempt to erode its author­i­ty.”

So this is going to be quite a few weeks. 

Lots of meet­ings. Lots of hear­ings. Lots of votes. All sur­round­ing staffing the next admin­is­tra­tion.

Out­go­ing Sen­ate Minor­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnell, R‑Ky., is fond of say­ing that the Sen­ate is “in the per­son­nel busi­ness.” 

It’s also in the “pol­i­cy” busi­ness, and those “poli­cies” are now walk­ing around the halls of Capi­tol Hill.