For the Record: Too much news for a Tuesday
Buckle up, buttercup. We’ve got quite a ride ahead of us.
President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks begin their Senate hearings today. There’ll be another hearing on the Russian election hack. President Obama is set to give his farewell speech tonight in Chicago. And the pace only picks up from there, as Trump is expected to give a real, live press conference on Wednesday and Congress is expected to vote on, well, everything.
Get your calendar out: We’ll walk (OK, maybe run) you through what to watch for in a very busy edition of For the Record.
WHO ARE THESE GUYS? DON’T ASK – JUST VOTE
Senate Republicans are looking to make a statement with how quickly they can approve Trump’s nominees, even if several haven’t been vetted by the Office of Government Ethics. But will it work? Trump thinks so.
Up today for committee hearings: Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions at 9:30 a.m. (all times Eastern), followed by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly at 3:30.
Kelly, a retired general, is one of Trump’s less controversial picks and is likely to sail through (after the obligatory questions on Trump’s border wall, of course). But expect resistance on Sessions, the Alabama senator and former state attorney general whose controversial comments on race and staunch stance against legal marijuana has rankled Democrats.
The pace gets worse (or better, if you just can’t get enough C-SPAN) as the week goes on: The big one – Rex Tillerson as secretary of State – goes before the Foreign Relations Committee at 9 a.m. Wednesday. Expect fireworks, given concerns about Russian election hacking and Tillerson’s connections to the country.
An hour later, probably just as the arguing over Tillerson starts to get good, hearings in other Senate committees will commence on possible CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who also will face tough questions about Russia, and Department of Education nominee Betsy DeVos, who some fear will take a wrecking ball to public schools.
But wait! There’s even MOAR split-screen drama on tap for Thursday. The hearing for Defense Secretary nominee James “Mad Dog” Mattis starts at 9:30 a.m. (see a theme here? Expect more Russia questions), followed by hearings at 10 for Ben Carson, who has no experience in Housing and Urban Development, and Wilbur Ross, who if confirmed to oversee Commerce is expected to radically change our trade policies.
MORE QUESTIONS ON THE RUSSIAN MENACE
OK, we got ahead of ourselves. Let’s go back to the madness on tap today. As if two confirmation hearings isn’t enough, the heads of the CIA, FBI and NSA will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee at 1 p.m. (Seriously, how is C-SPAN going to cover all of this?) The intelligence community released a report Friday contending that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the hack on the Democratic Party’s email to discredit them with voters. So, yeah, there’s a lot to talk about.
WILL OBAMA LEAVE WITH A MIC DROP?
If you aren’t in news overload by this evening, President Obama will give his farewell address at 9 p.m. He’s leaving office with a higher approval rating than Trump and George W. Bush but lower than Bill Clinton. Still, Obama’s signature policy – the Affordable Care Act – may soon be repealed. So expect him to spend much of the speech talking about the law’s successes and his role in boosting the economy from the mess it was in 2008. Also a possibility, according to CNN: A series of “admonitions” aimed at Donald Trump about respecting diversity and critics.
WAIT. TRUMP IN THE FLESH BEFORE REPORTERS?
Speaking of our soon-to-be-leader, Trump is expected to finally hold a news conference (!) on Wednesday, where he is expected to outline how he’s handling business conflicts of interest. It’s been 165 days since the last one, according to a Monday check of NPR’s counter, though Trump has tweeted 1,592 times since then. As you may remember, Trump had planned to give this big presser in December but canceled it at the last minute. So don’t hold your breath for this thing to actually happen if things get wacky in the Senate or if more Russia news breaks.
OH YEAH, AND THEN THERE’S THE VOTES
Last week, Senate committees took the initial votes on a package of budget bills that would begin to repeal Obamacare. On Wednesday, they are expected to go to the Senate floor, and as you’d expect, there is potential for more drama. Only two Republicans can vote no and the resolutions still pass – and at least two have expressed concerns over the plan to repeal but not immediately replace the law (doing so is expected to balloon the national debt, for one).
If you think the House is sitting on its hands while the Senate has all the fun, think again. It is expected to vote this week on six regulatory-reform bills, which according to The Hill, includes requiring federal agencies to choose the lowest-cost alternative when issuing new rules, repealing a requirement that courts defer to agency interpretations when rules are ambiguous and deferring rules that cost more than $1 billion for 60 days so businesses can take them to court.
MORE FROM THE TRANSITION
- Fiat Chrysler CEO: ‘We need clarity’ on what Trump wants from the auto industry (Detroit Free Press)
- Donald Trump fires back on Meryl Streep’s anti-Trump Golden Globes speech (Paste BN)
- Hugh Laurie also disses Trump at the Golden Globes, gets crickets on Trump’s Twitter feed (Paste BN)
- Trump tweets his disapproval that NBC cut nine of 10 minutes from adviser Kellyanne Conway’s interview (Paste BN)
- Are we really in for four years of mean Trump tweets? (Arizona Republic)
WHAT WOULD MATURE TRUMP TWEET?
If you noticed a theme in the above bulleted links, it’s that Trump is sort of a social-media honey badger (he just don't care what you think about what he says). If that bothers you, enter @MatureTrumpTwts, which describes itself as an “alternative parody account of how a mature, more presidential Trump should tweet.”
When Trump tweeted, “Dishonest media says Mexico won't be paying for the wall if they pay a little later so the wall can be built more quickly. Media is fake!” @MatureTrumpTwts reworked that to say, “True, I said Mexico would ‘pay’ for wall, not reimburse us. At press conference Jan. 11, I'll outline how this will occur w/Q&A for clarity.”