WASHINGTON — Six of President-elect Donald Trump's big-office nominees faced Senate confirmation hearings Wednesday, previewing a parade of policy and political fights that will define his second term.
The picks — Pam Bondi for attorney general, Marco Rubio for secretary of state, Sean Duffy for transportation secretary, John Ratcliffe for CIA director, Chris Wright for energy secretary and Russell Vought for director of the White House Office of Management and Budget — largely avoided the kind of fireworks that can sink confirmation chances.
At the same time, they collectively laid out visions for the agencies they hope to lead that comport with Trump's campaign promises and political grievances.
Here are seven takeaways from the hearings.
No one ruined their confirmation chances
Democrats poked and prodded each candidate to try to expose extreme views or daylight from Trump. But they don't have enough votes to block any of the nominees on their own in the Senate, where Republicans will have a 53-47 edge once all their seats are filled. So the big question about the hopefuls was whether they would say anything that would cost them Republican votes.
The answers won't be clear until the full Senate considers their nominations after Trump takes office next week. But none of them appeared to lose support from the GOP side Wednesday, portending an easy road for Wednesday's cluster of picks.
The toughest sells — former Democrats Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, to serve as secretary of health and human services and director of national intelligence, respectively, and Kash Patel for director of the FBI — haven’t yet had confirmation hearings.
Bondi wouldn't say Trump lost in 2020
Bondi pointedly refused to say Trump lost the 2020 election fair and square under questioning from Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., at her hearing before the Judiciary Committee.
"President Biden is the president of the United States. He was duly sworn in, and he is the president of the United States," Bondi said. "There was a peaceful transition of power. President Trump left office and was overwhelmingly elected in 2024.”
Durbin, the top-ranking Democrat on the panel, noted that Bondi didn’t give him a yes-or-no answer. Later, Bondi declined to retract her past statement that Trump had won Pennsylvania in 2020 and pushed back against Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., for interrupting her.
“I’m not going to be bullied by you," she told Padilla.
William Barr, Trump's attorney general during the 2020 election, incurred Trump’s wrath by refusing to use the Justice Department to back false claims of election fraud.
But Republicans are unlikely to vote against Bondi because of her views on the 2020 election.
Democrats grill Bondi over Trump's — and Patel's — influence
Bondi told Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., that she wouldn’t use the attorney general's power to target political adversaries — even though Trump has often called for investigating and prosecuting his rivals.
"There will never be an enemies list within the Department of Justice," Bondi said.
Last month, Trump told "Meet the Press" moderator Kristen Welker that decisions about whom to investigate and whom to prosecute would fall to Patel and Bondi, assuming that they are confirmed.
Patel has said judges, lawyers and journalists should be prosecuted for perceived impropriety in pursuing investigations of Trump after the 2020 election. Bondi defended Patel on Wednesday — to an extent.
"I don’t believe he has an enemies list,” Bondi said, adding that "Kash is the right person at this time for this job."
But she told senators they would have to ask Patel directly about his promotion of QAnon conspiracy theories.
Rubio seeks 'concessions' from Ukraine and Russia
As a senator from Florida, Rubio has been a vocal opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin. As Trump's pick to be America's top diplomat, he has been more measured in talking about the war between Russia and Ukraine.
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Rubio told the Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday that he, like Trump, wants a quick end to the war. And that, he said, will require Ukraine to give ground, either literally or figuratively.
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“It is important for everyone to be realistic," Rubio said. "There will have to be concessions made by the Russian Federation, but also by the Ukrainians."
The comments were consistent with what Rubio has been saying since Trump's election, but they signal an even more firm commitment to forcing a negotiated settlement at a time when it isn’t clear how much leverage Ukraine has.
Vought previews a potential major spending fight
Vought, seeking a return engagement as the White House budget director, suggested he doesn’t see the 1974 Impoundment Control Act as a binding law.
The law, designed to prevent the president from refusing to spend money appropriated by Congress, has been upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court in the past, and it was at the center of the House's first impeachment of Trump.
Among other things, Trump was accused of improperly withholding appropriated funds from Ukraine to force its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to announce an investigation into Joe Biden, who was then considering a presidential bid.
"I don't believe it's constitutional," Vought told Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. "The president ran on that view."
"You’re saying that you’re just going to defy the courts?" Blumenthal asked.
"The incoming administration is going to take the president’s view on this as he stated on the campaign, work it through with the lawyers at the Department of Justice," Vought said, "and put that through a policy process, and I can’t prejudge that policy process, but I certainly can’t announce the parameters of what it would produce."
Vought's answers portend a battle over who controls the country's purse strings.
Former lawmakers steer clear of controversy
Ratcliffe and Duffy, both Republican former House members, generated little fanfare in their public hearings before the Intelligence and Commerce, Science and Transportation committees.
The Intelligence Committee also met with Ratcliffe behind closed doors to discuss classified or sensitive national security matters.
In the public part of his hearing, Ratcliffe said he believes China interfered in Trump's 2020 re-election bid — a view he has long held, which he readily acknowledged was at odds with that of most of the intelligence community.
“The minority opinion was that they were,” he said. “I agreed with the minority opinion, but what I did was not try to substitute my judgment for the community."
Duffy committed himself to provide more robust oversight of the aviation industry through the department's Federal Aviation Administration — and he said he believes whistleblowers should be listened to.
“I 100% do,” he said.
Energy nominee pressed about past wildfire comments
Wright, an oil and gas executive, stood by a social media comment about the "hype" over wildfires during his hearing to lead the Energy Department.
“The hype over wildfires is just hype to justify more impoverishment from bad government policies,” Wright wrote on LinkedIn over a year ago.
Expressing "great sorrow" over the ongoing wildfires in Southern California, Wright told Padilla he wouldn’t retract his comment. But he said Wednesday, "Climate change is a real and global phenomenon."
Aside from several protests by climate activists that interrupted the hearing, the exchange with Padilla was the most notable moment. That's a good sign for his chances.
