Former Democratic Congressperson Tulsi Gabbard kicked off her bid to win Senate support as America’s new top spy on Monday by wooing a key demographic: Republican defense hawks.

The recent MAGA convert and longtime anti-interventionist held one-on-one meetings on Monday with four muscular advocates of American foreign policy. She started the day by having breakfast with Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa). Later, she met with Sens. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), and Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) behind closed doors.

Those meetings marked Gabbard’s first visit to the Hill since Donald Trump nominated her to be the next Director of National Intelligence, and appeared to signal her strategy for winning Senate support for her surprise nomination to a key national security post.

After her meeting with Lankford, Gabbard also briefly stepped outside the senator’s office to address the stunning overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government. The lightning advance of Syrian rebel groups this weekend surfaced what many believe is Gabbard’s biggest weakness — a secret trip she took in 2017 to meet with al-Assad, who has used chemical weapons repeatedly in the war.

“I want to address the issue that’s in the headlines right now,” she said. “I stand in full support and wholeheartedly agree with the statements that President Trump has made over these last few days, with regards to the developments in Syria.”

On Saturday, Trump posted on his Truth Social account that “Syria is a mess” and “THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.”

Gabbard is expected to face stiff resistance in the Senate Intelligence Committee not just for the Syria trip. She lacks formal experience in the U.S. intelligence community, and has espoused dovish views about Russia and the war in Ukraine that her critics note mirror Kremlin propaganda.

She nonetheless holds a top secret clearance.

While her fate is unclear, Gabbard appeared to make promising inroads Monday. Ernst called her a “strong and proven leader” in a post on X. Rounds, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, posted that the two had “an excellent first meeting.”

Tom Cotton, another member of the intelligence panel, also put out a message on X that bodes well for Gabbard.

“Of the 72 cabinet secretary nominees since the Clinton transition, only 2 nominees have ever received NO votes from the president-elect’s party,” he wrote. “No one should be surprised that the Republican Senate will confirm President Trump’s nominees.”

Rep. Brett Guthrie of Kentucky was recommended by his Republican colleagues Monday night to become chair of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee, defeating Rep. Bob Latta of Ohio, two people familiar with the decision told POLITICO.

House Republicans’ steering committee chose Guthrie, but the decision still needs to be ratified by the full conference, which is considered a formality.

The top Republican position on the committee was up for grabs due to Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) declining to seek reelection as part of a wave of retirements among GOP members of the influential House panel.

Read more here.

Jordain Carney contributed to this report.

Sen. Joni Ernst appeared more open to supporting Pete Hegseth as Pentagon chief after the pair met Monday for a second time, although she did not explicitly say whether she’d back Trump’s embattled defense pick.

The Iowa Republican, a pivotal swing vote on the Senate Armed Services Committee, struck a positive tone in a statement issued after their meeting — and indicated Hegseth is moving toward her positions.

Ernst said she extracted commitments from Hegseth on auditing the Pentagon and naming a senior official whose purview would include tackling military sexual assault. She called their discussions “encouraging” and said several times that she is supporting Hegseth “through the process” or “supporting the process” without saying if she plans to vote to confirm him. (The Pentagon has been performing audits since Trump’s first term, though it has never passed one.)

“It was a very productive meeting,” she told reporters on Monday evening. “We’re just moving through the process, but he does respect that I’m taking the time.”

Ernst — a combat veteran who has been vocal about her experience as a survivor of sexual assault — is seen as a key vote on Hegseth, whose nomination has been plagued by allegations of alcohol abuse and sexual misconduct.

The comments came after Ernst this weekend called for a thorough vetting of Hegseth’s nomination. Her refusal to commit to Hegseth has triggered fierce backlash among Trump allies and online.

“As I support Pete through this process, I look forward to a fair hearing based on truth, not anonymous sources,” Ernst said in her statement.

Ernst was critical of Hegseth’s comments denouncing women in military combat roles. Asked if the pair discussed the issue, Ernst said they did and called Hegseth “very supportive of women in the military.”

Hegseth’s meeting with Ernst was part of a blitz of sit-downs with Republican senators. He also met with Sens. Roger Marshall, Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) on Monday and has more than 20 meetings this week. That includes Senate Appropriations Committee ranking member Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who are also considered swing votes.

Hegseth told reporters he and Ernst had “a very good meeting.” The Pentagon pick praised Ernst’s combat experience and said the two agree on their commitment to defense issues.

“I’ve known her for 10 years, “Hegseth said. “The more we talk I’m reminded of, as two combat veterans, how dedicated we are to defense.”

He did not say whether he thought Ernst had shifted her position.

House Republicans’ steering committee recommended Rep. Brian Mast on Monday to become the next chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, two people familiar with the decision told POLITICO.

The decision still needs to be ratified by the full conference. But the GOP steering committee, which doles out most committee gavels and assignments, picked Mast (R-Fla.) as their recommendation to be the next chair during a closed-door meeting where they heard from each of the candidates for the gavel.

Mast faced off against Reps. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.), Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.). Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the current chair, is term-limited. Though he initially sought a waiver to remain atop the committee starting in January, McCaul announced in November that he was bowing out of the race.

As the vote counting dragged out, Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), who was recently elected House GOP policy chair, joked that it was “rough” in the room with plenty of “arm twisting.”

Mast’s ascendance comes as he has closely embraced Trump. The Florida Republican served as the national chair of Veterans for Trump, leading attacks on Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz’s claims about his military record.

He wasn’t the only one in the mix who embraced Trump. Wagner previously told POLITICO that contenders “should” lean into their Trump ties.

Meanwhile, Issa is known for his aggressive approach leading the House Oversight panel. He pitched himself as the most prepared to take over the gavel, given his previous experience leading a committee and substantial travel schedule.

McCaul, as committee chair, led the House GOP’s investigation into the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The committee will be at the center of the congressional debate over any additional Ukraine aid, which Speaker Mike Johnson ruled out passing before Trump comes into office, as well as dealing with Trump’s foreign policy more generally. Additional funding related to Ukraine staunchly divides congressional Republicans.

Joe Gould contributed to this report. 

Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Donald Trump, on Monday sought to walk back the president-elect’s recent statement that he believes the members of the House’s Jan. 6 committee who investigated him should be jailed.

Trump, who has a history of calling for revenge against his political opponents, made the assertion during a wide-ranging interview on “Meet the Press” that was recorded Friday and aired Sunday.

“[Former Rep. Liz] Cheney was behind it, and so was [Rep.] Bennie Thompson and everybody on that committee. For what they did, honestly, they should go to jail,” Trump said in the interview.

When asked if he would direct his incoming FBI director and attorney general to send the former committee members to jail, Trump said “No, not at all. I think that they’ll have to look at that, but I’m going to focus on drill, baby, drill.”

During an interview on CNN Monday, Miller said Trump’s comments were taken out of context.

“What President Trump said, if you listen to the entire ‘Meet the Press’ interview, is he wants everyone who he puts into key positions of leadership … to apply the law equally to everybody,” Miller said.

He continued, “as far as the politics aspect, if you listen to the entire interview with President Trump, he said he’s going to leave that up to the law enforcement agents in charge, including Pam Bondi and Kash Patel.”

Cheney called Trump’s comments an “assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic” in a statement to news outlets Monday. It wasn’t his first threat against the former GOP congressmember who went on to campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris — early last month, Trump suggested he would like to see how Cheney would fare “with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her.”

Former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who was also a member of the committee, said on CNN Sunday he is “not worried about it at all in the least” about the threats, adding it’s “not a sin” to embarrass Trump.

Pete Marocco, a former Trump administration official who was reportedly caught on camera inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is now working with President-elect Donald Trump’s transition on national security personnel matters, according to three people familiar with the situation.

Marocco, who drew internal fire when he worked in numerousagencies in the Trump administration and more recently was a conservative activist in Dallas, has been seen at the transition’s Florida headquarters working on hiring, including for the State Department, according to two of the people who saw him. One of the people said he was interviewing candidates this week.

Last month, the online sleuth group Sedition Hunters identified Marocco and his wife Merritt’s alleged presence inside and outside the Capitol on Jan. 6 using social media posts, video analysis and facial recognition software. Asked about the allegation by D Magazine, Marocco didn’t address whether he had been at the Capitol, instead calling it “petty smear tactics and desperate personal attacks.” Neither Marocco nor his wife have been charged.

Marocco didn’t respond to requests for comment. Trump transition spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that Marocco’s “valuable knowledge on national security policy has been a tremendous benefit to the Trump-Vance transition effort.”

She added: “Democrats and their allies in the media who think they are going to obstruct our ability to deliver on this mandate by going back to the same January 6 playbook of smears and faux outrage that was soundly rejected by the American people will be disappointed.”

President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission has been a vocal critic of the financial regulator’s recent effort to require companies to disclose their risks from climate change.

Paul Atkins, a Republican whom President George W. Bush named to the SEC in 2002, is best known as an advocate for cryptocurrency since leaving the commission in 2008. He’s also assailed the SEC’s controversial climate-disclosure rule as a burden to corporate America.

Finalized in March under Biden SEC Chair Gary Gensler, the rule would require publicly traded companies to divulge details about the risks that climate change poses to their business. The SEC paused the rule in April amid lawsuits from Republican state attorneys general and a company led by Chris Wright, Trump’s pick for Energy secretary.

Atkins, who founded the financial sector consultancy group Patomak Global Partner, is a “proven leader for common sense regulations,” Trump said in announcing the selection Wednesday.

“He believes in the promise of robust, innovative capital markets that are responsive to the needs of Investors, & that provide capital to make our Economy the best in the World,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “He also recognizes that digital assets & other innovations are crucial to Making America Greater than Ever Before.”

Environmental groups and advocates for sustainable investing criticized Atkins’ selection and urged the Senate to reject him, saying he would gut efforts to promote investing based on environmental, social and governance considerations, known as ESG.

“Atkins’ mission to roll back accountability and transparency should raise alarm for the future of responsible investing,” said Kyle Herrig, a spokesperson for Unlocking America’s Future, which promotes ESG investing and has run ads supporting the SEC climate-disclosure rule.

Atkins would “surely put a stop to any progress on ESG [principles], which are critical for building a resilient American financial system, protecting the financial security of America’s retirees, and maintaining America’s leadership on the global stage,” Herrig said in a statement.

Before the SEC climate disclosure rule was finalized, Atkins and Republican SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce had argued that it could harm investors because of the complexity and uncertainty of accurately gauging climate risks. Trump appointed Peirce, who was seated in 2018.

Atkins rejected the contention that investors are demanding climate disclosures. He accused the SEC of conflating the demands of both politically motivated investors and climate advocacy groups with the larger market.

“It’s a roundabout way through regulation of disclosure to try to regulate or influence greenhouse gas emissions by themselves, which is delegated by Congress to another agency of the United States government, and that’s namely the EPA,” Atkins said at a virtual panel discussion in 2022 run by the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

Atkins wrote a Wall Street Journal opinion column in 2022 urging the SEC to “retract and rethink its planned disclosure rule.” He joined a comment letter with other former SEC commissioners opposing the rule.

During a Federalist Society webinar in July, Atkins called it a “huge rule that would completely upend corporate disclosure.” He said the rule, which the SEC had recently paused, would expand disclosure “and really make things revolve around climate disclosure and all sorts of subjective and very hypothetical effects.”

Testifying before Congress in 2019, Atkins told lawmakers that more mandatory disclosures would be burdensome for companies and would dissuade them from going public. Atkins was testifying against Democratic-led legislation that would have required public companies to provide more information about their environmental and social effects and vulnerabilities.

Atkins would replace Gensler, who championed the climate disclosure rule and has been leading a crackdown on the crypto industry. Gensler, nominated by President Joe Biden, announced in November that he would step down on Inauguration Day.

The SEC’s five commissioners are appointed for five-year terms, which can be extended, and are politically balanced so that no more than three commissioners are from the same party. Although Gensler’s term runs into 2026, he followed a long practice of SEC chairs resigning when a new president takes office.

Trump, who once expressed skepticism about power-hungry cryptocurrencies, received billions of dollars from the industry for his 2024 campaign and said he would launch his own cryptocurrency business.

Mining cryptocurrency requires high-powered computers that consume a vast amount of electricity. U.S. operations currently account for as much as 2.3 percent of total U.S. electricity usage, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That’s equivalent to the demand from Utah or West Virginia.

While you’re busy buying presents and running to the dry cleaners after yet another holiday party, Congress is racing toward the end of the year — and one of the final weeks in session of Joe Biden’s presidency.

Top of mind: Getting a compromise version of the annual defense policy bill across the finish line. The House Rules Committee meets at 4 p.m. in hopes of teeing up the measure (all 1,800+ pages of it) for floor consideration; if hard-line conservatives block that path, look for Speaker Mike Johnson to put it up under suspension, relying on Democratic votes for the must-pass measure.

There’s no white smoke yet, but we’ll also keep a close watch for progress on a short-term government spending patch. Current funding levels run out on Dec. 20, and there are always bipartisan wishes to get home for the holidays.

Other things on the radar as another week kicks off in Washington:

Two new senators: Democratic Sens.-elect Adam Schiff (Calif.) and Andy Kim (N.J.) will become the newest members of the chamber Monday.

Judges, judges, judges: The House Rules Committee will tee up floor consideration of a Senate-passed measure expanding the number of federal court judicial seats gradually over the next decade. Some progressives have urged the White House to oppose the bill now that President-elect Donald Trump will get to fill some of those posts, but Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) defended the bill last week. “It is really balanced and it’s implemented over a period of years,” Durbin told reporters. “So there might be a political bias but it’s not built into it. It depends on how the voters decide to come up with the next president.”

Side note: Democrats are closing in on 234 judges confirmed, the number that got through the Senate during Trump’s first term. The current tally for Biden’s presidency will hit 230 after senators confirm Tiffany Johnson to a Georgia federal district court slot on Monday evening.

More nominee meetings: More of Trump’s Cabinet picks are expected on the Hill this week to meet with Republican senators, including embattled Defense Department pick Pete Hegseth and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, his pick to be director of national intelligence. On Hegseth, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), vowed over the weekend to conduct a “thorough vetting” of the pick and will hold another meeting with him. And Gabbard, who has drawn criticism for previously meeting with the newly ousted Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, is being seen as the next Trump nominee likely to hit major turbulence in the Senate.

Who says Congress is gridlocked? The House is about to take up a bill granting 39 communities their own unique zip codes. Good news for you Scotland, Conn., Goose Creek, S.C. and Montz, La., among others.

Here’s what we’re watching in transition world today:

 🗓️ What we’re watching

• Following the rebel victory in Syria over the Assad regime, President-elect Donald Trump told Russian President Vladimir Putin that “this is his time” to start making cease-fire deals with Ukraine. 
• After a few weeks under the radar as other nominees were on the hot seat, Tulsi Gabbard is facing renewed scrutiny over her past sympathies for Assad. 
• Democratic governors got together on Friday and Saturday in Los Angeles to discuss how they plan to “Trump-proof” their states going into the second Trump administration.
• Trump said on “Meet the Press” that he plans to end birthright citizenship in the United States on day one of his presidency “through executive action,” though he did not go into specific details. In the same interview, he also said he “can’t guarantee” that Americans won’t pay more if tariffs are enacted. 

🚨What’s up with the nominees?

• Defense Secretary designate Pete Hegseth has 21 Hill meetings set for this week, Joe Gould reports for POLITICOPro’s Morning Defense. On Monday, he’ll meet with Sens. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Joni Ernst (R-Iowa). 
• Ernst, who holds an important swing vote in Hegseth’s path to being confirmed as defense secretary, has spoken out about her concerns over the president-elect’s pick. As a survivor of sexual assault herself, she noted in an address to the Reagan National Defense Forum that she would like to hear more about the allegations against Hegseth.
• Pam Bondi, Trump’s pick to lead the Justice Department, is getting some help from Chad Mizelle, formerly acting general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security under the first Trump administration, to prepare for her confirmation.

📝ICYMI: Here are the latest Cabinet picks 

• Alina Habba is joining the White House as counselor to the president, Trump announced Sunday. 
• Trump announced a few hires who will serve in the State Department with Marco Rubio if he’s confirmed. Christopher Landau is Trump’s pick for deputy secretary of state, Michael Needham was tapped as counselor and Michael Anton is the prospective director of policy planning.