Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has extended Senate orientation invitations to Pennsylvania Republican Dave McCormick and Arizona Democrat Ruben Gallego after previously withholding them while their respective races remained unsettled.

Schumer previously insisted the Pennsylvania race had not yet been decided, despite the Associated Press calling it for McCormick over incumbent Democrat Bob Casey, who has yet to concede. “We will invite the winner once the votes are counted,” a spokesperson for Schumer said in a statement on Sunday.

The AP called Gallego’s race late Monday night, marking the final Senate race call of the 2024 elections.

“Ruben Gallego and David McCormick have been invited to attend orientation,” a spokesperson for Schumer said Tuesday morning.

Schumer’s decision comes after he faced growing pressure since Sunday to invite both senators-elect to the orientation. Republican senators opposed Schumer’s decision to block McCormick on social media, even offering to escort McCormick to the Capitol.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is working to crowdsource names for the more than 4,000 appointees under the second upcoming Trump administration.

Kennedy, a former environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine crusader, launched a website that asks the public to submit names of candidates who might be qualified for positions in environmental, energy, agriculture, labor policies and beyond.

So far, popular submissions for environmental and natural resource picks include former Nevada City, California, Mayor Reinette Senum and self-proclaimed forester Sterling Mantlow.

Senum in a post on social media website X celebrated her nomination as a “bid to address geoengineering at the highest level!”

After dropping his independent campaign for president in August, Kennedy joined Trump’s campaign with a mission to “Make America Healthy Again,” a play on Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again.”

Kennedy’s MAHA agenda includes ridding the nation’s food, pharmaceuticals and the surrounding environment of toxic chemicals, as well as addressing corporate influence in agencies.

Exactly what role Kennedy would serve in the Trump administration is still yet to be determined.

Sources close to Kennedy say he is reviewing resumes for top officials in the Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration, according to Reuters.

On Monday, Trump picked Lee Zeldin to be EPA administrator.

Spokespeople for Kennedy or the Trump transition team did not immediately respond for comment.

President Joe Biden bid farewell to the U.S. armed forces in his final Veterans Day remarks at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday.

“This is the last time I will stand here at Arlington as commander-in-chief,” Biden said from the Memorial Amphitheater. “It’s been the greatest honor of my life to lead you, to serve you, to care for you, to defend you, just as you defended us generation after generation after generation.”

Biden was joined by Vice President Kamala Harris, their first joint appearance since last week’s loss. Second gentleman Doug Emhoff, first lady Jill Biden, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Denis McDonough and top military officials also attended.

In his speech, the president brought up the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which led to the death of 13 U.S. service members, saying that he didn’t want the next president to be responsible for it: “Four presidents faced a decision after we’d got [Osama] bin Laden, whether to end our longest war in history in Afghanistan. I was determined not to leave it to the fifth.”

But he also signaled that he would try to stay engaged for the rest of his time in the White House.

Biden committed to expanding the coverage of the PACT Act, legislation aimed to expand healthcare access for veterans exposed to toxic chemicals and their families, to include a “number of cancers” — and he committed to expanding coverage for veterans who were harmed by toxins at Karshi-Khanabad Air Base in Uzbekistan by the end of his term.

“We’re the only nation in the world built on an idea,” Biden said, concluding his remarks. “Every other nation is based on things like geography, ethnicity, religion. But we’re the only nation, the only one in the world, built on an idea. That idea is we’re all created equal.”

Special counsel Jack Smith’s decision to pause his prosecution of President-elect Donald Trump is no reason to do the same for members of the mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the Justice Department argued Monday.

Several Jan. 6 defendants have used Smith’s call for a three-week breather — quickly endorsed by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan — as proof that all criminal cases connected to the Jan. 6 attack deserve a similar slowdown.

“To deny this motion, in the face of the Justice Department’s official position [in the Trump case], would run contrary to the interests of justice and likely subject the defendant to criminal convictions for no purpose other than expediency,” argued William Shipley, an attorney for Jan. 6 defendant Stephen Baker, who was set to begin a trial in his case Tuesday.

Prosecutors responded Monday, saying Trump’s case was unique and not indicative of the government’s position in other Jan. 6 cases.

“There is a public interest in the prompt and efficient administration of justice. The government and the Court have endeavored to deliver that interest,” Assistant U.S Attorney Isia Jasiewicz wrote in a response to Baker’s request.

“The defendant’s citation to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s motion to vacate a briefing schedule in the matter of United States v. Trump … is inapposite,” she wrote. “That motion refers to the ‘unprecedented circumstance’ of a criminal defendant being ‘expected to be certified as President-elect on January 6, 2025, and inaugurated on January 20, 2025.’ The need to ‘determine the appropriate course going forward consistent with Department of Justice policy,’ is not similarly implicated in this case, where the defendant is a private citizen.”

A slew of Jan. 6 defendants have begun to try to delay their cases as they wait to see if Trump follows through on his broad promise to pardon them.

A conservative lawyer working on Donald Trump’s transition, Mark Paoletta, offered a stark warning to career Justice Department lawyers Monday that those who refuse to advance Trump’s agenda should resign or face the possibility of being fired.

“Once the decision is made to move forward, career employees are required to implement the President’s plan,” Paoletta wrote in a post on X responding to a POLITICO story detailing widespread fear among DOJ lawyers about being asked to advance or defend policies they consider unethical or illegal.

“If these career DOJ employees won’t implement President Trump’s program in good faith, they should leave,” Paoletta said. “Those employees who engage in so-called ‘resistance’ against the duly-elected President’s lawful agenda would be subverting American democracy. … [t]hose that take such actions would be subject to disciplinary measures, including termination.”

Paoletta recited a laundry list of Trump goals, including mass deportations, ending birthright citizenship, issuing pardons and commutations to Jan. 6 defendants, reversing “lawfare and persecution of political opponents,” and “holding accountable those who weaponized their government authority to abuse Americans.”

Paoletta, a former counsel to Vice President Mike Pence and to the Office of Management and Budget during the first Trump administration, is playing a role in drafting potential changes in Justice Department policy to be put into effect after Trump is sworn in as president in January.

Sen. Roger Wicker, one of Capitol Hill’s most vocal defense hawks, will soon get the chance to pursue a larger Pentagon budget — and it stands a much better chance with Donald Trump headed back to the White House.

The Mississippi Republican is poised to chair the Armed Services Committee after the GOP romped in Tuesday’s Senate elections. And he brings to the role a plan for tens of billions of dollars in new military spending to expand the Navy and Air Force, modernize the nuclear arsenal and ramp up defense manufacturing.

“We’re not where we need to be in our Navy and our Air Force,” Wicker told Mississippi’s WAPT News in an election night interview. “So that’s going to be an opportunity for me as chairman of the Armed Services Committee, if this majority that’s been projected does hold, to work across the aisle … and build up our military so we can stay out of war.”

Though Wicker, who has been the top Armed Services Republican since 2023, might have the inside track with a Trump administration on spending, he’ll also be one of the most prominent GOP advocates of continuing to arm Ukraine. As chair, he’d likely need to navigate differences between defense hawks and Trump on whether to continue aid.

Budget battle plan: Wicker laid out his preferred roadmap for defense in the spring, urging the U.S. to make “a short-term generational investment” to deter an increasingly cooperative Russia, China, North Korea and Iran, which he has termed an “Axis of Aggressors.”

The plan proposes a $55 billion hike over President Joe Biden’s most recent defense budget request, eventually ramping up to 5 percent of gross domestic product — which would bring annual military spending to more than $1 trillion. Within that, Wicker wants to expand shipyard and industrial capacity to more quickly achieve a 355-ship Navy and expand the Air Force by blocking the retirement of some aircraft and adding 340 fighters over five years.

Wicker won an initial round in June when a bipartisan coalition in the Armed Services Committee voted to increase the price tag of its annual defense policy bill by $25 billion.

That heightened spending may not come to fruition this year, as extra funding would break budget caps agreed to last year and could see opposition from fiscal hardliners in the House. But it showed bipartisan support for a larger military budget that Wicker could capitalize on as chair.

A Trump roadmap? Perhaps just as importantly, some experts argue Wicker’s detailed budget blueprint could provide the GOP administration with fodder for at least their initial defense budget request. While the full extent of Trump’s Pentagon plans isn’t yet clear, confirming top officials and other issues could constrain his first-year spending blueprint.

“They’re going to probably want to go to people whom they trust more and lean on them,” said Bradley Bowman, a former Senate Republican aide who is now a senior director with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “And that would be Sen. Wicker.”

Though hawks have muscled through defense increases in divided government, Wicker has criticized Biden’s spending plans as unserious. He likened raising the Pentagon budget under a Democratic White House “pulling teeth” and suggested a GOP president would be more committed to the cause.

“We’re going to have to increase our national defense to keep us out of a war,” Wicker said in a recent interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. “The idea is to keep the peace by being so strong nobody will take a chance on us.”

Ukraine campaigner: Wicker — a vocal GOP advocate for Ukraine aid alongside Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — urged Biden to use his final days to step up support for Kyiv. He wants faster weapons transfers and looser restrictions on strikes inside Russia, arguing the administration’s limits have left Kyiv “hamstrung.”

While it would be easy for Wicker to confront another Democratic administration for not giving Ukraine what it needs, it’s an open question how he would approach Trump, who has opposed more U.S. spending and has instead said he aims to broker an end to the conflict before he even takes office.

Observers say Wicker is likely to keep those differences behind closed doors.

Bowman argued that Wicker’s “unimpeachable conservative credentials” could help him make an argument on the value of NATO and arming Ukraine. Mackenzie Eaglen, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, noted that while there’s still considerable Republican support for arming Ukraine, a potential Trump administration must be convinced to ask for more aid. That could occur, she argued, if the White House is convinced it hastens an end to the war with Russia.

“If their team can be convinced that a last and final surge of military assistance for Ukraine — that is almost entirely spent here in the United States — strengthens Ukraine’s position in a negotiated settlement to end the war, then it is possible,” Eaglen said. “I suspect this will be attempted in private as long as possible to see what comes over in a [fiscal 2026] White House budget request and whether it includes a supplemental.”

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be “border czar” is ready to execute his boss’ immigration agenda come hell or high water.

“I’ve got to go back and help because every morning I get up, every morning I’m pissed off about what this [Biden] administration did to the most secure border in my lifetime. So I’m going to go back and do what I can to fix it,” incoming Trump administration “border czar” Thomas Homan said on “Fox & Friends” Monday morning just a few hours after Trump announced his selection on the Truth Social platform late Sunday night.

Homan, who oversaw Trump’s controversial family separation policy as acting ICE director, said the enforcement will be the “same as it was during the first administration” but Americans can expect “a hell of a lot more” deportations this time.

“I’ve known Tom for a long time, and there is nobody better at policing and controlling our Borders,” Trump said in the post. “Likewise, Tom Homan will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin.”

Emphasizing public safety and national security as the top priority, Homan honed in on so-called sanctuary cities Monday, calling on state leaders to work with the Trump administration’s future attempts to crack down on “sanctuaries for criminals.”

“I have seen some of these Democratic governors say they are going to stand in the way. They are going to make it hard for us,” he said. “Well, a suggestion. If you are not going to help us, get the hell out of the way. If we can’t get assistance in New York City, we may have to double the number of agents we send to New York City. We are going to do the job. We are going to do the job without you or with you.”

Homan, who was appointed as acting ICE director in 2017 but was never confirmed by the Senate for the permanent job, said on “Fox & Friends” that his phone was inundated with texts and emails from “thousands of ICE agents and Border Patrol agents excited about the rumor” of his return. He added that retired members of the military also told him they wanted to “volunteer to help this president secure the border and do this deportation operation.”

Homan’s new “border czar” position does not require Senate confirmation.

He officially retired from ICE in 2018, though Trump announced Homan was returning as “border czar” the next year, taking Homan himself by surprise. On Monday, he said he would be “a hypocrite” to not accept the position now.

Homan told the “Fox & Friends” hosts that he has been “off the grid for three days because I couldn’t handle all the phone calls, plus all the death threats rolling in. My family is not at home right now because that is starting.”

“They are not going to bully me away, they are not going to shut me up and they are not going to make me go away,” Homan said. “This is the biggest national security vulnerability this nation has seen since 9/11 and we have to fix it.”

There are more than a dozen House contests — and a Senate race — still uncalled by the Associated Press, but Republicans are inching ever closer to officially retaining the House majority, as western states continue to slowly tally up their ballots.

Arizona Senate: Several days of strong vote counting numbers have put Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) on the precipice of holding this Senate seat for his party, even as President-elect Donald Trump carried the state by nearly six percentage points. Gallego’s lead over GOP nominee Kari Lake was nearly 67,000 votes — or more than two percentage points — following a Sunday evening drop from Maricopa County. Advantage Gallego. 

Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania Senate: While the Associated Press has called the Keystone State race for the GOP, Republicans are furious that Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has withheld an orientation invite to Sen.-elect Dave McCormick (R-Pa.). Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) has refused to concede the race, citing tens of thousands of outstanding ballots. McCormick currently leads Casey by more than 39,000 votes in the commonwealth.

Battle for the House: There are 18 races technically uncalled by the AP, but here’s where to focus your attention to understand who will control the House.

Colorado’s 8th: Rep. Yadira Caraveo (D) conceded defeat on Sunday after several batches of ballots broke in favor of GOP challenger Gabe Evans, though the race has yet to be technically called. The expected loss further dents Democrats’ majority hopes.

Alaska’s at-large: Incumbent Rep. Mary Peltola (D) trails by more than 10,000 votes with around 80 percent of the estimated total now counted. Rural ballots are expected to favor her, but the math to catch GOP challenger Nick Begich is daunting. 

Arizona’s 6th: Several favorable ballot drops over the weekend put incumbent Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R) again in the lead for this swingy seat in southern Arizona. Democrat Kirsten Engel trails by around 2,000 votes with about 83 percent counted. 

California’s 22nd: Rep. David Valadao (R) leads by more than 10,000 votes — and more than seven percentage points — over challenger Democrat Rudy Salas with around 77 percent of the vote now in. 

California’s 41st: Longtime incumbent Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.) expanded his lead over Democratic challenger Will Rollins on Sunday to nearly 7,900 votes — or more than 2.8 percentage points. 

California’s 13rd: Democratic challenger Adam Gray has been eating into GOP Rep. John Duarte’s initial lead as more ballots are counted. An estimated 61 percent of votes are in, with Duarte currently holding 3,261 vote advantage. 

California’s 45th: Several recent drops have been beneficial to Democratic challenger Derek Tran, who now trails GOP Rep. Michelle Steel by 6,128 votes. Around 80 percent of the vote is counted, so gear up for a potential photo finish. 

California’s 47th: Democrats got much-needed good news in their quest to hold Rep. Katie Porter’s (D) open seat when Democrat Dave Min surged into the lead over the weekend, opening a 2,713 vote lead over GOP nominee Scott Baugh. 

California’s 27th: In the years-long Democratic quest to topple Rep. Mike Garcia (R) from his Los Angeles-based district, challenger George Whitesides took the lead over the weekend and now boasts a lead of 4,730 votes. Later batches of votes have favored Democrats.

And a big call: Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) won reelection in Arizona’s 1st District, according to a late Sunday race call from the AP. It’s a major hold for Republicans.

Several lawmakers are launching bids for the No. 4 position in House GOP leadership — seemingly the only wide open race after Donald Trump tapped Rep. Elise Stefanik for UN ambassador.

Reps. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) and Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) are officially running for conference chair, according to McClain and a person with direct knowledge of Cammack’s plans.

McClain is presently serving in House Republican leadership as the conference secretary. Cammack has worked as recruitment chair of the House GOP campaign arm and unsuccessfully ran to lead the Republican Study Committee two years ago.

Other Republican candidates are believed to be weighing bids as well, including Reps. Blake Moore (R-Utah) and Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), who challenged Stefanik for the position last term.

Candidates will only have two days to campaign, since the House GOP’s internal leadership votes are set for Wednesday afternoon.

The House GOP conference chair leads the party’s messaging, a critical position as Republicans prepare to try to pass Donald Trump’s agenda in what increasingly looks like an entirely GOP-controlled Congress. The House majority remains uncalled, but Democrats’ path to victory has gotten slimmer. Regardless, the majority will remain narrow.

Stefanik ascended to the role after the party’s then-leadership under former Speaker Kevin McCarthy mobilized to remove then-Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) from the perch over her frequent and public criticism of Trump after Jan. 6.