Momentum is building among Democrats to oust their ailing leader on the House Agriculture Committee, part of the party’s generational shake-up on Capitol Hill in the wake of their demoralizing losses in November.

Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.) — the committee’s current ranking member — faces a challenge from fellow Democrats Reps. Jim Costa of California and Angie Craig of Minnesota for the post in the next Congress. And, according to more than two dozen House Democratic lawmakers and aides granted anonymity to discuss the matter, Scott is poised to lose the vote if he doesn’t step aside before then.

“The race is against Costa and Craig at this point,” said one House Democratic lawmaker. “Scott is done.”

If he loses, Scott would be the third septuagenarian House Democrat push out of a committee leadership role in the new Congress — along with Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), who ended bids to continue as ranking members on the House Natural Resources and House Judiciary Committees following challenges from younger Democrats. And it would be a sign of just how strongly the party wants to turn the page on an older generation of leaders, particularly after losing an election many blame on 82-year President Joe Biden’s initial decision to run for a second term.

“It’s in the air. People want heads to roll on our side,” a House Democratic aide said.

At this point, Scott can only survive if the powerful Steering Committee recommends him for the post again when the panel meets next Monday. Such a move would essentially block Costa and Craig from consideration. But House Democrats, including several on the Steering panel, don’t expect that to happen.

Costa has strong ties to a bloc of senior Democrats on the Steering panel who have been pushing for him. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has also been telling members she is supporting Costa in the race and trying to advocate for him, according to three people familiar with the conversations. Craig meanwhile is a frontline Democrat who has a strong relationship with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and his leadership team. Jeffries, according to Democratic lawmakers, hasn’t discouraged her or any other Democrat from challenging Scott and additional senior panel leaders.

Spokespeople for Jeffries and Pelosi declined to comment.

Costa, a Congressional Hispanic Caucus member, also secured the endorsement of the influential caucus Tuesday, according to two people familiar with the closed-door meeting.

Separate discussions are also underway among some members who are searching for a way for the Steering Committee to refrain from making any recommendation on the Agriculture panel race — which would effectively greenlight Scott’s ouster without the panel having to overtly move against him.

Scott, 79, has faced a number of behind-the-scenes attempts to remove him as the Agriculture Committee’s leading Democrat in recent years, as POLITICO has reported. He became the first Black chair of the Agriculture Committee in 2021, and then stayed on as ranking member in 2023. But a growing group of fellow Democrats have complained to party leaders that he is no longer able to effectively lead the committee, which faces critical negotiations on a $1.5 trillion farm bill in the next Congress.

Spokespeople for Scott did not respond to an inquiry. But Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.), who still supports Scott, said his fellow Georgia Democrat indicated in a recent conversation that he was staying in the Agriculture panel race.

Scott missed two weeks of votes last month to receive treatment for back problems, and currently relies on a wheelchair to get around the Capitol. And he has shed so much personal staff in recent years that his 26-year-old chief of staff, who was recently promoted from legislative assistant, is one of the few people left in his office to navigate the fallout as members dig in to oust remove Scott from his leadership role.

Scott won his post with the support of then-Speaker Pelosi and the powerful Congressional Black Caucus, but those alliances are now crumbling.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who himself represents a new generation of Democratic leadership, has notpublicly backed Scott as strongly in recent monthas Pelosi once did. Jeffries and his leadership team also made the rare move last year to start personally attending several meetings with Scott and his agriculture panel Democrats after members continued to raise alarms about Scott.

In private conversations with rank-and-file members, Jeffries and his team have taken concerns about Scott seriously, according to three Democratic lawmakers familiar with the conversations.

The CBC is navigating its own generational divide on the matter and has so far stayed silent on the challenges to Scott’s leadership in the next Congress, despite strongly pushing back on an effort to replace him in 2022.

“I don’t think he has the capacity,” said one younger House Democrat who is a CBC member, who was granted anonymity to candidly discuss the matter. “I’m leaning towards Angie.”

Asked if younger members within the Black Caucus are more willing to oust Scott compared to the older guard who’ve long backed the Georgia Democrat, the young CBC member responded: “Absolutely.”

But in an incredibly striking move, even some older Black Caucus members say they’re still weighing their options.

“I haven’t made up my mind,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the top Democrat on the Homeland Security panel. “But I do want someone who … can carry the Democratic message far and wide. … We need the strongest voice.”

Thompson headed the farm bill task force that Jeffries created in 2023, effectively removing a major piece of Scott’s workload as ranking member. Democrats pleaded with Thompson and senior Democrats for him to take over the Agriculture panel from Scott, but Thompson resisted their efforts.

Scott has raised eyebrows by not showing up to several candidate forums to make his case members. Thompson said it was his understanding that Scott isn’t attending the Black Caucus member forum Wednesday.

“I think that’s a mistake,” Thompson said. “I think anyone running has to make their case as to why they’re there. It’s part of the process.”

“The first inclination of course is to support him,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee. “However, I’m also talking to members of the committee, etc. to see where they are.”

“Any member that’s not feeling well, I have concerns about their health, and obviously he would be one of them,” Meeks added, when asked about other members’ concerns regarding Scott.

On Monday, Scott’s team scheduled a meeting with him and House Agriculture Democrats for Wednesday (right before the CBC candidate forum Scott is expected to skip) to provide an update on the ongoing farm bill extension talks as negotiators are close to a deal, according to two Democrats familiar with the plans. Scott’s panel staff have dug into hammering out a complex farm bill extension agreement in a way that’s made fellow lawmakers believe the Georgia Democrat will try to hang onto the role until the very end. He also hasn’t made any indication to panel Democrats that he plans to step aside and told POLITICO just off the House floor last week that he was in fact not dropping out of the ranking member race.

Scott also skipped making his case before the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which is chaired by House Agriculture member Greg Casar (D-Texas), and a separate closed-door candidate forum on Tuesday for the New Democrat Coalition, a center-left caucus of about 100 Democrats, of which he’s a member.

President-elect Donald Trump announced private equity executive Tom Barrack, a longtime ally who faced legal scrutiny for his work on behalf of the United Arab Emirates, as his pick to be the next U.S. ambassador to Turkey.

In a Truth Social post on Tuesday, Trump said Barrack, a California billionaire, is “a well respected and experienced voice of reason to a wide range of thought leaders in both political and business circles.”

Barrack’s relationship with Trump goes back to the 1980s and he has fundraised and supported Trump throughout his political career. Barrack, who served as a deputy undersecretary at the Department of the Interior during the Reagan administration, was a senior adviser to the Trump campaign in 2016 and chaired the 2017 inaugural committee.

But Barrack may face a rocky road to confirmation. He has faced legal issues related to his Middle East business dealings and his ties to Trump.

An Arabic speaker born to Lebanese parents, Barrack built relationships with Saudi government officials and businesses in the 1970s. He also helped open diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Haiti, and has ties to other Gulf monarchies.

He was indicted by the Department of Justice in 2021 on charges that he was lobbying the Trump campaign on behalf of the United Arab Emirates, all the while pursuing business deals valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Barrack was acquitted in November 2022.

During the Trump administration, Barrack was heavily scrutinized for his connections to undemocratic regimes in the Middle East and foreign donations to the 2017 inaugural committee.

Barrack was also a friend of disgraced investor and sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.

Kimberly Guilfoyle, the former Court TV anchor and Fox News host who became a staunch advocate for Donald Trump, has been chosen by him to be the next U.S. ambassador to Greece.

Trump announced the decision Tuesday in a social media post, calling her a a “close friend and ally” who “is perfectly suited to foster strong bilateral relations with Greece.”

Guilfoyle was engaged to Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest child, but newspapers have recently published photos suggesting that he is now romantically involved with socialite Bettina Anderson.

Neither Trump Jr. nor Guilfoyle has publicly announced a split, and their relationship status is unclear.

Guilfoyle, before her TV career, was a prosecutor in San Francisco who was married to the city’s then mayor, Gavin Newsom — who, as California’s Democratic governor, has become one of the most high-profile critics of President-elect Trump.

CBS was the first to report that Guilfoyle was being considered for the diplomatic posting in Athens.

Guilfoyle isn’t the first person with ties to the Trump family tapped for a foreign policy role. The president-elect has announced that Charles Kushner — whose son Jared is married to Ivanka Trump — would be ambassador to France.

He also named Massad Boulos — the father of daughter Tiffany’s husband — to be his senior adviser on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs.

Guilfoyle’s nomination will require Senate confirmation and she may face scrutiny for allegations of abusive behavior against her former assistant at Fox News.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said that Republicans were negotiating on Tuesday over how to accommodate concerns about the state and local tax deduction that could be an obstacle to a sweeping tax package next year.

“We need to address this problem,” said Scalise (R-La.) of the contingent of House Republicans from California, New Jersey and New York who have been adamant about lifting the $10,000 cap on the deduction for state income and property taxes, known as SALT in tax parlance. “They’re coming back.”

A spokesperson for Scalise did not immediately respond to a request about which lawmakers were participating in the meetings.

The early negotiations signal just how challenging House Republican leadership expects it to be to muster the votes for an anticipated reconciliation bill next year, which could be passed without Democratic support. Republicans want to use the legislation to extend trillions of dollars in expiring tax cuts that President-elect Donald Trump and his allies in Congress pushed through in 2017, during Trump’s first term.

And the most difficult part for leadership promises to be those pro-SALT Republicans, who held up a tax package earlier this spring over demands that it include some form of relief from the cap. The limit was imposed to offset some of the cost of the 2017 cuts – and ding blue states that have high taxes.

Tuesday morning, Rep. Michael Lawler (R-N.Y.) reaffirmed those demands, telling POLITICO that he’s made it “abundantly clear” that any future tax packages will need to address SALT.

In remarks made at a panel hosted by the Business Roundtable and the American Petroleum Institute, Scalise said that he reminded incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) that such demands from Republicans in high-tax states could be a significant challenge in the House.

“I reminded him, because he wasn’t part of it last time around in the top leadership, that our challenge in the House is much different,” Scalise said. The Senate GOP “doesn’t have a single SALT state member. There’s five states that are really affected by SALT, and New York and New Jersey were the most vocal,”

“We had over 30 members from those states,” Scalise said of 2017. “By the way we still have close to that today.”

For now, negotiations over taxes are mired in an ongoing strategic debate over whether to do two reconciliation bills, addressing border and energy policies first and taxes later, or enact all of the Republicans’ policy priorities together.

Still, there are plenty of Republicans who detest the idea of raising the SALT cap because they believe it unfairly benefits wealthy taxpayers in high-tax states.

“We’ve got people on both ends, Republicans and Democrats who don’t like it,” said House Ways and Means committee member Kevin Hern (R-Okla.).

According to Donald Trump Jr., “It’s time for House Republicans to pass the Kids Online Safety Act ASAP.”

Speaker Mike Johnson disagrees.

Johnson says he remains concerned that the Senate-passed bill, the first serious attempt by Congress to force social media companies to do more to protect kids online, “might lead to further censorship by the government of valid conservative voices” and that more negotiation was needed.

In other words, a Saturday offer from the principal GOP Senate sponsor, Tennessee’s Marsha Blackburn, to make changes to the bill, combined with endorsements from Trump Jr. and Elon Musk, haven’t yet gotten Johnson on board.

But Johnson has softened his “no” a little, saying that if an agreement weren’t possible this year, Republicans could take up the measure again in 2025. “All of us, a hundred percent of us, support the principle behind it, but you’ve got to get this one right,” he said.

Why it matters: Blackburn’s bill would create a “duty of care” requiring social media firms to change design features that addict kids and allow unwanted contact from people they don’t know.Changes she offered over the weekend would limit the regulation of platform design so it only applies to personalized features, and also limit the duty of care to only harms that are related to features that stoke compulsive usage. She also emphasized that her new version does not allow the Federal Trade Commission or any other government entity to go after protected speech, another worry House Republicans have expressed.

But despite a lobbying campaign that also includes parents, advocacy groups, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and attorneys general in over 35 states, Johnson hasn’t relented.

The opponents of the legislation include unusual bedfellows: Facebook parent Meta, tech lobbying group NetChoice, and conservative and liberal groups concerned about speech, including Fight for the Future, the ACLU, and Patriot Voices, an advocacy group started by former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.).

Johnson said that waiting till next year, when Republicans will have unified control of Congress and the White House, would speed negotiations. But that might effectively kill the bill.

Blackburn’s version passed the Senate as part of a two-bill package in a bipartisan 91-3 July vote.

But when the House Energy and Commerce Committee took up another version of the bill in September, the sponsor, Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.), agreed to make changes requested by GOP leaders that proponents of the Senate bill said made it much weaker.

For example, Bilirakis changed the duty-of-care language so that it only applied to the physical health of minors. The surgeon general has found that social media poses a significant danger to kids’ mental health.

Tech industry opponents of the bill want to get rid of the duty-of-care language entirely, arguing it could force them to suppress content.

What’s next: Parents groups that support KOSA are demonstrating on Capitol Hill today, putting up a tree with presents bearing the names of children who the parents say died because of social media.

They are still hoping to convince lawmakers to attach KOSA to end-of-year spending legislation.

Jordain Carney contributed to this story.

Sen. Tom Cotton has blocked a first-of-its-kind federal shield law for journalists against revealing their confidential sources, arguing its passage would represent a threat to national security.

“The liberal media doesn’t deserve more protections,” Cotton (R-Ark.), who will chair the Intelligence Committee next year, said on the Senate floor. “The press badge doesn’t make you better than the rest of America or put you above the law.”

The Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act — or the PRESS Act — previously passed the House by voice vote in January.

Cotton said he was providing the “sober second thought” to the “rash, impetuous, hasty, impulsive” action by the House on the legislation.

Under the bill, federal entities would be barred — except in rare and narrow circumstances — from using subpoenas, search warrants, or other compulsory actions to force journalists to reveal sources. The protections would also apply to third parties like email providers and phone companies, shielding them from being forced to release potentially identifying information.

“The PRESS Act [is] very important to us to preserve the press,” Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a strong supporter of the bill, said at a press conference earlier on Tuesday. “We hope Republicans don’t block it.”

Lead sponsors of the legislation span the ideological spectrum to include Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). Attempts to pass the measure comes as incoming President-elect Donald Trump has railed against the media, often going so far as to label journalists as “enemies of the people.”

President-elect Donald Trump is considering replacing Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan with Andrew Ferguson.

Trump has not made a final decision and is set to meet with Ferguson this afternoon, according to a person familiar with the meeting who was granted anonymity to discuss the potential nomination. A decision could come soon.

If selected, Ferguson won’t need Senate confirmation since he is already on the commission.

Ferguson, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment, is well-known in Republican circles. He previously did stints as chief counsel for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and was the former solicitor general for Virginia. Ferguson was also a senior special counsel for incoming Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).

Grassley told POLITICO on Tuesday that he reached out to Trump’s transition team about the benefits of picking Ferguson.

“He’s already a member of the commission, and he worked so hard for me,” Grassley said of his endorsement. “He headed up our judicial nominees for the Supreme Court — that’s a tough job. And I know his work ethic is very strong, he’s a strong person of convictions and he’s going to see that the law’s enforced.”

Asked about Ferguson’s potential pick, Graham told POLITICO, “We’ll keep our fingers crossed.” He declined to elaborate on any recent conversations, saying “I just want to lay low right now, don’t want to screw it up.”

Other contenders may still be in the mix. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary’s antitrust subcommittee, told POLITICO he recommended his former staffer Mark Meador for an FTC role “one way or another.”

Meador is “one of several who I think could be considered for the chair role,” Lee said.

Lee stressed that whoever is named to the FTC “ought to see the same way as the incoming administration” and particularly dovetail with the ideology of Gail Slater, Trump’s recent pick to head the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, which frequently works — and occasionally clashes — with the FTC on antitrust matters.

“That’s one of the reasons I point them to Mark Meador,” Lee added. “Birds of a feather.”

Ferguson has taken a tough line on tech platforms in recent weeks, which is in line with several of other top Trump picks so far, including Brendan Carr, the incoming chair of the Federal Communications Commission.

“The FTC must protect Americans’ freedom of speech online,” Ferguson wrote in a statement early in December. “If platforms or advertisers are colluding to suppress free speech in violation of the antitrust laws, the FTC must prosecute them and break up those cartels.”

Newly sworn-in Sen. Adam Schiff said Tuesday that it would be unnecessary for President Joe Biden to issue preemptive pardons for members of the Jan. 6 committee.

“I don’t think the incoming president should be threatening his political opponents with jail time,” Schiff (D-Calif) said at a press conference alongside Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. “Nor do I think that a pardon is necessary for members of the Jan. 6 committee. We’re proud of the work we did on that committee.”

Schumer seemed to agree that a pardon wouldn’t be necessary for Schiff: “He broke no laws whatsoever, and the truth stands for itself.”

The committee had voted in 2022 to refer President-elect Donald Trump for criminal prosecution for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

The comments come after President Joe Biden issued a comprehensive pardon for his son, Hunter Biden. The president’s inner circle is mulling whether to issue additional preemptive pardons for political enemies of President-elect Donald Trump.