President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Energy Department, Chris Wright, said Wednesday he supported increasing global access to oil and gas — even as he acknowledged that fossil fuels were driving climate change.

“Energy is critical to human lives. Climate change is a global challenge that we need to solve,” Wright said. “And the trade-offs between those two are the decisions politicians make, and they’re the decisions that will impact the future of our world.”

Wright, who is the CEO of Colorado-based fracking services company Liberty Energy, faced numerous questions Wednesday over his previous comments on climate change and his support for growing U.S. fossil fuel production and exports.

Wright’s comments came in response to questions from Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), who called Wright “a walking energy transition” and dubbed his positions on climate change to be “more subtle” than is publicly recognized.

“Predictions are hard, particularly about the future, and I think we need to be humble about that,” Wright said on Wednesday. Instead, Wright called for the advancement of energy technologies “that grow the amount of energy we have and drive down the cost,” as well as lowering emissions.

Climate protesters disrupted Wright’s hearing earlier Wednesday who sought to link Wright to the disastrous L.A. wildfires.

Donald Trump has called for former special counsel Jack Smith to be prosecuted and even thrown out of the U.S., but the president-elect’s pick for attorney general declined to say Wednesday whether she’d investigate Smith’s conduct if confirmed.

“I haven’t seen the file. I haven’t seen the investigation. I haven’t looked at anything,” Pam Bondi said during questioning by Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) “It would be irresponsible of me to make a commitment.”

During a testy exchange, Bondi told Schiff she wouldn’t rely on his “summary” of the situation to make a decision, prompting the senator to reply: “Not a summary by the president either?”

“I will look at the facts and evidence,” she replied.

Smith resigned from the Justice Department last week after submitting his final report on his investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and the presence of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after he left office in 2021.

Former Vice President Mike Pence’s organization, Advancing American Freedom, is calling for senators to vote against Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s nomination for Health and Human Services secretary over his past support for abortion access.

The letter from the conservative advocacy group Advancing American Freedom, first reported Wednesday by Daily Wire, criticized Kennedy as being “pro-abortion,” specifically over his past support for abortions later in pregnancy. This position is “completely out of step with the strong, pro-life record of the first Trump Administration,” the group wrote.

“While RFK Jr. has made certain overtures to pro-life leaders that he would be mindful of their concerns at HHS,” the AAF said in their letter, “there is little reason for confidence at this time.”

HHS plays a big role in abortion access nationwide. Under its jurisdiction lies funding for Planned Parenthood and potential access or restrictions to the abortion drug mifepristone. As secretary, the enforcement of Trump’s policies surrounding abortion access would fall directly under Kennedy’s purview.

But Kennedy’s record on abortion is all over the place, leaving him facing a complicated confirmation process. During his own presidential campaign, Kennedy at first seemed to support a ban after the first 15 weeksof pregnancy, but then he reversed that stance and emphasized “a woman’s right to choose” and said he would back legislation that restored the protections from Roe v. Wade, which was overturned during Trump’s first term.

In May, he gave a full-throated support of abortion access, “even if it’s full-term,” only to walk back the comment in a post on X.“I support the emerging consensus that abortion should be unrestricted up until a certain point,” he wrote.

AAF isn’t the first to raise red flags over Kennedy’s record on abortion. Pence himself, a staunch opponent of abortion, already voiced his disapprovalof Kennedy’s nomination back in November, saying if confirmed, Kennedy would be “the most pro-abortion Republican appointed secretary of HHS in modern history.”

Since his nomination, Kennedy has been courting abortion opponents on the Hill like Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who he met with in December. Hawley posted on X that Kennedy would support reinstating Trump’s anti-abortion policies, including the Mexico City policy which blocks federal funding for NGOs that advocate for abortion or provide abortion services.

The Trump Vance Inaugural Committee on Wednesday announced the list of musical performers for the president-elect’s inauguration activities. Gear up for a lot of country.

During Trump’s swearing-in ceremony on Monday, country music star Carrie Underwood and singer-songwriter Lee Greenwood will perform. American tenor Christopher Macchio will lead the National Anthem.

At the “Make America Great Again Victory Rally,” singer songwriter and longtime Trump ally Kid Rock, disco band The Village People, singer songwriter Billy Ray Cyrus and Greenwood will perform.

At the “Liberty Ball,” country singer Jason Aldean, the Village People and a “surprise musical guest” are listed as performers. Country band Rascal Flatts and country music star Parker McCollum will perform at the “Commander-in-Chief Ball.” And singer songwriter Gavin DeDraw is the headliner for the “Starlight Ball.”

Tensions at the confirmation hearing for Pam Bondi, Trump’s pick for attorney general, boiled over Wednesday afternoon, as Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) pressed Bondi about her role in Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

“You pointed your finger at me and said you were speaking,” Bondi interjected, as the two attempted to speak over one another in the line of questioning around Bondi’s involvement in the campaign to block Joe Biden’s win in Pennsylvania. “I’m not going to be bullied by you Senator Padilla.”

Bondi’s previous confrontations with Democratic senators had been relatively uncontentious, even as they pushed Bondi to answer questions around the results of the 2020 election that Bondi largely obfuscated. But the interaction with Padilla got testy.

When Padilla moved on to a line of questioning related to the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which concerns birthright citizenship, Bondi quipped that the senator did not want to hear her answer regarding the activities in Pennsylvania. Padilla again questioned Bondi about her interpretation of the 14th Amendment.

“I didn’t take your homework assignment,” she said. “I’m sorry, I was preparing for today.”

First lady Jill Biden shared her disappointment with Nancy Pelosi amid the former speaker’s role in President Joe Biden’s decision to exit the presidential race last year, in an interview with The Washington Post published Wednesday.

“We were friends for 50 years,” Jill Biden told the Post, in what appear to be her first public comments about Pelosi since the president dropped his reelection bid. “It was disappointing.”

Following the president’s shaky debate performance and growing questions from Democratic lawmakers about his capability to beat former President Donald Trump, Pelosi privately shared her concerns with Biden that he was dragging down the party and urged the president to make a decision about stepping down, POLITICO reported in July.

In a now-infamous interview with “Morning Joe” on MSNBC last July, Pelosi questioned if Biden would stay in the race after the president had already publicly said he intended to continue his reelection bid.

“It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run,” Pelosi told MSNBC. “We’re all encouraging him to make that decision, because time is running short.”

Biden dropped his bid and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee less than two weeks later, and POLITICO reported in August that Biden harbored frustrations at the former speaker for helping show him the door.

Pelosi told The New York Times in an interview days after Trump won the presidency that she believed the outcome could have been different had Biden stepped aside sooner.

“Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” she told the Times, adding, “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary.”

Secretary of State nominee Marco Rubio didn’t rule out designating Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations during his Senate confirmation hearing, previewing a sharp crackdown by the incoming Trump administration on threats to the U.S. southern border.

“These sophisticated transnational terroristic organizations have operational and functional control over huge swaths of areas that border the United States of America,” he told senators Wednesday. “It is important for us not just to go after these groups but identify them and call them for what they are and that is terroristic in their nature.”

Rubio said he’d prefer to work collaboratively with Mexico instead of turning to military force to root out drug cartels. But he didn’t rule out the possibility of the latter as an option President-elect Donald Trump may choose.

“President Trump is someone that never publicly discusses his options and leaves himself the flexibility to act,” said Rubio, a senator from Florida. “I think there’s a lot we can and we’ll continue to do in close partnership with our allies in Mexico. I think there’s more they can do as well to confront this challenge, and my preference would be, from the Department of State’s perspective, my preference would be that we can work with the Mexicans on this issue cooperatively, because it is impacting their nation as much as ours.”

Pam Bondi has argued in courton behalf of a pro-Trump legal group that special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional because he wasn’t confirmed by the Senate, despite his broad prosecutorial powers.

But on Wednesday, Trump’s pick for attorney general said under current law, special counsels “don’t need to be confirmed by the Senate.”

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) homed in on the apparent contradiction in her position during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“I will follow the law, senator,” Bondi said.

“Understood,” Coons responded. “Just getting to the clarity about the position you have advocated and what the current law is.”

Smith, appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, brought two federal criminal cases against the president-elect. The special counsel ended his pursuit of those prosecutions shortly after Trump won the 2024 election.

Attorney general nominee Pam Bondi declined to say Wednesday whether she would enforce the law set to kick in on Sunday that would ban the popular social media app TikTok if it isn’t sold to a new owner.

While Bondi vowed to follow the law on other subjects, she was evasive when Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) pressed her on whether she would make sure that the ban takes effect despite the fact that President-elect Donald Trump has urged the Supreme Court to put the law on hold.

“That is pending litigation within the Department of Justice. … I can’t discuss pending litigation,” Bondi said.

The Supreme Court heard arguments last Friday on cases challenging the constitutionality of the law, but has yet to rule.