Trump Transition Live Updates: House Ethics Panel Deadlocks on Whether to Release Gaetz Report
Where Things Stand
Representative Michael Guest, the Mississippi Republican who heads the House Ethics Committee, said the panel did not reach an agreement about whether to release its report into sexual misconduct allegations against former Representative Matt Gaetz. Mr. Gaetz resigned from the House when President-elect Donald J. Trump announced his intention to nominate him for attorney general. Read more ›
Vice President-elect JD Vance is spending his day on Capitol Hill with Mr. Gaetz for meetings with senators in hopes of smoothing his path to confirmation. Read more ›
Mr. Trump said he intended to nominate Matthew Whitaker, an acting attorney general in his first administration, as his ambassador to NATO. Mr. Trump has repeatedly voiced skepticism about the alliance, particularly in light of the war in Ukraine, and he has long threatened to withdraw from it. More administration picks ›
The House Ethics Committee deadlocked on Wednesday on whether to release a report about sexual misconduct and illicit drug use allegations against former Representative Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican who is President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice for attorney general, setting up a possible constitutional clash between the House and the Senate.
Senators in both parties have clamored to see the bipartisan conclusions of the panel’s yearslong investigation into Mr. Gaetz’s conduct as part of their vetting of presidential nominees, who normally require Senate confirmation.
But since Mr. Trump named Mr. Gaetz last week as his choice to head the Justice Department, House Republicans have been reluctant to make the report public. And following an hourslong meeting of the secretive ethics panel on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Representative Michael Guest, the Mississippi Republican who chairs the committee, emerged to say only: “There was no agreement by the committee to release the report.”
He declined to comment further, as did other members of the panel, which includes five Republicans and five Democrats.
Speaker Mike Johnson pressured the committee last week not to release its findings on Mr. Gaetz, arguing that it would constitute a “terrible breach of protocol” to do so after a member had resigned, putting him beyond the panel’s jurisdiction. He also privately urged Mr. Guest not to make the findings public.
Mr. Gaetz abruptly resigned from Congress last week when Mr. Trump announced plans to tap him, days before the Ethics Committee had been set to take a vote on the report. That meeting was then abruptly scrapped.
In the Senate, Republicans and Democrats alike have demanded to see the report as part of the confirmation process. Some Republican lawmakers, like Senator John Cornyn of Texas, have suggested that the Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over Justice Department nominees, could subpoena the House committee if it did not willingly hand over the file.
On Wednesday, Mr. Gaetz was on Capitol Hill accompanied by Vice President-elect JD Vance as he met with Republican senators. Many senators in both parties have expressed concern over the choice of Mr. Gaetz to lead the Justice Department.
In addition to his ethical and legal challenges, Mr. Gaetz has a long record of gleefully disparaging some Republican senators whose votes he now needs to be confirmed. For instance, he has referred to Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, as “dangerous” and coined the nickname “McFailure” for him. But on Wednesday, he was working to shore up support with Republican skeptics, including Mr. Cornyn and Senator Susan Collins of Maine.
Since the spring of 2021, the ethics panel had been investigating Mr. Gaetz over an array of allegations, including that he had engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use and accepted gifts that violated House rules.
The secretive congressional investigation, conducted by a panel of five Republicans and five Democrats, paused while the Justice Department carried out a related investigation of Mr. Gaetz’s conduct, including allegations involving sex trafficking and sex with a minor. In February, the Justice Department decided not to bring charges against Mr. Gaetz after concluding it could not make a strong enough case in court. Once the Justice Department inquiry ended, the Ethics Committee resumed its work.
The panel interviewed more than a dozen witnesses, issued 25 subpoenas and reviewed thousands of pages of documents. The committee said in June that it was continuing to investigate the allegations that Mr. Gaetz may have engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts, dispensed special privileges and favors to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct.
On Wednesday, Judiciary Committee Democrats wrote to Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, requesting “the complete evidentiary file” on Mr. Gaetz, including from a Justice Department investigation and the Ethics Committee inquiry, a letter reported earlier by Politico.
Mr. Gaetz has denounced the ethics inquiry as a “political payback exercise” and suggested it was arranged by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, his bitter rival whose ouster he orchestrated last year.
In a public letter from September, Mr. Gaetz called the Ethics Committee’s work “uncomfortably nosy” and complained that it involved questions about details of his sexual activity.
“The lawful, consensual sexual activities of adults are not the business of Congress,” he wrote.
He noted he had already been investigated by the Justice Department, which opted not to pursue the case.
“The very people who have lied to the Ethics Committee were also lying to them,” he said.
Luke Broadwater and Aishvarya Kavi contributed reporting.
Representative Susan Wild, the ranking Democrat on the House Ethics Committee, said in a statement on behalf of the Democrats on the committee that there was a vote on whether or not to release the report, but the group came out deadlocked. Noting that the committee is evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, she said that “in order to affirmatively move something forward, somebody has to cross party lines and vote with the other side,” but “that did not happen in today’s vote.”
Reporting on Congress
Wild said the committee had agreed to reconvene on December 5 to further discuss the Gaetz report.
After leaving the meeting room, the chairman of the Ethics Committee, Representative Michael Guest, said “there was not an agreement by the committee to release the report.” He did not comment on whether the committee took a vote.
Marco Rubio
Secretary of state
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Health secretary
Linda McMahon
Education secretary
Doug Burgum
Interior secretary
Pete Hegseth
Defense secretary
Chris Wright
Energy secretary
Matt Gaetz
Attorney general
Dr. Mehmet Oz
Medicare and Medicaid administrator
Howard Lutnick
Commerce secretary
Sean Duffy
Transportation secretary
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTReporting on Congress
Representative Sean Casten, Democrat of Illinois, said in a statement that if the Ethics Committee refused to release the Matt Gaetz report, he would move to force the entire House to vote on its release.
After two hours, the members of the House Ethics Committee are leaving their meeting. So far, the Democratic members would not even comment about whether they took a vote on whether to release the Gaetz report.
Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday said single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House office buildings would be available only to those of that biological sex, backing a move from a far-right member to target the first openly transgender person elected to Congress.
The new restrictions, which apply to restrooms, changing rooms and locker rooms, were first proposed by Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina but quickly gained the support of other Republican women. Ms. Mace made it clear that her efforts were designed to target one individual, Representative-elect Sarah McBride, a Delaware Democrat who this month became the first openly transgender person elected to Congress.
“Women deserve women’s only spaces,” Mr. Johnson said in a statement, giving his unequivocal backing to Ms. Mace’s resolution. On Tuesday, Mr. Johnson had appeared noncommittal about any rules he might impose on use of the Capitol and House facilities.
When Ms. McBride won her seat earlier this month, she knew she would face attacks from hard-right Republicans over her identity. But she did not expect they would start before she had even been sworn in.
In Washington this week, Ms. McBride was plodding through mundane orientation activities such as cybersecurity training and learning how to introduce a bill when Ms. Mace announced she would try to bar transgender women from using women’s restrooms and changing rooms in the Capitol complex. The proposal would apply to all employees and officers of the House.
“Sarah McBride doesn’t get a say,” Ms. Mace told reporters on Monday. “I mean, this is a biological man.” Ms. McBride, she added, “does not belong in women’s spaces, women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms — period, full stop.”
The move by Ms. Mace, one of the more attention-seeking members in the House, was straight out of the political playbook Republicans have employed on transgender issues, which they see as an effective wedge to divide Democrats.
House Republicans in the last two years have routinely proposed legislation seeking to roll back transgender rights. And Republican-led state legislatures across the country have tried to pass laws requiring people in government buildings to use bathrooms associated with their sex assigned at birth.
In the final days of the campaign, President-elect Donald J. Trump hammered Vice President Kamala Harris on her stance on transgender rights. And in the days since Democrats lost the White House and both chambers of Congress, there has been much hand-wringing among them about whether their position on the issue cost them with voters.
With Ms. McBride’s arrival in Washington, House Republicans for the first time have a transgender colleague to target in their own workplace.
On Wednesday, Ms. McBride said she would “follow the rules” laid out by Mr. Johnson, “even if I disagree with them.” In a statement, she said she was “not here to fight about bathrooms” and called the controversy an “effort to distract from the real issues facing this country.”
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTReporting on Congress
Representative-elect Sarah McBride of Delaware, a Democrat and the first openly transgender lawmaker elected to Congress, said in a statement that she had agreed to “follow the rules” if she were barred from using women’s restrooms in the Capitol complex, as proposed by Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina and supported by House Speaker Mike Johnson. McBride said she was “not here to fight about bathrooms” and called the focus on them an “effort to distract from the real issues facing this country.”
Linda McMahon, who is President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick for education secretary, has a slimmer educational résumé than has been typical of candidates for the position.
She became certified as a French teacher in college, but she married young and did not end up in the classroom. She has served for 16 years on the board of trustees for Sacred Heart University in Connecticut, where a student center is named for her. She also spent just over a year on the Connecticut State Board of Education, before resigning in 2010 to run as a Republican for a Senate seat.
As a political force, however, she has been a “fierce advocate” for transforming the nation’s educational system in a way that Mr. Trump supports, he said when announcing her selection.
Chief among those policies is school choice, meaning that some money that would normally flow to public schools will instead go to families, who can spend it on private education. This was a major push under Mr. Trump’s previous education secretary, Betsy DeVos. Since then, more states have instituted this policy through taxpayer-funded voucher programs.
“As Secretary of Education, Linda will fight tirelessly to expand ‘Choice’ to every State in America, and empower parents to make the best Education decisions for their families,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Trump also said Ms. McMahon’s business experience, including as the former chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment, would help her spearhead an effort to “send Education back to the states” — a reference to one of his key education campaign pledges: to reduce or eliminate the federal Department of Education.
The platform Ms. McMahon has championed as the chair of the board at the America First Policy Institute also supports teaching American history in a more patriotic, less critical way and increasing transparency for parents about what is taught in classrooms. It also backs expanding technical education opportunities and moving away from an emphasis on college for all, a bipartisan push embraced by many in the education world.
On Tuesday, Ms. McMahon posted a message on social media praising “apprenticeship programs” and highlighting examples of them in Switzerland, which is often cited as a high-performing country whose model the United States should follow.
She also has backed a House bill to make federal Pell grants available for those pursuing skills training programs and technical education, not just traditional college degrees.
“Our educational system must offer clear and viable pathways to the American Dream aside from four-year degrees,” she wrote in a column for The Hill in September.
Ms. McMahon’s support of the Pell grant bill was troubling to many advocates of college affordability. The bill would open up the grants to programs that are as short as eight weeks and let the for-profit sector more easily tap federal aid, said Aissa Canchola-Bañez, policy director at the Student Borrower Protection Center. She said she worried it would help “some of the most shady actors in the higher education space.”
For-profit colleges have stirred political conflict. Many Democrats say they have taken advantage of students and of federal money, often posting poor outcomes compared with many of their nonprofit peers. Republicans, including those in the last Trump administration, see the sector, which often operates online, as an important option for students and have championed policies that help it.
The for-profit college sector applauded Ms. McMahon’s selection.
“Under her leadership, we are confident that the new Department of Education will take a more reasoned and thoughtful approach in addressing many of the overreaching and punitive regulations put forth by the Biden administration, especially those targeting career schools,” Jason Altmire, president of Career Education Colleges and Universities, a trade group that represents the for-profit sector, said in a statement.
For universities that faced accusations over the last year that they were allowing antisemitism to go unchecked on their campuses, there are some clues about how she might view the issue.
The America First Policy Institute has said combating campus antisemitism is a major priority, though Ms. McMahon appears not to have personally written about it. Its publications, for example, call for universities to explicitly disavow language some deem antisemitic and for the elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion programming, which the group says has fueled antisemitism because it teaches students to understand the world in terms of victims and oppressors and, the group says, codes Jewish people as oppressors.
Reactions to her nomination from union leaders, public school advocates and some Democrats were fierce and swift.
“By selecting Linda McMahon, Donald Trump is showing that he could not care less about our students’ futures,” Becky Pringle, the president of the National Education Association, said in a statement. She added, “McMahon’s only mission is to eliminate the Department of Education and take away taxpayer dollars from public schools.”
“Donald Trump has chosen yet another unqualified, dangerous sycophant to carry out his agenda,” said Gaylynn Burroughs, vice president of education and workplace justice at the National Women’s Law Center.
But Ms. McMahon’s allies in the area of school choice were delighted.
“Linda is a fierce patriot and a champion for Americans, and I believe that the first thing she can do is empower parents to be in the driver’s seat when it comes to their children’s education,” Tiffany Justice, a co-founder of the parental rights group Moms for Liberty, said in an interview.
She said that in her view, “President Trump has made excellent cabinet choices,” and that by choosing Ms. McMahon, “he is proving that he is dedicated to reclaiming America and getting us back on track.”
Others took a more measured view, saying they looked forward to learning more about her educational views or finding common ground.
Robert C. Scott, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said in a statement that while he was “staunchly opposed to President-elect Trump’s education agenda” he would “wait to pass judgment on her nomination until she has been fully vetted by the Senate.”
And Ted Mitchell, the president of the American Council on Education, congratulated Ms. McMahon and said that his organization looked forward to working with her on shared priorities such as “ensuring college access and affordability, supporting student success, and advancing cutting-edge research that saves lives and protects our national security.”
Isabelle Taft, Anemona Hartocollis and Vimal Patel contributed reporting.
President-elect Donald J. Trump chastised Senate Republicans for not being present to vote against President Biden’s judicial nominees, saying on social media that Republicans “need to show up and hold the line — No more judges confirmed before Inauguration Day!” Democrats will continue to hold a majority in the Senate until January, so Republicans would be unable to defeat a nomination even if all 49 Republicans showed up to vote against them.
Vice President-elect JD Vance, who is still a senator for Ohio, insulted a conservative commentator yesterday as a “mouth breathing imbecile” for similar attacks against him and other Republican senators who missed votes on judges. Vance has since deleted that social media post.
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
President-elect Donald J. Trump has picked Matthew G. Whitaker, who briefly served as acting attorney general in the first Trump administration, to serve as ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the next one.
Mr. Whitaker, 55, served for about three months as the nation’s top law enforcement official after Jeff Sessions stepped down, and before William P. Barr was confirmed to succeed him. His short tenure at the helm of the Justice Department was marked by internal tensions and distrust as senior officials vied for the attention and favor of a president consumed by a special counsel investigation into his campaign.
Mr. Whitaker does not bring foreign policy experience to a job that may serve as a focal point for Mr. Trump’s complaints about how much the United States pays to help NATO keep Europe secure. But Mr. Whitaker, known for his personal loyalty and willingness to defend Mr. Trump during his first administration, is likely to bring a similar approach to his ambassadorship.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly voiced skepticism about the alliance, and he has long threatened to withdraw from it. At one point on the campaign trail, he said he would encourage Russia to do what it wished against allies that weren’t meeting NATO’s targets for defense military spending. The president-elect has also promised to quickly negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, which could require Ukraine to make major concessions to Moscow. NATO countries have spent billions of dollars of aid shoring up Ukraine’s military.
In a statement announcing the choice, Mr. Trump said Mr. Whitaker “will strengthen relationships with our NATO Allies, and stand firm in the face of threats to Peace and Stability — He will put AMERICA FIRST.”
Mr. Whitaker, who played football at the University of Iowa, leveraged his local celebrity early in his legal career, securing an appointment to serve as a U.S. attorney in Iowa by President George W. Bush, despite having no experience in law enforcement, on the recommendation of Charles E. Grassley, the longtime senator from Iowa. Mr. Whitaker showed political ambition in the job, unsuccessfully applying for the Iowa Supreme Court in 2011 and running in the Republican primary for a U.S. Senate seat in Iowa in 2014.
He first gained Mr. Trump’s notice as he fiercely defended the president while appearing as a political commentator on CNN in 2017, and was interviewed by Mr. Trump’s White House counsel about joining the president’s legal team. Mr. Whitaker instead returned to the Justice Department to serve as chief of staff for Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, in October 2017.
As Mr. Sessions’s relationship with Mr. Trump deteriorated leading up to the 2018 midterms, Mr. Trump floated Mr. Whitaker to his advisers as a potential replacement in the hopes that Mr. Whitaker would either wind down the special counsel’s investigation or work to protect the president from it.
On Nov. 7, 2018, hours after the election was over, Mr. Trump fired Mr. Sessions and replaced him with Mr. Whitaker in an acting capacity. He served until Mr. Barr took over the Justice Department in February 2019.
Michael Crowley and Michael Gold contributed reporting.
Vice President-elect JD Vance has emerged from his Capitol meeting room a few times today to cast votes in the Senate, but otherwise he and Matt Gaetz, Trump's choice for attorney general, have remained behind closed doors as Republican senators have trickled in and out. Currently the two men are meeting with three senators: Susan Collins, John Cornyn and John Kennedy. Vance is planning to return to the Capitol tomorrow to hold similar meetings with Pete Hegseth, the Fox News anchor who has been picked as the next secretary of defense.
Reporting on Congress
Members of the House Ethics Committee are arriving for a closed-door meeting during which they are expected to discuss and potentially vote on whether to release a report on their investigation into former Representative Matt Gaetz. The members have all remained tight-lipped about their plans for the meeting when pressed by reporters.
Reporting on Congress
Representative Susan Wild of Pennsylvania, the top Democrat on the committee, kept a stone-faced stare as she walked past reporters who bombarded her with questions. “I’m not going to make a comment,” she said. “I previously stated I think the report should be released, and that’s my final comment.”
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTAfter initially remaining noncommittal, Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday sided with Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, who is planning to introduce a measure to bar transgender women from using women’s restrooms and changing rooms in the Capitol complex. Her move was designed specifically to target the first transgender member of Congress, Representative-elect Sarah McBride, Democrat of Delaware.
“All single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House Office Buildings — such as restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms — are reserved for individuals of that biological sex,” Johnson said in a statement. “Women deserve women’s only spaces.” He noted that members have private restrooms and there are unisex restrooms available throughout the Capitol.
Vice President-elect JD Vance was on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to usher Matt Gaetz, one of Donald J. Trump’s most embattled Cabinet picks, to meetings with key senators. It amounts to the highest profile public assignment for Mr. Trump’s heir apparent since the president-elect won the White House earlier this month.
Mr. Vance shepherded Mr. Gaetz, the former representative from Florida who is Mr. Trump’s pick to be the nation’s next attorney general. On Thursday, he’s expected to do the same for Pete Hegseth, the Fox News host who is up for secretary of defense. Both men are under fire for past allegations of sexual misconduct.
Even Republican senators have expressed alarm about the selection of Mr. Gaetz, whose resignation from the House last week effectively ended a yearslong investigation by the House Ethics Committee into accusations that he engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use.
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said he met with Mr. Vance and Mr. Gaetz and told them there would be “no rubber stamps, no lynch mobs” in the confirmation process. “These allegations will be dealt with in committee, but he deserves a chance to confront his accusers,” Graham told reporters.
Mr. Hegseth, a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is facing allegations that he sexually assaulted a woman, which he has denied. A co-host of a weekend Fox News program, he also faces questions about his ability to serve as the incoming president’s principal adviser on defense policy while leading an agency overseeing 750 military bases worldwide. Mr. Hegseth’s meetings with senators had been scheduled for Wednesday before being pushed back a day.
But Mr. Trump has remained unequivocal about his choices and has assigned his running mate, a senator from Ohio, the task of shepherding them through the initial stages of their confirmation process. That task is not typically carried out by the vice president-elect; usually it is a job for a midlevel official or someone with deep personal relationships on the Hill.
Mr. Vance has maintained a behind-the-scenes role in the two weeks since the election, a departure from the spotlight he commanded as a vice-presidential candidate when he participated in 149 interviews in less than four months on the campaign trail.
That shift, combined with the increasing presence at Mr. Trump’s side of Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has raised questions about Mr. Vance’s role in the administration. Michael Steele, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said on MSNBC on Sunday that Mr. Musk had “sandwiched himself between JD Vance and the president — that’s the relationship that is going to play out here in Washington.”
Aides to the president-elect said that Mr. Vance has been in all of the key transition meetings with Mr. Trump, including those with Mr. Musk and Howard Lutnick, the chairman of the transition whom Mr. Trump has selected as his secretary of commerce.
Mr. Vance showed some irritation on Tuesday at questions about his whereabouts when Grace Chong, the chief financial officer for the WarRoom podcast, a pro-Trump program hosted by Steve Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief White House strategist, criticized Mr. Vance on social media for missing votes in the Senate.
Mr. Vance responded by calling Ms. Chong a “mouth breathing imbecile” and saying that he was with Mr. Trump in Mar-a-Lago helping interview potential administration officials, including the next director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the timing of Pete Hegseth’s visit to Capitol Hill. His appearance was moved to Thursday; he was not there on Wednesday, as previously expected.
When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.Learn more
Donald J. Trump said he intended to nominate Matthew Whitaker, who served as acting attorney general in his administration and was a top campaign surrogate in Iowa, to be his ambassador to NATO. Trump has repeatedly voiced skepticism about the alliance, particularly in light of the war in Ukraine, which is not a member, and he has long threatened to withdraw from it. At one point on the campaign trail he said he would encourage Russian aggression against allies he did not feel were spending enough on their own defense.
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTVice President-elect JD Vance appeared to offer a glimpse of his message to fellow senators with a social media post this morning that credited Trump’s “major electoral victory” for the Senate Republican majority. “He deserves a cabinet that is loyal to the agenda he was elected to implement,” Vance wrote.
Senators Josh Hawley of Missouri and Mike Lee of Utah just arrived at Senator Mitch McConnell’s office suite, which Vance and Gaetz are using as a base for their meetings today. Hawley called the confirmation process a “great opportunity” for Gaetz. “He’s denied everything, but the hearing is an opportunity for him to — under oath in front of everybody — to walk through it,” Hawley told reporters.
Vance and Gaetz appear to be starting the day meeting with Republican senators who have been openly supportive of the Florida congressman. They have not yet met with McConnell, the outgoing party leader who has so far stayed mum on Trump’s most divisive cabinet picks.
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, just left a meeting with Vice President-elect JD Vance and Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general. He said he discussed, at least indirectly, the allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use involving Gaetz. Graham said he told the two men there would be “no rubber stamps, no lynch mobs” in the confirmation process.
“These allegations will be dealt with in committee, but he deserves a chance to confront his accusers,” Graham told reporters.
Vice President-elect JD Vance arrived at the Capitol this morning in a motorcade with former Representative Matt Gaetz, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick to be attorney general. They have a full day of meetings as they try to cobble together support for Gaetz’s nomination, which will need the support of some senators he’s bashed in order to succeed.
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe House Ethics Committee was set to vote last week on whether to release its report about Matt Gaetz, Trump’s choice for attorney general. But it canceled that meeting after Gaetz abruptly resigned from Congress. Since then, Speaker Mike Johnson has pressured the committee and its chairman not to release the report publicly, arguing that it would be a violation of the rules to release information about a former lawmaker.
The committee is split evenly on party lines, five Democrats and five Republicans. Their meeting today is behind closed doors.
President-elect Donald J. Trump on Tuesday tapped Linda McMahon, a former professional wrestling executive who ran the Small Business Administration for much of his first term, to lead the Education Department, an agency he has routinely singled out for elimination in his upcoming term.
A close friend of Mr. Trump’s and a longtime booster of his political career, Ms. McMahon had been among his early donors leading up to his electoral victory in 2016 and has been one of the leaders of his transition team, vetting other potential appointees and drafting potential executive orders since August.
In Ms. McMahon, 76, Mr. Trump has elevated someone far outside the mold of traditional candidates for the role, an executive with no teaching background or professional experience steering education policy, other than an appointment in 2009 to the Connecticut State Board of Education, where she served for just over a year.
But Ms. McMahon is likely to be assigned the fraught task of carrying out what is widely expected to be a thorough and determined dismantling of the department’s core functions. And she would assume the role at a time when school districts across the country are facing budget shortfalls, many students are not making up ground lost during the pandemic in reading and math, and many colleges and universities are shrinking and closing amid a larger loss of faith in the value of higher education.
“We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort,” Mr. Trump said in a statement announcing the decision on Tuesday.
Ms. McMahon led the Small Business Administration during Mr. Trump’s first term and resigned in 2019 without a public fallout or rift with Mr. Trump, who praised her at her departure as “one of our all-time favorites” and a “superstar.” She stepped down from that role to help with Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign and became the chairwoman of the pro-Trump super PAC America First Action.
More recently, she also played an influential role in laying the groundwork for a second Trump presidency as the chairwoman of the America First Policy Institute, a conservative policy group. It has offered training for prospective leaders, outlined staffing plans and drafted policy agendas for every federal agency, rivaling the similar Project 2025 effort led by the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Since last year, Mr. Trump had reportedly complained in private that the America First Policy Institute, which filled out its ranks with former officials from his first term in office, owed him a portion of the money he said it had brought in by fund-raising off its political associations with him.
The group nonetheless maintained close ties to Mr. Trump’s transition team, and Ms. McMahon’s nomination on Tuesday was the latest sign of its relevance.
In part because of her recent policy role and her experience as the small business administrator, Ms. McMahon had been discussed as a possible pick to lead the Commerce Department until the role was officially offered to Howard Lutnick, a Wall Street executive and a chairman of the Trump transition team, earlier in the day.
While Mr. Trump has repeatedly called for an outright dissolution of the agency, any effort to shutter it would require congressional action and support from some Republican lawmakers whose districts depend on federal aid for public education.
On Monday, Vivek Ramaswamy, who is expected to recommend and plan steep cuts to the federal work force as a leader of the proposed government efficiency department, voiced support on social media for a proposal to shut down the department, calling the idea a “very reasonable proposal.”
But the America First Policy Institute has set out a more immediate list of changes it says could be achieved through vastly changing the department’s priorities. Those include stopping schools from “promoting inaccurate and unpatriotic concepts” about American history surrounding institutionalized racism, and expanding voucher programs that direct more public funds to parents to spend on home-schooling, online classes or at private and religious schools.
In his statement announcing the pick, Mr. Trump homed in on Ms. McMahon’s work at the America First Policy Institute, which he said focused on encouraging universal school choice policies across the 12 states that have adopted them so far.
“Linda will fight tirelessly to expand ‘Choice’ to every State in America, and empower parents to make the best Education decisions for their families,” the statement said.
Hours before her announcement, Ms. McMahon posted a message on social media praising “apprenticeship programs” and highlighting examples of them in Switzerland, which is often cited as a high-performing country whose model the United States should follow.
Ms. McMahon has for decades been a financial supporter of Mr. Trump’s political campaigns and the Trump Foundation, the charitable organization that is now defunct. She gave more than $7 million to two pro-Trump super PACs in 2016, according to data from the watchdog group OpenSecrets. In 2024, she gave $10 million to the Make America Great Again PAC.
In 2009, Ms. McMahon stepped down as chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment to run as a Republican to represent Connecticut in the U.S. Senate. She spent heavily to fund her own campaign, winning her party’s nomination, but lost to the Democrats Richard Blumenthal in 2010 and Christopher S. Murphy in 2012.
Mr. Trump’s ties to Ms. McMahon and her husband, Vince McMahon, go back decades. He served as a sponsor for the W.W.E. broadcast WrestleMania when it appeared in Atlantic City, N.J., in the late 1980s, and later appeared in his own story lines on WrestleMania that had him throwing punches in the ring and shaving Mr. McMahon’s head.
The two had a fake feud in which Mr. Trump pretended to buy the franchise from Mr. McMahon — causing a real-life market upset for the company’s stock — then sell it back for twice the price. In 2013, W.W.E. inducted Mr. Trump into its hall of fame.
Noah WeilandMargot Sanger-Katz and Dani Blum
Noah Weiland and Margot Sanger-Katz reported from Washington, and Dani Blum from New York.
President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Tuesday that he would nominate Dr. Mehmet Oz, the author and former television host, to serve as the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a powerful agency that oversees health insurance programs covering more than 150 million Americans.
The selection of Dr. Oz, who lost to John Fetterman in 2022 in a race to represent Pennsylvania in the Senate, was a surprise to many close watchers of the agency, even in a health department that could be led by another unconventional pick, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It also continued a trend of Mr. Trump selecting television personalities to oversee federal agencies. His candidates to run the Defense and Transportation Departments have been working for Fox News and Fox Business.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services oversee several of the country’s largest government programs, providing health coverage to more than 150 million Americans. They regulate health insurance and set policy that guides the prices that doctors, hospitals and drug companies are paid for many medical services. About a quarter of all federal spending runs through the centers.
The centers are part of the Department of Health and Human Services, which also includes the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Their presence among those high-profile divisions has sometimes led to their work being overshadowed, despite their enormous influence in the American health system.
“C.M.S. touches virtually every family in America through Medicaid and Medicare, and it’s probably the most challenging technical, policy and political job in government,” said Drew Altman, the president of KFF, a health research group. “Even small, almost daily decisions at C.M.S. are billion-dollar decisions that affect industries and patients with serious illnesses who really care.”
In a statement announcing his choice, Mr. Trump said Dr. Oz would “work closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake.” Mr. Trump noted that Dr. Oz had “won nine Daytime Emmy Awards hosting ‘The Dr. Oz Show,’ where he taught millions of Americans how to make healthier lifestyle choices.”
Dr. Oz, a heart surgeon and the son of Turkish immigrants, does not have experience running a large federal bureaucracy. Past leaders of the agency have typically had experience working in roles that dealt broadly with health insurance policy, including government positions.
Dr. Oz has also frequently clashed with other medical experts. In the early days of the pandemic, he promoted the malaria drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine to ward off the coronavirus, medicines that were shown to be ineffective in treating the virus. A decade ago, he went before a Senate panel and was chastised for hyping so-called miracle weight loss products without substantial proof that they worked.
“Even putting aside the raft of alarming pseudoscience Dr. Oz has previously endorsed, it is deeply disappointing to see someone with zero qualifications being announced to head up such a critical agency,” Senator Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat who used to lead the Senate health committee, said in a statement.
Dr. Oz has weighed in on Medicare policy, helping to write a 2020 opinion column in Forbes arguing for a universal health coverage system, in which every American not covered by Medicaid would be enrolled in a private Medicare Advantage plan. The coverage expansion, the column said, would be financed by an “affordable 20 percent payroll tax,” and would eliminate employer health coverage and the government Medicare program.
That strategy would be far out of the mainstream of conservative health policy. In 2019, Vice President Kamala Harris, then a candidate for president, proposed a version of a “Medicare for all” plan with similarities to Dr. Oz’s 2020 idea. Instead of replacing private coverage with a government-run system, as some of her Democratic rivals had done, Ms. Harris called for allowing people to choose between a government Medicare program and plans modeled on Medicare Advantage.
Dr. Oz will also be pressed to outline an agenda for Medicaid, the joint federal-state program that covers more than 70 million poor and disabled Americans. Republican lawmakers and conservative policy experts in recent months have pressed for major changes to the program, including cutting federal funding for it and tightening rules for eligibility.
The agency also oversees insurance marketplaces established by the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. Mr. Trump unsuccessfully tried to overturn large portions of the law during his first term, and has been vague about his ambitions for it now. Dr. Oz has supported the law’s goal of expanded health insurance coverage, though he has been critical of its details, characterizing it as a government takeover of the health care system.
Christina Jewett contributed reporting.
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTPresident-elect Donald J. Trump picked Howard Lutnick to serve as commerce secretary on Tuesday, tapping a billionaire Wall Street executive for one of the most prominent and increasingly powerful economic positions in the federal government.
Mr. Lutnick, the chief executive of the financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, has emerged as a central economic adviser to Mr. Trump over the past year and has been leading his transition team. He has called for tariffs to protect U.S. industries from foreign competition, lower corporate taxes and an expansion of American energy production.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump said in a post on Truth Social that Mr. Lutnick “will lead our tariff and trade agenda, with additional direct responsibility for the Office of the United States Trade Representative.”
Over the past two years, Mr. Lutnick has donated $1 million to Mr. Trump’s super PAC, according to federal election records, and hosted a fund-raiser at his Bridgehampton, N.Y., home that raised $15 million. All told, he donated or raised more than $75 million for groups supporting Mr. Trump in the 2024 cycle, according to someone familiar with his fund-raising who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss nonpublic figures.
Mr. Lutnick has been an ardent defender of Mr. Trump’s plans for imposing tariffs on imports. He has suggested, however, that they should be used to negotiate trade deals with other nations and that goods that the United States does not produce should not necessarily face tariffs.
“Donald Trump is here to protect the American worker,” Mr. Lutnick told CNBC earlier this year.
Mr. Lutnick had been under consideration to serve as Mr. Trump’s Treasury secretary and had garnered support from Elon Musk, who has become an influential adviser to the president-elect.
But the competition for that job has been fierce, with one person describing the battle as a knife fight. Mr. Trump also privately expressed frustration that Mr. Lutnick had been trying to manipulate the transition process.
If confirmed, Mr. Lutnick would join a long line of commerce secretaries who have been chosen from among a president’s biggest donors. But the Commerce Department — which has an $11 billion budget and roughly 51,000 workers — has grown in importance in its own right in recent years.
The agency is the nation’s primary advocate for the commercial interests of U.S. businesses globally. However, it also oversees an increasingly important system of technology restrictions, which bar exports of certain technology, including semiconductors, to China, Russia and elsewhere, for national security reasons.
It is also charged with dispensing tens of billions of dollars of subsidies to U.S. chip manufacturers under the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, and regulating artificial intelligence. Because of this, it is considered one of the most critical parts of the government in determining whether China or the United States will dominate industries of the future.
Under the current secretary, Gina Raimondo, the Commerce Department has signed preliminary term sheets agreeing to grant many U.S. chip manufacturers money, but it has not disbursed many of the funds. It remains to be seen whether the Trump administration follows through with those plans, or tries to make major changes to that program.
Mr. Lutnick will also inherit an effort by the Biden administration to provide broadband internet access to at least 6.25 million households and locations across the country by 2025.
The department has a sprawling array of other responsibilities and is sometimes jokingly referred to as the “hall closet” of government. Its other roles include counting the U.S. population during the census, overseeing America’s fisheries, forecasting the weather and helping to develop global technological standards.
Bureaus within the department promote American businesses owned by minorities, grant patents and trademarks, and oversee business activity in space. The department also analyzes the world’s oceans and atmosphere, researches the effects of climate change and provides much of the data that the country uses for weather forecasting and severe weather warnings.
In addition to being chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, Mr. Lutnick is also chairman of BGC Group Inc., a brokerage and financial technology company, and of Newmark Group, a commercial real estate service provider. He could face questions during the confirmation process about his finances and potential conflicts of interest.
His companies are involved in nearly every sector in the U.S. economy. Newmark Group consults on commercial real estate around the world. Cantor and BGC clients could be affected by a broad array of government policies and regulations, including tariffs, the corporate tax rate, or the Food and Drug Administration’s approval or rejection of new drugs.
Mr. Lutnick, who was orphaned in his teens, made his fortune as a trader of U.S. government bonds on Wall Street. He earned a reputation as a ruthless competitor, battling his mentor as he lay on his deathbed for control of Cantor Fitzgerald.
Mr. Lutnick narrowly escaped death during the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when he was a young chief executive. The offices of Cantor Fitzgerald were high in the World Trade Center towers, and 658 of the company’s employees, including Mr. Lutnick’s brother, Gary, perished. They represented almost a quarter of the people killed in the attack on New York. Mr. Lutnick, who had taken his son to school that morning, was not at the office.
Almost all of the company’s brokers were at their desks when the flight hit the tower. Even after losing so many brokers, Cantor Fitzgerald was able to stay in business in part because Mr. Lutnick had been pushing an electronic trading system that did not require as much human input. Mr. Lutnick now runs a charity aimed at helping the victims of terrorism and natural disasters.
Alan Rappeport has covered the Treasury Department in the Trump and Biden administrations.
The conflicting goals of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s economic agenda have been playing out as he debates whom to choose as his Treasury secretary, a job that will entail steering tax cuts through Congress, leading trade talks with China and overseeing the $30 trillion U.S. bond market.
Budget experts have warned that his plans could add as much as $15 trillion to the national debt while increasing inflation and slowing growth. But Mr. Trump is not in the market for a naysayer. After a first term in which some of his top economic aides tried to tame his protectionist impulses, Mr. Trump is seeking a Treasury secretary who will carry out his unconventional plans while still having the credibility to keep markets buoyant.
That mix of qualities is not easy to find.
“I think Trump has a problem in that he wants two different things,” said Lawrence H. Summers, who served as Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration. “He wants somebody who will be deeply loyal, and he wants someone who will be deeply reassuring to markets. Since markets are fearful of the tariff agenda, it’s hard to square both things.”
In recent days, Mr. Trump has been considering several candidates for the job, and their prospects have been rising and falling by the hour, according to people familiar with the deliberations.
The current front-runners are Scott Bessent, the billionaire hedge fund manager, and Kevin Warsh, a former Federal Reserve governor. Marc Rowan, the chief executive of Apollo Global Management, is also in the running, while Howard Lutnick, Mr. Trump’s transition co-chairman and the chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, appeared to fall out of favor for that post and was tapped on Tuesday to serve as commerce secretary instead.
Mr. Trump has made unorthodox choices for some cabinet posts. But a Treasury secretary pick who is seen as unserious could rattle markets and impede his ability to deliver on his economic promises. For that reason, Mr. Trump needs a secretary who is respected in corporate America and can strike a balance between supporting tariffs while not seeming eager to start a trade war that could tank the global economy.
“Investors are on edge regarding the Trump Treasury secretary pick and what it might signal about the balance of power within the administration on economic policy, the mix of market-friendly versus -unfriendly policies, and how less market-friendly trade and immigration policies plus deficits will be calibrated to mitigate adverse impacts,” analysts at Evercore ISI wrote in a note to clients this week.
Analysts at the research group Beacon Policy Advisors theorized on Tuesday that Mr. Trump had the stock market in mind as he considered his decision. They noted that one reason Mr. Trump had not selected Robert Lighthizer, his trusted former trade representative and the architect of the tariffs in his first term, was that the president-elect was mindful of the effect that the choice would have on markets.
“Ultimately, Trump will likely select a nominee who can sell his tariffs to the markets rather than mitigate them,” they wrote in a report analyzing the stakes of the decision. “When it comes to Trump, tariffs can be seen as an end goal in themselves.”
Although the Treasury secretary does not direct trade policy or enact tariffs, the person in the role is generally the economic face of an administration whose goal is to instill confidence in the U.S. economy. The Treasury secretary is expected to explain America’s economic policies to companies and investors around the world, helping to ensure that investment flows into the United States and investors continue to see its debt as a solid investment.
The Treasury Department is at the core of the federal government and issues debt to fund the nation’s operations and pay its bills, including paying Social Security and veterans’ benefits. Although the American economy is the strongest in the world, the national debt is approaching $36 trillion, and prices remain high after two years with record levels of inflation.
“Whoever becomes Treasury secretary will face a full plate and daunting challenges, including making the case for large tax cuts, which will cause a huge explosion in debt and deficits, dealing with the Fed — and perhaps combatively so — on behalf of the president,” said Mark Sobel, a longtime former Treasury official.
He added that Mr. Trump’s Treasury secretary will also have to deal with “jousting over the dollar and exchange rate policy with noisy White House and trade teams calling for devaluation.”
Mr. Trump has often said that, for the sake of U.S. exports, he would prefer to see the dollar weaken because that would make American goods cheaper to buy overseas. But most economists expect his plans to impose tariffs on imports and cut taxes, among other actions, to have the opposite effect.
The day after the election, the dollar rose the most it had in years against a basket of other major currencies. And it has continued to rise, hitting a fresh high for the year last week.
Mr. Trump’s victory also has led to unease among bond investors, who worry about government largess and the resurgence of inflation under the president-elect. That has led to a rise in bond yields, which means investors expect to be paid more in interest in exchange for lending to the government.
A booming stock market is another priority for Mr. Trump, who sees stock prices as a critical indicator for the health of the economy. However, during Mr. Trump’s first term, each new round of tariffs that he imposed on Chinese imports sent stocks falling.
That dynamic is likely to play out again, as Mr. Trump has called for blanket tariffs as high as 50 percent on imports and even higher tariffs on goods from certain countries.
“Tariffs are going to increase costs on a lot of U.S. multinationals” said Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The conventional wisdom is that would make many in the market nervous.”
Mr. Setser, who served as the deputy assistant secretary for international economic analysis at the Treasury Department from 2011 to 2015, said that the desire for a rising stock market and higher tariffs were “somewhat in tension” and that Mr. Trump’s Treasury secretary will have to grapple with those crosscurrents.
As Mr. Trump and his advisers have been considering that pick, a belief in the merits of tariffs has been a priority. Mr. Trump’s first Treasury secretary, Steven T. Mnuchin, often argued against increasing tariffs on China and warned about the potential market implications.
That has put the views of the current group of front-runners in focus.
Mr. Warsh argued in a 2011 Wall Street Journal essay written with Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor who ran against Mr. Trump in 2016, that “we must find our voice to resist the rising tide of economic protectionism.”
Mr. Bessent has suggested recently that Mr. Trump’s tariff threats are a “maximalist” negotiating strategy to secure better free trade deals, and he has expressed concern about flouting World Trade Organization rules. Those comments led some of Mr. Bessent’s detractors to argue that he is not a true believer in tariffs or, as the increasingly influential billionaire Elon Musk recently said, is “a business-as-usual choice.”
“Business-as-usual is driving America bankrupt, so we need change one way or another,” Mr. Musk, who expressed support for Mr. Lutnick to get the job, wrote on social media on Saturday.
For Mr. Trump, the decision could come down to whom he most trusts to be loyal.
Stephen Moore, a Heritage Foundation economist who advised Mr. Trump’s first campaign, said that Mr. Trump benefits from aides who will try to steer him away from making mistakes but that he has learned to prioritize hiring people who believe in his policies. That is especially true, he said, when it comes to tariffs.
“If you’re going to go in and work for Trump, you’ve got to be on board with the agenda,” Mr. Moore said.
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Reporting from Washington
An unidentified hacker has gained access to a computer file shared in a secure link among lawyers whose clients have given damaging testimony related to Matt Gaetz, the former Florida congressman who is President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice to be attorney general, a person with knowledge of the activity said.
The file of 24 exhibits is said to include sworn testimony by a woman who said that she had sex with Mr. Gaetz in 2017 when she was 17, as well as corroborating testimony by a second woman who said that she witnessed the encounter.
The information was downloaded by a person using the name Altam Beezley at 1:23 p.m. on Monday, according to the person, who was not authorized to speak publicly. A lawyer connected to the case sent an email to the address associated with Altam Beezley, only to be informed in an automated reply that the recipient does not exist.
The material does not appear to have been made public by the hacker.
The documents include information that is under seal with the Justice Department, which investigated Mr. Gaetz but did not file charges, and the House Committee on Ethics, which has completed its own inquiry into the former congressman. The Ethics panel’s members are scheduled to meet on Wednesday to decide on whether to vote to release material it has gathered.
But the hacked trove of documents stems from an altogether different source: a civil suit being pursued by a friend of Mr. Gaetz’s, Christopher Dorworth, a Florida businessman. Mr. Dorworth filed the suit against both the woman who says she had sex with Mr. Gaetz when she was a minor and Joel Greenberg, an erstwhile ally of Mr. Gaetz who is serving an 11-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to federal sex trafficking charges involving the woman.
Mr. Dorworth has claimed that he was defamed by Mr. Greenberg and the woman, both of whom had told federal authorities that Mr. Dorworth hosted parties where he, they, Mr. Gaetz and others took drugs and openly had sex.
In mustering their defense, lawyers for Mr. Greenberg and the woman have solicited sworn statements from others who they say were witnesses. The 24 exhibits were attached to a motion prepared by lawyers for Mr. Greenberg and the woman in response to Mr. Dorworth’s suit.
The hacked information also includes sworn testimony from Mr. Dorworth and his wife, as well as testimony from Michael Fischer, Mr. Gaetz’s former campaign treasurer, who is also said to have attended the party. It also contains various supporting material, such as the gate logs showing who entered the property of the Dorworth home on the evening in July 2017 when the two women said the sexual encounter with Mr. Gaetz occurred.
The material apparently taken is unredacted and includes the names and other personal information of the witnesses but is otherwise said to be more damaging to Mr. Gaetz than to his accusers, according to the person familiar with the hack. The hacker had not contacted the lawyers as of Tuesday morning, and it was not clear what motive the person might have.
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Posts
