The Senate has scheduled hearings for a dozen of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s picks for some of the most significant positions in his new government.
Many of these candidates have previously visited Capitol Hill for meetings with individual senators whose support they may need in the final confirmation vote. Now they will appear before Senate committees that oversee the agencies that they have been selected to lead.
Here’s the schedule for this week:
Tuesday
9:30 a.m.: Pete Hegseth, secretary of defense
Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host and veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, kicked off the confirmation hearings on Tuesday. He had a troubled path to his hearing, grappling with accusations of excessive drinking and an allegation of sexual assault that critics have used to question his fitness to lead the Defense Department, one of the most important posts in the federal government. Senators grilled Mr. Hegseth about many of those accusations during a tense, four-hour hearing on Tuesday.
Wednesday
9 a.m.: Kristi Noem, secretary of homeland security
Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota is a staunch ally of Mr. Trump who has vowed to fulfill the president-elect’s promises of stricter border controls and mass deportations of unauthorized immigrants if confirmed to lead the Department of Homeland Security. Ms. Noem has previously used her authority as governor to intervene in the national immigration crisis, spending millions of taxpayer dollars to deploy the South Dakota National Guard to the U.S.-Mexico border.
9:30 a.m.: Pam Bondi, attorney general
Pam Bondi, a lobbyist and longtime loyalist to Mr. Trump, made her name in Florida politics as the state’s first female attorney general. After endorsing Mr. Trump in the 2016 Republican primary, Ms. Bondi joined Mr. Trump’s legal defense team during his first impeachment in 2019, and later supported Mr. Trump’s fabricated claims of election fraud after his defeat to Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the 2020 election. As attorney general, Ms. Bondi would oversee the Justice Department and its complement of federal prosecutors.
10 a.m.: Sean Duffy, secretary of transportation
Former Representative Sean Duffy of Wisconsin, a former television host on Fox Business, served in Congress from 2011 to 2019 before retiring to care for a newborn daughter with a birth defect. Mr. Duffy, who originally rose to fame in reality television, would oversee the nation’s railways, airlines and transportation infrastructure if confirmed to lead the Transportation Department.