


Senate confirmation hearings for President Trump cabinet nominations continue today.
10 a.m.: Scott Turner, secretary of housing and urban development. Lee Zeldin, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Doug Burgum, interior secretary. 10:30 a.m.: Scott Bessent, Treasury secretary.
♦ Scott Turner, a former football player who served as a midlevel official in the first Trump administration, has been elevated as Mr. Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
♦ Former Representative Lee Zeldin of New York previously made an unsuccessful run for governor in the state in 2022. Now he has been tapped by President Trump to carry out his environmental policy and remove excessive climate regulations at the Environmental Protection Agency.
♦ Former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum made a $1 billion fortune in the tech industry before running for governor. Burgum, who has longstanding ties to oil and gas companies will seek to fulfill the “drill baby drill” energy independence policy expressed by candidate Trump. Burgum would be in charge of managing vast swaths of federal land and coastal waters in the Interior Department, as well as leases of those lands for oil and gas drilling.
♦ Scott Bessent is a billionaire hedge fund manager who has been a central economic adviser to Mr. Trump as the president-elect created a campaign agenda centered on raising tariffs on imported goods. Mr. Bessent, who will oversee some of America’s most powerful economic levers in the Treasury Department, has called for rolling back government subsidies, deregulating the economy and raising domestic energy production.
Burgum and Bessent will get the majority of attention from the ‘resistance’ democrats and the Moonbats amid their climate change base.