| Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for secretary of state, was in the middle of his confirmation hearing at 11:56 a.m. Wednesday when Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho) told him the news. “For the edification of the committee, I’ve just been advised that there’s been a ceasefire announced in Gaza,” said Risch, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Rubio said during his next answer that “all involved deserve credit” for the ceasefire but especially praised Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy, calling him a “critical component.” It illustrated how the biggest news of the day on the Hill — a half-dozen confirmation hearings from Trump’s planned nominees — was suddenly overshadowed by the announcement of the deal — and a bipartisan scramble to claim credit for it. The Biden and Trump teams worked closely on the negotiations for the deal, which was nearly the same as the one on the table last May, our colleagues Hannah Knowles, Toluse Olorunnipa and Karen DeYoung report. Now that collaboration has given way to jockeying for credit. Republicans have echoed Rubio’s praise of Witkoff for his role in the negotiations, and have suggested the deal would not have happened without Trump threatening stronger U.S. action against Hamas. “[Trump] made it clear and unambiguous that if the hostages were not released prior to his taking office, there would be hell to pay,” said Matt Brooks, the CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition. Democrats and State Department officials have given credit to President Joe Biden for brokering the deal. Democrats have pointedly noted that the final deal was very similar to the one that Biden proposed in May, and at a Wednesday briefing, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said “what we’ve seen in the negotiations” did not align with the idea that Trump was responsible for the ceasefire. When Biden was asked who he thought would get credit, he had shorter response: “Is that a joke?” Back on the Hill … there was a common theme across the confirmation hearings: Trump’s picks faced Democratic questions over how deferential they would be to an incoming president who has made little secret of wanting to bend the federal government to his will. The recurring query: Would a nominee put Trump above their pledge to support the Constitution? One Trump ally scoffed at the debate when we asked him. “I don’t know anything about that, about a constitutional oath of office,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) told us. “It’s important that you’re a team player, but also you got to go by your own thoughts and beliefs.” Let’s take a look at how some nominees navigated the Trump-fueled scrutiny: Pam Bondi Bondi, Trump’s pick for attorney general, quickly encountered scrutiny over her views on the 2020 election. Bondi made unfounded allegations of election fraud in 2020, and participated in a failed effort to challenge the results of the election in Pennsylvania, which Biden won. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, pressed her to affirm that Trump lost the 2020 election. She declined to explicitly do so, acknowledging Joe Biden is the president and saying she “accept[s] the results,” even though she saw “many things” of concern when she visited Pennsylvania after the election. Durbin also asked about Trump’s campaign promises to pardon people charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, specifically the prospect that he could pardon “violent” offenders. She said that if she was asked to review the charges, she would do so on a “case-by-case basis.” “But let me be very clear in speaking to you,” Bondi told Durbin, “I condemn any violence on a law enforcement officer in this country.” Russ Vought Trump has tapped Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget, a role he held during Trump’s first term. Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-New Hampshire) was among the Democrats who pressed Vought on how he would respond if Trump sought to play politics with the doling out of federal funding approved by Congress. Hassan gave the hypothetical example of Trump withholding disaster aid from the deep-blue state of California. “I don’t engage in hypotheticals, but the president would never ask me to do something along those lines,” Vought said, drawing a skeptical response from Hassan. “Well,” she said, “history speaks a little differently to that point.” After the hearing, Sen. Andy Kim (D-New Jersey), who asked Vought about his previous efforts to strip protections from large swaths of the federal workforce, told us that he was worried by Vought’s answers, which indicated to him that Vought was willing to fire people disloyal to Trump. Marco Rubio Even Rubio, Trump’s planned nominee for secretary of state who has enjoyed bipartisan enthusiasm, could not escape sensitive questions about his potential future boss. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) asked Rubio if Trump should refrain from pursuing new business deals with Middle Eastern governments during his second term. Rubio said he believed that any such deals would be handled by Trump’s family members and he would only be interested in their business as secretary of state if it was running counter to national interests. Next up … Expect Kash Patel, Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who could run the Department of Homeland Security, to face similar queries. Reacting to recent hearings, Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-North Dakota), told us it is “common sense” for Cabinet picks to show their loyalty to their president. Cramer, on the Senate Armed Services Committee that questioned Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon, said that the potential nominees’ audience is in part Trump — and also his voters. “It indicates how savvy they are, that they know Donald Trump won the popular vote, and that right now, the American people are rooting for him,” Cramer said. | 
Meryl Kornfield and 
