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IN THIS EDITION

Scalise’s power play inside the Steering Committee

The Trump nominee persuasion campaign begins

House Ethics poised for high-stakes meeting on Gaetz report

Huffman launches bid to unseat Grijalva on Natural Resources

THE TOP

Scalise’s power play inside the Steering Committee

Happy Wednesday morning.

To understand who has the real power in the House Republican Conference, you need to pay close attention to the GOP’s Steering Committee.

Steering sets committee assignments and recommends committee chairs, effectively charting the course for how the Republican Conference operates. It’s the most important power base among House Republicans and the least understood.

Something fascinating is happening inside the tightly controlled panel: Several of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s top lieutenants are getting challenges from allies of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise.

– Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) is in a race against Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.) for the Tennessee/Missouri seat. Smith is expected to win. And here’s some interesting drama: Reps. David Kustoff (R-Tenn.) and John Rose (R-Tenn.) are expected to support Smith over their fellow Tennessee Republican.

– House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), who famously almost got into a fight with former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) while defending McCarthy, was lumped into a steering seat with Georgia. Rogers is facing Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.). Loudermilk has a slight edge, according to sources tracking the race.

– Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.), one of McCarthy’s strongest allies, is facing Rep. Julia Letlow, a Louisiana Republican close to Scalise. Hill is seeking the gavel at the Financial Services Committee.

All of these moves, which are playing out across the conference in private conversations, serve to consolidate Scalise’s power over the Steering Committee. Scalise has two votes on the panel himself, second only to Speaker Mike Johnson’s four votes.

But should they win, Scalise’s allies will now be sprinkled throughout Steering, potentially giving him outsized influence over the members who actually do most of the work inside the House Republican Conference.

One veteran GOP lawmaker described it as a proxy battle between Scalise and “the ghost of Kevin McCarthy.” The two were long-time rivals in leadership.

The McCarthy-versus-the-world fight is not only playing out on Steering. It’s also playing a big role in the race for the chairmanship of the House Financial Services Committee. Hill is still getting criticized for voting “present” on Johnson’s nomination to be speaker after McCarthy had no chance of re-claiming the gavel.

Let’s run down the other Steering contests and who else will have power in the next two years:

– New York: Rep. Andrew Garbarino.

– Pennsylvania/Maryland: Rep. Mike Kelly (Pa.).

– Ohio/West Virginia: Rep. David Joyce (Ohio).

– North Carolina/Guam: Rep. David Rouzer (N.C.).

– Indiana/Kentucky: Rep. Rudy Yakym (R-Ind.). Indiana Reps. James Baird and Victoria Spartz were also showing interest, but Yakym is the clear frontrunner.

– Michigan/Illinois/Iowa: Iowa Rep. Randy Feenstra and Michigan Rep. Jack Bergman.

– Wisconsin/Minnesota/North Dakota/South Dakota: Wisconsin Rep. Bryan Steil and Minnesota Rep. Pete Stauber.

– Oklahoma/Kansas/Nebraska: House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole (Okla.).

– Washington State/Idaho/Montana/Wyoming/Colorado/Alaska: Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke and Washington State Rep. Dan Newhouse. Zinke is expected to win.

– Arizona/Utah/Nevada/Oregon: Utah Rep. Burgess Owens.

– California: Rep. Ken Calvert.

– Texas’ two seats: Rep. Jodey Arrington. Rep. Pat Fallon will now ascend without a challenge after Rep. August Pfluger dropped his bid to unify the delegation, a spokesperson said.

– Florida 1: Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart.

– Florida 2/Northern Mariana Islands: Rep. Vern Buchanan (Fla.).

– Small states: Rep. Dusty Johnson (S.D.).

– Sophomore class: Ohio Rep. Max Miller.

This will all be decided by secret ballot in HC-5 in the Capitol today. Only the members from the designated region get to decide who their steering representative is.

– Jake Sherman, Melanie Zanona and John Bresnahan

Join us! Happening tomorrow at 9 a.m.: Punchbowl News founder Jake Sherman and Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) will sit down to discuss news of the day and the future of defense and industrial policy. RSVP now!

Don’t miss: Our Lame Duck Special Edition will go out later this morning. Check your inboxes and our website for the latest on the full plate of issues Congress has to deal with before Washington turns red in January — all fraught with varying levels of political risk.

THE TRANSITION

The Trump nominee persuasion campaign begins

President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet confirmation prospects run the gamut — from slam dunks like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as secretary of state, to very steep uphill climbs like former Rep. Matt Gaetz’s (R-Fla.) bid to serve as attorney general.

Others lie somewhere in the middle and are controversial for very different reasons. Take Pete Hegseth’s nomination to run the Pentagon, or the choice of former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) to head up the sprawling U.S. intelligence apparatus.

The Trump transition team is ramping up its engagement with the Senate to prepare for the confirmation processes. Here’s where things stand.

Gaetz: It’s no secret what Senate Republicans think of Gaetz. At this point, GOP senators are hoping Gaetz’s nomination doesn’t even advance far enough that they have to vote on it. There’s a significant number of Republicans who would vote no. This is even before the controversy over the House Ethics Committee’s investigation into Gaetz.

In the meantime, Senate Republicans want to show Trump and his team that they’re going through the normal vetting process and not prejudging the nominee.

The lobbying campaign is already underway, with Trump himself calling senators and Vice President-elect JD Vance getting directly involved with his soon-to-be former colleagues. Vance is on the Hill this week helping set up meetings for Gaetz with GOP senators, starting with Judiciary Committee members.

Senate Republicans are cautiously optimistic they can kill the nomination. Several GOP senators have already said the Judiciary Committee should get access to the House Ethics Committee’s report on Gaetz’s alleged sexual misconduct and other questionable behavior. This would give Republicans additional opportunities to argue that Gaetz is unconfirmable.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), a reliable Trump ally, supports Gaetz’s confirmation and told us he’s spoken with the former House member a few times since the nomination was announced.

According to Tuberville, Gaetz suggested that no additional damaging information will surface that’s not already public. Of course, what’s already out there is troubling enough for many Republicans. Tuberville also said he urged Gaetz to be transparent.

Here’s Tuberville:

Some GOP senators also believe there would probably be enough Republicans willing to take the heat for tanking Gaetz’s nomination and give cover to the others — and take the pressure off of incoming Majority Leader John Thune. It only takes four GOP defections to sink any nominee, assuming all Democrats are opposed. And they would be in this case.

Gabbard: The former Democrat has some controversial views on foreign policy and national security, to put it lightly. Ideologically, Gabbard couldn’t be further from Senate Republicans writ-large.

But our discussions with senators and aides suggest that most Senate Republicans are prepared to put those concerns aside for Gabbard, noting her role would be in the intelligence realm rather than big foreign policy decisions.

That’s not to say Gabbard won’t attract opposition — maybe, for example, from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a noted defense hawk. But Gabbard’s confirmation prospects could depend on what comes out during her Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, including concerns that she’s parroted talking points of hostile foreign governments including Russia in the past.

Interestingly, we’re told there’s been no outreach yet from the Trump team to the Intelligence Committee.

Hegseth: So far, Republicans are generally enthused about the idea of the Fox News host heading up the Pentagon. Hegseth’s sherpa is John Wason, a former Senate Armed Services Committee staff director.

Hegseth probably won’t get Democratic support, so he’ll need to limit GOP defections. Recent stories about sexual assault allegations against Hegseth are troubling for senators, of course. As of now, it appears that Hegseth’s alleged personal indiscretions — rather than his qualifications for the job — are the only thing that could prompt an erosion of GOP support.

— Andrew Desiderio, Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan

APPOINTMENT WATCH

House Ethics poised for high-stakes meeting on Gaetz report

The House Ethics Committee is scheduled to meet this afternoon to decide the fate of its long-awaited report on former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), marking the biggest moment for the bipartisan panel in years.

Gaetz’s sudden resignation after his nomination to lead the Justice Department has thrust the secretive panel into the spotlight. The Ethics Committee is wrestling with whether to release the report publicly.

That decision is largely in the hands of the five Republicans on the evenly divided panel. They’re led by Ethics Committee Chair Michael Guest (R-Miss.), who has been publicly targeted by Gaetz during the long-running probe. Guest and the other Ethics Committee Republicans — Reps. David Joyce (Ohio), John Rutherford (Fla.), Andrew Garbarino (N.Y.) and Michelle Fischbach (Minn.) — have been under intense pressure from Speaker Mike Johnson to keep the report under wraps.

The panel has been investigating Gaetz on and off since 2021 over allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use. Gaetz denies any wrongdoing. The Justice Department declined last year to charge Gaetz following its criminal investigation into the allegations. The Ethics panel conducted its own extensive probe, issuing more than 25 subpoenas and interviewing a number of witnesses.

It’s uncertain whether there will be a straight up or down vote on releasing the report. It would take just one Republican to cross party lines and vote to release the report, although that’s very unlikely to happen. Democrats are united in calling for its release.

And then there’s the “nuclear option” of a Democrat on the Ethics Committee just leaking the report or trying to enter it into the Congressional Record, moves that could jeopardize the entire future of the panel. In other words, the stakes couldn’t be higher here.

The Ethics Committee is the House’s only real internal policing mechanism. The panel’s investigative findings on former Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) are what ultimately led to his expulsion after several failed attempts to oust him prior to the committee’s report.

It’s worth noting that many of the most damaging details from the Gaetz investigation have already been reported publicly, and it didn’t impact his political standing. Gaetz got reelected twice since Ethics began its probe. Gaetz also blamed former Speaker Kevin McCarthy for the investigation, saying it would haven’t happened without the California Republican’s intervention.

Yet having those allegations laid out in detail from his now former Republican colleagues would be a far more searing finding for Gaetz.

— Melanie Zanona

HOUSE COMMITTEES

Huffman launches bid to unseat Grijalva on Natural Resources

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) will challenge Rep. Raúl Grijalva (Ariz.) for the ranking member post on the Natural Resources Committee, the California Democrat announced in a letter today obtained by Punchbowl News.

The 76-year-old Grijalva, the son of a Mexican immigrant, has been chair or ranking member of Natural Resources since 2015. The challenge from the 60-year-old Huffman is going to cause waves within the Democratic Caucus.

But with President-elect Donald Trump returning for a second term in January — and all that means for the environment, energy production and federal land management — Huffman argues that Democrats need to be as aggressive as possible in responding to that agenda:

Huffman added “my first action as Ranking Member will be to ask the Caucus to designate our friend and colleague Rep. Raúl Grijalva ‘Ranking Member Emeritus.’”

With Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-Calif.) and Del. Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan (D-CNMI) retiring, Huffman is next in line for Democrats on the panel.

Grijalva’s office couldn’t be reached for comment on Tuesday night.

Grijalva has announced that the 119th Congress will be his last following his diagnosis of lung cancer. He missed extensive time undergoing medical treatment, returning to Capitol Hill this week to vote for the first time in months.

Huffman has served on the Natural Resources panel since he came to Congress in 2013, with a decade of that as a chair or ranking subcommittee member. His northern California district — which has the highest number of Indigenous tribes outside of Alaska — has suffered from climate change, including drought, wildfires and sea-level rise.

Huffman has also been far more active than Grijalva politically. According to a DCCC dues sheet, Huffman raised $1.4 million-plus this cycle for Democrats, including nearly $900,000 for Frontliners. Grijalva raised $161,000 and nothing for Frontliners this cycle. Since 2018, Huffman has nearly quadrupled Grijalva’s money totals.

We’ll have lots more on this contest, which will come to a head next month.

— John Bresnahan

DOWNTOWN DOWNLOAD

Jane Lee, a former top Senate Republican staffer, is now CEO of Invoke, a government affairs firm that focuses on U.S. emerging tech innovators.

Lee is also the founder and chair of the board for the Software in Defense Coalition, which helps small tech startups serve national security missions.

Lee’s resume on Capitol Hill is extensive, to say the least. She worked on the Senate Appropriations and Commerce committees, as well as the House Budget Committee. Lee also did a stint at OMB. Lee worked on the 2017 Trump tax cuts, debt limit and reconciliation packages, and dozens of spending bills.

— John Bresnahan

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