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January 20, 2025
Presented by RED Coalition
You voted for American energy dominance—and the Trump Administration is delivering. From solar to oil & gas, they’re unleashing it all. More energy. More jobs. Higher wages. America is booming—because when we lead, we win.
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THE TOP
What’s different about Trump’s 2025 return
Happy Monday morning. And happy Inauguration and MLK Day.
President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance will take the oath of office in the Rotunda today, the first to do so since Ronald Reagan in 1985. The stated reason is the frigid temperatures that have gripped D.C. since late Sunday.
The Trumps and the Bidens will have coffee and tea at the White House this morning, and then the action shifts to Capitol Hill. Trump and Vance will be sworn in during the 11 a.m. hour. Trump will speak, and the Bidens will then depart from the East Side of the Capitol. Afterward, the new president will sit down with lawmakers and VIPs for the traditional post-inaugural lunch.
Trump’s decision to hold his inaugural ceremony inside the Rotunda instead of on the West Front of the Capitol scrambled plans for the thousands of his supporters who came to Washington to attend the historic event. Yet beyond those who can squeeze into the Rotunda and the Capitol One Arena, MAGA is going to be disappointed.
Members and senators can still attend the swearing-in ceremony, but the 300 tickets that each lawmaker distributed to constituents, donors and friends are only good as memorabilia. There’s no widely attended ceremony or parade, except for the dramatically scaled-down event at the Capital One Arena.
Executive orders. We broke the news Sunday that Stephen Miller, Trump’s chief policy hand, had briefed top House and Senate lawmakers about Trump’s planned executive orders. Trump plans to sign some executive orders in the Capitol today and then do more signings at Capital One Arena.
Miller didn’t give away many specifics on the executive orders to the 40-something GOP lawmakers and aides who took part in the Sunday afternoon call. But Miller outlined the stunning breadth of the planned EOs, some of which may be part of “omnibus” packages. And please remember this is all still in flux, as is usual for Trump world.
Trump plans to issue EOs in three buckets: energy, government reform and immigration-border security. The entirety of the list can be found in our Sunday special report.
Energy-related EOs include halting spending on the “Green New Deal” and other climate-related priorities of the Biden administration; speeding energy permitting and the construction of pipelines; opening tens of millions of acres of federal land, including offshore areas, to oil drilling; and declaring a national energy emergency.
In seeking to overhaul the federal government, Trump wants to make it easier for government agencies to fire workers and order them back to the office; bring back the “Schedule F” classification for federal employees; and rescind DEI and gender-related directives from the Biden administration.
On immigration and border security, Trump plans to classify drug cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations;” declare an emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border; reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” policy; end “catch and release”; and more generally restrict entry into the country.
The Trump operation. Sunday was a good example of what a new Trump administration could look like. During his first term in office, Trump was distant from Capitol Hill, choosing to keep lawmakers at arms-length.
Compare that to now. Trump started this Sunday with a breakfast at Blair House for Senate Republicans. The event went on for hours, with Trump riffing on a variety of topics, including how he prefers one reconciliation bill to two. Miller, a one-time Hill staffer, then hosted a call with GOP lawmakers and aides about the executive orders. In his previous term, Hill Republicans would’ve been completely blindsided by Trump’s news.
Trump will meet with Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Tuesday, followed by a meeting with the full bicameral Republican leadership.
Trump has been active for some time behind the scenes with GOP lawmakers. He met with Johnson in November about reconciliation and government funding. Trump met with Thune as well. Trump met with Senate Republicans last week. He met with the House Freedom Caucus, House GOP chairs, SALT-centric lawmakers and other rank-and-file Republicans.
Trump wants to get a quick start – that much is clear – and he is laying the groundwork to do so. He spent half of 2017 on a failed quest to repeal Obamacare. Trump and his team appear dead set on avoiding that kind of inefficiency this time around.
Sure, Trump and GOP congressional leaders have huge challenges ahead of them. There are 53 days until a government shutdown, and negotiators don’t even have a topline spending number yet for FY 2024 spending bills. The debt limit will need to be raised by summer, although we expect Congress to lift it as part of any government funding deal. And Trump has an aggressive reconciliation agenda that he wants to pass quickly with a slim House majority.
Yet, with the help of a relatively submissive Republican leadership on Capitol Hill, the Trump transition team has been a highly professional operation compared to 2017.
Noms, noms, noms. Trump will press for his Cabinet nominees to be confirmed quickly, but only one — Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Trump’s pick for secretary of state — will be confirmed today. The Senate will also finish work today on the Laken Riley Act and send it to the House.
After Rubio is confirmed, Thune is expected to move ahead with another national security position. CIA nominee John Ratcliffe or defense secretary pick Pete Hegseth are both under consideration. DHS nominee Kristi Noem is also a possibility.
Senate Democrats won’t agree to speed up Hegseth’s confirmation, so that’ll take at least a few days. The same could be the case with Noem. Ratcliffe may be an easier lift. He’s been confirmed by the Senate previously as DNI. The Intelligence Committee will vote on Ratcliffe’s nomination this evening
Thune has indicated he’ll keep the Senate in nights and weekends to confirm Trump’s nominees quickly. That may have to start as early as this week.
— Jake Sherman, John Bresnahan and Andrew Desiderio
The Daily Punch 🥊 With new episodes every weekday morning, The Daily Punch brings you inside Capitol Hill, the White House and Washington all in less than 15 minutes. Listen to today’s episode now.
TICK, TICK, TICK…
Trump’s TikTok plan and the law
TikTok is coming back online, but soon-to-be President Donald Trump’s plan to save the app is already a headache for congressional Republicans who championed last year’s law to ban it.
Trump said he would issue an executive order today to give the app’s Chinese-owned parent company ByteDance 90 extra days to divest itself of TikTok before a U.S. ban kicks in.
Trump floated a joint venture for “the United States to have a 50% ownership position.” People we spoke to didn’t understand what Trump meant or how this would comply with the law.
Yet clarity on TikTok’s future has been hard to find. So we spoke with GOP lawmakers and aides Sunday to get a better understanding of what the law allows and what the road ahead might look like.
Here are the takeaways from those conversations.
Retroactive pause? Trump’s plan for a delay would be implemented a day after the ban from app stores and cloud services began. Sen. Tom Cotton (Ark.), the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, said that’s not possible.
“Now that the law has taken effect, there’s no legal basis for any kind of ‘extension’ of its effective date,” added Cotton, who also chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The exact wording is an extension “with respect to the” original deadline. Confused? So are many lawyers.
Before the Supreme Court, an attorney for TikTok users said he thought an extension may not be possible after Sunday. U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the justices she wasn’t taking a position on a retroactive delay.
This will likely be a matter for the courts to decide if Trump triggers the 90-day extension.
App stores. The enforcement mechanism of the law has always been focused on the U.S. companies that host TikTok in their app stores and cloud computing services. They’re the ones staring down billions of dollars in fines if they break the law.
The app wasn’t available on Apple and Google’s app stores throughout Sunday. Apple said in a statement that apps developed by ByteDance and its subsidiaries, including TikTok, “will no longer be available for download or updates” on its app store.
Given the scale of potential liability for making TikTok available to its users, it’s unclear if U.S. companies will bring it back even if Trump does assure them they’ll be OK.
As Cotton pointed out, these companies need to be worried about enforcement beyond any steps taken by the federal government.
We asked Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon what they’re planning to do if Trump issues the extension. None responded.
Executive order? Trump said he’d save TikTok through an EO, but the law says the extension is dependent on the president certifying to Congress there’s been “significant progress” toward a divestiture. There must also be “binding legal agreements” on how to get the app out of Chinese hands during the 90 days.
Right now, Trump mostly seems to be considering offers to buy the app from wealthy U.S. investors and his own love of deal-making as enough to warrant an extension. But there’s been no public indication that ByteDance is close to selling TikTok.
Control. It’s pretty clear under the law that ByteDance has to give up its full stake in TikTok. But if that happens, the new ownership structure only has to remove control of the app by Beijing. Whether China can retain any stake without running afoul of the law may be a trickier question than it seems.
It’s not clear how much communication on this issue is happening at the moment between the incoming administration and Congress. We’re told TikTok didn’t come up during the Trump team’s calls with lawmakers and aides Sunday to review potential executive orders by the new president.
— Ben Brody, Diego Areas Munhoz and Andrew Desiderio
K Street, Capitol Hill cast doubt on Gabbard’s confirmation
The Senate is already conducting confirmation hearings for Trump administration nominees, with some sparking fireworks.
One nominee in particular could be in trouble, according to respondents to our Canvass Inauguration Special survey: Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii). More than two-thirds of senior Capitol Hill staff and K Street leaders we polled said Gabbard will not be confirmed.
President-elect Donald Trump nominated Gabbard to serve as director of national intelligence, raising concerns among some former national security officials. Of all the Trump nominees, Gabbard is the only one whom a majority of respondents believe won’t make it across the finish line.
Just 34% said Pete Hegseth wouldn’t be confirmed as Defense secretary and 33% said the same of Kash Patel as FBI director. Similarly, only 25% of respondents said Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wouldn’t be confirmed as secretary of Health and Human Services.
Hegseth could be confirmed later this week.
As we’ve reported, the Senate Intelligence Committee hasn’t yet scheduled Gabbard’s confirmation hearing, citing paperwork delays that are plaguing other Trump nominees, too.
Paperwork aside, lawmakers have voiced grave concerns about Gabbard, including her past opposition to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Gabbard released a statement to us backing the program after senators from both parties were questioning her position.
With a tiny Republican majority in the Intelligence Committee, Gabbard cannot afford to lose any GOP support in the panel. It’s very unlikely any Democrats would vote to advance her nomination out of committee.
Want to take part in The Canvass? Our survey provides anonymous monthly insights from top Capitol Hill staffers and K Street leaders on key issues Washington is dealing with. Sign up here if you work on K Street. Click here to sign up if you’re a senior congressional staffer.
– Elvina Nawaguna
PRESENTED BY META
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What we’re watching – besides confirmation action
Tuesday: The House Rules Committee will meet to set up floor consideration of the Fix Our Forests Act.
Wednesday: The House Ways and Means Committee will have a members’ day. The House Homeland Security Committee will have an organizational meeting.
The House Judiciary Committee will have a hearing on restoring immigration enforcement in America. The House Financial Services Committee will have an organizational meeting. The House Small Business Committee will have an organizational meeting.
The House Veterans Affairs Committee will have a hearing on “putting veterans first in community care.” The House Foreign Affairs Committee will have its organizational hearing.
Thursday: The House Natural Resources Committee will have a hearing on a number of bills. The House Appropriations Committee has its organizational meeting.
– Jake Sherman
… AND THERE’S MORE
Ballard Partners, which boasts of its close ties to members of the incoming Trump administration, has signed three new clients.
It will lobby for:
– Pirelli Tire on trade and tariff issues.
– Paramount Global on “[l]egislative and regulatory issues related to the media industry.”
– JEA, a Florida-based utility company, on the Biden infrastructure law and WRDA.
– Jake Sherman
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Presented by RED Coalition
You voted for American energy dominance—and the Trump Administration is delivering. From solar to oil & gas, they’re unleashing it all. More energy. More jobs. Higher wages. America is booming—because when we lead, we win.