U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison, says she has “concerns” about some of Donald Trump’s nominees.
She is pushing to meet with some of the more controversial picks to ask “tough questions” ahead of confirmation votes in the U.S. Senate. Baldwin singled out Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for Defense secretary, and Kash Patel, his pick to lead the FBI.
“Their concerns are different types with regard to each of those nominees, and that’s why I’m going to be very interested to see the FBI vetting materials, to meet with them if possible, and to see the hearings unfold when they are asked tough questions and have to answer,” Baldwin said on WISN’s “UpFront,” which is produced in partnership with WisPolitics.
Baldwin, though, has said she will back former northern Wisconsin Congressman Sean Duffy, tapped by Trump to lead the Department of Transportation.
“I worked on transportation issues with Sean Duffy when he served in the House of Representatives,” Baldwin said. “So I feel really good about the idea of having a Wisconsinite in that role who actually knows the infrastructure needs of our state.”
Baldwin dismissed the notion that Senate Dems will only work to block Trump’s agenda with Republicans now controlling both chambers of Congress.
“Absolutely not,” she said. “First, I have served in the minority, and I have served in the majority. And as a U.S. senator, knowing the Senate rules where you need bipartisan alliances to get bills passed, you need 60 votes, not just a simple majority. I am used to reaching out across the party line.”
Baldwin, who beat Republican Eric Hovde in November to serve a third term in the Senate, said Hovde never called her personally to concede, but declined to elaborate.
“Look, he just didn’t,” she said.
Baldwin also fully backed Ben Wikler in his bid to be the new Democratic National Committee chairman. Wikler, the current chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, received Dem Senate Leader Chuck Schumer’s endorsement last week.
“Ben is exactly what the party needs right now,” Baldwin said. “And I’m an enthusiastic supporter of Ben Wikler for DNC chair. Look, he has a very pragmatic approach, but it is one that I think needs to be replicated beyond Wisconsin. And frankly, we might have had success in other states where we didn’t if we had a model like we see in Wisconsin.”
Ann Jacobs, the Dem chair of the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission, says the commission is seeking answers from the city of Madison by Jan. 17 into why nearly 200 absentee ballots went uncounted during the November election.
“There’s a few important issues we don’t know about what happened in Madison, the first of which being how did these ballots not get noted as having arrived at the clerk’s office, which we think that’s what happened, but we’re not even sure,” Jacobs told “UpFront.” “And secondly, how were they discovered? Why were they discovered so late? And most importantly, what can we do to try to make sure that this doesn’t happen again in the future?”
Jacobs said the commission, which voted to launch an investigation, officially sent a specific list of questions to the city attorney and clerk late last week.
“We have very little information,” Jacobs said. “We have broad strokes of dates and actions, but it’s extremely limited.”
Jacobs said the main objective, at this point, is to ensure a similar error doesn’t happen again.
“Something happened here that is not tolerable, right?” she said. “We can’t have people submitting their ballots on time and not having them get counted. That we can’t do. So what we need to do is figure out why it happened, get to the root cause, prevent it from happening in the future. And you know, whether the commission chooses to do something more than just a directive to not do it again, and here’s why you need to do it differently, that’s going to be up to the commission.”
GOP U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil joined newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson and huddled with the two key Republican holdouts just moments before they returned to the House floor to change their votes for speaker.
“The conversation that I was a part of was just a group of members before we went back out for a vote on the House floor,” Steil told “UpFront.” “I wouldn’t describe it as arm-twisting. I would describe it really is just a true family conversation about how do we deliver upon our agreed-upon goals and objectives? Again, we’re unified in policy, and I think you saw that on the campaign as President Trump and conservatives across the country ran for office.
“That said, sometimes the inner workings of the House can be challenging,” Steil added. “It can be darn frustrating. It’s like, we just came back from Christmas. You can imagine a handful of your relatives. Imagine 220 of your relatives sitting around the Christmas table having that conversation. It’s going to be a little messy. It’s going to be a little challenging. But at the end of the day, I think we’re going to get there, and the reason for that is we, as a conference, are unified behind the policies that are needed to get our country back on track.”
Steil during the previous Congress chaired the House Administration Committee, which oversees the U.S. Capitol Police. And he is expected to again chair the panel this session. Steil said he’s been in constant communication with law enforcement officials ahead of the major events in Washington this month, including the certification of the presidential results and Trump’s inauguration Jan. 20.
“I’ve been in constant conversations with the Capitol security apparatus to make sure that we keep Washington, D.C., and in particular, the Capitol campus, both open but also secure, not only for members and staff but also for the American public, many of whom will be visiting in the weeks ahead, in particular on Jan. 20,” Steil said. “I believe we have the resources in place. We have the security protocols in place to make sure that everyone is safe. But it’s always a reminder that we need to remain vigilant in a period of time when there’s plenty of danger and plenty of evil across the world.”
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