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Good morning. I'm Anna Palmer. And I'm Jake Sherman.

And welcome to The Daily Punch. Brought to you by Punch Bowl News. It's Monday, January 13th, 2025.

Let's get into the mix. Here are your Washington headlines of the day. Number one, Trump's nominees head to the Senate.

What to expect. Number two, what Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune are focused on this week? And number

three, Johnson officially launches his big fundraising vehicle. All right, Jake, let's get into it.

This week is Noms, Nams. We have been reporting for the last several weeks on all of the

ins and outs of President-elect Donald Trump's nominees heading to the hill, meaning with the

Republicans, sometimes meeting with Democrats. But the rubber really meets a road here this week

where you have many of the nominees,

13 cabinet nominees, to be exact, are up for confirmation hearings.

This week, you know, not only is there, is that important, just in the sense of the speed

with which they're trying to get this done

before Trump's inauguration one week from today because depending on how these go, it'll

kind of make the difference for whether Democrats make it easy for these folks to get

confirmed on the Senate floor in a quick fashion or a slower fashion, but,

uh, maybe it's most important that we focus on Pete Hegseth's confirmation. He's going to be

before Senate Armed Services on Tuesday morning. He is Trump's nominee for defense secretary,

...