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It's the Brian Laird Show on WNYC. Good Monday morning, everyone. Hope you had a good weekend if you were off.

Hope you hung in there if you were working. Well, the main stage in American politics this week will probably be the United States Senate, where the confirmation hearings are beginning for various Trump nominees, and particularly

tomorrow for the very controversial defense secretary nominee Pete Hickseth, with his personal

behavior issues and things he's written like about preparing for civil war and admiring the crusades. The New York Times had an

article last month, for example, headlined Pete Hegseth and his battle cry for a new Christian

crusade. It says the veteran picked to lead, the defense department has praised the brutal,

religious, military campaigns of the past past and has called for a Christian

approach to governing.

Now, we may do a special coverage edition of this show tomorrow with stretches of the hearing

live and analysis around the edges, but we're waiting to see if their timing matches our

time on the air.

But the Hexeth hearings and I guess maybe a debate over what kind of

military would Jesus command starts tomorrow. So we begin the week with a member of the Senate.

Senator Ron Wyden, and we're looking forward to it. He's never been on the show before.

He's the second most senior Democrat in the Senate, and has been in Congress since 1981.

He also has a new book entitled It Takes Hutzpah.

And he's got a bill for more prescribed burns and national forests to help prevent wildfires,

very relevant, obviously, to what's happening in California now,

as Wyden is from the neighboring state of Oregon, which also has a chair of wildfires

in recent times. Before we bring them on, the fires, of course, are the other main stage in

U.S. politics right now, as well as, of course, for the emergency response, but for politics, too,

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