Hill Heat

March Forth!

March 4 Liberty

Defend Democracy

United We Stand, Divided We Fall.

Defend Your Rights.

In DC and at your state Capitol.

Details coming soon.

03/04/2025 at 12:00PM

Business meeting to consider the nomination of Steven Bradbury to be Deputy Secretary of Transportation.

Bradbury’s nomination hearing was February 20th.

Bradbury, the author of memos supporting the use of torture during the George W. Bush presidency, was narrowly confirmed as general counsel for the Department of Transportation in Trump’s first term.

02/27/2025 at 10:00AM

Full committee hearing.

Nominees:

• Dr. Stephen Miran, to be Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, Executive Office of the President
• Jeffrey Kessler, to be Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security, Department of Commerce
• William Pulte, to be Director, Federal Housing Finance Agency
• Jonathan McKernan, to be Director, Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection

Stephen Miran is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a senior strategist at Hudson Bay Capital, the global investment firm. Miran works at the intersection of economic policy and investing. During the first Trump administration, he was senior advisor for economic policy at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University, where he was a student of Marty Feldstein. He received a B.A. from Boston University, where he studied economics, philosophy, and mathematics.

Jeffrey I. Kessler is a partner in WilmerHale’s International Trade Practice. He served as Assistant Secretary for Enforcement and Compliance at the US Department of Commerce during the first Trump administration. Kessler headed the 360-person office that enforces US anti-dumping and countervailing duty laws, monitoring foreign compliance with trade agreements, supporting the negotiation and implementation of international trade agreements to open foreign markets, administering the Foreign-Trade Zones program, and evaluating Section 232 steel and aluminum tariff exclusion requests. He was the decisionmaker in hundreds of trade remedies cases, renegotiated politically-charged trade pacts with foreign countries and producers.

02/27/2025 at 10:00AM

Full committee hearing.

Nominee:

• Keith Sonderling, Boca Raton, FL

Sonderling began his career as a management-side labor and employment attorney in his native state of Florida. After spending nearly 10 years in the private sector he joined the Department of Labor in the first Trump administration. There he held several roles, most notably serving as the acting and deputy administrator of the Wage and Hour Division (WHD). There, he was responsible for gifting Amazon, Uber, and other giants of the gig economy by ruling that gig workers are independent contractors.

In 2020, Sonderling was tapped to become one of five commissioners at the EEOC. He was strongly supported by the business community.

The deputy secretary of labor serves as the de facto chief operating officer of the DOL, managing an approximately 17,000-person workforce and a $14 billion dollar budget. Further, the deputy manages the politically appointed heads of each agency that falls under the DOL, including vital agencies such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, WHD, the Employee Benefits Security Administration, and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), among others.

02/27/2025 at 10:00AM

Full committee hearing.

Nominee:

• John C. Phelan, to be Secretary of the Navy

Phelan heads the Palm Beach-based private investment firm Rugger Management. Previously he was Managing Partner and Co-Founder of MSD Capital, LP, the private investment firm for Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell Technologies. Prior to forming MSD, Phelan was a principal for seven years at ESL Partners, a Greenwich, Connecticut-based investment firm. At ESL, Phelan was responsible for ESL’s Special Situation and Distressed Investments and helped grow the firm from $50 million to over $2 billion in assets under management. Prior to ESL, Phelan was a vice president at the Equity Group and was in charge of acquisitions (Western region) for the Zell-Merrill Lynch Real Estate Opportunity Funds. Phelan began his career at Goldman Sachs & Co., where he worked as a financial analyst in the Investment Banking Division. He has not served in the Navy or any other branch of the military.

He does, however, have an extensive art collection. Phelan and his wife Amy, a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, started collecting art more than two decades ago and they were included on a list of the world’s top 200 art collectors published by Artnews earlier this year. Phelan raised $12 million for Trump’s campaign when he hosted a dinner at his $38 million Aspen home in August. The Phelans are on the North American acquisitions council of the Tate museums and the contemporary art council of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. John also serves on the board of the Aspen Art Museum, where admission has been free for visitors since 2009 thanks to an endowment from him and his wife. From 2006 to 2019, the Phelans also hosted an annual wine tasting event called WineCrush to raise funds for the institution as part of its summer ArtCrush gala.

02/27/2025 at 09:30AM

Full committee executive session.

Nominee:

• Lori Chavez-DeRemer, of Oregon, to be Secretary of Labor.

Her nomination hearing was held on February 19th.

02/27/2025 at 09:30AM

Subcommittee hearing.

Repository

Witnesses:

Panel I

• Crystal Williams, Treasurer, United South and Eastern Tribes Sovereignty Protection Fund
• Abigail Echo-Hawk, Director, Urban Indian Health Institute
• Jason Schlender, Executive Administrator, Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission

Panel II

• Monique Martin, Vice President of Intergovernmental Affairs, Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium
• Ileen Sylvester, Executive Vice President for Executive and Tribal Services, Southcentral Foundation

Panel III

• Reno Franklin, Chair, California Rural Indian Health Board
• Inder Wadhwa, Chief Executive Officer, Northern Valley Indian Health
• Teresa Sanchez, Health Board Delegate, Riverside-San Bernardino County Indian Health Inc.

Panel IV

• Jerilyn Church, President, Chief Executive Officer, Great Plains Tribal Leaders Health Board
• Anthony Locklear, Interim Chief Executive Officer, National Indian Health Board
• Robyn Sunday-Allen, Chief Executive Officer, National Council of Urban Indian Health

Panel V

• Anhiwake Rose, President, Chief Executive Officer, American Indian Higher Education Consortium
• Jason Dropik, Executive Director, National Indian Education Association
• Toni Tsatoke-Mule, Executive Director, Kiowa Education Agency and Higher Education

Panel VI

• Cecilia Fire Thunder, Chairwoman, Oglala Lakota Nation Education Coalition
• Jordan Etcitty, Executive Director, Diné bi Olta School Board Association
• Aurene Martin, Board of Directors Member, National Indian Child Welfare Association

Panel VII

• Greg Abrahamson, Vice-Chair, Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board
• Esther Lucero, President, Chief Executive Officer, Seattle Indian Health Board
• Lloyd Miller, Council, National Tribal Contract Support Coalition

Panel VIII

• Jeremy Takala, Chair, Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission
• Ed Johnstone, Chairman, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission
• Heather Dawn Thompson, Vice President, Native Nations Conservation and Food Systems

Panel IX

• Austin Lowes, Tribal Chairman, Chippewa Ottawa Resource Authority, Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians
• Mark Macarro, President, National Congress of American Indians
• Cody Desautel, President, Intertribal Timber Council
• Cory Blankenship, Executive Director, Native American Finance Officers Association

02/27/2025 at 09:00AM

Full committee business meeting to vote on the nominations of:

• Troy Edgar to be Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
• Dan Bishop to be Deputy Director, Office of Management and Budget

Chair Rand Paul has scheduled the vote only two days after the nomination hearing.

02/27/2025 at 09:00AM

Subcommittee hearing.

Repository

Witnesses:

Panel I

• Grant Johnson, President, Prairie Island Indian Community
• Anna Miller, Tribal Council Secretary, Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, Grand Traverse Tribal Council
• Stephen Selam, Executive Secretary, Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation
• Sheilah Bray, Vice-Chair, Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation

Panel II

• Jarred-Michael Erickson, Chairman, Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation
• William “Bill” Iyall, Chairman, Cowlitz Indian Tribe
• W. Ron Allen, Tribal Chairman, Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe and Pacific Salmon Commission

Panel III

• Quintin Swanson, Chairman, Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe
• Tom Strong, Vice-Chairman, Skokomish Indian Tribe
• Steve De Los Angeles, Vice-Chairman, Snoqualmie Tribe

Panel IV

• Eric White, Chairman, Stillaguamish Tribe of Indians
• Glen Gobin, Council Member, Tulalip Tribes
• Edwina “Winnie” Johnson-Graham, Vice-Chairwoman, Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe

Panel V

• Robert Blanchard, Executive Director, Tribal Chairman, Bad River Tribe
• Buu Nygren, President, Navajo Nation
• Tehassi Hill, Chairman, Oneida Nation
• Guy Capoeman, President, Quinault Indian Nation

02/26/2025 at 01:30PM

A subcommittee hearing entitled “America Last: How Foreign Aid Undermined U.S. Interests Around the World.” Originally titled “How Foreign Aid Lost Its Way.”

USAID distributed $44 billion to over 160 countries in FY 2023. U.S. foreign aid has significant implications for global stability. DOGE has recently lawlessly hacked USAID.

Witnesses:

• Tyler O’Neil, Managing Editor, The Daily Signal
• Max Primorac, Senior Research Fellow / The Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, The Heritage Foundation
• Gregg Roman, Executive Director, Middle East Forum
• Noam Unger (Minority Witness), Director of the Sustainable Development and Resilience Initiative, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)

DOGE claims have been found repeatedly to be wildly overstated, false and misleading.

02/26/2025 at 11:00AM