Good evening and welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Abby Livingston.

Both Democrats and Republicans are dealing with internal dissent as Congress settles uncomfortably into the lame duck period ahead of Donald Trump’s return to Washington. Real legislative action is unlikely, but there’s a lot happening behind the scenes, both at the leadership level and on the Senate committees where the fate of Trump’s cabinet nominees will be determined. More on the confirmation outlook for Pete Hegseth, R.F.K. Jr., Tulsi, Kash Patel, and more, below the fold.

But first…

• Puck on Pardon-gate: Would Hunter Biden have ever been targeted, tried, and sentenced by the Justice Department if he weren’t Biden’s son? And was the president in any way justified in pardoning him? Peter Hamby and Tara Palmeri get into it in an especially feisty episode of The Powers That Be, our flagship daily podcast. Listen here.

• Eriq Gardner on Trump’s antitrust warning signs: Unless you’re a racing fan or Drive to Survive devotee, you may have missed that Formula 1 is adding an American team, Cadillac, sponsored by General Motors. This isn’t just a milestone for the rapidly growing sport; it seems to be the first inroad that Trump 2.0 has made on the antitrust front, while also signaling a significant media deal to come.

  Liberty Media, which owns F1, had previously blocked a proposed new team from Michael Andretti, sparking a Department of Justice investigation into possible antitrust violations, pushed by Republican lawmakers including Reps. John James and Jim Jordan. Now the air seems to have cleared: The Cadillac team will be operated by execs tied to Andretti’s camp, if not the former racing legend himself.

  Liberty’s newfound flexibility likely has something to do with the election of Donald Trump. The Andretti family is close with Don Jr., for starters, and sources tell me that Liberty chairman John Malone wants to clear potential regulatory obstacles as he explores a sale of the company, which also has sizable stakes in Live Nation and SiriusXM. Making nice with the D.O.J. is a smart play. Meanwhile, Liberty C.E.O. Greg Maffei—instrumental in the company’s 2017 acquisition of F1 and regarded as the staunchest opponent to Andretti’s team—is leaving.

  The F1 shake-up comes as Michael Jordan’s NASCAR team fights over that circuit’s closed charter system. The NBA Hall of Famer, who has powerhouse sports antitrust attorney Jeffrey Kessler leading the charge, was recently denied a preliminary injunction. But I wouldn’t be surprised to see the feds take a closer look at exclusionary practices across the sports and media landscape. Having ties to Trump’s inner circle might just offer a competitive edge. —Eriq Gardner

Of course, in a 53-47 Senate, it would take only four Republican defections to sink any of Trump’s nominees. And in my conversations with close Senate observers, a few schools of thought are emerging about how Republican members will evaluate these nominees.

The first cohort is the potential rebels. Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, who are invulnerable to primaries in Maine and Alaska, respectively, have the freedom to challenge Trump. Both women are keeping their cards close to the vest, but Collins intriguingly warned on Tuesday against letting Trump bypass the Senate’s advice and consent role in the Hegseth matter—perhaps a harbinger of her opposition. “That is why I do not want to see an attempt to have recess appointments,” she said. “It’s important that we thoroughly vet the nominees for these very important decisions.”

Meanwhile, Lindsey Graham sits in a camp we’ll call “the specialists.” On Tuesday afternoon, he was noncommittal on Hegseth’s nomination, telling CBS News: “I think some of these articles are very disturbing. He obviously has a chance to defend himself here, but some of this stuff is, it’s going to be difficult.” Sure, Graham almost always ends up falling in line with Trump, but the fact that he wasn’t reflexively all-in for Hegseth illustrates a theory in circulation: Senators who serve on specific committees might hesitate to support a problematic nominee in their jurisdiction.

Graham, for instance, previously served on the Armed Services Committee for most of his 30 years in Congress—in both the House and the Senate—and he’s also a veteran. Joni Ernst, another veteran and longtime Armed Services member—and a survivor of sexual assault—told the press on Tuesday that she will have a “really frank and thorough” conversation with Hegseth about his reported behavior. So while senators might peel off on the nominee relevant to their committee assignments or past life experiences—law enforcement, medicine, etcetera—they may back nominees for departments outside of their policy specializations. The committees to watch are Judiciary (for Patel), Intel (for Gabbard), H.H.S. (for R.F.K. Jr.), and Armed Services (for Hegseth).

Assuming Trump decides against running for a third term (which, of course, he is constitutionally barred from doing), the Class II senators, whose terms expire in 2027, will be the last group up for reelection before Trump fully becomes a lame duck. That makes them an intriguing lot to observe: It’s the largest Republican class grouping, with 20 members in all. They’ll be the first up for reelection, in 2026, and likely the first to face Trump’s wrath—including via possible Trump-backed primary challengers—for any acts of defiance. Within this grouping, the members to watch are North Carolina’s Thom Tillis and Collins (again), since they may also face competitive general elections.

Finally, there is the YOLO caucus of senators—those who may retire at the end of their current terms. Going rogue on confirmations will likely be the tell. The most watched senator in this category is, of course, Mitch McConnell, who hasn’t actually said whether he’s retiring. I’m not hearing any specific names, but there is a sense that a senator or two might quickly get their fill of the latest round of Trump drama and decide to hang it up.

But in reality, Trump will probably mostly get his way in staffing the executive branch. Even with these possible waverers, it’s hard to see the Senate issuing many rejections at the cabinet level, let alone for the lower-tier nominees who will most likely also be like-minded Trump loyalists.

Finally, there’s an important changing-of-the-guard coming on the Republican side of the House: Politico reported yesterday that Dan Conston will leave the Congressional Leadership Fund—the powerful super PAC aligned with House Republican leadership. Conston is a key House Republican operative who’s spent his career specializing in House races, and he has few peers when it comes to institutional memory. He was also a major cog in Kevin McCarthy’s political machine. Because of the G.O.P.’s hard-money fundraising deficiencies in 2024 (given the results this cycle, it’s gone underappreciated that House Republican candidates shat the bed in fundraising vs. their Democratic counterparts), Conston’s super PAC carried a much heavier load in buying TV time than had previous iterations of the C.L.F.

Yes, the G.O.P. is on track to lose, in aggregate, a seat or two this cycle. But Conston and the C.L.F. were a major reason Republicans narrowly held on to the House majority. Replacing Conston will be one of the most consequential political decisions facing Mike Johnson and House leadership in the new term.