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As Vice President-elect JD Vance shepherds controversial cabinet picks Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth through a charm offensive with Republican senators, an adjacent intra-party fight is simmering.

President-elect Donald Trump has already stirred angst among some GOP senators by choosing Gaetz for attorney general and Hegseth as Defense secretary despite past allegations of sexual misconduct (which both men deny) and questions about their qualifications. Now there are hints Trump may skip FBI vetting for his nominees.

Vance and Gaetz at the Capitol Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg

Senators of both parties, for the most part, value protocol and jealously guard their institutional power. Trump appears to put little stock in either.

Even some Republican senators who haven’t publicly dissed Trump’s picks don’t want to cast aside more than 60 years of precedent of seeing FBI background checks for nominees as they exercise their constitutional role vetting cabinet picks, Bloomberg’s Steven T. Dennis, Jamie Tarabay, Daniel Flatley and María Paula Mijares Torres report from the Capitol.

Susan Collins of Maine, a crucial Republican swing vote, Mississippi’s Roger Wicker, whose Armed Services Committee will oversee the nomination of Hegseth, and Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy, who will lead the panel with jurisdiction over Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination as Health and Human Services secretary, agree on the need for the FBI vetting.

All this is going on while the House Ethics Committee couldn’t come to an agreement on whether to release its report on the allegations against Gaetz. 

So far, Trump’s transition team hasn’t signed an agreement with the Justice Department and FBI that would allow the bureau to vet nominees, according to a person familiar with the matter. CNN reported last week that Trump is considering hiring a private company to do the vetting.

A spokesperson for Trump’s transition team didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Trump might be able to force through some of his more controversial picks, but the question is whether the juice will be worth the squeeze. And while he has never had more political capital, he can only lose four Republican votes in the Senate on any one of them. — Joe Sobczyk

Read more: Here Are the People Trump Is Naming to Key Roles

The drawn-out drama of Trump’s search for a Treasury secretary continues as he was scheduled to hold interviews with former Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh and Apollo’s Marc Rowan.

The president-elect’s team is holding discussions with the digital asset industry about whether to create a new White House post solely dedicated to cryptocurrency policy and is vetting candidates to serve in such a role.

Trump picked Republican lawyer Matthew Whitaker to be the US Ambassador to NATO, selecting a former loyal aide from his first term as his envoy to an international alliance he regularly criticizes.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy — Trump’s picks to lead a task force to review government spending — said they will strive to eliminate work-from-home policies for federal workers.

The Biden administration's announcement that it considers Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo González as the country's president-elect leaves Trump little room to cut a deal with Nicolás Maduro on migrants.

As Democrats try to figure out why the country lurched so dramatically toward Republicans this year, Representative Seth Moulton’s analysis of what went wrong has garnered particular attention — and backlash.

The Port of Los Angeles continued to move near-record levels of imports in October as businesses bring goods in ahead of potential tariff increases and seek to avoid labor-related disruptions at alternate ports.

The Federal Reserve’s top banking cop, Michael Barr, said he plans to serve his entire term when questioned about what he would do if Trump sought to fire him.

Fed Governor Michelle Bowman said she wants to move cautiously on further interest-rate cuts because progress in bringing down inflation has slowed.

Today on Bloomberg Television’s Balance of Power early edition at 1 p.m., hosts Joe Mathieu and Kailey Leinz interviewed Democratic Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi about whether the Ethics Committee should release its report on Gaetz and how Democrats can influence the House next year while in the minority.

On the program at 5 p.m., they talk with Republican Representative Mike Lawler about the Federal Reserve’s supervision of banking and other issues lawmakers have to work through before the next Congress is sworn in in January.

On the Elon Inc. podcast, Elon Musk reporter Dana Hull, social media reporter Kurt Wagner and Bloomberg Businessweek senior writer Max Chafkin consider how Musk has benefited from his incredibly close relationship with the president-elect, even as some cracks emerge between them. Listen on iHeart, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Robot density tracks the adoption of automation in the manufacturing industry, and the latest tally puts the US in 11th place. A new report by the International Federation of Robotics shows that factories around the world are rapidly adding robots, more than doubling the number per 10,000 employees in the past seven years. Economies in Asia are most apt to use robots, with Korea, Singapore, mainland China, Japan and Hong Kong among the top 10 most automated countries in the world. — Alex Tanzi

Initial jobless claims for last week will be reported at 8:30 a.m. tomorrow.

Existing home sales are reported tomorrow at 10 a.m. 

The University of Michigan’s final read of consumer sentiment in November will be released Friday.

New home sales for October will be reported on Tuesday.

Data on personal income and spending in October will be released next Wednesday.

The deadline for state certification of presidential electors is Dec. 11.

The Federal Reserve’s next meeting is Dec. 17-18.

The new Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3.

Inauguration day is Jan. 20.

• A Venezuelan man who entered the US illegally was convicted of murder in the killing of nursing student Laken Riley, a case that was repeatedly cited by Trump during the presidential race, the Associated Press reports.
• A hard turn by many Americans against science as a result of the pandemic has some public health experts concerned about dealing with the next national emergency, the Wall Street Journal reports.
•  New research on casualties during the US Civil War suggest the mortality rate in Confederate states was more than twice as high as in Union states, the New York Times reports.

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