Trump Administration Live Updates: R.F.K. Jr. and Gabbard Face Confirmation Votes

That exact cap is contained in Tuesday’s legislation to amend the 1968 Truth in Lending Act, proposed by two senators who aren’t typically ideological allies: Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, and Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri. Both separately participated in earlier attempts to impose a cap.

The average credit card interest rate is now more than 20 percent, according to Bankrate. The metric has risen over the past decade; at 22.8 percent in 2023, credit card companies were charging their highest rates since the Federal Reserve began collecting data in 1994.

The new limit would expire in 2031, after Mr. Trump’s term. The White House did not respond to a request for comment on whether the administration would back it.

“We cannot continue to allow big banks to rip off Americans by charging outrageously high credit card interest rates,” Mr. Sanders said in a statement. Mr. Hawley, who has fashioned himself a populist on economist issues, described current interest rates as “exploitative.”

The proposal can be counted on producing a dim response from the banks and the credit card industry. Bank lobbyists came out hard against Mr. Trump’s remarks last year, arguing that they need to charge fees high enough to recover losses from borrowers who don’t pay back their loans.

The American Financial Services Association, a trade organization for credit card issuers, has said rate caps are “unworkable” and “actually harm the consumers policymakers are trying to help, by limiting the types of credit tens of millions of Americans depend on more than ever.”

Republican and libertarian policymakers and researchers have tended to agree.

As ever with Mr. Trump, however, traditional boundaries may not hold. The Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, was asked during his confirmation hearing last month if he would support a cap on credit card interest rates.

He did not commit to a position, saying he would back whatever Mr. Trump decided.

The meeting, which is part of a multiday visit to Washington by Mr. Netanyahu, is meant to demonstrate the close ties between the two leaders after more than a year of war between Israel and Hamas severely strained the relationship between the Israeli leader and President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu had forged a close partnership during the president’s first term. In remarks to reporters over the weekend, Mr. Trump said he was looking forward to the meeting.

“The discussions on the Middle East with Israel and various and sundry other countries are progressing,” the president said, adding that Mr. Netanyahu would be “coming on Tuesday, and I think we have some very big meetings scheduled.”

But Mr. Netanyahu will be going into his meeting at odds with Mr. Trump on several key issues, according to analysts. Those are likely to include the questions of how to confront Iran’s nuclear ambitions and how quickly to end the war in Gaza.

The Trump administration has made clear that it wants to see all of the hostages held by Hamas returned and then move on to a grand bargain involving Saudi Arabia that formalizes relations with Israel. All of that hinges on an end to fighting in the Palestinian enclave.

With Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing government in jeopardy if the war ends with Hamas still in control there, and with no other plan for Gaza in place, analysts expect the Israeli prime minister to try to delay moving to the next stage of the deal, which calls for a permanent cease-fire.

“Netanyahu made this salami deal,” said Shira Efron, the senior director of policy research at the Israel Policy Forum, a New York-based research group, referring to the three-phased agreement with Hamas. “He’s always playing for time and kicking the can down the road — something he is an expert in. Trump wants to cut to the chase and end the war.”

Mr. Netanyahu is also in a vulnerable position internationally, with an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court accusing him of war crimes during the conflict with Hamas.

“The stakes are really high for the prime minister, to be clear,” said Thomas R. Nides, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel. “President Trump is holding all the cards and is really clear he wants to see all the hostages come home.” Negotiations have begun to move beyond the first phase of the cease-fire in Gaza, during which Hamas has pledged to release 33 prisoners in exchange for a pullback of Israeli troops from populated areas in Gaza and freedom for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly claimed credit for the deal, which was actually negotiated for months during the Biden administration. But the fate of the second phase of the deal — in which the cease-fire is supposed to become permanent — will be on Mr. Trump’s watch. Mr. Netanyahu met in Washington on Monday with Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy.

After that meeting, Mr. Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that Israel was preparing to send a working-level delegation to Qatar, one of the main countries mediating between Israel and Hamas, at the end of this week in order to discuss “technical details related to the continued implementation of the agreement.”

Once back in Israel, Mr. Netanyahu will convene his security cabinet “to discuss Israel’s overall positions regarding the second stage of the deal, which will guide the continuation of the negotiations,” the statement added.

Adding to the anxiety in the region were reports on Monday that U.S. intelligence officials believe Iran is seeking to build a cruder atomic weapon that could be developed quickly if the leadership in Tehran decided to do so.

It remains unclear whether that decision has been made, and Iran’s new president has indicated that he would like to begin a negotiation with Mr. Trump’s administration even as the country’s nuclear scientists push ahead with their efforts.

Mr. Netanyahu has said for years that letting Iran become a nuclear power would be an existential threat to Israel and an enormously destabilizing event for the United States and nations across the globe. In 2018, Mr. Trump pulled out of a deal negotiated during the Obama administration that aimed to put limits on Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu are likely to discuss other ways to keep Iran from succeeding in building a bomb, including the possibility of taking military action against Tehran’s nuclear facilities. The prime minister has advocated taking military action in the past, but Israel has always pulled back after pressure from the United States.

At the same time, the two leaders are also expected to discuss the possibility of normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia. Mr. Trump had pushed the idea during his first term, and Mr. Biden continued to do so after he took office. That effort largely stalled after Israel’s bombardment of Gaza in its campaign against Hamas that has killed tens of thousands of people, many of them civilians. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia has declared that the kingdom will not establish diplomatic relations with Israel before the “establishment of a Palestinian state,” an apparent shift in Riyadh’s position that could potentially complicate normalization talks.

The war began after the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killed roughly 1,200 people, and saw roughly 250 people taken hostage.

Also on the agenda is a request by Mr. Netanyahu for the United States to move forward with a set of pending arms transfers to Israel that amount to over $8 billion worth of bombs, missiles, artillery and other weapons. Those orders are still in an informal congressional review process. A U.S. official said the State Department was moving forward with two additional large sets of orders of weapons for use — one for thousands more bombs and one for armored Caterpillar D9 bulldozers.

The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the arms shipments, said the Trump administration had begun to make to Congress the informal notifications necessary to initiate the weapons transfers. Mr. Biden had paused a single shipment of the largest U.S.-made bombs to Israel amid outrage over bombing by Israeli forces in Gaza. Mr. Trump has told the Pentagon to proceed with the shipment.

Edward Wong contributed reporting.

“Joshua said to them: ‘Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Be strong and courageous. This is what the LORD will do to all the enemies you are going to fight,’” Mr. Cassidy, who is also the chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, wrote on X.

The Finance Committee has 14 Republicans and 13 Democrats. If every Democrat votes against Mr. Kennedy, a no vote by Mr. Cassidy would deprive Mr. Kennedy of a favorable recommendation to the full Senate. But it would not necessarily doom his nomination; it is possible that Republicans could use procedural tactics to force the full Senate to vote. It is also possible that Mr. Cassidy votes to move the nomination forward on the grounds that the full Senate should consider it, while reserving the right to vote against Mr. Kennedy on the floor.

For Mr. Cassidy, voting against Mr. Kennedy would be a politically perilous step. He is up for re-election in 2026 and is already facing a primary challenge from the right.

Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the panel, said Democrats were examining their procedural options and “trying to catalog all the different approaches” they might take, depending on how the vote goes.

On Capitol Hill on Monday, all eyes were on Mr. Cassidy, who said that he and Mr. Kennedy had a “cordial” conversation over the weekend, but was “still working through” how he would vote. During last week’s confirmation hearing before the health committee, Mr. Cassidy delivered impassioned, anguished remarks expressing his reservations about Mr. Kennedy.

“I’ve been struggling with your nomination,” Mr. Cassidy said after Mr. Kennedy repeatedly refused to disavow his past criticism of vaccines. The senator told the nominee he was worried that Mr. Kennedy would use his platform as a cabinet secretary to continue to cast doubt on vaccines and that he was too old to change.

“Does a 70-year-old man, 71-year-old man who spent decades criticizing vaccines, and who’s financially invested in finding fault with vaccines — can he change his attitudes and approach now that he’ll have the most important position influencing vaccine policy in the United States?” Mr. Cassidy asked.

“I’ve got to figure that out for my vote,” he added.

Mr. Kennedy had been under scrutiny over his decision to keep a financial stake in hundreds of vaccine cases he referred to a plaintiff law firm suing a major drug maker. After sharp questioning from lawmakers during back-to-back hearings last week, Mr. Kennedy changed course, instead declaring that he would sign over the interest in the litigation to his son, a lawyer in California. Conor Kennedy appears to be the only Kennedy son working in law at Wisner Baum, the firm that the elder Kennedy referred the cases to, claiming that Merck’s HPV vaccine, which is meant to prevent cervical cancer, caused harm.

The reversal did not quell concerns from Democrats, including Mr. Wyden and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

“What is clear is that your involvement and financial interests in vaccine litigation are broad and extensive,” the senators wrote in a letter sent Sunday to Mr. Kennedy. “It seems possible that many different types of vaccine-related decisions and communications — which you would be empowered to make and influence as Secretary — could result in significant financial compensation for your family.”

Ms. Warren and Mr. Wyden asked Mr. Kennedy to pledge in writing that he would recuse himself from vaccine-related matters while he served as secretary. They also asked him to step away from vaccine-related litigation for four years after his term as secretary.

Mr. Kennedy’s rise to national prominence was fueled by his vaccine skepticism, his criticism of the pharmaceutical and agricultural industries and his embrace of organic foods. He ran for president last year, first as a Democrat and then as an independent, before endorsing Mr. Trump.

He is among Mr. Trump’s most divisive cabinet picks, and perhaps his most prominent. A scion of the storied Kennedy Democratic political clan, he has built a movement that he calls MAHA — Make America Healthy Again — and has legions of followers. Many of them are women, whom he refers to as the “MAHA Moms.”

As Mr. Cassidy said last week, “My phone blows up with people who really follow you, and there are many who trust you more than they trust their own physician.”

El Salvador was the second stop on Mr. Rubio’s first foreign trip as secretary of state. After meeting with Mr. Bukele on Monday, Mr. Rubio said that he had briefed President Trump on the offer, which he described as unprecedented.

Mr. Rubio said that El Salvador had proposed jailing undocumented migrants who have been convicted of crimes and deported from the United States. The secretary said Mr. Bukele had offered to also accept convicted criminals who are currently serving their sentences in the United States, “even if they are U.S. citizens or legal residents.”

The State Department later added that Mr. Bukele had agreed to take undocumented migrants from any country, not just El Salvador, that have been convicted of crimes, including members of the MS-13 and Tren de Aragua gangs.

Despite the sweeping scope of the offer, which Mr. Rubio described as “an act of extraordinary friendship,” deporting U.S. citizens would fly in the face of protections that make it illegal in all but the rarest of cases.

While details of the plan are not yet known, it is another example of how the Trump administration is quickly driving home the point to governments in the region that they are either allies or enemies based on their willingness to support him, especially on illegal migration, fentanyl trafficking and restricting Chinese influence.

Mr. Bukele rose to power in 2019 on a promise to rid his country of drugs and gangs and has since earned adulation across Latin America for bringing down crime in his country. At the same time, he has used emergency powers to order mass arrests that critics say have trampled human rights and the rule of law, ensnaring thousands of innocent people.

Mr. Bukele said Monday that criminals deported by the United States would go to the Terrorism Confinement Center, a prison built to house 40,000 people. Human rights groups have documented extreme overcrowding in El Salvador’s prisons and reports of torture by guards.

El Salvador signed a similar agreement in 2019 to receive non-Salvadorans detained in the United States, known as a “safe third country” agreement. That deal was never implemented because of the Covid pandemic. Mr. Bukele referred to it on Monday, saying his new proposal was “more important and of a much broader scope than the agreements made in 2019.”

Michael Crowley and Gabriel Labrador contributed reporting from San Salvador, El Salvador.

Mr. Musk and his lieutenants, representing an outside advisory group aimed at reducing waste in the federal government, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, gained access to the Treasury Department’s payment system late Friday.

The move immediately became a key skirmish in Mr. Musk’s wider war on the federal bureaucracy. The Trump administration pushed out a top Treasury Department official who had refused to give Mr. Musk’s team access to the payment system, and former Treasury officials said they were not aware of a political appointee ever before seeking access to its details.

Monday’s lawsuit said that the system, which sends out money on behalf of the entire federal government and disbursed more than $5 trillion in fiscal year 2023, includes sensitive information needed to send payments like tax refunds, veterans’ benefits, salaries for workers and Social Security payments. Federal law heavily restricts disclosure of that data.

The suit accused Mr. Musk and his team that gained access to those records of violating the Privacy Act and the Internal Revenue Code, laws that restrict access to taxpayer and other personal information unless the person is an employee engaged in official duties that require having access to those records. The suit also said Mr. Bessent’s giving Mr. Musk’s team access to the payment system was “arbitrary, capricious,” and exceeded his statutory authority.

Mr. Musk’s allies who were given access to the payment system were made Treasury employees, passed government background checks and obtained the necessary security clearances, according to two people familiar with the situation, who requested anonymity to discuss internal arrangements.

“The scale of the intrusion into individuals’ privacy is massive and unprecedented,” said the 19-page suit, filed in the Federal District Court in Washington. “Millions of people cannot avoid engaging in financial transactions with the federal government and, therefore, cannot avoid having their sensitive personal and financial information maintained in government records.”

It continued, “Secretary Bessent’s action granting DOGE-affiliated individuals full, continuous and ongoing access to that information for an unspecified period of time means that retirees, taxpayers, federal employees, companies, and other individuals from all walks of life have no assurance that their information will receive the protection that federal law affords.”

The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union of federal employees, representing more than 800,000 workers, filed the suit alongside the Service Employees International Union and Alliance for Retired Americans, a group that represents the interests of retired union workers. All three groups are affiliated with the A.F.L.-C.I.O., an umbrella group of more than 50 unions representing more than 12.5 million workers.

Mr. Ellis was a top lawyer for former Representative Devin Nunes of California when he led the House Intelligence Committee and used his position there to try to delegitimize the investigation into potential ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign. Mr. Ellis then moved to serve as a lawyer for the National Security Agency, a position he held only briefly before the Biden administration placed him on leave.

Critics viewed his appointment then as a reward for his role in a contentious legal decision by the administration to try to stop John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser, from publishing a damning book about the president. But an inspector general’s report later concluded that there was no undue pressure by the Trump administration to install him.

During the transition this time, aides to Mr. Trump initially considered Mr. Ellis for C.I.A. general counsel. But then other candidates for the deputy job at the agency — including Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, a former intelligence officer who is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s daughter-in-law — generated strong internal debate. A person briefed on the deliberations said Mr. Ellis emerged as a consensus candidate for the deputy job, pushed by both Mr. Nunes, who leads Mr. Trump’s social media company, and Mr. Ratcliffe, a former member of the House Intelligence Committee.

Mr. Ellis, a graduate of Yale Law School who appeared on “Jeopardy!” in 2013, has long earned praise for his smarts and legal talents. He has been tapped by Mr. Trump for difficult assignments before, including officially reviewing Mr. Bolton’s memoir, “The Room Where It Happened.” Mr. Ellis said it included classified material, setting the stage for the Justice Department to ask a judge to order a halt to its publication.

That attempt failed, but Mr. Trump cited those allegations last month when he issued an executive order stripping Mr. Bolton of his security clearance. Mr. Trump also stripped Mr. Bolton of his security detail.

After that review, Mr. Ellis was appointed to serve as the top lawyer at the National Security Agency, a top intelligence job, in the closing days of the first Trump administration. Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, denounced the appointment, saying it was an example of the administration trying to help its allies “burrow” into civil service jobs.

Mr. Ellis resigned in April 2021 after being put on leave in the first days of the Biden administration. While finding no wrongdoing in his hiring, the inspector general’s report affirmed reports that the agency’s director had reservations about whether he was the best choice for the job.

Musk allies who have taken on roles inside government agencies are evaluating how to harness A.I. to identify budget cuts and detect waste and abuse, according to people familiar with internal conversations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.

On Monday, Thomas Shedd, a former Tesla engineer who was appointed by the new administration to head technology efforts at the General Services Administration, told some staffers that A.I. would be a key part of their cost-reduction work, according to four people with knowledge of the conversation. At the agency, some staffers have been informed that they will be expected to cut 50 percent of its budget.

The agency houses the Technology Transformation Services, a group of roughly 700 technologists that Mr. Musk’s DOGE has seen as a key resource of engineering talent. Members of DOGE — who Mr. Shedd has referred to in internal messages as his “advisers” — have spent the past two weeks interviewing workers, asking them to describe their technical accomplishments and identify co-workers who exhibit “exceptional” talent.

Meeting with T.T.S. members Monday, Mr. Shedd said he hoped to pool all government contracts in a central database and use artificial intelligence to assess them for potential redundancies and budget reductions, the people familiar with the discussion said. He noted that the acting G.S.A. administrator, a Trump appointee and Salesforce executive named Stephen Ehikian, is maintaining an A.I. strategy document.

A.I. could also be used as a tool to detect fraud and waste, Mr. Shedd added.

Neither G.S.A. nor Mr. Shedd responded to requests for comment.

While both the Trump and Biden administrations have signaled an interest in increasing federal spending on the use of A.I. technologies across government, it’s unclear if the emerging technology could be used to identify overspending or fraud as Mr. Musk’s allies envision. In public discussions, Mr. Musk has, with little evidence, portrayed the U.S. government as rampant with billions of dollars in fraud that can be excised with hard work and technological know-how.

President Trump has defended Mr. Musk’s vast reach and the tactics he has used to shake up the federal bureaucracy.

“He’s got a team of very talented people, and we’re trying to shrink government, and he can probably shrink it as well as anybody else, if not better,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Monday.

Mr. Musk has been bullish on building A.I. systems at his companies, while simultaneously warning that the powerful technology could destroy humanity if he does not control it. Mr. Musk leads xAI, an artificial intelligence company that provides a chatbot and other services to his social media company, X, and also uses A.I. to power driver assistance systems at Tesla.

He has also sued OpenAI, his chief competitor, claiming that the firm, which he co-founded, breached its founding contract by putting commercial interests ahead of the public good. Mr. Musk left OpenAI in 2018 after disputes with other co-founders. (The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied the suit’s claims.)

The leaders of the nation’s largest A.I. companies — among them Google, Meta, OpenAI and Amazon — donated to and attended Mr. Trump’s inauguration last month as they’ve sought to curry favor with a new administration shaping federal policy around the developing technology.

Mr. Trump also appointed David Sacks, a venture capitalist, donor and ally to Mr. Musk, as the “White House A.I. and Crypto Czar,” and rescinded the Biden administration’s order to create A.I. safeguards. Last month, the president also announced a new $100 billion A.I. initiative between OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank to create computing infrastructure in the United States to power artificial intelligence.

In his new government role, Mr. Musk has insisted that there is ample waste and fraud that has gone undetected, echoing claims he made when he cut costs at companies like Twitter. In a livestream audio conversation that began after midnight on Monday in Washington, Mr. Musk claimed that wasteful spending, including “fake people” collecting Social Security and Medicare payments as well as “foreign fraud rings,” was taking $100 billion to $200 billion a year of U.S. taxpayer money.

“A trillion dollars can be saved just by addressing waste, fraud and abuse,” he said without saying how he arrived at that number.

Aric Toler contributed reporting.

In a series of phone calls and a private lunch on Friday at a Manhattan steakhouse with Gov. Kathy Hochul, he aggressively pushed for legislation that would give the governor far more time to call special elections for unoccupied legislative seats, according to several people familiar with the discussions.

Mr. Jeffries had one looming vacancy in particular in mind: the House seat that Representative Elise Stefanik would step down from if she is confirmed as President Trump’s U.N. ambassador.

Current law would require Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, to schedule a special election to fill the Republican-leaning seat within about three months of Ms. Stefanik’s resignation. But Democratic majorities in the State Legislature could soon grant the governor the ability to wait far longer to schedule the contest — potentially lining it up with the state’s regular June 26 primary date, or even the general election in November.

By doing so, they would deprive the Republicans’ already bare-bones House majority of a crucial vote for months as they try to fund the government and pass major tax and immigration legislation.

Republicans currently control 218 seats, including Ms. Stefanik’s in New York’s North Country, to the Democrats’ 215. (Republicans are expected to pick up two more seats in Florida in special elections in April.)

Republicans are furious, and they have set out to kill the proposal before it becomes law. In a statement, Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, called the maneuver “an open display of political corruption.”

“Instead of working to address high costs, taxes or fees, the illegal immigration crisis, crime, antisemitism on college campuses or other priorities, New York Democrats are instead working feverishly to silence the voices and needs of more than 750,000 citizens in New York’s 21st Congressional District,” he said.

The discussion by state lawmakers of pushing back scheduling of special elections was disclosed by Capital Pressroom on Friday. But the involvement of Mr. Jeffries, one of the most powerful Democrats in the state, has not been previously reported.

Christie Stephenson, a spokeswoman for Mr. Jeffries, did not address the leader’s involvement or political motivation when asked for comment.

She wrote in a statement that Mr. Jeffries “supports any good government initiative and legislative effort designed to expand the number of people who participate in a congressional special election.” She also pointed out that other states, like Texas and Florida, already allow their governors far more discretion when scheduling special elections.

Albany Democrats had been coalescing late last week around the idea of extending the timeline so that a special election for Ms. Stefanik’s seat would coincide with New York’s June primary. But Mr. Jeffries is still pushing for a longer timeline to keep the seat vacant as long as possible, two of the people said.

Privately, Democrats like Mr. Jeffries argue that if Republicans do not hesitate to wield their own power in the states to advance their cause, neither should Democrats. If they can hold up Republican policies they abhor in Congress, it is worth the cost.

They point to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican, who has been sued repeatedly in recent years for holding open Democratic-leaning congressional and state legislative seats for months without calling a special election. He has moved comparatively quickly to fill Republican-held seats.

Democrats in New York used a similar rationale in 2021 when they tried to adopt gerrymandered congressional districts. They were slapped down by the courts. Any attempt to change the special election law could attract a similar lawsuit.

Democratic legislative leaders in Albany have yet to agree to Mr. Jeffries’s request. And as of Monday afternoon, no bill text had been introduced.

Ms. Hochul has indicated to colleagues that she wants to help Mr. Jeffries and their party in Washington, according to the people familiar with the talks, who were not authorized to discuss them.

The two met to discuss the matter on Friday over lunch near South Street Seaport with at least two other New York Democrats close to the leader, Representatives Gregory W. Meeks of Queens and Joseph Morelle of Rochester.

Mr. Morelle, who has also joined Mr. Jeffries in calls to top legislative leaders in Albany in recent days, did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Mr. Meeks declined to expand on their discussions. “I’m not going to talk about it,” he told a reporter on Monday.

Ms. Hochul could indirectly benefit from the change herself. A narrower majority would theoretically force individual Republicans in Congress to take more politically painful votes to advance Mr. Trump’s agenda. Among them is Representative Mike Lawler, a Hudson Valley Republican who might run against Ms. Hochul next year.

“These are the same people that lecture everybody about protecting democracy but have no problem subverting democracy when it suits their needs,” Mr. Lawler said on Monday while in Albany, where he previously served in the State Assembly.

Speaking to reporters in the State Capitol on Monday, Ms. Hochul did not mention the outreach or its potential political impact. But she did indicate she was considering changing the law and cited other potential justifications.

Special elections that coincide with regularly scheduled elections could save counties money and boost turnout, the governor said.

Ms. Stefanik, for her part, is expected to easily win Senate approval for the U.N. post. She spent the weekend on a farewell tour of her district. But some Republicans said that the maneuvering by New York Democrats could force their party to delay her confirmation vote until other House vacancies are filled with new Republican members.

A spokesman for Ms. Stefanik did not return requests for comment.

At his confirmation hearing, Mr. Wright said his top priority was to “unleash” domestic energy production, including liquefied natural gas and nuclear power. He also told Democrats that he believed climate change was a “global challenge that we need to solve” and that he would support the development of renewable energy like wind and solar power.

At the same time, Mr. Wright said he would “work tirelessly” to support Mr. Trump’s “bold” energy agenda. The president has frequently dismissed climate change as a hoax, disparaged wind and solar power and said he wants to expand the use of oil, gas and coal, the burning of which is driving climate change.

The Energy Department plays a central role in developing new energy technologies. The agency oversees a network of 17 national laboratories that conduct cutting-edge research as well as a powerful loan office that has backed dozens of low-carbon energy projects, including battery factories in Ohio and Tennessee and two giant nuclear reactors in Georgia.

Mr. Wright would also oversee approvals of liquefied gas export terminals, which the Biden administration tried to slow, angering industry groups. Mr. Trump has already ordered the Energy Department to restart reviews of proposed export facilities.

The Energy Department is a sprawling agency. About 80 percent of the department’s $52 billion annual budget goes toward maintaining the nation’s nuclear arsenal, cleaning up environmental messes from the Cold War and conducting research in areas like high-energy physics.

Under the Biden administration, the department aggressively supported new clean energy technologies such as advanced nuclear power, enhanced geothermal energy, green hydrogen fuels, next-generation batteries and more. Backed by new funding from Congress, it issued tens of billions in loans and grants to everything from firms making low-carbon cement to power companies building new transmission lines.

At his confirmation hearing, Mr. Wright mostly declined to go into details about how he would run the department.

Some conservative groups have urged Mr. Wright to reorient or even shutter the agency’s Loan Programs Office, which was given roughly $400 billion in loan authority by Congress to bring promising energy technologies to market. Under the Biden administration, the office finalized more than $60.6 billion in loans and loan guarantees to companies that were mining lithium, restarting a shuttered nuclear plant, converting wind and solar power into hydrogen fuels and more. It also issued $47 billion in conditional loans that have not been finalized.

As of Jan. 17, there were still 160 companies seeking more than $200 billion in loans and loan guarantees. But the loan office’s work has largely been paused since Mr. Trump took office, and it is unclear what will happen to those applications.

Most major environmental groups and many Democrats opposed Mr. Wright’s confirmation, saying that he downplayed the risks of a warming planet. In a social media post in 2023, Mr. Wright wrote, “There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition, either.” On a podcast last year, he said that climate change would have “a slow-moving, modest impact two or three generations from now.”

On podcasts and in speeches, Mr. Wright has frequently made a moral case for fossil fuels, arguing that the world’s poorest people need access to oil, gas and coal to enjoy the benefits of modern life that rich nations take for granted.

Still, some Senate Democrats joined Republicans in voting to approve Mr. Wright’s nomination. They included Ruben Gallego of Arizona, Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper of Colorado, Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Ben Ray Luján and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, as well as Angus King, an independent from Maine who normally caucuses with Democrats.

“While I do not agree with Mr. Wright on a number of issues, he has committed to working with us in good faith” on issues like investing in national labs and building out high-voltage power lines, Mr. Heinrich said last month.

Mr. Wright graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and did graduate work on solar energy at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1992, he founded Pinnacle Technologies, which created software to measure the motion of fluid beneath the Earth’s surface. The software helped bring about a commercial shale-gas revolution.

Mr. Wright started Liberty Energy in 2011, and the company has worked with others on geothermal energy and small, modular nuclear reactors.

Mr. Wright holds 2.6 million shares in the company, which were worth roughly $47 million based on Monday’s closing stock price. In a written statement to the Senate he promised to step down from Liberty Energy and divest his holdings within 90 days after being confirmed. According to his ethics agreement, he is scheduled to get paid his last bonus from the company in March.

Lisa Friedman contributed reporting.

“I have the right to do that, and we might put that in the sovereign wealth fund, whatever we make, or if we do a partnership with very wealthy people, a lot of options, but we could put that as an example in the fund,” Mr. Trump said of buying TikTok.

The three-paragraph executive order tasks the Treasury and Commerce Departments with generating a plan within 90 days for creating a such a fund. Sovereign wealth funds are popular in oil-rich countries like Norway and Saudi Arabia that can invest large budget surpluses in projects around the world.

But the United States runs persistent, and widening, budget deficits, and it is unclear where the Trump administration could find the money to seed such a fund. Howard Lutnick, Mr. Trump’s pick to lead the Commerce Department, suggested that the government could take a stake in companies it does business with.

“If we are going to buy two billion Covid vaccines, maybe we should have some warrants and some equity in these companies and have that grow for the help of the American people,” he said, standing beside Mr. Trump at the White House.

Mr. Trump discussed the idea during the presidential campaign, floating the possibility that money collected from imposing new tariffs could be invested in projects around the country. The Biden administration had also studied the possibility of creating a fund to make investments in specific strategic industries.

Standing up a national investment fund would require resolving a series of questions about how the government money is controlled and which projects or companies receive it. The executive order tasks administration officials with figuring out whether Congress would need to pass new legislation in order to create such a fund.

If the Trump administration ultimately moves forward with creating a sovereign wealth fund, it would be the latest step to expand the federal government’s role in the American economy. Under both Mr. Trump and former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., officials in Washington have been much more proactive in supporting American companies, often at the expense of foreign competitors, ending a decades-long embrace of free trade and open investment among American officials.

Mr. Trump said during his remarks that he would like the American wealth fund to be among the largest in the world, many of which exceed $1 trillion.

“And I think in a short period of time, we’d have one of the biggest funds. And you know, some of some of them are pretty large,” Mr. Trump said. “So, that’s a big deal, huh?”