We’re following the confirmation hearings for the incoming Trump administration. See our full politics coverage, and follow NPR’s Trump’s Terms podcast or sign up for our Politics newsletter to stay up to date.

Who: Marco Rubio

Nominated for: secretary of state

You might know him from: The Senate and the 2016 Republican presidential primary race, when Trump dubbed him “Little Marco” and Rubio warned voters not to support Trump, saying “friends do not let friends vote for con artists.”

More about Rubio:

• He would be the first Latino in the post.
• He is known for hawkish stances on China, Cuba and Venezuela. 
• His interventionist foreign policy positions put him at odds with Trump.

What does this role do: The secretary of state is fourth in line of succession to the president and the top Cabinet position. The secretary oversees U.S. foreign policy.

Watch Rubio’s confirmation hearing scheduled for 10 a.m. ET:

Among President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks, secretary of state nominee Marco Rubio may face the easiest confirmation process. He is a longtime member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, so he is well-known by the lawmakers who will be questioning him Wednesday at 10 a.m.

If confirmed, the 53-year-old Florida Republican would be the first Latino to serve as America’s top diplomat. Born in Florida, the son of Cuban immigrants was first elected senator in 2010 and gained a reputation as a hawkish voice on China, Cuba, Venezuela and Iran.

His relations with Trump have been uneasy. In 2016, Rubio told voters they should not back Trump as candidate for president, saying “friends do not let friends vote for con artists.” Trump dismissed him as “Little Marco,” though Rubio became a fixture on the campaign trail in 2024.

He may face some tough questions about why he voted against aid to Ukraine last year, despite his previous positions on Russia’s war there. He may also face questions about how his interventionist foreign policy views clash with Trump’s positions.

China has imposed sanctions on Rubio, which could make travel there difficult. Rubio has accused China of a “grotesque campaign of genocide” against Uyghur Muslims and he wrote legislation that banned imports from the Xinjiang region. This human rights advocacy has put him at odds with Trump ally Elon Musk, who opened a Tesla dealership in Xinjiang soon after Rubio’s Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act was signed into law in 2021.

The outgoing Biden administration has made it a priority to build up alliances in Asia to counter China’s rise. At the State Department, Secretary of State Antony Blinken set up “China House,” an office that draws on experts across the U.S. government to focus on China. That may be one office that Rubio will want to keep.

The secretary of state oversees U.S. foreign policy, but Trump has already chipped away at some of the job of America’s top diplomat, by tapping numerous special envoys for Ukraine, Gaza and Lebanon. He has also named a longtime foreign policy adviser, Richard Grenell, who had been in the running for secretary of state, to serve as envoy for “special missions.” “Ric will work in some of the hottest spots around the World, including Venezuela and North Korea,” Trump said in a posting on his social media platform, Truth Social, announcing the appointment.

We’re following the confirmation hearings for the incoming Trump administration. See our full politics coverage, and follow NPR’s Trump’s Terms podcast or sign up for our Politics newsletter to stay up to date.

Who: Pamela Bondi

Nominated for: attorney general

You might know her from: She served as Florida’s attorney general for eight years, and later served as a personal attorney for President Trump during his first impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate.

• She publicly pushed false claims of fraud in the 2020 election.
• She says Trump was unfairly prosecuted after leaving office in 2021.
• She has called individuals who investigated and prosecuted Trump members of “the deep state” and said they will face prosecution.

What does this role do? The attorney general leads the Justice Department and oversees the more than 100,000 people who work for it and its component agencies, including the FBI.

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, Pam Bondi, appears before the Senate on Wednesday for her confirmation hearing to serve as the nation’s top prosecutor.

Watch Bondi’s Senate confirmation hearing, set to begin at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, before the Senate Judiciary Committee, here:

A former two-term attorney general for the state of Florida, Bondi is expected to receive broad support from Republicans, who hold the Senate majority, but face sharp questions from Democrats who have concerns about whether she will protect the Justice Department from undue political influence or use its vast powers to go after Trump’s perceived political enemies.

Bondi, who is appearing for two days of hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, was Trump’s second choice for attorney general.

His first pick, former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, withdrew from consideration amid a backlash over allegations of sexual misconduct and illegal drug use. Gaetz has consistently denied those allegations. Nevertheless, Republicans, who showed little enthusiasm for Gaetz, warmly welcomed Bondi after Trump named her for the job.

Unlike Gaetz, who had no prosecutorial experience, Bondi worked as a local prosecutor in Florida for almost two decades before serving as the state’s attorney general from 2011 to 2019.

After leaving office, she served as a personal attorney for Trump during his first impeachment trial in the Senate. She also worked as a lobbyist for corporate clients, including Amazon and Uber, and lobbied on behalf of the government of Qatar.

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, has praised Bondi’s record as a prosecutor, and called her well-qualified to lead the Justice Department.

“Bondi is prepared to refocus the Justice Department’s attention where it ought to be: on enforcing the law and protecting Americans’ safety,” Grassley has said.

If confirmed, Bondi will lead the Justice Department and wield the vast powers that come with it. She will be responsible for enforcing federal laws, including voting and civil rights laws, as well as defending the Trump administration’s policies in court.

The job of attorney general is one of the most important in any administration, but it is viewed as having particular significance in Trump’s second term because of his tumultuous relationship with the department in the past.

‘The prosecutors will be prosecuted’

Much of Trump’s first presidency took place in the shadow of Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.

After leaving office, Trump faced four criminal prosecutions, including two federal cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith into Trump’s handling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Trump was not charged in the Mueller investigation, and neither of the Smith cases ever made it to trial.

Still, Trump has claimed that the Justice Department was weaponized against him, and during the 2024 campaign he repeatedly talked about seeking vengeance against his perceived political enemies, including at the department.

Bondi has been a fierce defender of President-elect Donald Trump. Above: In May 2024, during Trump’s hush money trial in New York, Bondi spoke outside the courthouse to defend Trump.

Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images North America

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Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images North America

Bondi has echoed that view in some of her own public statements.

“The Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted. The bad ones,” she said on Fox News in 2023. “The investigators will be investigated because the deep state, last term for President Trump, they were hiding in the shadows but now they have a spotlight on them and they can all be investigated.”

Those sorts of comments have fueled concerns among Democrats that Bondi will use the department’s prosecutorial powers to pursue Trump’s stated desire for vengeance.

“The president-elect has made it clear that he values one thing above all else in an attorney general: loyalty,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, earlier this week. “I have no reason to believe President-elect Trump has changed his litmus test for attorney general or his views on how the Justice Department should operate. In fact, I fear he found someone who can pass his loyalty test.”

Bondi has not spoken about how she would approach the job of attorney general since her nomination was announced, but in her meeting with Grassley in December she said she would “do my best every day to work tirelessly for the American people.”

Several of Trump’s personal attorneys are up for top jobs

If confirmed, Bondi would enter the job with deep ties in Trump world. She spoke on his behalf at the 2016 Republican National Convention, and publicly pushed false claims of vote fraud in the 2020 election. More recently, she led the legal arm of the America First Policy Institute, a think tank led by former members of Trump’s first administration.

Bondi is not the only former personal attorney of Trump’s to be tapped for a top job at the Justice Department.

Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, who have represented Trump in state and federal court, have been picked for deputy attorney general and another senior post, respectively, while former Missouri solicitor general Dean John Sauer, who represented Trump before the Supreme Court, has been picked as solicitor general for the incoming administration.

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s impeached president Yoon Suk Yeol was apprehended for questioning over insurrection charges, a month and a half after he briefly imposed martial law.

He is the country’s first sitting president to be detained.

With his detention, investigators turned the page on weeks of anxiety about potential clashes between the presidential security detail and the police following the issuance of Yoon’s warrant.

But the political chaos provoked by the Dec. 3 martial law declaration is expected to continue, as Yoon and his ruling party supporters remain defiant against the insurrection charges.

One of motorcade for impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol leaves for the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials from the gate of the presidential residence in Seoul, South Korea on Wednesday.

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Lee Jin-man/AP

Yoon argued the martial law declaration was necessary because the opposition’s “legislative dictatorship” paralyzed state affairs and disturbed social order.

In a video message released after his detention, the president called the investigation and the warrant “illegal” and said he agreed to go with the law enforcement only to prevent violent confrontation.

The first attempt to detain Yoon by the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO) and police on Jan. 3 ended in a failure after a five-hour standoff with the president’s security detail. The CIO’s Chief Prosecutor Oh Dong-woon later told the parliamentary judiciary committee that his staff had not expected “organized resistance” by armed security agents and felt “psychological and physical pressure.”

The CIO, which is leading a joint investigation on Yoon with the police and the military, beefed up its preparations ahead of the second attempt, mobilizing 3,000 riot police, 1,000 detectives and anti-corruption investigators in their pre-dawn operation. It also issued warnings to the security detail that they too can be arrested for obstructing public duties and, if convicted, lose their job and pensions.

After dispersing dozens of ruling party lawmakers blocking the gate of the presidential residence, police and investigators used ladders to climb over buses parked behind the gate as barricades.

Some police officers tried to enter from the rear of the residence through a mountain hiking trail.

Investigators from the state anti-corruption agency and police officers make their way to the residence of impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol to execute a warrant to detain Yoon in Seoul, South Korea on Wednesday.

Ahn Young-joon/AP

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Ahn Young-joon/AP

Unlike the first attempt, no presidential security agents were seen trying to stop law enforcement.

After more than two hours of negotiation inside the presidential residence between Yoon’s representatives and law enforcement, a presidential convoy left the compound.

Demonstrators gathered outside the presidential compound

When the CIO confirmed Yoon’s detention, cheers broke out among protesters who had been urging his arrest in the freezing cold.

“I haven’t lived for long, but this is the happiest I’ve been in my life,” says Choi Haysu, a 20-year-old college student from the southeastern city of Busan. Choi says she arrived in the area the day before and spent the night on the street.

When Yoon declared martial law last month, Choi says she searched for a protest to go to the next day, comparing it to democracy activists clashing with militant police during the 1980s. “If the National Assembly had failed to stop martial law troops,” she says, “I feared the kind of violent crackdowns I saw in history books would happen.”

Young South Koreans born after the country’s military dictatorships have actively participated in recent protests demanding Yoon’s ouster. Many say they took for granted South Korea’s stable democracy before the martial law declaration.

“Most people live with constant anxiety, checking every morning if Yoon Suk Yeol has been arrested overnight or if any other situation has happened,” says Min So Won, 24, who protested outside the presidential residence on Wednesday.

In a recent Gallup poll, 75% of South Korean respondents between ages 18 and 29 said they support Yoon’s impeachment. The National Assembly passed the impeachment motion on Dec. 14, and the Constitutional Court began formal hearings this week to decide whether to formally remove him from office.

Older South Koreans, however, are more sympathetic to Yoon. In the same poll, 36% of people ages 70 or older supported the impeachment.

Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol stage a rally to oppose his impeachment near the presidential residence in Seoul, South Korea on Wednesday.

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Lee Jin-man/AP

Jeong Hyung-mok, a 76-year-old retired teacher, took part in the anti-impeachment protest also happening outside the presidential residence on Wednesday. She says she fears South Korea’s government would collapse if Yoon is impeached.

“The president is the pillar that supports our country and the vanguard of liberal democracy,” Jeong says, calling the leader of the liberal opposition a “communist.”

Speaking to reporters outside the residence, lawmaker Kim Gi-hyeon of the ruling People Power Party also argued the country’s liberal democracy and rule of law is at stake, repeating Yoon’s claims about the illegality of the investigation.

But the courts have dismissed objections raised by Yoon’s lawyers and supporters over the detention warrant.

The CIO can hold the president for interrogation for 48 hours. The agency is then expected to file for an arrest warrant, which would grant the office and the prosecution up to 20 days to question him.

As Donald Trump prepares to once again assume the office of the presidency, a new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll finds that, despite his claims of an “unprecedented and powerful mandate,” Trump may have to be careful about how far he decides to go with what he wants to do.

More people hold an unfavorable than favorable view of him, most are against pardoning those convicted of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and they’re split on whether to mass deport immigrants who are in the U.S. without legal status.

Perhaps most importantly, Americans have high expectations that their personal financial situations will improve under Trump, but more think tariffs will hurt rather than help the economy.

Trump has promised bold action, but, as the NPR poll shows, the politics may be tricky. Presidents often become vulnerable because of overreach. They tend to believe — falsely — that because they were elected, they have a mandate for everything on their agenda. Clearly, that’s not the case.

“The opening round of the second term is not going well with the public,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, which conducted the survey of 1,387 adults. “Americans are not convinced of Trump’s agenda pillars, including pardons and tariffs. Mass deportations are only getting mixed reviews.”

The core of why Trump got another term was negative feelings about the economy. Voters said throughout the campaign that their top concern was inflation, specifically prices. But bringing down prices, Trump said after the election, will likely be “hard” despite his promises to fix the economy.

President Biden and his campaign successor, Vice President Harris, suffered politically because of inflation, and the poll provides a grim view of Biden’s presidency. Just 42% approve of the job he’s doing in this final survey of his presidency, and a slim majority said as a president, he will go down as below average or worse.

It’s a warning sign for Trump, too, that the economy can make or break a presidency, and leading up to his second inauguration, he has garnered more attention for his designs on Greenland, potentially annexing Canada, reclaiming the Panama Canal Zone and renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” rather than serious plans for the economy.

The survey was conducted Jan. 7-9 and has a margin of error of +/- 3.2 percentage points, so results could be about 3 points lower or higher. It used multiple approaches to reach respondents, including by cellphone, landline, text and online in both English and Spanish.

Views of Trump remain more negative than positive

For most presidents, it doesn’t get much better than their early days in office when it comes to how Americans view them.

But Trump starts with a net-negative favorability rating, 44% favorable, 49% unfavorable. Since Marist started asking about Trump’s favorability in 2016, he has never had a net-positive rating, but there does appear to be a small percentage withholding judgment for now, as the 49% unfavorable view is tied for the least-negative rating for him.

There is a sharp gender divide on how Trump is viewed — 53% of men have a positive view of him, while just 35% of women do.

Trump was viewed best by white evangelical Christians (69%), white men without college degrees (65%) and those who live in rural areas (57%).

Those with the least positive feelings toward the incoming president include white women with college degrees (29%), women who live in small cities or suburban areas (34%) and people who live in big cities (36%).

Just 41% of Latinos had a positive view of Trump. The sample size in the polling means there’s a high margin of error with subgroups like this, but it’s an important number to watch across multiple surveys, considering the record share of Latinos Trump won in the 2024 election.

It also raises the stakes for Trump and Republicans when it comes to the importance of improving feelings about the economy in the coming years.

Some Trump priorities have mixed support, at best

From pardons for people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, to mass deporting migrants, to tariffs on other countries, Americans either disagree with Trump or are split on whether they are good ideas.

When it comes to Jan. 6, days after the four-year anniversary of the siege, 59% said it was an insurrection to overthrow a free and fair election, as opposed to a protest by patriots to stop a stolen election. Among Republicans, however, 61% think it was a protest by patriots.

A significant majority — 62% — said they would not approve if Trump pardoned people who were convicted of attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6. Vice president-elect JD Vance said Sunday that people who “committed violence” should not be pardoned; Trump has been less clear about how he might discern between “peaceful protesters” and those who acted violently that day. (See NPR’s database of those who have been charged here.)

Trump received better marks than Harris or Biden on who people trusted more on immigration ahead of the election, but when asked specifically about mass deportation of immigrants in the U.S. illegally, reviews were mixed — 49% supported it, 49% opposed.

But showing why this has been such a salient issue for Trump’s campaign, not only did almost 8-in-10 Republicans support mass deportation, 53% of Republicans strongly support it.

Only a quarter of Democrats support the proposal, and independents are evenly split.

On the economy, almost 6-in-10 said they think the economy is not working well for them personally, including 73% of Republicans. Pre-pandemic, two-thirds of those surveyed said they thought the economy was working well for them.

Feelings of nostalgia for the pre-pandemic economy could be a big factor in why Trump won in November and why 44% in this survey said they expect their family finances to get better in the coming year compared to just 22% who said they think it will get worse.

That 44% is the most optimistic respondents have been about their near-future personal financial situation since Marist has been asking the question in the last 15 years.

Republicans (63%) were the most likely to have confidence that their financial situation would get better, not surprising considering how partisan views of the economy have been.

But when it comes to tariffs or fees on products imported from other countries, something Trump has promoted as potentially solving lots of economic issues, respondents, by a 48%-31% margin, were more likely to say tariffs would hurt the economy than help.

Trump nominees largely not well known

There are a raft of confirmation hearings this week for several Trump Cabinet nominees, including Pete Hegseth, a Fox News personality whom Trump has nominated for defense secretary. Hegseth sat for his one and only day of questioning on Tuesday.

More than half of people (55%) said they don’t have an opinion or are unsure of their view of him. Just 19% had a favorable opinion, while 26% had an unfavorable one.

Trump’s nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Kennedy, had a net-positive rating, 40%-37% with 23% unsure. He actually had the highest net-rating — and the only one that was net-positive of those asked about, including Trump, Hegseth, secretary of state nominee Sen. Marco Rubio and adviser Elon Musk.

Rubio, who has had a checkered history with Trump but got in his good graces in recent years, was 25% positive, 34% negative.

Musk is the world’s richest man and donated more than $250 million to Trump’s reelection effort. He’s tasked with an outside advisory effort to identify governmental waste. Just 37% have a favorable opinion of the Tesla and SpaceX chief, who also owns the social media platform X. Forty-six percent have a negative view of him.

Biden’s legacy is viewed negatively 

In addition to his middling final approval rating of 42% approve, 50% disapprove, Biden was also seen by 53% as likely to go down as either a below average (19%) or one of the worst presidents (34%).

Just 19% said he would be above average or one of the best. More than a quarter said he would be seen as average. Even among Democrats, just 44% said he would be remembered as at least above average.

Combining average or better, 47% said Biden would be seen as at least average. That’s higher than Trump when he left office the first time in January 2021, when just 37% said so.

But both were far lower than for former President Barack Obama when more than two-thirds — 68% — said he would be remembered as at least average and 40% said he would be seen as at least above average.