Trump transition updates: Trump taps America First think tank CEO as agriculture secretary

Pete Hegseth, President-elect Trump's pick to lead the Department of Defense, is on Capitol Hill Thursday meeting with Republican senators and making his case for the job.

Hegseth is joined by Vice President-elect JD Vance, and the two huddled in Vance's office Thursday morning.

Sen. John Barrasso issued a statement this morning following his meeting with Hegseth calling him a "strong nominee."

"Pete pledged that the Pentagon will focus on strength and hard power -- not the current administration's woke political agenda," Barrasso said.

Hegseth's nomination and eventual hearing will be managed by the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The top Republican on the committee, Sen. Roger Wicker, was spotted entering Vance's office and is meeting with Hegseth now.

-ABC News' Mariam Khan and Allison Pecorin

President-elect Donald Trump's pick for the director of national intelligence, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, has little experience working with the nation's spy agencies and a long track record of echoing the Russian disinformation they work to expose and to counter -- a combination her critics claim should be disqualifying.

Gabbard, who represented Hawaii as a Democrat from 2013-2021 and ran for the party's presidential nomination in 2020 before becoming a Republican earlier this year, has been accused of harboring sympathies for the Kremlin and parroting propaganda generated by Russia to justify its invasion of Ukraine.

At the outset of the conflict, Gabbard blamed the Biden administration and NATO, claiming they had provoked Russia's aggression by ignoring what she called its "legitimate security concerns" about Ukraine potentially becoming a member of the defensive alliance.

Read more here.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer is set to create a new "Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE)" subcommittee to work with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy's incoming Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in the next Congress, a source familiar with the plans tells ABC News.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene will chair the new subcommittee, which will "support the Oversight and Accountability Committee's mission to root out waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government," the source said.

Lawmakers involved in the future subcommittee have already met with members of the White House "DOGE" team, including Ramaswamy, who support the House Oversight Committee's endeavor and are already working together, the source said.

"The subcommittees will be officially established early next year when the Oversight and Accountability Committee meets to ratify its rules for the 119th Congress," the source said.

-ABC News' Will Steakin

President-elect Trump campaigned relentlessly on a radical overhaul of the federal government. His Cabinet picks, being unveiled at a breakneck pace, reflect he's determined to keep the promises he made to millions of Americans who voted to put him back in the White House.

And while his first choices toed a more traditional line, his next round included a series of names that shocked even Trump's close Republican allies in Congress: former Fox News host Pete Hegseth for defense secretary, Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, Matt Gaetz for attorney general and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to oversee Health and Human Services.

"This will absolutely be a brand-new era in Washington, from the pledge to remake the civil service to a top-to-bottom change in federal policies. There's nothing like it in recent memory," said Donald Kettl, a professor emeritus at the University of Maryland and former dean of its school of public policy.

Read more about the Cabinet picks and what some of the more unconventional picks indicate about Trump's plan to govern here.