Good morning! Mastercard will settle a pay discrimination suit for $26 million, the Fortune 500 loses a female CEO, and senators grill Trump defense pick Pete Hegseth.
- On defense. Pete Hegseth testified before the Senate Committee on Armed Services yesterday in his bid to become Donald Trump's secretary of defense. Hegseth's nomination is among the most controversial of Trump's picks, thanks to Hegseth's record of a drinking problem, past allegations of sexual assault and infidelity (which he's denied), and views on women in the military.
At the Capitol yesterday, Hegseth was grilled by Democratic senators about all of the above. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) pressed the 44-year-old Army veteran and former Fox News anchor about his history of drinking to the point of incapacitation at work events, about an affair that resulted in a child—and about an encounter two months after that child's birth, which a woman told police was sexual assault. According to a police report, the woman said that Hegseth took her phone, blocked the door to his hotel room, and assaulted her. Although she went to the police, Hegseth wasn't charged with a crime. He paid the woman a sum, his lawyer has said, out of fear she would file a lawsuit and threaten his career. Hegseth has denied these allegations, as he continued to do yesterday, calling them all "anonymous smears."
