Republican Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, who initially did not publicly back Pete Hegseth's nomination as secretary of Defense, publicly questioned the nominee on Tuesday morning on her three "very important issues" surrounding the military. 

"I want to know, again, let's make it very clear for everyone here today, as Secretary of Defense, will you support women continuing to have the opportunity to serve in combat roles?" Ernst asked former Fox News host Hegseth on Tuesday, saying women serving in the military was one of her top three concerns. 

"Senator, first of all, thank you for your service. As we discussed extensively as well, and my answer is yes, exactly the way that you caveated it. Yes, women will have access to ground combat roles, combat roles given the standards remain high, and we'll have a review to ensure the standards have not been eroded," Hegseth responded. 

Ernst sits on the ​​Senate Armed Services Committee, which held its hearing on Hegseth's nomination Tuesday morning. She initially withheld public support of the Trump nominee before later signaling she endorsed his nomination.

'POLITICAL PRICE TO PAY': TRUMP ORBIT EXPECTED TO RAMP UP ERNST CRITICISMS WHILE SHE WITHHOLDS HEGSETH SUPPORT

The Iowa senator said in her opening remarks that she is known for not keeping "anything hidden, pull no punches," while thanking Hegseth for joining the committee for the hearing. She explained that she had three top issues to ask Hegseth, including an audit of the Department of Defense, women serving in combat roles and "making sure that we are combating sexual assault in the military."

On the point of a DOD audit, Hegseth said that he has long called for an audit and supports one, before moving onto his view of women serving in military combat roles and combating sexual assault in the military. 

"A priority of mine has been combating sexual assault in the military and making sure that all of our service members are treated with dignity and respect. This has been so important. Senator Gillibrand and I have worked on this, and we were able to get changes made to the uniform code of military justice to make sure that we have improvements, and on how we address the tragic and life altering, issues of rape, sexual assault. It will demand time and attention from the Pentagon under your watch, if you are confirmed," Ernst said. 

"So, as secretary of Defense, will you appoint a senior level official dedicated to sexual assault prevention and response?" she asked. 

Hegseth said that, as they had previously discussed, he would appoint an official to such a role. 

Late last year, Ernst initially withheld committing to voting in favor of Hegseth before backtracking and saying she would support the nominee as the Trump orbit was anticipated to ramp up criticisms against Ernst. 

CONSERVATIVE GROUP COMPILES LIST OF 'WOKE' SENIOR OFFICERS THEY WANT PETE HEGSETH TO FIRE

"It's really this simple: If you oppose President Trump's nominees, you oppose the Trump agenda and there will be a political price to pay for that. We are well aware that there are certain establishment Senators trying to tank the President's nominees to make him look weak and damage him politically, and we're just not going to allow that to happen," a top Trump ally told Fox News Digital as Ernst hesitated about offering her endorsement.  

Ernst said in comments last month that she supported his nomination. 

"As I support Pete through this process, I look forward to a fair hearing based on truth, not anonymous sources," Ernst said at the time. 

PETE HEGSETH SAYS HE WILL BE 'STANDING RIGHT HERE IN THIS FIGHT' AFTER MEETING WITH SENATORS 

Ernst's questions followed Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Kirsten Gillibrand grilling the candidate about similar issues surrounding women in the military. 

"You’ve made a number of surprising statements about women in the military," Shaheen told Hegseth, before noting that women comprise roughly 18% of U.S. military personnel. 

"Women in our military, as I have said publicly, have and continue to make amazing contributions across all aspects of our battlefield," Hegseth responded. 

"What I'm confused about, Mr. Hegseth, is why should women in our military— if you were the secretary of defense— believe that they would have a fair shot and an equal opportunity to rise through the ranks? If, on the one hand, you say that women are not competent, they make our military less effective— and on the other hand, you say, ‘Oh, now, now that I've been nominated to be the Secretary of Defense, I've changed my view on women in the military.’" 

Hegseth responded that his concern revolves around standards used for women in combat roles and those standards getting watered down. 

"I would be honored to have the opportunity to serve alongside, shoulder to shoulder, men and women; black, white; all backgrounds with a shared purpose," Hegseth said.

​​Trump nominated Hegseth, a former National Guard officer, as secretary of Defense in November following his election win, saying "with Pete at the helm, America's enemies are on notice — Our Military will be Great Again, and America will Never Back Down." Hegseth was a host on "Fox & Friends Weekend" before Trump's nomination.

Former first lady Michelle Obama will not attend the inauguration of President-elect Trump on Monday, which will mark the second absence in two weeks from a gathering of former presidents and their spouses. Obama was not in attendance at former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral last week.

Former President Barack Obama is scheduled to attend the Jan. 20 inauguration event along with former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and their spouses. 

"Former President Barack Obama is confirmed to attend the 60th Inaugural Ceremonies. Former first lady Michelle Obama will not attend the upcoming inauguration," reads a statement from the Office of Barack and Michelle Obama that was shared with The Associated Press.

MICHELLE OBAMA, DICK CHENEY AMONG NOTABLE ABSENCES AT CARTER FUNERAL

It is unclear why former first lady Michelle Obama is skipping Trump’s inauguration.

Former presidents Trump, Bush and Clinton and their spouses all attended Carter's funeral on Jan. 9 at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., as did former President Barack Obama. Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband also attended, along with former Vice President Mike Pence and his wife. 

Former President Bill Clinton will attend next week’s swearing-in ceremony, a person familiar with the former president’s schedule confirmed to the AP. Former first lady Hillary Clinton will also attend, a spokesperson said. The Office of George W. Bush said he and former first lady Laura Bush are attending.

At Carter’s funeral, Trump and Obama appeared to put their political differences aside and were seen chatting and laughing together despite the former Democrat president's history of political animosity with the returning Republican.

All three former presidents and their wives attended Trump’s first inauguration in 2017, including Hillary Clinton, after she lost the 2016 presidential election to Trump. Carter also attended.

President-elect Trump and former first lady Melania Trump did not attend President Biden's inauguration in 2021.

Fox News Digital has reached out to the Obama Foundation for comment. 

CARRIE UNDERWOOD TO PERFORM ‘AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL’ AT TRUMP INAUGURATION

The news of Michelle Obama sidestepping the inauguration comes a day after former first lady Melania Trump revealed that she and her husband did not get enough information from the Obama administration about moving into the White House back in January 2017, for the beginning of the first Trump administration. 

"The difference is, I know where I will be going. I know the rooms where we will be living. I know the processes," the former first lady told "Fox & Friends" co-host Ainsley Earhardt on Monday. 

"The first time was challenging. We didn't have much of the information, the information was upheld from us from the previous administration. But this time I have everything. I have the plans. I could move in. I already packed. I already selected the furniture that needs to go in. So it's very different a transition this time, second time around."

The inauguration events will feature performances by Carrie Underwood, the Village People and Lee Greenwood. Underwood, the 2005 "American Idol" winner, will be singing "America the Beautiful" and will be joined by the Armed Forces Choir and the United States Naval Academy Glee Club.

A Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee spokesperson told Fox News Digital Underwood will perform during the swearing-in ceremony for President-elect Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance.

TRUMP, OBAMA CHATTING AND LAUGHING AT CARTER FUNERAL LIGHTS UP SOCIAL MEDIA

The '70s disco group Village People have been a staple during Trump's rallies over the past year, with hits like "Y.M.C.A" and "Macho Man" being played. 

The group is slated to perform at one of Trump's inaugural balls and a rally he's holding in Washington the day before his inauguration.

Along with Greenwood, opera singer Christopher Macchio is set to make a performance during Trump's inauguration festivities, The Associated Press reported. 

Fox News’ Janelle Ash, Brooke Singman and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

A Texas man who was arrested for allegedly stalking and sending sexually violent messages to Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark had a disruptive hearing on Wednesday as he pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Michael Lewis entered Marion County Superior Court, leaned back in his chair and told Judge Angela Davis he was "guilty as charged," according to ESPN.

Davis suggested to Lewis that he exercised his right to remain silent and entered a not guilty plea on his behalf as she wasn’t going to accept anything else in an initial hearing, according to the report. 

CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM

Lewis was ordered held on $50,000 bail and to stay away from the Gainbridge Fieldhouse and the Hinkle Fieldhouse – where the Fever and the Butler Bulldogs play, respectively. Clark’s boyfriend, Connor McCaffrey, is an assistant on Butler’s men’s basketball team.

Lewis, 55, was charged with stalking threatening sexual battery or death, FOX 59 reported, citing court documents. The charge is considered to be a Level 5 felony. He could face up to six years in prison if convicted.

Lewis allegedly sent Clark sexually violent messages through his X account. One message said he had been driving around her house multiple times and encouraged her "not to call the law just yet." He also allegedly spoke of going to a Fever game and sitting behind the bench.

Authorities talked to Lewis about the messages on Jan. 8, according to the station. He reportedly told authorities he was going to Indianapolis for vacation and downplayed the number of messages he sent to the WNBA sharpshooter.

JEMELE HILL QUIETLY DELETES CAITLIN CLARK POST FOLLOWING STALKER ARREST

Lewis told authorities the messages weren’t threatening and called it a "fantasy-type thing" and a "joke."

Clark reportedly alerted authorities to the messages and said she had become fearful over the words sent to her.

"t takes a lot of courage for women to come forward in these cases, which is why many don’t," Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears said, via FOX 59. "In doing so, the victim is setting an example for all women who deserve to live and work in Indy without the threat of sexual violence."

The arrest of Lewis came nearly a month after an Oregon man pleaded guilty to stalking UConn Huskies women’s basketball star Paige Bueckers.

Robert Cole Parmalee, 40, was arrested in August and was found with an engagement ring and lingerie while walking near Bradley International Airport in Connecticut. He said he intended to marry Bueckers.

Follow Fox News Digital’s sports coverage on X and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.

Wyze’s latest AI feature aims to reduce how often you need to manually check security footage by instead just describing what the camera has seen. The new Descriptive Alerts will send notifications that “accurately summarize motion events” with more contextual detail than simply telling users that the camera has detected movement or an object, according to Wyze.

An example alert provided by the company is “a delivery driver wearing a blue hat leaves a package on the doorstep, then leaves. A green SUV is parked in the street.” Rival smart home security companies like Ring, Google’s Nest, and (to some extent) Arlo provide similar AI summarization features for their own cameras, but Wyze’s video-to-text alerts seem to be the only service that specifies detail like color in its descriptions.

Image: Wyze

Wyze’s Descriptive Alerts are available to Cam Unlimited Pro members — a new $19.99 per month (or $199.99 per year) subscription that bundles other features like facial recognition, searching videos using descriptive keywords, and simultaneously viewing live feeds from multiple Wyze cameras. The Cam Unlimited Pro subscription will also include 60 days of cloud storage, though Wyze says this won’t be available until “Spring 2025.”

Just remember, Wyze cameras have suffered from serious security and privacy issues in the past. Choose wisely.

The new wing will feature another bedroom and more bathrooms, and the pop star's existing kitchen also will be getting a makeover, according to a new permit.

Brooke Shields revealed in her new memoir that Tom Cruise privately expressed remorse over his 2005 rant about her use of antidepressants. She revealed that the actor eventually did say sorry, in her memoir “Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old: Thoughts on Aging as a Woman.” Watch the full video to learn more...

From exclusive items to portion sizes, we wanted to find all the differences between the US and UK Burger King menus in 2024 and see what's changed since 2020. This is "Food Wars."

• Kate Middleton announced she is in remission after her cancer diagnosis.
• On Tuesday, she visited The Royal Marsden Hospital. It's where she received her treatment.
• The Princess of Wales revealed she had cancer in March 2024.

Kate Middleton said she is in remission from cancer.

On Tuesday, the Princess of Wales visited The Royal Marsden Hospital in Chelsea, speaking with patients and sharing that she received treatment at the center after she was diagnosed with cancer in 2024.

In the caption of an Instagram post about the visit, Kate said she was officially in remission.

"It is a relief to now be in remission and I remain focussed on recovery," she said in the post. "As anyone who has experienced a cancer diagnosis will know, it takes time to adjust to a new normal. I am however looking forward to a fulfilling year ahead. There is much to look forward to. Thank you to everyone for your continued support."

Kate previously announced she had finished her chemotherapy in September 2024 after revealing she was undergoing treatment for cancer in March.

Kensington Palace didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

• Indeed released its list of the best jobs for the year based on pay and other factors.
• The career site ranked the job list based on the share of postings on its platform.
• Structural engineers, attorneys, and physicians were part of the top 10.

Career site Indeed found that if you're looking for work as a veterinarian, civil engineer, or structural engineer, 2025 could be your year.

Indeed published a list of the best jobs for the year based on growth in job postings, flexibility, and typical salary. To be included in the ranking, jobs needed a median annual salary of at least $75,000, at least 5% of their postings had to have been for hybrid or remote roles, and they had to have had job-posting growth on Indeed of at least 20% between December 2021 and this past December.

"I think we do see a rather large amount of variety on this list, and although they may be somewhat technical or some require more specialized education and training, it's not always a catchall," Gabrielle Davis, a career trends expert at Indeed, said. "There are usually different avenues or different ways to approach some of these different fields as well if you're either interested in breaking out into them or even career changing."

Indeed's post about the results said, "healthcare and engineering endure as dominant sectors." Physicians had a median salary of $225,000, and demand based on Indeed job postings has increased.

"It's kind of showing the need for the workforce to balance both deep technical knowledge and the ability to tackle evolving societal needs," Davis told Business Insider.

While job growth in December was strong, economists who spoke to Business Insider before that data was available think tech job seekers and others may have a hard time finding work this year.

Below are the top 10 best jobs, along with their median posted salaries on Indeed, growth in job postings between December 2021 and this past December, and the share of postings that offer remote or hybrid work. Indeed ranked the jobs by the share of postings on its platform.

• Could Elon Musk buy TikTok?
• Several reports say that's what Chinese government officials are contemplating.
• It sure seems like a stretch! And there are lots of downsides. But we're in a weird time, where weird deals could become reality.

MuskTok?

I mean, on the one hand — why not? We're already in a world where Mark Zuckerberg is using Donald Trump's election as a reason to change the way Meta maintains its restrooms. (Seriously.)

So why not have Elon Musk swoop in with a deal to buy TikTok from ByteDance, the Chinese company that currently owns it, to get around a law that's meant to ban the service on January 19?

That's what Chinese government officials are pondering, per Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal. The Financial Times, meanwhile, reports that China is merely hoping that Musk will somehow "broker" a solution. (Musk didn't respond to a request for comment from the FT or BI.)

All of the reports convey the sense that all of this is … fluid, at best. All three note that it's unclear how much anyone at TikTok or ByteDance knows about any of this. And Beijing's thoughts about this are "very preliminary and mostly brainstorming," an official tells the FT.

TikTok, for its part, relayed the same statement to me that it provided to other reporters on Monday night: "We can't be expected to comment on pure fiction."

So, it's hard to get too worked up about something that seems like it's in the barely-on-the-drawing-board stage.

Still, we are in a world — again — where barely-there ideas have to be taken at least seriously, if not literally. Ask the residents of Greenland.

So, for the record: Elon Musk makes perfect sense as a TikTok owner. He has the capital, the technical capacity, and the political backing to make it happen.

When I suggested this back in March, I also noted that this would be a terrible idea since Musk's track record at Twitter shows what happens when you give him control of a social media platform — he runs it erratically and scares off users and advertisers.

That's all still true.

My hunch, though, is that, unlike Twitter, TikTok would likely weather Musk's ownership much better simply because of its nature: It's a very big video entertainment service, and even if a meaningful number of users leave because they don't like Musk's ownership, many others would stick around because they like being entertained by videos. The same goes for advertisers.

That is: Even a diminished TikTok would certainly be of use to both Musk and many TikTok constituents. And certainly, many of TikTok's 170 million US users would rather use a Musk-owned TikTok — if they even knew who owned it in the first place — than go without a TikTok at all.

I still have many, many questions about how any of this would work in reality.

Starting with this: The law on this one is quite clear: In order to avoid an effective ban by January 19, TikTok needs a new US owner — or, failing that, Joe Biden, who is still the US president, can provide a one-time, 90-day extension on the ban, if there's "significant" progress on a deal, including a "binding legal agreement" to get something done.

So assuming neither thing happens over the next few days — and the Supreme Court upholds the law, as observers seem to think will happen — what would the plan be? Come back days, weeks, or months later with a new law to reverse the old one — even though the last one had overwhelming support from Congress? But before we get too deep on any of this, let's see what happens in the next few days.

As a new generation emerges at the grand slams, others are in danger of being passed by

© Getty Images

The 25-year-old had a spell at Arsenal as a youth player.

© PA Archive

Third-placed Forest can close the gap on the league leaders to three points if they win tonight

© REUTERS

Gloucester backs Gareth Anscombe and Max Llewellyn failed to win Warren Gatland’s Six Nations vote.

© PA Wire

First phase of agreement likely to involve release of 33 Israeli hostages and up to 1,000 Palestinian prisoners

© AFP via Getty Images

Before he’s even entered office, Trump has already tapped 18 Fox Newsers to work in his administration, Justin Baragona reports

© Getty Images

Hegseth was challenged over his comments about women in the military by senators Kirsten Gillibrand, Jeanne Shaheen and Elizabeth Warren

© AP/Getty

Republicans rubbish special counsel’s findings on president-elect’s attempt to overthrow democracy as ‘not a big deal’, labelling it instead ‘a one-sided, prosecutor’s version of reality’

© Fox News/YouTube

Richard Kowalczyk and his partner Eric Patrick ‘both very clearly engaged in predatory deviant sexual behavior towards minors – behavior [that] went on for years’, federal prosecutors allege

© Google Maps

A ‘concerned relative’ reported John Henry Mallouk missing in January 2023, but he hadn’t been heard from since August 2022, authorities say

© Martin County Sheriff’s Office