Slate’s guide to the most important figures in politics this week.

A major national news story (well, New York–area news story, which makes it national news), is that drones have been spotted flying above New Jersey, doing recon on Slate’s Ben Mathis-Lilley as he performs his nightly ritual of crimes. No one is quite sure what’s going on with these drones. Well, that’s not true. New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a dentist turned Democratic congressman turned Republican congressman, knows what’s going on with these drones. “I’m going to tell you the real deal. Iran launched a mother ship that contains these drones,” Van Drew said on Fox News on Wednesday. “It’s off the East Coast of the United States of America. They’ve launched drones.” Van Drew further wrote a letter to the president that states that while he further remained open to “alternate explanations for the drones,” he’s pretty sure it’s Iran, and he’s pretty sure they’ve got a mother ship out there. By Thursday, he’d downgraded his certainty a touch, arguing that there’s a “real possibility it could be Iran, that it could be a ship.” Could be! It could also be Bermuda, Elon Musk, teenage pranksters, the U.S. Air Force, creepy yet ultimately harmless voyeuristic aliens, or murderous aliens. To be fair to Van Drew, the federal government could be doing much more to alleviate people’s fears about these drones—and limit the conspiracies—by not just refuting that they’re coming from an Iranian mother ship off of Wildwood, but by saying what they are. The sightings are spreading, with former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, for example, now sharing grainy videos of flying objects in his state. Alternately, the public might settle for one or two of them being blown up, balloon-style.

Trump-appointed FBI director Chris Wray announced this week that he would step down when the next president, who is also Donald Trump, takes over in January. Wray relayed his decision in a town hall with FBI employees, arguing that it was “the best way to avoid dragging the Bureau deeper into the fray” while adding that the decision was not “easy” for him. And what was the fray to which he was referring? Well, Trump was going to fire Wray, because he’s still mad at the FBI for seizing the stolen documents he kept at Mar-a-Lago and refused to return. Trump had, after all, already announced Kash Patel—our dear friend!— as Wray’s replacement, pending Senate confirmation. You’re going to hear this a lot in the coming years, but the precedent being set here could be unpleasant. Wray still had more than two years left in his fixed 10-year term, a trans-administration tenure designed to insulate FBI directors from political pressure to do the president’s bidding. Almost certainly from now on, the FBI director—i.e., the person who runs the federal cops—will be replaced at the beginning of each new administration and serve in a more straightforwardly political role. We still believe that all of this could’ve been easier if Trump had just returned the stupid documents.

After the Biden White House explains what the drones are, it should close up shop until Jan. 20, to the extent it hasn’t already. Too many rakes are being stepped on, at too rapid of a pace. After successfully pissing off Republicans and Democrats alike with the pardon of his son a couple of weeks ago, Biden’s White House attempted to distribute mercy more broadly. On Thursday, in what the White House described as “the largest single-day grant of clemency in modern history,” Biden granted clemency (mostly commutations) to nearly 1,500 people “who were placed on home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic and who have successfully reintegrated into their families and communities.” How swell. But it seems that in its rush to appease those calling for widespread clemency of nonviolent offenders to make up for Biden’s sweeping pardon of Hunter, the White House either didn’t do a great vetting job or has stopped caring. Because some truly egregious dirtbags were among the recipients. A Pennsylvania judge who took kickbacks for sending juveniles to for-profit detention centers, in which he had a financial interest, earned clemency. Huh? A lawyer whom prosecutors had described as “the most prolific, pernicious, and utterly unrepentant tax cheat in United States history” earned clemency. Cool. An Illinois comptroller who embezzled $50 million from her city to build a horse breeding and show operation had her sentence commuted. Why? These are not just nonviolent drug offenders from an era of stricter war-on-drugs laws. These are major white-collar criminals who could’ve continued to gut it out in home confinement. What is this?

Last week, Pete Hegseth’s nomination to run the Department of Defense appeared to be in more trouble than an employee summoned to HR after the 2016 Fox & Friends holiday party. Potential replacements, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, were practicing giving nuclear launch orders in the mirror. But by all accounts, Hegseth—while by no means a lock for confirmation—has steadied the ship. A couple of factors have worked in his favor. First, Hegseth showed a little more fight in his approach to the media. “I don’t answer to anyone in this group,” Hegseth told a crowd of Hill reporters late last week. “None of you, not to that camera at all. I answer to President Trump, who received 76 million votes, on behalf, and a mandate for change.” This was a performance for an audience of one—Trump—who stuck with Hegseth. Second, outside allies ramped up pressure on key holdouts. One, specifically, was Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst—a veteran—who’d signaled doubts about Hegseth, in particular his past comments about women in the military. All of a sudden, she was facing extraordinary pressure from both inside and outside her state to fall in line. And so she did. On Monday, after a second meeting with Hegseth, Ernst said in a statement that “as I support Pete through this process, I look forward to a fair hearing based on truth, not anonymous sources.” The Surge nevertheless encourages anonymous sources to reach out to us with true stories about Pete Hegseth, as well as everyone else in politics.

On Wednesday, the Senate rejected the renomination of current National Labor Relations Board Chair Lauren McFerran to another five-year term, 49 to 50. Had she been confirmed, Democratic appointees would have comprised a majority on the NLRB well into 2026; now, Donald Trump gets to make the majority. It was, just as in the good ol’ days, the two usual suspects voting with Republicans to kill the nomination: Independent Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. In Manchin’s case, he’s going to do what he’s going to do; he has long taken issue with a proposed NLRB rule from 2022. But Sinema’s vote on this was extra special. The Arizona senator has generally had one foot out the door since announcing her retirement earlier this year, and her absences have gotten worse since the election. She had not voted in the Senate since Nov. 21, but then materialized on the Senate floor on Wednesday to cast her “no” vote on this specific nomination. If this doesn’t add another zero to her forthcoming private sector salary, what will?

While Hegseth has been doing battle for weeks now, another of Trump’s most controversial nominees—former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, to be director of national intelligence—was just beginning to make her rounds in the Senate this week. And according to a report in the Hill on Friday, these meetings are “not going well.” GOP senators and aides, granted anonymity, described her as “a little shallow, like a House member talking at a hearing” and “not very well prepared”—they said there have been “a lot of eyerolls” from the senators who’ve met with her. Gabbard’s past comments about Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin (enjoy the Moscow Christmas village together!) comprise most of her baggage so far. But there’s another hurdle that Gabbard has to get over with Republican senators: She was a Democrat until 10 minutes ago. Whereas these Republican senators may be more willing to give Hegseth the benefit of the doubt since they know him a bit from the Fox & Friends greenroom, Gabbard is from an entirely different cinematic universe. Gabbard’s nomination, then, is in grave danger … until right-wing media yells at all the holdout senators for 10 minutes and they fall in line.

Congrats to former prosecutor, TV personality, and MAGA loyalist Kim Guilfoyle on her nomination to be ambassador to Greece! Such a lovely part of the world. We guess that means that Guilfoyle’s fiancé, Donald Trump Jr., will be shipping off to Parthenon Country for the next few years too, huh? Oh? He’s not going? So interesting. This could be related to the various rumors about Don Jr.’s apparently budding relationship with Palm Beach socialite Bettina Anderson. While Don Jr. hasn’t given any public update on his dating life, it would appear that there has been an update, and that the U.S. diplomatic corps is the vessel through which the mess will be managed. Greece will be Guilfoyle’s Elba—and if she tries to buy a return ticket to the U.S., St. Helena it is.