How Republican skeptics in the Senate got to 'yes' on RFK Jr. and Gabbard

This combination photo shows Tulsi Gabbard, nominee for Director of National Intelligence, left, pictured Jan. 30, 2025, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, pictured Jan. 29, 2025, at their confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican skepticism in the United States Senate of U.S. President Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees has been worn down, putting his unconventional choices for some of the most powerful positions in the federal government on the verge of confirmation.

Floor votes are expected this week on Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in line to be the nation’s health secretary, and Tulsi Gabbard, the choice for director of national intelligence. Both are from outside traditional Republican circles and espoused views in the confirmation process that alarmed GOP senators at times. Still, their nominations have advanced to the full Senate after crucial committee votes.

One by one, Republicans have acquiesced to Trump’s picks, even those whose personal history, lack of experience and unorthodox views would have once made them hardly imaginable for a Cabinet.

It’s a striking demonstration of how GOP lawmakers are standing by as Trump, in a show of force, disrupts the federal government and installs loyalists to lead key departments. Republican leaders in the Senate, eager to show Trump their worth, have chalked up confirmations at a rapid clip.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, just a month into the role, has lined up a vote on Gabbard as the first order of business, followed by Kennedy later in the week. Already on the job is Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who faced allegations over drinking and aggressive behavior toward women. And Republicans appear ready to soon install Kash Patel as FBI director.

Those four nominees were long seen on Capitol Hill as the most vulnerable to losing support from Republicans, who hold a Senate majority by three seats.

“There’s never any guarantees, but we’re trending in the right direction,” Thune, R-S.D., said as the Senate wrapped up its work Thursday night and dozens of Republicans headed to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort to meet with the president over the weekend.

Thune’s cautious optimism followed a week where the prospect of opposition from Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Todd Young of Indiana — both of whom have tried to maintain some independence from Trump — threatened to derail Kennedy and Gabbard. But after a series of intense phone calls and negotiations led by Vice President JD Vance, even in the moments leading up to committee votes Tuesday, the new leadership team persuaded the key holdouts to come around.

Both walked away from the talks speaking of assurances the nominees would restrain some of their more worrisome views.

The collapse of resistance has set a new tone in the Republican-controlled government and shown how even the most independent-minded lawmaker would rather work with Trump than risk crossing him. Trump himself has refrained from the threats to GOP skeptics that defined his first term and relied on Vance, a former Ohio senator, to quietly walk some of his former colleagues through their concerns.

“You can’t think of this just as a normal president coming into office for the first time,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., who was involved in the effort to get Trump’s nominees across the finish line. “Everybody I was dealing with was truly undecided trying to get to yes, and so it was just a process.”

It didn’t always look that easy.

Cassidy, a liver doctor, told Kennedy during a committee hearing that he was “struggling” to support the nomination because Kennedy had built a following as a vaccine skeptic and refused to denounce a discredited theory that vaccines cause autism. Cassidy cited his ethics as a doctor — “dedicating my life to saving lives” — as a chief cause for his concern.

Young, a former intelligence officer in the Marine Corps, questioned past statements that Gabbard has made, including support for government leaker Edward Snowden and expressions of sympathy for Russia. Young said he sought written assurances from Gabbard that she would punish those who disclose sensitive government intelligence. Vance played a crucial role, brokering a letter from Gabbard that spelled out those assurances.

“I got them at the 11th hour,” Young said after his committee vote for Gabbard.

Young said Vance approached him with a “respectful” tone and “listened a lot more than he talked.”

It’s a change from Vance’s Senate tenure, when he often defied the GOP leadership under Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell. Now Vance is working closely with the new team.

A similar process played out with Cassidy. He said he voted to advance Kennedy after “intense conversations” and reassurances on how health agencies would handle vaccine recommendations. The senator thanked Vance for his “honest counsel.”

Cassidy and Young insisted that the political fallout from blocking Trump’s Cabinet picks did not factor into their negotiations, but the stakes were clear. Cassidy, who is up for reelection in two years, already has a primary challenger after voting to convict Trump on an impeachment charge in 2021 stemming from Trump’s role in the Capitol riot.

Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said that regardless whether Trump offers senators such as Cassidy or Young a campaign endorsement, no Republican wants to openly defy the president.

“I think that Donald Trump at his heart is ultimately a transactional guy,” Cramer said, adding, “Whether you ever get an endorsement out of it, not having an active enemy. He can be pretty effective as you know and he’s proven, so nobody wants to be in that spot.”

That leaves Democrats almost powerless to stand in the way of Trump’s Cabinet selections. With Republican support in line, Democrats had little recourse but to draw out the process through every procedural move possible. They are also trying to hold the Senate floor for maximum debate time to slow the pace of votes.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said he hoped the tactic would call attention to Trump’s expansion of presidential power and help “persuade the American people to express outrage to their members of Congress, particularly from the red states, where so far their senators have been unwilling or unable to listen.”

Stephen Groves, The Associated Press