Trump’s Nominees Are Suddenly Looking Safer

A little over a month ago, President-elect Donald Trump’s top nominees appeared to be entering a world of pain.

HHS pick Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was facing tough questions about his stance on the polio vaccine. Would-be director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was in the barrel over her dealings with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. And top Pentagon nominee Pete Hegseth suffered through mounting questions about his personal and professional life.

Now, with a whirlwind of confirmation hearings launching on Capitol Hill, Republicans are more confident than ever that they’ve gotten Trump’s personnel blitz back on track — thanks to a combination of hardball politics, appeals to GOP unity and lots of personal charm.

Most Republican senators “are predisposed to let the president have his team absent some extraordinary circumstances,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said on Monday.

The biggest question now for Senate Republicans isn’t who they will be able to confirm, it’s how long will it take to confirm them all. GOP leaders are warning senators to prepare for Friday votes or even weekend work in the coming weeks.

Democrats, meanwhile, are signaling that they plan to use the hearings less as an opportunity to derail the confirmations but instead to collect fodder to use against the administration down the line.

It’s a far cry from even just weeks ago when several of Trump’s nominees appeared to be at serious risk, setting the table for a momentous early clash between the incoming president and Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s conference.

That’s not to say that there might not yet be a curveball or two ahead: Hegseth’s hearing Tuesday is being closely watched by several GOP senators, though the reigning belief is that if he does well, he will be on track for confirmation. And Kennedy’s nomination remains endangered, with a powerful committee chair still holding back his support.

But while many senators are officially keeping their powder dry until after the hearings, there are signs that GOP senators are preparing to fall in line behind most, if not all, of Trump’s picks. Intelligence Committee Republicans appear ready to embrace Gabbard after she backed a key surveillance program. And early predictions that Kash Patel’s FBI nomination would run into trouble quickly collapsed as he won over potential GOP skeptics in private meetings.

“I think [Gabbard’s] moving in the right direction,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said. “I really do. I think she's had some good meetings. She's a very quick study, and I think she will do well in her open hearings.”

That optimism is shared inside the Trump transition, which has been orchestrating a carefully scripted charm offensive targeting the Senate GOP — with Hegseth, Gabbard and Patel pounding Capitol Hill’s marble hallways particularly hard to woo potential skeptics.

“The nominees have done a lot of hard work, and they are ready,” said one transition official granted anonymity to describe the effort, who added that Trump’s convincing victory has helped smooth the path for nominees: “The appetite of the American people for a bunch of theatrics is pretty diminished and it will be seen as obstructionist to play too many games.”

The movement from Republican senators in some ways mirrors the movement that some of Trump’s picks have done behind closed doors: In addition to Gabbard, Patel has offered reassurances that the FBI’s mission isn’t political retribution; Kennedy has clarified his vaccination positions; and Hegseth has shifted on issues including women in combat.

Kennedy is still working to win the support of Senate HELP Chair Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who declined to endorse his confirmation immediately following a meeting last week. He also met last week with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), another key vote on the health-focused panel, a person familiar with the meeting said.

It’s already clear, however, that opposing any Trump nominee would come at a price to any Republican senator. The president-elect’s allies threatened to primary Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) after she indicated that she was undecided on supporting Hegseth; she later offered a more positive assessment. House firebrands have formed a chorus on the party’s right flank pushing Senate Republicans to unite behind all of Trump’s picks and confirm them quickly.

While Democrats might not be able to block any of Trump’s nominees outright, they do have some control over when they get confirmed.

Thune and Senate Republicans have already started talking with Democrats about who could be confirmed on Day One of Trump’s administration — conversations that were first reported by POLITICO. Accelerating any confirmation votes will require bipartisan buy-in: Any one member can force the Senate to jump through a floor process that can stretch across four days for Cabinet nominees.

As Republicans have rallied around Trump’s nominees, stamping out chances of a GOP jailbreak, Democrats have made it clear that while they intend to use the hearings to dig into nominees’ backgrounds, they are perhaps more interested in collecting fodder that they can use against Trump and Senate Republicans in the future.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, during a closed-door lunch last week, told Democrats to hold nominees “feet to the fire” and hold them accountable for delivering on Trump’s sweeping campaign promises to lower prices and improve life for the working class and families.

“We will use these hearings to show the contrast between Donald Trump’s agenda of helping the special interests, especially the very wealthy, and the Democrats’ agenda to fight for working Americans,” Schumer said on Monday. “Nominees should expect tough, candid but fair questioning.”

Schumer on Monday also had a specific warning about Hegseth, calling allegations of sexual assault and excess drinking against him “deeply troubling, to put it generously.”

“He can expect his hearing to be tough, but respectful,” Schumer noted on the Senate floor. “It’s not hard to imagine an emergency situation where the secretary of Defense has to make quick and steady decisions about our military. Is someone with Peter Hegseth’s history really the kind of person we want at the helm in a very, very important situation, dangerous situation, like that?”