| It’s been a promising week so far for some of President Donald Trump’s most controversial Cabinet nominees. Let's recap:  |  | | | - Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) announced Monday night she would support Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence. Collins previously made waves as one of three Senate Republicans to oppose Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon, forcing Vice President JD Vance to cast the tiebreaking vote to confirm Hegseth.
- Then, yesterday morning, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) announced his support for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee for health and human services secretary who has faced scrutiny over his history of vaccine skepticism. Cassidy, a doctor who chairs the Senate health committee, was a key holdout, and his announcement came minutes before the Senate Finance Committee advanced Kennedy’s nomination in a 14-13 vote.
- Within minutes of Cassidy backing Kennedy, Sen. Todd Young (R-Indiana) broke his silence on Gabbard and announced he would support her. Young, a former Marine Corps intelligence officer, made the news hours before the Senate Intelligence Committee voted 9-8 to send Gabbard’s nomination to the floor.
Those developments made it considerably more likely that Gabbard and Kennedy will be confirmed. But the drama isn’t over yet. Kennedy’s confirmation in particular could still be in question. The three Senate Republicans who nearly doomed Hegseth — Collins, plus Sens. Mitch McConnell (Kentucky) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) — remain publicly undecided on Kennedy. McConnell, the former Senate GOP leader, has been tight-lipped about nominees in general, including during a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday night. But McConnell, a polio survivor, made a point of saying that it’s “no surprise” that vaccines are “a big deal with me.” In other corners of the Senate GOP, confidence is peaking that all of Trump’s nominees will make it across the finish line. “As I said in December--don’t be surprised when Republican Senators confirm President Trump’s nominees,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), chair of the Senate GOP conference and the Intelligence Committee, said yesterday on X. Will the pressure campaigns continue? The Republican senators who have appeared uncertain of Trump’s nominees have faced the greatest backlash from MAGA supporters. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) was among their first targets when she hesitated to initially support Hegseth. But as the nomination fights continue, it’ll be interesting to see how much Trump allies reconsider their tactics. Over the weekend, Musk took to X to bash Young as a “deep state puppet” but later took down the post and said he had an “excellent conversation” with Young. Cassidy told us the pressure campaign he faced didn’t weigh on his decision to support Kennedy. “I promise you being up for reelection has zero to do with it,” said Cassidy, who is up for reelection next year and already faces a credible primary challenger over his vote to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) raised his eyebrows when we told him Cassidy said the pressure campaign didn’t influence him. “It’s a very unfortunate turn of events when senators are so easily bullied and buffaloed,” Whitehouse told us. “And I think it’s also a signal of the merciless quality of the political power of the folks who are behind Trump in all of this and how they can turn the screws on senators in unprecedented ways.” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina), who was a holdout for Hegseth, told us he “slept like a baby” the night before the confirmation vote and denied feeling any sort of arm-twisting, especially from Trump. “There was not even a degree increase in the temperature between me and the president,” he said. The sleeper noms While the nominations of Hegseth, Kennedy and Gabbard have proved the most divisive, there could be more to come that give the GOP heartburn. Take for example Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Trump’s pick to be labor secretary and a former GOP representative from Oregon who is friendly with unions. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) has suggested he will oppose her and that 14 other Republicans will follow suit, meaning she would need to pick up a sizable faction of support from the Democratic caucus. And don’t forget: Trump is still nominating people who require Senate confirmation. Among them: Joe Kent, a former Washington congressional candidate whom Trump named Monday as his pick to lead the National Counterterrorism Center. Kent’s 2022 campaign was beset with questions about his ties to far-right and extremist groups, including the Proud Boys. Kent campaign ran on a platform that he called “inclusive populism” and said he rejected hate. The (growing) resistance While Republicans have mostly fallen in line behind Trump’s nominees, Democrats have grown increasingly combative toward the confirmation process. Some are in no mood to help the GOP after Trump’s since-rescinded order freezing federal grants and amid Elon Musk’s efforts to wrest control of the Treasury Department and USAID. Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Delaware) announced yesterday she would oppose all Trump Cabinet nominees going forward. “I’m not voting for any more of these folks until I get answers,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Virginia) told us yesterday. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) kicked off a news conference yesterday afternoon by touting that every one of his caucus members planned to vote against Russ Vought’s nomination to direct the White House budget office. But Senate Democrats still appear to be picking and choosing their confirmation battles with nearly half the caucus voting yesterday to confirm Doug Collins to be Trump’s secretary of veterans affairs. While Democrats don’t have the numbers to defeat Trump’s nominees on their own, they continue to look for ways to slow down the process. Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee sought yesterday to hold a second hearing on Kash Patel’s nomination to be FBI director, but the panel’s GOP chair, Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), quickly rejected the request. | 
Meryl Kornfield and 
