WASHINGTON — A group of Republican senators hemmed and hawed for months over whether to support President Donald Trump’s most controversial nominees — people who’ve parroted Russian talking points, spread dangerous conspiracy theories, faced allegations of alcohol and domestic abuse and baselessly questioned the safety of vaccines.
But after pressure from Trump and his army of online allies, nearly every Republican has backed down and embraced all of the president’s picks for powerful Cabinet posts, including Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Trump is now set to continue efforts to dismantle parts of the federal government with a full complement of top aides, working in tandem with billionaire Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Musk’s team has moved to unilaterally gut federal agencies and freeze spending approved by Congress, over the objections of Democrats and legal experts, who warn it could be unconstitutional.
“The senate of America seems a lot like the Senate of late Rome. They exist to do the bidding of the emperor,” former Illinois GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a prominent Trump critic, wrote in a post online on Tuesday.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Kennedy has drawn strong opposition from Democrats and outside groups over his long history of peddling anti-vaccine misinformation, including the falsehood that vaccines cause autism. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who is a physician and the chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, initially appeared to have grave doubts about Kennedy’s belief in settled science.
“I’ve been struggling with your nomination,” Cassidy admitted to Kennedy last month, when he testified before the health panel.
“As someone who has discussed immunizations with thousands of people, I understand that mothers want reassurance that the vaccine their child is receiving is necessary, safe and effective,” said the Louisiana senator. “I’ve approached it using the preponderance of evidence to reassure, and you’ve approached it using selective evidence to cast doubt.”
Fast forward to Tuesday, and moments before the Senate Finance Committee voted to advance Kennedy to the Senate floor for his confirmation vote, Cassidy — also a member of this committee — voted to back his nomination. He explained that he changed his mind because Kennedy promised to “meet or speak multiple times a month” about what he’s working on and receive input on his hiring decisions at the department.
“Mr. Kennedy and the administration reached out, seeking to reassure me regarding their commitment to protecting the public health benefit of vaccination,” Cassidy said. “To this end, Mr. Kennedy and the administration committed that he and I would have an unprecedentedly close, collaborative working relationship if he is confirmed. … This collaboration will allow us to work well together and therefore to be more effective.”
Kennedy said that the partnership “will allow us to represent all sides” of vaccine safety in government.
Cassidy’s decision to support Kennedy was worrisome even to some conservative observers, as they feared he had dropped his legitimate concerns about the nominee in order to get in line with his party behind Trump. The Louisiana Republican is up for reelection in 2026 and has already drawn a GOP primary challenger, who is likely to remind voters about Cassidy’s vote to convict Trump in his 2021 Senate impeachment trial following the Jan. 6 insurrection.
“Cassidy’s vote is the single most disappointing, and frightening, occurrence yet in the series of abject surrenders to Trump,” Quin Hillyer, a longtime conservative columnist based in Alabama, wrote on social media. “It says there remains NO check in Congress, NONE, against Trump’s outrages, constitutional abuses, and seizures of unwarranted power.”
Tulsi Gabbard
Gabbard, a lieutenant colonel in the National Guard and former Democratic member of Congress who switched parties last year, had been viewed as the Trump nominee with one of the hardest paths to confirmation. Numerous Senate Republicans expressed concerns with her qualifications to be director of national intelligence, her commitment to top secret intelligence programs, her 2017 meeting with former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and her past statements echoing Moscow’s talking points about Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Frustration with Gabbard boiled over during her committee hearing last week, with multiple GOP senators urging her to condemn Edward Snowden, who leaked information on classified intelligence programs in 2013. In Congress, Gabbard had called Snowden “brave” and proposed calling for charges to be dropped against him. She refused to disavow her past support for Snowden and call him a “traitor,” as several Republican senators demanded.
“It would befit you and be helpful to the way you are perceived to the members of the Intelligence Committee if you at least acknowledge that the greatest whistleblower in American security, so-called, harmed national security,” Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) told Gabbard.
On Monday, however, Gabbard’s nomination got a major boost after Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a GOP swing vote, announced she would support her confirmation. The Republican senator said Gabbard had addressed her concerns about Snowden and promised not to endorse a potential presidential pardon for him.
With Collins squarely in the yes column, all eyes turned to Young, a Marine and former intelligence officer with hawkish views who had been critical of Trump in the past. The Indiana Republican announced his support for Gabbard on Tuesday shortly before her nomination advanced in the Senate Intelligence Committee after speaking with Trump and billionaire Elon Musk. The Tesla CEO and Trump ally accused Young of being a “deep state puppet” over the weekend, but Musk recanted shortly after Young got on the phone with him.
Young said he was satisfied with commitments Gabbard had made to him to hold any leakers of intelligence information accountable and to not recommend any pardon for Snowden.
“I have done what the Framers envisioned for senators to do: use the consultative process to seek firm commitments, in this case commitments that will advance our national security, which is my top priority as a former Marine Corps intelligence officer,” Young said Tuesday.
Unlike Cassidy, Young does not face reelection until 2028, theoretically giving him a degree of political insulation in the Senate. Still, the prospect of singlehandedly taking down a Trump nominee would have risked even greater anger from Trump’s allies, even though the president reportedly told Young to “vote your conscience.”
Pete Hegseth
Last month, the Senate confirmed Hegseth as Trump’s defense secretary after weeks of debate about his slim qualifications and his alleged history of excessive drinking and domestic abuse. Three GOP senators — Collins, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky — stood in opposition, but Vice President JD Vance broke the 50-50 tie and his nomination was confirmed.
New reporting from The Wall Street Journal on Monday, however, revealed that another GOP senator — Thom Tillis of North Carolina — had been prepared to vote against Hegseth because of the abuse allegations, and had informed the White House of his intention to do so. Tillis backed down hours before the vote, however, after GOP leaders told him they would not cancel it, making clear he’d have to endure backlash from Trump’s MAGA allies if he voted Hegseth down.
“Anytime you have an allegation and somebody is willing to put it in sworn testimony, you owe it to the process to review it and not just dispose it out of hand,” Tills told Fox News about conversations with Hegseth’s accusers. “And that’s exactly what I did. And then I arrived at the conclusion that I’d support Pete’s nomination.”
Tillis is also up for reelection in 2026 and is likely to face several GOP primary challengers. In 2023, the North Carolina state Republican Partycensured Tillis for backing LGBTQ+ rights, immigration and gun violence policies in Congress.
Some Democrats said they were surprised to see their Republican colleagues fold so quickly on Trump’s most problematic Cabinet picks.
“There are so many reasons that they should be defeated by their own statements, both past and recent,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said of the nominees.
Of his colleagues, Blumenthal added, “Anyone voting for these nominees will be haunted by those decisions when they do bad things.”
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) also expressed disappointment in Republican senators, who he said are “maybe secretly whispering” to Democrats about their concerns with certain Trump nominees but will then turn around and vote for them on the Senate floor.
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“At some point, people are going to have to stand up and say, this is not what we meant,” Schatz said in a speech on the Senate floor.