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The Senate is set for a late-night vote on Friday to confirm Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Pentagon.
On Thursday, a metaphorical bomb dropped when Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine announced their opposition to Hegseth. For a second, the Senate’s Mod Squad seemed to be the only Republicans who would voice their objections to Hegseth.
Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso told reporters on Friday before the vote that he was not sure and that “we’re continuing to work on it.” That’s not the same as saying that they have a lock on votes. Even though only two Republicans defected when Senate Majority Leader John Thune invoked cloture there could still be additional holdouts.
A Hegseth failure would make him the second nominee to go down after Matt Gaetz did not even make it to his attorney general confirmation hearing and had to be switched out by former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi.
Trump so far has had a difficult go at getting his nominees confirmed at the rate he would want. On inauguration day, the Senate voted unanimously to confirm Marco Rubio, the former Florida senator, to be secretary of state. But that’s a low-ball given the old adage the Senate ends “partisan politics at the water’s edge.”
“I think Barack Obama had 12 done and we have two,” Sen. Rick Scott of Florida told The Independent.
“If the Democrats want to make their lives miserable by voting at two in the morning, they can do so, but I believe within 30 days, the entire cabinet will be confirmed,” Sen. Ted Cruz told The Independent.
There is some hypocrisy; Republicans did the same thing with Democratic nominees throughout the Biden presidency.
And Republicans can pass nominees without a filibuster because Democrats invoked the nuclear option on cabinet officials and judges during Barack Obama’s presidency after Republicans blocked those. And Mitch McConnell would not even give Merrick Garland a Supreme Court judicial hearing to keep the seat warm for Justice Neil Gorsuch.
The Senate is set to confirm South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security, as soon as Saturday. The Senate already confirmed John Ratcliffe to lead the CIA in a 74-25 vote.
But next week will see perhaps Trump’s most controversial nominees up. On Wednesday, the Senate Finance Committee will hold its confirmation hearing for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist. On Thursday, he will speak before the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, the chairman of the HELP Committee and a doctor from Louisiana who voted to convict Trump, has criticized those who parrot the debunked lie that vaccines cause autism. But ultimately, the Finance Committee will vote on Kennedy’s nomination.
On Thursday, the Senate Intelligence Committee will hold its hearing for Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman who found religion in Trump, whom the president nominated to be his Director of National Intelligence. Gabbard has come under intense scrutiny for meeting with deposed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
The Intelligence Committee is relentlessly bipartisan; it vigorously investigated Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and it is made up of an equal number of Democrats and Republicans. Expect questions not only about Assad, but also her previous remarks about Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Finally, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold its hearing for Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist and hardcore partisan, to become FBI director. Patel has called to root out the “deep state” that many in MAGA world believed undermined Trump’s first presidency and has said that China is sending “military-aged males” across the U.S.-Mexico and U.S.-Canada border to prepare for a pre-emptive strike.
All three hearings will not only do what Trump wants out of the Senate GOP–to bring it to heel–but also give him what he always enjoys: a spectacle. Trump wants to see these nominees fight and clash with a body that regularly served as a roadblock during the first Trump term. Whether it actually leads to hard confirmations is another question.
