Democrats' hopes of derailing Trump nominees fading fast

Democrats' hopes of defeating any of President-elect Trump's Cabinet nominees appear to be fizzling as Senate committees prepare for the first week of hearings.

Senate Democrats have yet to reveal more evidence to back up the allegations against Pete Hegseth, Trump's pick to head the Pentagon, and a recently completed FBI background check isn’t moving the needle on that nominee.

Only Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Sen. Jack Reed (R.I.), the ranking Democrat on the panel, have been able to review the report thus far, which hasn’t yet caused any serious political reverberations.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a key moderate swing vote, on Monday noted that it's Senate protocol on some committees for only the chair and ranking member to review a nominee's background check.

But she said it would be "helpful" if other members of the Armed Services panel could also review the closely held report.

"Given the many questions that have been raised, I would think it would be helpful for the entire committee to be able to read it," she said.

Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii), Trump's choice to serve as director of national intelligence (DNI) who had been considered among the heaviest lifts to get confirmed, is winning more Republican support after backing away from her past opposition to expanded surveillance authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The lull in attention on the nominees over the winter holiday break, combined with the sheer deluge of confirmation proceedings in a short time frame, is giving Trump's picks a lot of momentum after the embarrassing setback suffered by the president-elect’s first choice for attorney general, former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.).

All of Trump’s pending nominees now appear to have good chances of winning confirmation thanks to the comfortable 53-seat Republican majority in the Senate.

Any one of them would have to lose the support of at least four Republican senators to fail on the Senate floor.

“We’re going to have to have the hearings, but I think my impression is most of my colleagues are predisposed to let the president have his team absent some extraordinary circumstances,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said.

Pam Bondi, Trump’s new nominee to lead the Justice Department, and Kash Patel, Trump’s candidate to head the FBI, have also both consolidated significant Republican support and appear to be cruising toward confirmation.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said Monday he expects Bondi to have enough Republican support to advance out of committee.

He said he would wait to review Patel’s “paperwork” before scheduling a hearing.

Democrats, however, are expressing deep concerns about Patel. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said “Republicans are going to rue the day they put somebody like Kash Patel on the FBI.”

“We’re talking about dysfunction and chaos — Democrats being hunted by a radical who only believes that conservatives like him and Donald Trump should be populating the Department of Justice and FBI,” he said.

Senate Democrats could raise procedural objections to slow the progress of Trump’s most controversial nominees, but they are beginning to acknowledge they’re unlikely to score any knockout blow, barring a disastrous performance at a confirmation hearing.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Trump's choice to head the State Department, is likely to win support from both sides of the aisle, while Sen. Martin Heinrich's (D-N.M.) objections to the timing of Doug Burgum's hearing to serve as secretary of Interior haven’t sparked much public outrage.

Rubio is expected to be confirmed on Trump’s first day of office, and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, predicted he would get a strong bipartisan vote.

Shaheen noted that Republicans allowed the Senate to confirm Avril Haines as director of national intelligence on the same day President Biden was sworn into office.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) would like to get other nominees confirmed on Trump’s first day in office if possible. One candidate for such a quick timeline is former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe.

Ratcliffe has been tapped by Trump to head the CIA, and his confirmation hearing is slated for Wednesday.

Democrats might have a better chance of persuading a Republican to flip on one of the committees handling a particular nominee, which would leave that nominee stuck.

On the Senate Armed Services Committee, for example, a single Republican vote against Hegseth would block his path to advancing out of the committee because Republicans hold a one-seat majority on it.

The key vote on that panel will be Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who appeared to be shifting toward supporting Hegseth after meeting with him twice.

She discussed her conversations with Hegseth as “encouraging” and pledged to “support Pete through this process” but stopped short of promising to vote for him.

A single Republican defection would also be a problem on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has jurisdiction over Gabbard’s nomination. Republicans have a narrow 11-10 majority on that panel.

Gabbard assured Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) that she had changed her view of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a provision which defense hawks say is critical to intercepting foreign threats.

“Tulsi Gabbard has assured me in our conversations that she supports Section 702 as recently amended and that she will follow the law and support its reauthorization as DNI,” Cotton said in a statement released by his office.

The Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over Scott Bessent, Trump’s choice to head the Treasury Department, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been tapped to lead the Health and Human Services Department, also has a one-seat Republican margin.

If a nominee is bottled up in committee by an adverse vote, Thune could still try to bring the candidate to the floor for a vote by offering a motion or resolution to discharge the nominee under Senate Rule XVII. But it takes 60 votes on the Senate floor to override the committee vote and advance the individual, which would require significant support from Democrats.

Senate Republicans have more breathing room on the Senate Judiciary Committee and other panels where they have two-seat majorities.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the ranking member of the Judiciary panel, which has jurisdiction over Bondi and Patel, hasn’t seen any sign that any Republican on his panel would vote against Bondi. But he said they want to dig deeper into her record.

“I have not received any signals one way or the other,” he said of possible Republican defectors on Bondi.

“Privately, they say they want investigations,” he added.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a member of the Armed Services Committee, on Monday vented her frustration with the lack of a fuller investigation by her panel into Hegseth’s background and past allegations of sexual misconduct and financial mismanagement — charges Hegseth has vigorously denied.

“We need to be able to talk to all the people in Hegseth’s background who are raising serious concerns about his fitness to serve,” she said.

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