Three of President Trump’s most contentious picks to lead government agencies will appear in Senate confirmation hearings on Thursday, with the fate of their nominations hanging on the votes of a handful of Republican senators.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the former independent presidential candidate who also threw his support behind Mr. Trump, will face his second hearing before a Senate vote, after a grilling on Wednesday on his views on vaccines and abortion.
Kash Patel, Mr. Trump’s F.B.I. pick, has promised to reshape the bureau by firing its top officials and has published a list of Trump enemies. And Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman who left her party and embraced Mr. Trump, has been nominated to oversee the nation’s intelligence agencies.
Here’s what to know about the candidates.
Kash Patel, F.B.I. director nominee
Mr. Patel, once an unknown Republican congressional aide, has swiftly risen in less than a decade — in large part because of his personal relationship with President Trump. His fealty to the president and his embrace of right-wing conspiracy theories are expected to be subjects of scrutiny at his confirmation hearing.
A right-wing pugilist, Mr. Patel has repeatedly undermined the F.B.I.’s work in public statements, including its prosecution of those charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. He has also sought to rewrite the history of that attack, pinning the blame for the riot on former Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Mr. Patel has promised that if he is confirmed, he will reshape the F.B.I. through firings and to closing its headquarters in Washington. He has also pledged to go after against Mr. Trump’s perceived enemies, though he said on a podcast last year that he was not on a “revenge march.”
Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence nominee
Many of Ms. Gabbard’s positions on Syria, Russia, Ukraine and warrantless spying are at odds with the Washington foreign policy establishment, and have given pause to Republican senators whose votes she will need to get the job.
Meetings she took with Syrian and Lebanese government officials as a congresswoman in 2017 — including with the autocratic leader of Syria at the time, Bashar al-Assad — are expected to be a particular focus in senators’ questions on Thursday.
She has also accused American intelligence agencies of going after political rivals of the Biden administration, echoing claims without evidence by Mr. Trump and his supporters of weaponization of law enforcement.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., health secretary nominee
In his first confirmation hearing on Wednesday, Mr. Kennedy appeared to have shored up support of Republican senators who had been leery of his nomination.
Mr. Kennedy, a scion of the Democratic political clan, left the Democratic Party and has joined Mr. Trump’s entourage, bringing his long history of criticizing vaccines, pharmaceutical companies and the nation’s public health institutions into the president’s orbit.
In his hearing on Wednesday, Mr. Kennedy at times displayed limited knowledge of critical programs like Medicare and Medicaid overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency that he is hoping to run. And he struggled to convince skeptical Democrats that he was not “anti-vaccine.”
Democrats pressed him on his views on vaccines and other health topics, while Republicans, and Mr. Kennedy himself, sought to elevate his stated goals of promoting nutrition and fighting an epidemic of chronic diseases.
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