The Great Surrender

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The single greatest success of Donald Trump’s second term so far might be his Cabinet. Today, senators confirmed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, one day after confirming Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence. The nomination of Kash Patel to lead the FBI is headed to a floor vote, and Linda McMahon—chosen to lead and apparently dismantle the Department of Education—is testifying to senators today.

Many parts of Trump’s agenda are deceptively fragile, as the journalist Ezra Klein recently argued. Courts have stepped in to block some of his executive orders and impede Elon Musk’s demolition of broad swaths of the federal government as we know it. Republicans in Congress still don’t seem to have a plan for moving the president’s legislative agenda forward. But despite clear concern from a variety of Republican senators about Trump’s Cabinet picks, it now seems possible that Trump will get every one confirmed except for Matt Gaetz—an indication of how completely Senate Republicans have surrendered their role as an independent check on the president.

The initial rollout of nominees was inauspicious. Gaetz, whom Trump reportedly chose spontaneously during a two-hour flight, lasted just eight days before withdrawing his nomination, after it became evident that Republicans would not confirm him. The rest of the slate was weak enough that at least one more casualty was likely, though I warned in November that a uniformly bad group might perversely make it harder for Republicans to take down any individual. How could they say no to one and justify saying yes to any of the others?

Pete Hegseth had no clear qualifications to run the Defense Department, serial infidelities, and allegations of a sexual assault and alcohol abuse. (He has denied both allegations, and settled with the sexual-assault accuser out of court. Prosecutors have said that they did not have sufficient evidence to pursue charges.) Gabbard not only lacked any intelligence experience but also brought a history of views antithetical to many Republican senators, an affinity for deposed Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin, and evidence of dishonesty. Patel was, in the view of many of his former colleagues in the first Trump administration, simply dangerous. Kennedy was, um, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Now all seem likely to take up their posts. Sure, it’s taken a while. Democrats have done what they can to slow down many of these nominations, and they voted unanimously against Hegseth, Kennedy, and Gabbard (a former Democratic House member!). Republicans objected when the administration tried to drive nominees through without FBI background checks, and damaging information about each of these nominees has continued to emerge; earlier this week, Democratic Senator Dick Durbin accused Patel of orchestrating a political purge at the FBI, despite promises not to do so. Yet none of that has mattered to the results.

Getting this done has required the White House to do some deft maneuvering. Trump allies publicly bullied Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican who is a veteran and an outspoken advocate for victims of sexual assault, into backing Hegseth. According to The Wall Street Journal, they privately bullied the Republican Thom Tillis, a North Carolinian who has sometimes bucked Trump and faces a tough reelection campaign next year, after he indicated that he’d vote against Hegseth; he ultimately voted in favor. They horse-traded with Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana medical doctor who sounded very skeptical of Kennedy during hearings, giving him undisclosed reassurances in exchange for his support. As Politico reported, Trump dispatched J. D. Vance to absorb the grievances of Todd Young, an Indiana senator, about Gabbard; the vice president called off attacks from Trump allies and won Young’s vote.

One lone Republican voted against all three: Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, the man responsible for keeping GOP senators lined up behind Trump during his first four years in office. The rest have various justifications for voting more or less in lockstep. They say they were reassured by what they heard in meetings—as though they’ve never seen a nominee fib, and as though that outweighed long histories. They say that presidents deserve to have the advisers they want. Behind closed doors, they might lay out a different calculation: Voting no on Cabinet members is a good way to tick Trump off while gaining little more than symbolism; better for them to keep their powder dry for real policy issues where they disagree with him.

These rationalizations might have made sense for a distasteful nominee here and there, but what Trump has put forward is likely the least qualified Cabinet in American history. In 2019, the Senate deep-sixed John Ratcliffe’s nomination as DNI (though it did confirm him a year later); this time around, when nominated for director of the CIA, he was seen as one of the more sober and qualified picks. Putting people like Trump’s nominees in charge of important parts of the federal government poses real dangers to the nation. Tom Nichols has explained how Hegseth exemplifies this: He seems more interested in bestowing trollish names on bases and giving contradictory messages about Ukraine than the tough work of running the Pentagon. That’s bad news in the immediate term and worse news when a crisis hits.

The idea of waiting to push back on Trump later might be more convincing if no one had ever seen him in action, as I discussed yesterday. Successfully ramming through this slate of nominees will only encourage the president. If Republican members wanted to, they could exert unusual leverage over the White House because of the narrow 53–47 margin in the chamber; Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin showed during the Biden presidency how a tiny fraction of the Democratic caucus could bend leadership to its will. But if Trump managed to get senators to vote for Gabbard and Kennedy, two fringe nominees with some far-left views, why should he expect them to restrain him on anything else?

The real reason for these votes is presumably fear. Republicans have seen Trump’s taste for retribution, and they fear his supporters in primaries. The irony is that in bowing to Trump, senators may actually be defying voters’ preferences. A CBS News poll published Monday found that six in 10 GOP voters would prefer to see congressional Republicans stand up to Trump when they disagree with him. By knocking down some of the worst nominees, senators might have made the Cabinet better and served the country well. But if that wasn’t enough to persuade them, perhaps the chance for political gain could.

Kash Patel will do anything for Trump.
The perverse logic of Trump’s nomination circus (From November)

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Today’s News

Trump signed a proclamation that outlines a plan to implement reciprocal tariffs for any country that imposes tariffs on the United States.
A federal judge extended the pause on the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle USAID for at least another week.
Roughly 77,000 federal employees accepted the Trump administration’s buyout offer by last night’s deadline after a federal judge lifted the freeze on the program yesterday.

Dispatches

Time-Travel Thursdays: Online life changed the way we talk and write—then changed it again, and again, and so on, forever, Kaitlyn Tiffany writes.

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Evening Read

The House Where 28,000 Records Burned

By Nancy Walecki

Before it burned, Charlie Springer’s house contained 18,000 vinyl LPs, 12,000 CDs, 10,000 45s, 4,000 cassettes, 600 78s, 150 8-tracks, hundreds of signed musical posters, and about 100 gold records. The albums alone occupied an entire wall of shelves in the family room, and another in the garage. On his desk were a set of drumsticks from Nirvana and an old RCA microphone that Prince had given to him at a recording session for Prince. A neon Beach Boys sign—as far as he knows, one of only eight remaining in the world—hung above the dining table.

Read the full article.