It’s a big day for three of President Trump’s most controversial cabinet nominees. After a contentious hearing before the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday, Health and Human Services nominee RFK Jr. faces the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on Thursday. Trump’s loyalist FBI pick, Kash Patel, who has vowed to prosecute the president’s enemies, is taking questions from the House Judiciary Committee. And Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s pick to be the Director of National Intelligence, is being grilled by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Gabbard, who has sympathized with several American adversaries and once championed Edward Snowden, is seen as having the toughest road to confirmation. Follow along below for live updates from all three hearings.
Kash Patel’s confirmation hearing was expected to be a slugfest, but so far, Democrats have had trouble laying a glove on him. They’ve posed tough question about his activities as a MAGA activist over the last four years, fixing particular attention on some of the more inflammatory things he has said on Truth Social and in podcast interviews. But for the most part, Patel has dodged those queries by suggesting they were snippets taken out of context. California Senator Adam Schiff — a longtime Patel nemesis going back to his time as a staffer on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence during the Russia investigation — engaged in a prosecutorial exchange with the nominee regarding him promotion of a song performed by a choir of imprisoned January 6 defendants. When Patel defiantly noted the song hit the Billboard charts, Schiff sarcastically responded, “Isn’t that great! People who violently attacked police have a Number 1 song. That’s something to be really proud of, isn’t it?” Patel distanced himself from the making of the recording, leading to an extended back-and-forth with Schiff over the definition of the word “we.”
But while at times his responses were curt, even prickly, Patel has made no serious mistakes, and with the Republicans on the committee unified behind him, Democrats on the panel seem resigned to their inability to stop his nomination. Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat, ended a long and sometimes humorous exchange (in which he repeatedly tried and failed to to get Patel to say that Joe Biden won the 2020 election) by conceding that the nominee will likely be confirmed. “Bottom line here is you’re going to have a tough job,” Welch said, “and you’re going to have a tough boss because if he gets it in his mind he wants to do something, nothing stands in the way.”
As the hearing neared its conclusion, a slightly exasperated Cassidy asked Kennedy to “convince” him that he will be a strong advocate for public health and not reject proven science like the lack of a connection between autism and vaccines. Kennedy essentially restated his previous answers.
“Senator, I’m going to be an advocate for strong science. You show me those scientific studies and you and I meet about it,” he said.
Senator Collins asked Kennedy about the polio vaccine and whether he believed it was safe and effective. He answered yes. In a follow-up, Collins asked if he would implement restrictions on the polio vaccine and Kennedy said he wouldn’t.
Just like yesterday:
In an exchange with Senator Andy Kim, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would not commit to distributing an mRNA vaccine for bird flu. “I need to look at all the data,” he said.
But there will never be enough data to convince Kennedy, who has claimed, falsely, that the COVID mRNA vaccines killed people. In fact, Kennedy has made up his mind — and not just on mRNA vaccines. Though he says he is “pro-vaccine” now, he is perhaps best known for anti-vaccine conspiracy theories that are responsible for preventable deaths. He has even said that the pertussis vaccine can cause brain injury, which is totally false. Kennedy can side-step a direct question — and make himself sound like a responsible expert — by saying that he’s simply following the science or waiting for data, but that shouldn’t fool onlookers. He’s waiting for the “right” data, something he can cherry-pick or twist until it affirms what he already believes.
Multiple senators, including one Republican, James Lankford of Oklahoma (who has said he supports her nomination), pressed Gabbard to say that Edward Snowden is a traitor:
Democratic Senator Michael Bennet stayed on the question, raising his voice as he emphasized that “this is not a hard question!”
The hearing briefly grew emotional as Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire pushed back on her Republicans colleagues’ characterization that their questioning of Kennedy is political and not based on wanting to find real answers. Hassan teared up as she spoke about being the mother of an adult son with severe cerebral palsy, saying that she often wondered what, if anything, she did while pregnant caused her son’s diagnosis.
“So, please do not suggest that anybody in this body of either political party doesn’t want to know what the cause of autism is,” she said.
Along with her opinions on Edward Snowden and the U.S. government’s surveillance programs, Tulsi Gabbard’s long meeting with Bashar al-Assad in 2017 is a major source of concern for skeptical senators. Gabbard has expressed doubt that Assad actually used chemical weapons on Syrians and seemed to imply earlier in the hearing that his recent ouster was a bad outcome for the U.S., since the new Syrian regime was once affiliated with al-Qaeda.
Gabbard attempted to mollify her critics:
A representative sample:
Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia introduced a July 2024 tweet from Kennedy’s presidential campaign where he said he would “not take sides” on 9/11 and that he would make all files from the tragedy public to increase transparency.
Kaine quoted Kennedy’s own tweet back at him, asking “Do you find it hard to tell what is a conspiracy theory and what isn’t? Is that kind of a general deficit that you find in your own analytical abilities?”
“My father told me when I was 13 years old, he said people in authority lie and that the job of a citizen in every democracy is to maintain a fearless skepticism,” he said.
Kaine wasn’t buying it. “You’re an authority! But you’re taking sides on 9/11,” he said.
Kennedy indicated that he doesn’t intend to challenge September 11 truthers, even if he disagrees with them. “People are allowed to hold that opinion. I’m not going to tell them they’re crazy for holding that opinion,” he said. “I’m going to say, ‘What is your evidence?’ And if I hear the evidence, I’m going to say that doesn’t make any sense.”
Tulsi Gabbard’s on-the-record sympathy for leaker Edward Snowden — who does not have a big fan club in the senate — is already a major focus of her confirmation hearing. Maine’s Susan Collins, a perennial possible swing vote, seemed skeptical of Gabbard’s stance on Snowden.
Cassidy and Senator Rand Paul got into a brief back-and-forth on the subject of the Hepatitis B vaccine. Paul, an ophthalmologist, argued with Cassidy, a gastroenterologist, about children being vaccinated for the disease shortly after birth.
In her opening statements, Gabbard pushed back on accusations that she in thrall to various powerful men: “Those who oppose my nomination imply that I am loyal to something or someone, accusing me of being Trump’s puppet, Putin’s puppet, Assad’s puppet, a guru’s puppet, Modi’s puppet — not recognizing the absurdity of simultaneously being the puppet of five different puppet.”
Democratic Senator Patty Murray of Washington asked Kennedy about the sexual assault claim levied against him by Eliza Cooney, a former babysitter that worked for his family.
“Did you make sexual advances against Eliza Cooney without her consent?,” Murray asked.
“No, I did not and that story’s been debunked,” Kennedy said.
Murray asked why Kennedy apologized to Cooney in a text message that’s been reported on in the media.
“I apologized for something else,” he said.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the committee’s ranking member, followed up on Cassidy’s line of questioning on autism, taking issue with Kennedy’s response that he will back vaccines as not causing the disorder if the data supports it.
“The evidence is there! Vaccines do not cause autism. Do you agree with that?,” Sanders asked.
Kennedy began, “Senator, if you show me those studies, I will absolutely…”
Sanders interrupted, “That is a very troubling response because the studies are there. Your job is to have looked at those studies as an applicant for this job.”
Former North Carolina senator Richard Burr said that journalists had engaged in a campaign to sink Gabbard’s nomination. Then Iowa Senator Joni Ernst spoke to Gabbard’s character, trying to assure skeptical senators that she hadn’t changed her moral compass over the years.
He helped promote the J6 Choir’s national anthem, but claimed he did not know who made the recording:
He also said disagreed with Trump pardoning the rioters who attacked police. “[I have] repeatedly, often publicly and privately, said there can never be a tolerance for violence against law enforcement,” Patel said.
“I do not agree with the commutation of any sentence of any individual who committed violence against law enforcement.”
For his first question, Cassidy drove right into the thorniest issue for Kennedy: vaccines. The senator noted that years of research has shown that vaccines are not a cause of autism and that Kennedy has been inconsistent on the subject.“
Will you reassure mothers unequivocally and without qualification that the measles and hepatitis B vaccines do not cause autism?,” Cassidy asked.
Kennedy said that he doesn’t plan to enter the agency with any preconceived notions. “If the data is there, I will absolutely do that,” he said.
The Republican senator from Arkansas defended Gabbard’s unorthodox past positions, which include supporting dictators against American intervention. “No doubt she has some unconventional views, like her criticism of Barack Obama’s regime change interventions in Egypt and Libya,” Cotton said. “Maybe Washington could use a little more unconventional thinking.” Cotton also said that Gabbard’s FBI background check was “clean as a whistle.”
It’s good exposure for them, their CEO told Politico:
The head of Children’s Health Defense — the anti-vaccine nonprofit that Kennedy founded — praised Kennedy’s performance in front of the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday, calling it a moment of vindication for a movement that until now had existed on the fringes of mainstream politics.
“Bobby is challenging the status quo,” Mary Holland, CEO of Children’s Health Defense, told POLITICO. “We’re very happy with the greater attention — and we hope to educate more people that there are issues around a lot of things that people don’t often think about.”
In his opening remarks, Senate Health committee chairman Bill Cassidy told Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. directly that he is uncertain about his nomination. “It’s no secret I have some reservations about your past positions on vaccines and a couple of other issues,” he said.
The senator, whose vote will be pivotal to Kennedy’s confirmation advancing, emphasized his own 30 year medical background as a physician and said that he has personally seen the benefits of vaccines.”
Your past of undermining confidence in vaccines with unfounded or misleading arguments concerns me. Can I trust that that is now in the past?,” Cassidy asked. “Can data and information change your opinion? or will you only look for data supporting a predetermined conclusion? This is imperative.”
The Illinois Democrat says the conspiracy-minded Patel “does not meet the standard” and doesn’t have the temperament to run the FBI:
This is someone who’s left behind a trail of grievances throughout his life, lashing out at anyone who disrespects him or doesn’t agree with him.
The day of marathon hearings began with Patel who is sitting before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina told Bloomberg that he helped to prep Patel ahead of today’s proceedings.
