For weeks, Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination to serve as the director of National Intelligence appeared in danger as several Republican senators expressed strong reservations about her qualifications and past stances. But one by one, those opposing voices have fallen in line. And on Tuesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee voted 9-8 to advance Gabbard through to a full floor vote.
Ahead of Tuesday’s vote, Gabbard managed to secure the support of several key Republicans, including Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Todd Young of Indiana, two committee members. Both senators, who were both put off by Gabbard’s past support for whistleblower Edward Snowden, said that Gabbard personally gave them reassurances in their one-on-one talks. Gabbard’s nomination now heads to the full Senate for a vote, where she can afford to lose only three Republicans. But given Collins and Young’s support, her nomination’s success is all but assured. The vote on Gabbard came just hours after another Senate committee voted in favor of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary nominee who faced his own contentious confirmation process.
In a field of controversial nominees put forward by Trump, Gabbard presented a particularly difficult challenge for Senate Republicans looking to support the president’s agenda. The former Hawaii representative has taken numerous stances at odds with the lawmakers whose votes she has courted, including support for Snowden and past opposition for a government surveillance program used overseas. Senators had also expressed concern over a past 2017 trip that Gabbard took to Syria where she met with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, who was recently deposed.
Last week, Gabbard faced hours of questioning from the committee in a hearing that, at times, grew tense. While Gabbard ceded that Snowden broke the law when he leaked classified information from the National Security Agency, she refused to call him a traitor despite the urging of members on both sides of the aisle.
