The Senate GOP’s Trump resistance is on life support

That’s a wrap. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) are on their way to confirmation by the U.S. Senate to direct the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, respectively. All that remains is Kash Patel for director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation — an essential White House nomination that Democrats are working hard to torpedo.

There was plenty of hand-wringing over Kennedy and Gabbard, two of the three more controversial nominees to President Donald Trump’s Cabinet remaining. Would Senate Republicans tank their nominations in committee? Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Chair Bill Cassidy (R-La.) was well primed to vote “nay” on Kennedy. The hearing he chaired considering RFK’s nomination was contentious; his questioning of the nominee even led to
a back-and-forth on the importance of long-lacking scientific humility between Cassidy and his fellow Republican, Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.).

Combined, the White House’s victories represent a near-total rout of Senate uniparty opposition to the president’s “Make America Great Again” agenda.

In the end, momentous outside pressure combined with a series of commitments from RFK to secure Cassidy’s final decision. In a tweet sent as he voted, the chairman credited his change of heart to “very intense conversations with Bobby and the White House over the weekend and even [Tuesday] morning,” led by Vice President JD Vance.

It definitely didn’t hurt that Cassidy, who voted to impeach Trump on the second Democrat-led go-around,
is up for re-election next year in Trump-loving Louisiana. He’s already drawn a primary challenger. It’s important to play nice when you now claim to represent the interests of the most popular Republican president in decades.

Gabbard’s confirmation — arguably more imperiled than even RFK’s was, given her direct threat to deep-state intelligence community interests — was all but secured over the weekend, when Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) confirmed her support. Collins’ decision put the last remaining holdout, Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), in the hot seat.

If Collins had stayed the course as a “nay” vote, Young, a hawk who doesn’t face re-election for three years, could have counted on the Senate Intelligence Committee’s inexplicable decision to hold its vote in secret to shield him from backlash from the president and his supporters. By Monday, he looked less sure. “He doesn’t have the balls,” one veteran D.C. conservative predicted Monday evening.

There’s good reason for that. In the days leading up to Tuesday’s vote, Young took incoming fire from Republicans as diverse as Meghan McCain and Elon Musk. McCain, a personal friend of Gabbard’s, called him “the new Liz Cheney,” and in a since-deleted tweet, Musk called him “a deep-state puppet.” In
a tweet before Tuesday afternoon’s vote, Young announced his support for Gabbard’s nomination.

Cassidy, Collins, and Young’s shifts follow Republican North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis’ literally last-minute decision to break with Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), and Collins to confirm Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth last week. His commitment was secured after a full-court press that included late-night/early-morning White House meetings. It figures that Tillis, a close McConnell ally, also faces re-election in red North Carolina next year. It pays to have friends in high places — and it hurts to have enemies. “They bent the knee,” one Trump team adviser told the Beltway Brief. “The MAHA/MAGA/anti-deep-state agenda rolls on.”

Combined, the White House’s victories represent a near-total rout of Senate uniparty opposition to the president’s “Make America Great Again” agenda. The next test — confirming Patel to the FBI — will come later this month. A Trump victory here would signify the end of Senate GOP opposition to his chosen Cabinet and the beginning a new Republican Party.

Patel’s confirmation has the most Republican momentum of the three remaining contested nominations. A dyed-in-the-wool MAGA Republican and proven enemy of partisan, deep-state, Department of Justice lawfare, Patel has secured the public support of key senators, but his confirmation isn’t for two weeks — giving Democrats plenty of time to undermine that support.

The delay is based on a committee rule that allows senators to request more questioning time — a rule Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) should have nixed at the beginning of the Congress but didn’t. Now Democrats are using the time to dig up anything they can on a nominee who has exposed partisanship in the FBI in the past and pledges to root it out from the top office if confirmed.

Republicans need to understand that a vote against Patel is a vote against the core of the president’s agenda. All signs say he’s set to pass, but for all the turmoil in this city, the uniparty is just a little too quiet. It’s enough to make a man nervous.

Blaze News:Swamp starts draining itself as 20,000 deep-staters accept Trump buyout: Report

Blaze News: Tulsi Gabbard’s confirmation advances to the Senate floor

Blaze News: RFK Jr. clears key confirmation hurdle in the Senate

Politico: Bill Cassidy’s decision on RFK Jr. could jeopardize his Senate career

The Wall Street Journal: The 24-hour blitz that flipped one senator’s vote from no to yes on Hegseth

NBC News: Report: White House preparing executive order to abolish the Department of Education

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THE FIRE RISES

City Journal: It’s time to end DEI in immigration. We all know American immigration is broken. We can see the results in the streets of small towns and big cities from El Paso to Albany, from Miami to Portland. But it’s not just illegal, but also legal immigration that is in need of serious reform. As with much of our decline, the problems are by human design. Daniel Di Martino reports:

… Today’s immigration system prioritizes diversity and inclusion over merit and skill. About 1 million new permanent residents arrive annually, according to the Department of Homeland Security. That number includes roughly 140,000 older parents of previous migrants coming through chain migration. The current system also randomly selects 55,000 people from “underrepresented” countries and gives them green cards. These relatively unskilled and older immigrants are admitted immediately, while highly skilled immigrants can wait decades for green cards, even after paying more than $100,000 in taxes as temporary workers. Even a Nobel prizewinner from India, who would qualify for the so-called Einstein visa reserved for the highest-skilled workers (EB-1), cannot obtain a green card without waiting for more than a decade …