BREAKING: Chalk Up Another Two Victories for Schumer and Reid!

Say, remember this moment from 2013? You’d better believe Republicans do — and Chuck Schumer should:

In a decade-long demonstration of the axiom Be careful what you wish for, Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer just scored another goal … for Republicans. Thanks to their elimination of the filibuster on presidential appointments, Tulsi Gabbard won Senate confirmation of Donald Trump’s appointment to service as the director of national intelligence. The final vote went 52/48, with Mitch McConnell as the lone Republican to object:

BREAKING: Tulsi Gabbard confirmed as Director of National Intelligence. pic.twitter.com/vVP5hjsOY0

— Fox News (@FoxNews) February 12, 2025

Gabbard, one of President Donald Trump’s more controversial picks, faced concerns from several Republican senators over her lack of support for Ukraine; her shifting position on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s Section 702, a key surveillance and security tool; her 2017 meeting with former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad; and her past support for Edward Snowden.

However, key swing Republican senators, including Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Todd Young of Indiana ultimately decided to back her confirmation.

On Monday night, Murkowski acknowledged in a statement that she still had “concerns about certain positions (Gabbard) has previously taken,” but added that Gabbard “brings independent thinking and necessary oversight to her new role.”

McConnell explained his vote afterward in a statement e-mailed by his office to media outlets, including Hot Air:

“The nation should not have to worry that the intelligence assessments the President receives are tainted by a Director of National Intelligence with a history of alarming lapses in judgment.

“Edward Snowden’s treasonous betrayal of the United States and its most sensitive lawful intelligence activities endangered sources, methods, and lives. Japan is among America’s closest treaty allies in the Indo-Pacific, and the risk of conflict in the region is the product of Chinese aggression, not western ‘threat inflation’. Russia’s escalation of its unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine threatens American interests and is solely the responsibility of Vladimir Putin.

“Entrusting the coordination of the intelligence community to someone who struggles to acknowledge these facts is an unnecessary risk. So is empowering a DNI who only acknowledged the value of critical intelligence collection authorities when her nomination appeared to be in jeopardy.

“Beginning today, the brave men and women of America’s intelligence community will turn to Director Gabbard for principled leadership and sounder judgment in the service of America’s interests and national security. I join all of them in hoping that she rises to the immense responsibilities of her office.”

It’s not an entirely unfair point, but it’s worth noting just how much the environment has changed in the years since. It wasn’t so long ago that Gabbard’s position on Snowden was the popular view on the Left and anathema on the Right. Perhaps the accumulated amount of lies told by the intel community at that time and in the decade-plus since has enough impact to flip the positions; one has to imagine that James Clapper’s perjury before Congress started the process. However, the Russia-collusion frame-up by the DoJ and intel community infuriated and alienated Republicans, which along with the attempt by 51 intelligence “professionals” to obstruct any effort to investigate Hunter Biden in October 2020 probably did most of that damage. 

At any rate, this kind of dispute would have been fatal to confirmations before Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer decided to exercise the “nuclear option” in 2013. Reid got angry because Republicans played the same game on Barack Obama appointees that Democrats had played with George W. Bush’s nominees and demanded more moderate nominations. Reid busted the norms on presidential appointments in order to force confirmations on simple-majority votes, only allowing for filibusters on Supreme Court nominations — which Mitch McConnell eliminated as soon as Trump took office in 2017 in retribution.

Thanks to Reid and Schumer, Tulsi Gabbard is now the new ODNI and brings her deeply skeptical view to the American intelligence community. Hope Democrats who participated in the 2013 rule change enjoy this victory, because they certainly earned it. Reid lived long enough to see his maneuver backfire repeatedly, but Schumer’s still leading Senate Democrats even with this ongoing demonstration of his strategic incompetence.

Actually, let’s congratulate Schumer on two victories. As I write this post, the Senate just voted to advance Robert F. Kennedy Jr to a final floor vote on his nomination, 53-47. That too would have doomed his nomination if not for Reid and Schumer. We can expect the same vote for his confirmation too, and Democrats can thank Reid and Schumer for their complete impotence to have any power to stop it.