Congress
Past Democratic presidential wannabes? Sign most Senate Republicans up.
Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. often talked like fairly conventional Democrats when they ran for that party’s presidential nomination. Senate Republicans are treating that past political history as water under the bridge.
That’s not to suggest either nominee — both of whom very publicly left the Democratic Party — will get a free pass during the confirmation process. Republicans have promised tough questions for Kennedy, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, over his position on abortion rights and anti-vaccine views. And Gabbard, Trump’s pick to be director of national intelligence, is sure to face questions about prior meetings with (now former) Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and her positioning on national surveillance.
Yet despite those potential roadblocks, Republicans largely seem unfazed by Kennedy and Gabbard’s fairly recent support for mainstream Democratic policies in areas as diverse as climate change, raising the minimum wage and stricter regulation of big banks.
“We’re focused on today. I can’t explain what happened four years ago,” said Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), who’s supporting Kennedy for the health perch after meeting with him.
Kennedy started out his 2024 campaign in the Democratic primary against President Joe Biden before switching to an independent bid, while Gabbard was one in a crowded field of Democratic contenders in 2020. Both have begun making the rounds with Republicans on Capitol Hill — Gabbard started with defense hawks while Kennedy Jr. is flooding the zone this week with GOP lawmaker meetings.
“These are the president’s nominees and he has full trust and faith in them regardless of their party,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), a member of Senate leadership. “Having voices that are not exclusively Republicans is probably a good idea.”
Still, some GOP senators are vowing to press the nominees for answers on their political evolutions through the confirmation process.
“Typically, there are policy differences that distinguish the political parties and so changing horses like this makes me wonder where people are coming from,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told Blue Light News.
Without any Democratic votes, Kennedy or Gabbard could only afford three GOP defections to get confirmed — and only then with Vice President-elect JD Vance breaking a tie.
One notable potential red flag from Republican senators is Kennedy’s vague and at times contradictory record on abortion, which has fired up some conservatives. During his presidential run, Kennedy and his running mate voiced support for a national 15-week ban before walking it back and offered scant policy details on how he’d approach abortion in office. Many Republicans have said they’ll be pressing Kennedy for clarity on where he is on the issue as he makes the rounds on Capitol Hill.
And Gabbard drew plenty of skepticism and outright condemnation for some idiosyncratic decisions while in office — she met with Assad in 2017 and voted ‘present’ on the first impeachment of Trump — but largely voted like a traditional Democrat.
She had a 100 percent score from the Human Rights Campaign, a pro-LGBTQ+ rights group, during her final term in Congress; she boasts a 92 percent lifetime score from influential green group the League of Conservation Voters and has just a ten percent lifetime score from the conservative Heritage Foundation.
But many Republicans see the fact that Kennedy and Gabbard don’t hail from traditional Republican backgrounds as a major selling point given the need, in their minds, to significantly revamp how the federal government operates.
“I’m looking for the best person to help us, and he’s got a lot of great ideas,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said of Kennedy. “Hey, he’s outside the box.”
Sen. John Cornyn said Monday he will not support Todd Blanche’s confirmation as attorney general absent a written modification to the settlement agreement President Donald Trump entered into with his own administration.
Opposition from the Texas Republican could sink Blanche’s nomination in a highly anticipated Judiciary Committee vote scheduled for Thursday.
While Cornyn said he is in talks with Blanche and others at the Justice Department, he has not secured changes he has demanded to the settlement agreement between Trump and the IRS. Those include formally rescinding a proposed $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” and restricting the scope of tax audit immunity granted to the president and his family.
Cornyn told reporters he needs the document to be signed by Blanche but did not specify whether Trump also needs to sign it.
“We’re talking about that. That hasn’t been fully resolved yet,” Cornyn said in a subsequent interview when asked if Trump needs to sign the modification as well. “We’re still talking. I mean, there’s different ways to approach it.”
Time is running out for Blanche to meet Cornyn’s demands ahead of Thursday’s committee vote, where any one Republican’s opposition could be fatal to the nomination. The senator said Blanche and the administration have been so far “reluctant” to follow through.
At his nomination hearing last week, Blanche testified that plans for the payout fund were dead and that the audit agreement was more limited than set out in the settlement. But Cornyn honed in on the text of the agreement, which states that it “may be modified only with the written agreement of the Parties.”
Blanche acknowledged during the hearing that, without a written change to the agreement, the anti-weaponization fund could still be revived.
“That’s what we’re trying to get them to agree to, which is again what his sworn testimony was,” Cornyn said. “So I don’t know why they’re so reluctant to do that.”
The White House and Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Jordain Carney contributed to this report.
Jay Clayton is on the verge of becoming President Donald Trump’s next director of national intelligence — though Democrats won’t be helping him get there.
The news: The Senate on Monday voted 51-43 in a party line vote to move forward with Clayton’s nomination, teeing up a final vote as soon as Tuesday to confirm him as the next head of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. No Democrats joined their GOP counterparts in support of Clayton.
Clayton, the top prosecutor in the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office and a former SEC chair, will take over from acting spy czar Bill Pulte and join Trump’s Cabinet when he’s confirmed by the full Senate.
Why it matters: At some level, that’s a win for Democrats, who have been eager to replace Pulte, a Trump loyalist with no background in national security, since the president named him to the post last month. But after an up-and-down confirmation process for Clayton, Democrats have new reservations about the incoming intel adviser, as Monday’s vote underscored.
During his Senate confirmation hearing two weeks ago, Clayton refused to say that Joe Biden fairly won the 2020 vote, leading Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Panel to vote against his nomination. That marked a reversal from June, when Senate Democrats worked with their GOP counterparts to fast-track Clayton’s confirmation in exchange for renewing a powerful spy law. That deal fell apart after Trump intervened, alleging on social media that Democrats weren’t delivering on their end of the deal.
Open question: Though Clayton’s confirmation now looks imminent, Senate action on the spy statute that was supposed to be part of the deal — Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — is not.
With the House already gone for the August recess, the Senate appears unlikely to vote on Section 702 until September.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang will meet with lawmakers in Washington to discuss American leadership on artificial intelligence, the company said Monday.
A spokesperson for the chipmaker said Huang would hold talks with both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill to talk about latest developments with the technology.
“Jensen is in DC to meet with leaders on both sides of the aisle to discuss American leadership in AI, including leading in open source,” the spokesperson said.
Huang is scheduled to sit down Tuesday with Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee who has expressed serious concern about security threats following last week’s OpenAI autonomous cyberattack.
The senator’s office confirmed the meeting. Senate Intelligence Chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It comes as Huang defended open-source AI on X, writing that such models “strengthen safety and cybersecurity, accelerate innovation and diffusion, and enable sovereignty.”
Huang’s visit comes as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is also expected to meet with Warner, although a spokesperson for the senator said the talks were separate. Earlier Monday, Open AI announced it was in talks with Nvidia, a technology company that makes chips to use artificial intelligence, for a data center project.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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