Several of President Donald Trump’s toughest confirmation fights are playing out in the Senate today. Here’s a rundown of what we’re watching.

Tulsi Gabbard: Trump’s pick to serve as director of national intelligence will appear before Senate Intel at 10 a.m. At least three Republicans on the panel are undecided: Sens. Susan Collins, Jerry Moran and Todd Young. Sen. Mitch McConnell is also being closely watched after voting “no” on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Republicans have been discussing unconventional tactics to advance Gabbard. Rachael Bade scooped this week that some want to take the unusual step of making the Intelligence Committee’s vote public to pressure members.

Another option would be to send her to the Senate floor without a favorable recommendation. Senate Majority Leader John Thune isn’t sounding convinced it’s a viable alternative, saying in a brief interview: “It’s been done before, but rarely.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: The HHS nominee appears before Senate HELP at 10 a.m. Kennedy seemed to pass his first test on Wednesday at Senate Finance, despite flubbing questions on Medicare and Medicaid. He’ll face tough scrutiny from senators today about his past anti-vaccine rhetoric.

Kash Patel: Democrats are preparing to hammer the FBI director nominee at a 10 a.m. Senate Judiciary hearing over social media posts making light of violence against lawmakers and his past statements suggesting he would go after the president’s political adversaries.

Russ Vought: Senate Budget is expected to approve Vought’s OMB nomination along party lines at noon. Republican lawmakers are declining to press Vought on the uproar around the Trump administration’s federal spending freeze. Democrats were already inclined to oppose him, and they unsuccessfully pushed for his committee vote to be delayed amid this week’s chaos.

What else we’re watching:

• Plane crash: Lawmakers are seeking answers from authorities after an American Airlines passenger jet collided with an Army helicopter Wednesday night while attempting to land at Reagan National Airport. Lawmakers’ interest in aviation safety is high — and especially so for operations at Reagan, a facility most members use on a routine basis. The involvement of a military helicopter adds to the oversight implications.
• More noms: It’s not just those four on Thursday — Senate Armed Services will have a nomination hearing for Daniel Driscoll to be secretary of the Army and Senate Foreign Relations will vote on Rep. Elise Stefanik for U.N. ambassador. Former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum will get a confirmation vote on the floor around 11 p.m., unless Democrats agree to speed up the process.
• Budget resolutions: News leaked out Wednesday about House Republicans’ budget reconciliation targets, expect more potential news on that Thursday. Meanwhile, Thune said the Senate’s reconciliation blueprint for their two bills is ready to go.

Democrats are launching a tax-focused group as their newest messaging megaphone in an attempt to counter President Donald Trump on one of his signature issues.

Organizers said the nonprofit group, Families Over Billionaires, will be backed by an eight-figure funding campaign, which will include advertising, rapid response and surrogate operations. They said the campaign will serve as a centralized war room to attack Trump and Republicans during the looming tax debate in Congress. The details of the group were shared first with Blue Light News.

The campaign’s launch marks one of the first outside efforts to push back on Trump’s agenda in his second term, as Democrats look to regain ground with voters on economic issues — a major weakness for the party last year. Democrats plan to blast Trump over his effort to extend his own 2017 cuts, which they argue will hand “out trillions in tax giveaways to billionaires and big corporations,” a memo about the group reads, while ignoring his promises to lower costs on everyday expenses.

But it’s not clear when Republicans, who have argued that allowing the cuts to lapse would hurt the economy, will take up the debate. There’s still plenty of wrangling on Capitol Hill over how to push through their priorities of tax cut extensions, immigration and slashing spending — a sprawling list of priorities that will be difficult to push through with their razor-thin majority in the House.

Democrats, for their part, are still searching for a way to reach voters on the economy. Throughout the 2024 election, more voters trusted Trump on the economy than Kamala Harris, according to public polling. Trump improved his standing with nearly every demographic group last November, when a majority of voters said the economy remained their top issue. Reaching voters on economic issues is becoming an existential challenge for the party.

A coalition of elected officials, labor unions and Democratic groups signed on to the Democrats’ messaging effort, including former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), former Office of Management and Budget Shalanda Young, the Service Employees International Union and the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

“For me, politics has never been about left or right, it’s about whose side you’re on. That’s what this fight will come down to,” Brown said in a statement. “Are you fighting for the people who make this country work, or more handouts for the wealthy and the largest corporations? We must make that contrast clear.”

Michael Linden, a Biden administration alum and a senior policy fellow at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, will serve as its director.

Down in Florida on Wednesday, House Republicans tried to coalesce around a plan to pass “one big, beautiful bill.” Meanwhile, up in Washington, Senate Republicans are ready to go with their own Plan B.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said in an interview that “text is ready” for a budget blueprint that would tee up a two-bill approach to the GOP’s ambitious border, energy and tax agenda.

“We’ve been ready for a while. … Everything is ready to go,” Thune said, explaining that he and fellow GOP senators are partially “waiting to see what the House is going to do.”

“I think there’s a point at which we will decide to pull the trigger,” he added, calling it “a question of — ultimately, of strategy.”

Under the Senate plan that has been described by multiple lawmakers, Republicans would first attempt to pass a smaller bill encompassing border security, defense and energy measures. Later would come a larger, more complex tax-focused bill.

Both would be passed under party-line reconciliation procedures, which first requires the adoption of an identical budget resolution by the House and Senate. The text Thune referred to would provide for passage of the first bill; another blueprint teeing up the second bill would follow.

Senate Budget Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) hasn’t given a hard timeline for when he will take up his Plan B. But Senate Republicans view him as eager to get going, with some predicting that he will move forward in the next two to three weeks. Thune didn’t rule out that timeline on Wednesday but acknowledged that House action could come to bear on the scheduling.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, meanwhile, wants to have his own chamber’s budget resolution written in committee by next week and finalized in the House by the week of Feb. 10. But he’s still struggling to get the unity he will need from his conference to get that one-bill approach across the floor.