DECEMBER 26, 2024:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The fate of President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet is still unclear after Republican senators spent much of December carefully dodging questions. Scrutiny is being focused on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s views on vaccines, accusations of sexual misconduct against Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard’s 2017 meeting with then-President Bashar Assad of Syria. Some GOP senators have indicated they are all-in for all of Trump’s picks. But others have withheld their support for now, especially on some of his more controversial nominees. That injects uncertainty into the process as Republicans are set to take the Senate majority with a four-seat margin. Trump has challenged them to confirm his Cabinet immediately.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The fate of President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet is still unclear after Republican senators spent much of December carefully dodging questions about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ’s views on vaccines, accusations of sexual misconduct against Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard’s 2017 meeting with then-President Bashar Assad of Syria.
While some GOP senators have indicated they are all-in for Trump’s picks, others have withheld support, for now, especially on some of his more controversial nominees. The dynamic is injecting uncertainty into the process as Republicans prepare to take the Senate majority in January with a four-seat margin and as Trump aggressively challenges them to confirm his Cabinet immediately.
It’s not unusual for senators to wait until after confirmation hearings to publicly announce a decision. But Republicans are under more pressure than usual as Trump and his allies make clear that they will confront senators who don’t fall in line.
“You only have control of the Senate because of Donald Trump,” the president-elect’s son, Donald Trump Jr., warned during a media appearance this month. “Without that, you’d be relegated to insignificance.”
There has been one casualty of the process so far — former Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, who withdrew from contention as attorney general after senators relayed private concerns. But Trump has enthusiastically stood by the rest, including Kennedy for secretary of Health and Human Services, Hegseth for secretary of Defense and Gabbard for director of national intelligence.
With hearings starting by mid-January, before Trump is even inaugurated, senators will soon have to decide how closely they will scrutinize the nominees and whether they are willing to vote against any of them. Republicans will have a 53-47 majority, so Trump cannot lose more than three votes on any nomination if Democrats are united in opposition.
The outcome of the confirmation process, and the level of dissent in the Senate, will likely set the tone for Trump’s presidency and his relationship with Congress, which was frequently tumultuous during his first term. He often clashed with the Senate, in particular, but has signaled he expects Republican senators to be more compliant this time around.
“It’s not about putting yeses on the board, it’s about keeping nos off the board,” said Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin, one of Trump’s top allies in the Senate, who speaks with him frequently.
While most Senate Republicans have scrambled to display as much loyalty to Trump as possible, a handful have made clear that they are willing to defend the body’s “advise and consent” role. Among the senators to watch are moderate Republicans Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and incoming freshman Sen. John Curtis of Utah.
“Anybody who wants to give me heat for doing my job, bring it on,” Curtis said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” when asked about vetting Trump’s nominees. “This is my job. It’s my constitutional responsibility.”
Still, even moderate senators have shied away from directly criticizing Trump’s picks. And not a single Republican has gone on the record against a nominee.
Several of Trump’s picks are expected to sail to confirmation, perhaps even with some Democratic votes. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., has indicated he will support Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for secretary of State and Rep. Elise Stefanik for United Nations ambassador, as have a few other Democrats.
For the more controversial nominees, though, party unity will be key.
One of Trump’s most embattled picks is Hegseth, a Fox News host and veteran who some see as inexperienced and has publicly questioned whether women should serve in combat. He has also faced allegations of sexual assault and excessive drinking that he has denied. But it’s all given some senators pause, despite Trump’s enthusiastic support.
Hegseth has faced particular pressure from Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, herself a combat veteran who has worked to address sexual assault in the military. She has met with Hegseth several times, and has not yet said she will support him. She will have a chance to question him, publicly and face-to-face, in a Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing that is scheduled for Jan. 14.
Though a hearing for Gabbard has not yet been set, senators will also be able to question her publicly and in a classified setting about her trip to Syria after the U.S had severed diplomatic relations. Gabbard has defended the trip, saying it’s important to open dialogue, but critics hear echoes of Russia-fueled talking points in her commentary. Assad fled to Moscow earlier this month after opposition forces overtook Syria in a surprise attack, ending his family’s five decades of rule.
While Republican senators have mostly refrained from publicly expressing concerns about Gabbard’s ties abroad, nearly 100 former senior U.S. diplomats and intelligence and national security officials have urged Senate leaders to schedule closed-door hearings to allow a full review of the government’s files on her.
Senators have been a bit more openly skeptical of Kennedy, who has long questioned the use of some vaccines.
After a report in the New York Times that one of his advisers filed a petition to revoke approval for the polio vaccine in 2022, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell issued a statement saying that “efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed — they’re dangerous,” and that “anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts.”
McConnell, who had polio as a child, is leaving leadership next year but will stay in the Senate. His votes will also be closely watched after years of tension with Trump as he assumes a new role free from the responsibilities of leadership.
Like McConnell, many senators have taken an “advice” approach, telling the nominees what they need to do to be confirmed.
North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis says he’s told all of the nominees he’s met with so far, “go out and see what the press is saying about you, find your top 10 and disarm the conversation by having a good solution for why that isn’t you.”
In addition, Tillis said, “you’ve got to have a good showing in committee.”
DECEMBER 14, 2024:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans may have recently elected Donald Trump to a second term, but that doesn’t mean they have high confidence in his ability to choose well-qualified people for his Cabinet — or effectively manage government spending, the military and the White House, according to a new poll from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
As Trump names his appointees for key posts in his administration — some of whom could face difficult confirmation fights in the Senate even with Republicans in control — about half of U.S. adults are “not at all confident” in Trump’s ability to appoint well-qualified people for his Cabinet and other high-level government positions.
The appointment process and its breakneck speed have represented a manifestation of Trump’s pledge to voters to be a disruptive force in the country and a return to the chaotic era of governance that defined his first four years in the Oval Office. But only around 3 in 10 Americans are “extremely” or “very” confident that Trump will pick qualified people to serve in his administration. A majority of Republicans say they do have high confidence.
Trump has promised to shake up Washington with an aggressive approach that includes the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a nongovernmental task force assigned to find ways to fire federal workers, cut programs and slash federal regulations, to be helmed by billionaire Elon Musk and fellow entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.
Beyond his appointments, though, the survey finds a similar level of confidence in Trump’s ability to manage government spending and perform other key presidential tasks, including overseeing the military and the White House — which, in Trump’s first term, experienced significant high-level staff turnover, particularly in its early days.
That’s not quite the same challenge faced four years ago by President Joe Biden, who came into office with higher levels of confidence in some areas than others.
Democrats and independents are most likely to doubt Trump’s leadership
That low confidence is generally driven by Democrats and independents. A large share of Democrats are suspicious of Trump’s abilities on all of these fronts — about three-quarters say they are “not at all confident” that he will be able to effectively manage the White House, government spending or the military, or choose well-qualified people for his Cabinet.
About 4 in 10 independents, meanwhile, say they are “slightly” or “not at all” confident in Trump’s capacity to execute each of these responsibilities, while about 2 in 10 are “extremely” or “very” confident.
Republican confidence is higher, but it isn’t overwhelming
Confidence among Republicans is higher, but not as overwhelming as Democrats’ doubts. About 6 in 10 Republicans are “extremely” or “very” confident in Trump’s ability to choose well-qualified people to serve in his Cabinet and manage the White House, the military and government spending. About 2 in 10 Republicans are “moderately confident,” and another 2 in 10 are “slightly” or “not at all” confident in each case.
Biden had similar hurdles at the start of his term
When Biden took office in 2021, people also harbored some doubts about how he’d carry out some major responsibilities — but unlike with Trump, where concern is fairly even across different tasks, they were more confident in Biden’s ability to do some things than others. When he entered the White House, Biden had served eight years as President Barack Obama’s vice president, as well as decades in the U.S. Senate, and he ran the 2020 campaign largely on those years of experience.
A separate AP-NORC poll conducted shortly after Biden took office — which asked the question slightly differently — found a higher level of confidence in Biden’s ability to appoint well-qualified people for his Cabinet and manage the White House than his ability to manage the military and government spending.
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The poll of 1,251 adults was conducted Dec. 5-9, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.
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