After a week of blistering confirmation hearings, the most contentious hearings are still yet to come. Will Tusli Gabbard, nominated for Director of Intelligence, and RFK, nominated for Health and Human Services Secretary, be able to make it through a grueling confirmation process?

From Just the News. Many of President-elect Donald Trump’s top-level nominees earned high marks this week following their hearings on Capitol Hill and appear poised for confirmation, but some of his less conventional picks have yet to have their hearings even scheduled and remain the subject of vocal opposition in the upper chamber.

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Among the candidates who have not appeared yet and are most likely to struggle are Director of National Intelligence-designate Tulsi Gabbard and Health and Human Services Secretary-designate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The pair sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 and 2024, respectively, but ultimately joined Trump’s camp in the 2024 election. …

Gabbard

A former Hawaii Democratic member of Congress and war-zone veteran in the Middle-East, Gabbard rose to national prominence during her 2020 presidential campaign when she famously sparred with now-Vice President Kamala Harris over her record as a prosecutor.

She ultimately withdrew from the primary, left the party, and emerged as a favorite of the MAGA movement due in part to her views on rolling back American intervention in foreign conflicts. …

After Trump tapped Gabbard to serve as DNI, Republicans expressed skepticism, including Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., who noted “[s]he met with Bashar Assad. We’ll want to know what the purpose was.”

Gabbard visited Syria in 2017, where she met with Assad and later challenged categorizations of him as an enemy of the United States. …

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Kennedy initially sought to wrest the Democratic presidential nomination from President Joe Biden, but later mounted an independent campaign citing frustrations with the Democratic National Committee.

Near the end of the election cycle, he dropped out of the contest and endorsed Trump, which led to the debut of “Make America Healthy Again” as a key campaign point. …

Kennedy’s confirmation appears to be the most contentious of all Trump’s picks. Democrats have labeled him a “conspiracy theorist” or “Anti-Vaxxer” over his past writings critical of specific vaccines and the approval process. Some Republicans, meanwhile, have expressed reservations about appointing a pro-choice figure …

This week, the would-be HHS secretary is meeting with key Democratic lawmakers on relevant health-related committees. He will likely have to account for intense opposition from American physicians, 15,000 of whom wrote an open letter against him last week. …

Paths to confirmation

Neither nominee has their post in the bag, but with their hearings unscheduled, they still have time to work behind the scenes to assuage Republican doubts. It is somewhat unclear how many votes they will need at a minimum, given the departure of Vice President-elect JD Vance from the Senate and expected confirmation of Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., as secretary of state.

Republicans will nonetheless have a majority, however, as two vacancies would still leave them with 51 Republicans and 47 Democrats/independents. …

What do you think of Gabbard and RFK? Share your prayers and scriptures below.

(Excerpt from Just the News. Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America – Tulsi Gabbard, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=79497229 and Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America – Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=150496506)