Tulsi Gabbard on the ticket

Cabinet nominees faced Senate committee hearings on Thursday as lawmakers weigh whether to advance their nominations to the Senate floor. 

First up: former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a onetime Democrat who Trump tapped to be director of national intelligence. The former Army lieutenant colonel has been considered among the toughest lifts of Trump’s nominees, and based on the public portion of Thursday’s hearing, Gabbard remains in a tough spot. She likely needs to win a majority of the 17 committee votes — which could be difficult in its own right — to reach a floor vote. 

The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports Gabbard’s nomination is on shaky ground.

“People are holding their cards pretty close to the vest but that nomination is in trouble,” said one Republican senator, who requested anonymity to comment candidly on Gabbard’s chances.

A second Republican senator said there’s been “a lot of discussion” among GOP lawmakers over Gabbard’s fitness to lead the nation’s intelligence community.

“There’s been a lot of conversation on that,” the senator said.

The Hill’s Al Weaver breaks down key moments from Gabbard’s hearing. At one point, she tried to quell concerns about her stance on Russia and the ongoing war in Ukraine, brushing off accusations that she is a “puppet” of Russian President Vladimir Putin

The Washington Post: Gabbard said, under oath, that she did not know “until today” that a prominent cleric she met in Syria threatened to unleash suicide bombers in the U.S. Documents and emails from 2017 indicate she was told then about the threats.

Meanwhile, Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) said Thursday he was “surprised” that Gabbard refused to call former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden a “traitor” after being repeatedly pressed on the question. Gabbard co-authored legislation supporting a pardon for him and supported a bill that would have given increased whistleblower protections for individuals accused of violating the Espionage Act — both of which were anathema to members on the Intelligence panel. 

“I felt that was a pretty easy question, actually, to be able to come through and just say, ‘This is universally accepted when you steal a million pages of top-secret documents and you hand them to the Russians, that’s a traitorous act,’” Lankford told reporters after the open session. “That did catch me off guard.” 

Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), meanwhile, announced Thursday during a Fox & Friends interview that he supports Gabbard’s nomination.