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Individuals holding shut monitor of political information could have been toggling their screens right now between Senate affirmation hearings: the second day of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s for secretary of Well being and Human Providers, and the primary for Tulsi Gabbard’s for director of nationwide intelligence and Kash Patel’s for FBI director. However every of these three hearings deserves the general public’s full consideration: Donald Trump’s nominees provided new glimpses into their approaches to coverage, fact, and loyalty to the president.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Day Two
Forward of Kennedy’s first day of hearings, our colleague Nicholas Florko famous that the HHS nominee is not any stranger to conspiracist statements: “RFK Jr. has insinuated that an try to assassinate members of Congress by way of anthrax-laced mail in 2001 could have been a ‘false flag’ assault orchestrated by ‘somebody in our authorities’ to gin up curiosity within the authorities getting ready for potential organic weapon threats. He has claimed that COVID was ‘focused to assault Caucasians and Black folks,’ and that 5G is getting used to ‘harvest our knowledge and management our habits.’ He has urged that the usage of antidepressants could be linked to mass shootings.”
“If Republican senators skirt round [Kennedy’s] falsehoods throughout right now’s affirmation hearings,” Nicholas wrote, “it is going to be proof of their prevailing capitulation to Trump. And it additionally could also be a perform of Kennedy’s rhetorical sleights … He’s able to rattling off vaccine research with the fluency of a virologist, which boosts his credibility, regardless that he’s freely misrepresenting actuality.” However Kennedy’s sleights didn’t serve him fairly as nicely right now as he may need hoped.
At a number of factors, senators inspired Kennedy to acknowledge that vaccines will not be the reason for autism, however as a substitute of confirming what quite a few research have proven to be true, Kennedy insisted that he would wish to “have a look at all the info” earlier than coming to any conclusions. “The room went silent right now throughout Senator [Bill] Cassidy’s closing questions,” Nicholas famous once we spoke this afternoon. “Cassidy was virtually begging Kennedy to recant his earlier statements on vaccines. Kennedy, like everybody else within the room, needed to know this was a make-or-break second for his affirmation. However regardless of the potential fallout, Kennedy refused, promising solely that he would have a look at any research introduced to him disproving a hyperlink between vaccines and autism.”
The nominee for HHS secretary additionally confirmed, for the second day in a row, his lack of awareness about fundamentals of the Medicare system, fumbling his solutions to a sequence of rapid-fire questions from Senator Maggie Hassan, a Democrat from New Hampshire. Hassan additionally shared that she is the mom of a 36-year-old with cerebral palsy, and accused Kennedy of relitigating settled science on the truth that vaccines don’t trigger autism. “It’s the relitigating and rehashing and persevering with to sow doubt so we are able to’t transfer ahead, and it freezes us in place,” she argued.
Cassidy, whose vote might show key as to whether RFK Jr. is confirmed, mentioned after right now’s listening to that he’s “struggling” over whether or not to verify Kennedy.
Tulsi Gabbard
Gabbard got here into her affirmation course of with a historical past that raises questions on her dedication to nationwide safety (she has, amongst different issues, met with former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and expressed sympathetic views towards Russian President Vladimir Putin). As our colleague Tom Nichols wrote in November, “Gabbard has each proper to her private views, nonetheless inscrutable they could be. As a non-public citizen, she will be able to apologize for Assad and Putin to her coronary heart’s content material. However as a safety danger, Gabbard is a strolling Christmas tree of warning lights. If she is nominated to be America’s high intelligence officer, that’s everybody’s enterprise.”
The subject that finally acquired a lot consideration in her affirmation listening to right now was her refusal to say whether or not Edward Snowden is a traitor. Regardless of strain from Democratic and Republican senators, Gabbard refused to reply the query, repeating that Snowden had damaged the regulation and that she would take steps to ensure whistleblowers know the right way to correctly make a criticism. Gabbard additionally revealed that she was unable to extract any concessions in her 2017 assembly with Assad. “I didn’t anticipate to,” she mentioned.
Gabbard’s potential affirmation will rely on how her considerably incoherent set of coverage views sits with Republican senators. Final week, our colleague Elaine Godfrey explored the one by way of line—in addition to ambition—that has guided Gabbard’s in any other case inconsistent political profession.
Kash Patel
Donald Trump isn’t at all times clear about what he means when he refers to “DEI,” however presumably it entails how somebody’s id is considered in the course of the hiring course of. On this morning’s press convention addressing the tragic airplane crash final night time, Trump asserted, with out proof however crediting his “frequent sense,” that DEI hiring on the Federal Aviation Administration was at fault.
It was odd, then, that just a few hours later, Republican senators used Patel’s affirmation listening to to focus on his id: Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina requested about examples of racism Patel has skilled, and Senator Mike Lee of Utah acknowledged the struggles Patel and his father should have confronted as racial minorities in the US and Uganda, respectively. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, as if he have been studying from a e book report in regards to the Gujarati folks, lauded the non secular variety in Gujarat, India, the place Patel’s household is initially from, omitting the state’s excessive tensions and violent historical past. Patel opened his personal remarks by acknowledging his household’s journey from overseas. He invoked the phrase Jai Shri Krishna, a regular greeting for a sect of Hindus in search of blessings.
Patel was calm and nonetheless—he turned riled up solely when questioned by Senator Amy Klobuchar about his previous suggestion that he would “shut down the FBI Hoover Constructing on day one and reopen it the subsequent day as a museum of the ‘deep state.’” However he was strolling a tightrope. At present’s listening to often is the uncommon occasion when Patel has publicly damaged with Trump, to whom he has in any other case been unequivocally loyal. He refused to explicitly state that Trump misplaced the 2020 election, however he additionally mentioned, “I don’t agree with the commutation of any sentence of any particular person who dedicated violence towards regulation enforcement.”
Total, Patel gave the impression to be making an attempt to rigorously toe a line, answering questions in regards to the culture-war points that Trump and congressional Republicans care about—Senator Marsha Blackburn, for instance, asserted in the course of the listening to that the FBI prioritizes DEI and “counting Swiftie bracelets” over conducting investigations—whereas making an attempt to not alienate the workers he hopes to steer. Pressed by Blackburn, Patel made a obscure assertion in regards to the “excessive requirements” FBI workers should meet.
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- Officers introduced that there are no survivors within the crash final night time between a U.S.-military Black Hawk helicopter and a regional American Airways passenger jet touchdown at an airport close to Washington, D.C. Three troopers have been aboard the helicopter, and 64 folks have been on the flight from Wichita, Kansas.
- Donald Trump appointed Christopher Rocheleau because the appearing administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration. The company had not had an administrator for the reason that begin of Trump’s new time period.
- Eight hostages have been launched from Gaza by Hamas, and Israel launched 110 Palestinian prisoners.
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