Since winning the 2024 election last week, Donald Trump has nominated two types of people for his Cabinet: candidates who are very likely to be confirmed by the incoming Republican-controlled Senate — and candidates who might have a much harder time of it.
The first category includes relatively mainstream Republicans such as Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida (for secretary of state): Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York (for United Nations ambassador); former Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York (for head of the Environmental Protection Agency); and former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe (for director of the Central Intelligence Agency).
"There have been serious, qualified individuals nominated to posts," Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania posted earlier this week. "My colleague @SenMarcoRubio is a strong choice and I look forward to voting for his confirmation."
Yet many of Trump's other Cabinet-level nominees are mired in controversy, and their confirmation is far from certain. For instance, Trump has selected former Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida to serve as attorney general, which would put Gaetz in charge of the same Justice Department that recently investigated (but declined to charge) him for allegedly having sex with a 17-year-old girl and transporting her across state lines. Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii is Trump's choice for national intelligence director — despite concerns about her sympathetic views toward dictators such as Syrian President Bashar Assad and Russia's Vladimir Putin. And if Trump gets his way, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who has long been at odds with medical professionals over a variety of issues, from vaccines to raw milk to fluoridated water — would oversee public health as secretary of Health and Human Services.
"I would describe it as god-tier-level trolling … to own the libs," Fetterman said of the Gaetz nomination.
The question now, however, is whether Trump can actually get his most controversial picks over the line. Here are three ways this could go.
Scenario 1: Republicans roll over and approve Trump’s nominees
What unites Trump picks like Gaetz, Gabbard and RFK Jr. isn’t that Democrats oppose them. It’s that many Republicans are squeamish about them too.
But if GOP senators stick together and vote en masse, Trump’s nominees will be confirmed. All it requires is a simple majority of 51 votes. The GOP will hold 53 seats in the incoming Senate. So Republicans already have all the votes they need.
In that sense, Gaetz, Gabbard and RFK Jr. "aren't just appointments," as columnist Ezra Klein of the New York Times put it. "They're loyalty tests. The absurdity is the point."
Other reporting backs up the view that Trump is trying to assert his power over the party, to bend Republicans to his will. And there are even signs they might submit.
"What I'm hearing privately from a few key GOP senators: yes, they'd prefer to not have a messy fight over Gaetz. Not their favorite," Robert Costa of CBS News reported Thursday. "But they also don't have a lot of energy for pushing back. Trump runs the show, they say. If Gaetz can reassure them, they're open to backing him."
Scenario 2: At least one Trump nominee will be a sacrificial lamb
Despite the reported reluctance to battle Trump, some Republicans have very real reasons to reject some of Trump’s picks.
When Gaetz was under federal investigation, for example, "no one in the Congress came and defended him," Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma recalled last year.
Why? “Because we had all seen the videos he was showing on the House floor, that all of us had walked away [from], of the girls that he had slept with,” Mullin continued. “He would brag about how he would crush E.D. [erectile dysfunction] medicine and chase it with an energy drink so he could go all night.”
Meanwhile, Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said earlier this week that he and other lawmakers should get access to a separate report by the House Ethics Committee examining allegations of Gaetz's sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, arguing that there shouldn't be "any limitation at all on what the Senate could consider" while vetting Trump's pick. (House Speaker Mike Johnson responded Friday by saying he would "strongly request that the Ethics Committee not issue the report, because that is not the way we do things in the House.")
As for Gabbard, her views on Russia (which align with Trump's) are certainly more popular in the GOP than they once were — but plenty of Senate Republicans remain hawkish on foreign policy, and it's an open question whether they will want the leader of 18 spy agencies to be someone who parrots Russian propaganda and repeats "treasonous lies," as Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah once put it.
RFK Jr. isn't just the nation's most prominent anti-vaxxer; he's also staunchly pro-abortion rights and pro-government-run health care, unlike most Senate Republicans. Conservatives are already sounding the alarm. Putting Kennedy in charge of "Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare," the National Review's Philip Klein wrote Thursday, "would be a monumental disaster."
With sexual misconduct allegations now surfacing against Pete Hegseth, Trump's choice for defense secretary, it wouldn't be surprising if one or more of these nominees can't find 51 votes in the Senate.
Some pundits have even suggested that this could be part of Trump's plan — a way to reward loyalists even though they're doomed and wear down Senate Republicans in the process. "The Gaetz nomination is so off-the-wall that I half believe he's sacrificial," Ezra Klein theorized earlier this week. "Senate R's will have an easier time confirming all the other questionable picks, having shown their independence by icing Gaetz."
Scenario 3: Trump sidesteps the Senate altogether
More plausible than the idea that Trump is playing three-dimensional chess is the possibility that he intends to skip the confirmation process entirely.
Official confirmation hearings are set to start in January, shortly after the new Senate is sworn in. But if GOP opposition to some of Trump’s picks mounts over the next few weeks — and if Trump remains dead-set on Gaetz, Gabbard and/or RFK Jr. — he could attempt what are known as "recess appointments."
Trump has already signaled his interest in this short cut — first to overcome Democratic opposition while he was president in 2020, and then again over the weekend when he insisted that any Republicans running for Senate leadership positions "must agree" to allow it.
A clause in the Constitution permits presidents to fill out their administrations while the Senate is in recess. This was useful in the 1700 and 1800s, when Congress would take months-long breaks. But the practice became more and more partisan in the 2000s, and in 2014, when Barack Obama was president and Republicans won a Senate majority, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the Senate has to recess or adjourn for 10 days before a president can make a unilateral appointment.
As a result, the Senate now holds pro forma sessions where one senator opens and closes the chamber, but no legislative business is conducted — even over long holidays.
Someobservers think Trump and his allies are plotting a workaround. For any adjournment longer than three days, the House and Senate need each other's approval. If Senate Republicans wanted to pave the way for Trump to make recess appointments, a simple majority could vote to adjourn, and the GOP House would likely sign off.
But if a Senate vote falls short, the House could still pass its own an adjournment resolution — and then the “extraordinary occasion” of their “disagreement” would trigger a presidential power in the Constitution that allows Trump to adjourn both chambers of Congress all by himself (and appoint whomever he wants.)
Or so the theory goes.