A president’s Cabinet offers Americans their best view into how an incoming chief executive will govern. In more normal times, presidents used their appointment power to balance competing policy interests, mollify restive members of their own party, and even extend an olive branch to the opposition.
That is not the case with the Trump administration. Triumphant at the polls and overstuffed with ego by the partisan right-wing media that gives form to his reality, Trump’s recent slate of nominees are nothing short of a sledgehammer to the federal government.
They’re also a sinister loyalty test designed to preemptively root out any remaining Republican dissenters.
Trump’s nominations read like self-parody. Fox News anchor Pete Hegseth, most notable for playing the sidekick on “Fox & Friends Weekend” and paying off a woman who claims he sexually assaulted her, could be America’s next secretary of defense. Hegseth has no senior military command experience and a penchant for rationalizing away war crimes, but those glaring red flags don’t matter in a Republican Party now completely captured by the nation’s biggest grifters.
Then there’s former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who until last week was under active investigation by the House of Representatives for allegedly engaging in sex acts with a minor and railing illegal drugs. That walking crime spree would be the nation’s top cop.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The uniquely toxic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also features prominently. Kennedy previously made headlines with the unhinged claim that COVID-19 was designed to spare Jews. Now he’s within an inch of controlling America’s health policy. Among his major priorities? Slashing medical regulations and ending federal funding for cancer research.
Last but not least is Tulsi Gabbard, the long-suffering Putinist and apologist for Syria’s brutal Assad regime. She finds herself poised to control the entire American intelligence apparatus. More than even Gaetz, Trump’s nomination of Gabbard as director of national intelligence seems to be a challenge to his own party: Embrace America’s pivot toward Moscow or get out.
Aside from a few minor gripes, the vast majority of Senate Republicans chose to fall in line behind Trump. That’s a worrying sign of things to come.
Trump’s nominees are qualified only in the sense that they offer him a slavish personal devotion and are willing to bear any humiliation in exchange for power. That’s especially true of Kennedy, who recently berated Americans for “poisoning” their bodies with unhealthy food before being photographed holding a McDonald's Big Mac and a Filet-O-Fish at Trump’s insistence. The pained grimace on Kennedy’s face says it all. He knows this is an intentional humiliation. But the power is worth the embarrassment.
How Senate Republicans respond to Trump’s list of patently unqualified grifters will determine the shape of our democracy not just over the next four years, but for future administrations. History is littered with the painful stories of legislatures voluntarily surrendering their independence to a corrupt and powerful leader. None of those stories have happy endings.
Our country is already facing the first of many Trump-era tests of our constitutional republic, and voters have elected one of the weakest-willed Congresses in American history to meet that critical moment. That doesn’t mean hope is lost, but a Senate filled with servile and cowardly Republicans will need to summon up an uncommon amount of moral courage to push back against Trump’s abuses.
It won’t be easy. During a recent meeting with congressional Republicans, Trump ally Elon Musk announced that his America PAC would support primary challenges for any Republican who obstruct Trump’s agenda. Given how successful Trump has been at ousting disloyal Republicans from the GOP, that’s a real threat that will persuade a majority of House and Senate Republicans to fall in line.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson
Some Republicans don’t need to be threatened. House Speaker Mike Johnson took the extraordinary step of demanding the House Ethics Committee keep secret the report on Gaetz’s possible criminal sexual misconduct. Johnson’s unprecedented demand came just a day after he pledged to play no role in the committee’s decision, a breakneck pivot that outraged conservatives like Yuval Levin over at the National Review.
“The very idea that the speaker of the House would collude with the president to undermine the Senate’s constitutional role and effectively make the legislative branch a passive plaything of the executive should outrage any member of Congress,” Levin wrote.
Trump delights in the idea that his nominees are already generating headline-grabbing controversy. He’s also made clear that these aren’t stunt picks, and that he expects Republicans to give all of his nominees a full confirmation vote. That vote will be an explicit stress test of the Senate’s independence, because if lawmakers are willing to deny their own eyes and ears to elevate Hegseth, Kennedy, Gabbard, and Gaetz into America’s most important offices, they can also be pressured to play ball with the rest of Trump’s autocratic agenda.
Trump is one of the least intellectual men to ever occupy the White House, but he has an innate understanding of how weak people respond to pressure. Each nominee demands Republicans declare their loyalty to Trump in a different way.
Kennedy requires the GOP to elevate a known kook and science denier to a critical science-based gig. Gaetz marks an explicit acceptance that the Department of Justice is now a Trump-captured body. Hegseth is an admission that decades of Republican tough talk about standing by the troops has been a lie. And in Gabbard’s case, a final acceptance that Republicans are now an overtly pro-Russia, pro-Putin, NATO-skeptical party.
Each nomination requires Republicans to make one final, painful repudiation of the party they were before Trump began his improbable takeover. It’s Trump’s politics of humiliation and dominance writ large, and this time Trump is demanding nothing less than the complete submission of the Senate to his unpredictable whims. If their recent public statements are any warning, we should prepare for the worst.
Trump’s inept and unqualified first round of nominees sets the stage for a fight that will reshape not just the Republican Party but the relationship between Congress and the executive branch. Those changes will outlive Trump’s administration and alter the political balance of power for years to come. Senate Republicans have the opportunity to throw the brakes on Trump’s dangerous nominees. Do they have it in them?
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