By Paul Kane · The Washington Post (c) 2025
It seemed, for a moment, like Republican lawmakers might offer some resistance.
The Army National Guard lieutenant colonel who survived a sexual assault in the military faced off with a defense secretary nominee accused of sexual assault. A physician who specialized in helping low-income children get vaccines grilled a health secretary pick who founded an anti-vaccine group. A Marine intelligence officer with an expertise in Eastern Europe questioned the intelligence director choice with soft views on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
But when push came to shove, all three – Sens. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) and Todd Young (R-Indiana) – folded.
Ernst voted for Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth, who won confirmation after Vice President JD Vance broke a 50-50 tie last month. Cassidy on Tuesday voted in committee to advance Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to be secretary of health and human services. Hours later, Young backed Tulsi Gabbard in a committee vote. Gabbard and Kennedy must still clear the full Senate, probably next week, but their opponents viewed their committee votes as the best chance to defeat them.
Their brief resistance burned fast across social media and cable news, prompting a flurry of calls and emails to their offices in hope of pressuring the senators to vote one way or the other. Their colleagues saw the final “yes” votes as an understandable move by three establishment-friendly Republicans.
“A lot of people, they talk about Trump loyalty like there’s something wrong with a president that wants loyalty. And quite honestly, I would submit that loyalty is a pretty big and pretty important part of running a country,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-North Dakota) told reporters Tuesday.
“I wouldn’t make a lot out of it, but some of it might be political reality, as well,” Cramer added.
Democrats dismissed the political maneuvering as caving to the outside conservative echo machine that demanded fealty to President Donald Trump. Ernst and Cassidy must face their state’s GOP next year, while Young is not up for reelection until 2028.
“I view some of these votes as sort of shocking but not surprising. I think people are succumbing to a muscle campaign,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia), dismissing the claims of those involved of winning over commitments from the nominees to respect their congressional partners.
“Many of these people are feeling very threatened with primaries or folks raising hell if they don’t vote the right way. I think that’s the way most of us look at these votes,” Kaine said.
Officially, these Senate Republicans do not admit that they caved to political pressure, offering various reasons their decisions.
Ernst, a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that she secured commitments from Hegseth to maintain women’s rights inside the fighting force and to uphold sexual assault laws of military justice that she helped write.
Cassidy, chair of the health committee, said he won assurances from Kennedy that he would work “within the current vaccine approval” systems, not remove vaccine statements from the agency’s website, and meet regularly with the senator to discuss issues such as personnel.
And Young, an influential member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, published a letter that Gabbard sent him making promises to uphold existing national security laws and to not make any recommendations for a pardon to Edward Snowden, the former intelligence contractor charged with one of the largest breaches of the Espionage Act in history.
“I have done what the Framers envisioned for senators to do: use the consultative process to seek firm commitments, in this case commitments that will advance our national security,” Young wrote on social media Tuesday, announcing his vote.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina), who is up for reelection next year in a state Trump has won three straight times, essentially ran his own mini-investigation in the hours before the final vote, interviewing an ex-sister-in-law about her accusations of his heavy drinking and spousal abuse, then talking to Hegseth about those allegations.
In a statement explaining his vote, the senator from North Carolina said he was satisfied with the nominee’s explanation of his personal behavior. “I conducted my own due diligence, including asking tough questions of Pete, and I appreciated his candor and openness in answering them,” he said.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Oklahoma), a Gabbard ally who straddles the Trump and establishment worlds of the GOP, saw Young using a similar method – maybe out of political necessity, maybe just to be loyal to the team.
“I think Todd is doing just what Tillis did,” Mullin told The Washington Post’s Liz Goodwin on Monday. “He’s being very methodical, asking the right questions, trying to get where he needs to be to feel good about where he needs to go.”
Democrats view these commitments as nothing more than promises to obey existing laws – which they consider the bare minimum of the Senate’s advice-and-consent process for considering nominations.
And some noted how Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she had promises from Supreme Court Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh that they would view the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling as settled precedent, only to cast votes in 2022 overturning that landmark abortion ruling. “Those commitments turned out to be illusory,” Kaine said.
Cassidy asked tough questions of Kennedy across two days of hearings, first about the intricacies of Medicare and Medicaid, and then about childhood vaccines. He described “the worst day of my medical career” when an unvaccinated young woman nearly died in front of him from a preventable issue.
Democrats hope that his willingness to vote to convict Trump in the 2021 impeachment trial and his record of bipartisan votes signaled enough of an independent streak that he might vote against Kennedy.
Ernst has more standing on issues facing women in the military than any other senator. After a November meeting with Hegseth, she issued a terse statement saying they had a “frank and thorough” conversation, but then went to Fox News and declared that she had not been persuaded by his answers on allegations of sexual assault. “We have to have a very thorough vetting process,” she told Fox.
Young peppered Gabbard over her past statements on Snowden, including her 2020 legislation voicing support for a pardon, even reading social media musings from Snowden bragging about how much damage he had done to the U.S. intelligence community. “This may be the rare instance in which I agree with Mr. Snowden,” Young said in a clearly irritated tone.
From the moment Ernst popped up as a leading Hegseth critic, Republicans back home talked of challenging her in next year’s primary. Cassidy is already facing a conservative challenge from the state treasurer. And Young serves in a state delegation with several ambitious House Republicans more in line with the Trump MAGA movement.
But they found their reasons to get to yes. “Some of it might be their own positioning,” Cramer said.
He mentioned the Old Testament figures of Joseph, Mordecai, Daniel and Esther, each of whom were loyal “to a point” and at times leveraged their positions to become high-ranking officials in the governments of Egypt and Persia.
“You know,” Cramer said, “who knows what motivates people to fall in line?”