Politics
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U.S. Sen. Susan Collins and most Senate Republicans voted Wednesday to confirm Tulsi Gabbard as President Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence, capping another controversial nomination process centered around Gabbard’s views on foreign adversaries.
Collins, who is up for reelection in 2026, was among several Republicans who were initially viewed as potential “no” votes on Gabbard, a former Hawaii congresswoman who ran for president as a Democrat in 2020 before becoming a Republican.
But the Maine senator said last week on the eve of a Senate Intelligence Committee vote she would support Gabbard, saying she “shares my vision of returning the agency to its intended size.” Collins did not touch on Gabbard’s controversial views in a statement on supporting her nomination.
The Senate voted 52-48 to confirm Gabbard on Wednesday, with Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky the lone Republican to oppose her nomination. U.S. Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats, opposed Gabbard, saying in a statement the national intelligence director position “boils down to judgment and management — and I find Congresswoman Gabbard lacking in both of these essential traits.”
Trump’s allies have called for GOP senators who oppose his nominees, including Gabbard, to face primaries, which Collins has not faced since first winning election to the Senate in 1996. Collins is one of three Republican senators to so far oppose a Trump nominee — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who won confirmation after facing scrutiny over sexual assault and excessive drinking allegations thanks to Vice President JD Vance casting a tie-breaking vote.
Collins also said this week she will vote to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the Health and Human Services secretary despite previously calling some of his anti-vaccine statements “alarming.” Trump’s allies lobbied her and other skeptics on supporting Kennedy and Gabbard, and the Senate was set to advance Kennedy’s nomination Wednesday.
Collins, who asked Gabbard during her confirmation hearing about her past calls for national security whistleblower Edward Snowden to receive a pardon, indicated she was pleased with Gabbard’s answer on how she would not advocate for any presidential action on Snowden.
Collins did not join several other senators from both parties in asking Gabbard if she felt Snowden was a “traitor,” to which Gabbard deflected and only said he “broke the law.” King U.S. also grilled Gabbard on Snowden.
Gabbard, a U.S. Army Reserve lieutenant colonel, had promised senators she would “leave her personal views at the door” if confirmed as the director of an office that oversees 18 intelligence agencies and was created via legislation Collins helped write in 2004.
During the confirmation hearing, Collins and King largely avoided using their questions to dive into the array of other controversies surrounding Gabbard. Those include Gabbard repeating Russia’s arguments that it had justification to invade Ukraine in 2022, criticizing Ukraine’s government as a “corrupt autocracy,” traveling to Syria in 2017 to meet with since-deposed dictator Bashar Assad and previously trying to repeal an overseas surveillance program.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, asked his Republican colleagues Wednesday to oppose Gabbard as someone who “echoes Russian propaganda” and “falls for crazy conspiracy theories,” and he acknowledged they “want to please the president.”
“This endangers our security,” Schumer said, “and my guess is if a secret ballot were cast on Tulsi Gabbard, maybe she’d get 10 votes.”
McConnell, the former Senate GOP leader, said in a statement explaining his opposition to Gabbard that the nation “should not have to worry that the intelligence assessments the president receives are tainted by a director of national intelligence with a history of alarming lapses in judgment.”
