After intense pressure from the White House and allies, Republicans in the Senate Intelligence Committee voted on Tuesday to advance Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination as director of national intelligence.
The committee’s decision came after multiple Republicans — including Sens. Susan Collins, Todd Young and Jerry Moran — initially suggested they were undecided about the nominee for director of national intelligence. The widespread hesitation about Gabbard’s history and fitness for the role, as well as the fiery reception Gabbard saw at her confirmation hearing, suggested that she could be one of the only Trump nominees to go down.
Any Republican opposition could have caused Gabbard to stall in committee and potentially derailed her nomination entirely. But all of the Republicans ultimately fell in line after urging — and threats — by Trump and Gabbard allies.
Vice President JD Vance personally spoke to Young about Gabbard, Politico reported. Elon Musk posted on Sunday that Young was a “deep state puppet” — although he later deleted it and praised him instead.
Young — who announced before the vote that he would support Gabbard — told reporters that he had a “very positive conversation” with Trump on the nomination.
Trump said “vote your conscience,” Young said. “This is how the process is supposed to work. It’s supposed to be a consultative process. And we got the reassurance as we need it.”
Before the undecided senators committed to advancing Gabbard’s nomination, Trump allies in Congress were looking to make the Intelligence Committee’s vote public to pressure Republicans to fall in line and to force a floor vote if Gabbard did not make it out of committee.
It did not come to that: Each of the three Republicans said before the vote that they planned to support Gabbard’s nomination.
Collins, widely considered the largest holdout on Gabbard, issued a statement Monday night saying she would vote yes.
“The Office of the Director of National Intelligence … has become far larger than it was designed to be, and Ms. Gabbard shares my vision of returning the agency to its intended size,” Collins wrote in the statement.
Republican senators repeatedly brought up cutting the scope and workforce of the national intelligence office during last week’s hearing. In response, Gabbard committed to working with Congress to downsize the office.
Ahead of last week’s hearing, Collins also cited concerns about Gabbard changing her stance on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (a tool for intelligence gathering on foreign nationals), her previous praise of Edward Snowden and her past travel to Syria. Collins said after the hearings that Gabbard allayed those concerns.
Young shared a letter Tuesday morning that Gabbard wrote to him.
In the letter, Gabbard made multiple commitments, including not making a recommendation about Snowden’s legal standing and refraining from protecting any members of the intelligence community who make unauthorized disclosures about intelligence programs.
“Having now secured these commitments, I will support Tulsi’s nomination and look forward to working with her to protect our national security,” Young said in a statement to reporters.
Moran also signaled his support ahead of the vote.
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Shifra Dayak is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.