Episode description

On Thursday, Senate committees held hearings to consider the nominations of Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), and Kash Patel as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). While most of President Donald Trump’s nominees have been confirmed by the Senate with bipartisan support — including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem — Gabbard, Kennedy, and Patel’s outlook is the most uncertain of Trump’s remaining nominees. 

In today’s special Friday edition, we’ll cover their Senate hearings in a truncated version of our standard Tangle format with an overview of each hearing, perspectives from writers on the left and right, and our take. 

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Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. 

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