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CV NEWS FEED // The Senate confirmed U.S. Army Reserve Lieutenant Colonel and former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence (DNI) in a 52-48 vote Wednesday morning.
All 47 members of the Senate Democratic Caucus voted against her confirmation. Fifty-two Republicans voted in favor, with former Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, being the sole member of the GOP to oppose Gabbard’s confirmation.
A Republican since last year, Gabbard is a former Democratic Party rising star and Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairwoman who served in the U.S. House from 2013 to 2021 representing Hawaii. She ran for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
Since leaving office, the incoming DNI has extensively criticized her former party – which she had left in 2022 – and once suggested they were “under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness.” She endorsed Trump in his successful White House bid last year.
As CatholicVote previously reported, Gabbard “spoke against intelligence operatives surveilling American Catholic parishes” during a confirmation hearing ahead of the vote, “referencing a controversial FBI memo leaked in 2023 which targeted both ‘radical traditional’ and ‘mainline’ Catholics as potential threats.”
“During the same hearing, Gabbard also decried U.S. intelligence operations that she said led to the persecution of Christians in the Middle East,” CatholicVote’s report noted. She has served in the U.S. Army since 2003.
Gabbard’s confirmation came one day after the Senate voted 52-46 along party lines to advance the DNI pick to a full vote in the upper chamber. A week earlier, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence had advanced Gabbard’s nomination, also along partisan lines.
>> LAST WEEK: GABBARD APPROVED BY SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE <<
In the days preceding the vote, multiple Republican senators – who were widely regarded as swing votes on Gabbard’s confirmation – announced that they would back her, putting aside their previously expressed reservations.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-AK, wrote on X Monday that she intended to vote “yes” on confirming Gabbard despite continuing “to have concerns about certain positions she has previously taken.”
The moderate senator noted that she appreciates Gabbard’s “commitment to rein in the outsized scope of the agency, while still enabling the ODNI [Office of the Director of National Intelligence] to continue its essential function in upholding national security.”
“As she brings independent thinking and necessary oversight to her new role, I am counting on her to ensure the safety and civil liberties of American citizens remain rigorously protected,” Murkowski wrote.
The same day, fellow moderate Republican Bill Cassidy, R-LA, stated: “President Trump chose Tulsi Gabbard to be his point person on foreign intelligence. I will trust President Trump on this decision and vote for her confirmation.”
CatholicVote had previously reported that Sen. Susan Collins, R-ME, made her decision to back Gabbard earlier this month.
Murkowski, Cassidy, and Collins are the only three remaining senators of the seven who voted to convict Trump following his second impeachment four years ago. The other four have since left office via retirement or resignation.
While Cassidy and Collins are up for reelection next year, Murkowski will not have to face voters again until 2028.
Both Collins and Murkowski – along with McConnell – voted against the confirmation of now-Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Cassidy thus far has voted for every one of Trump’s nominees for Cabinet-level positions.
As CatholicVote noted, an article published in the anti-Trump neoconservative website The Bulwark late last year quoted two anonymous Trump advisors who purportedly suggested that the president would “fight” and “go to war” if the Senate impeded the confirmation chances of either Gabbard or Health and Human Services nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
