Pennsylvania Democratic Senator John Fetterman, who has shown an increasing willingness to break with his party in recent months, has revealed that he will not be supporting the nominations of two of Donald Trump’s most controversial cabinet nominees: Robert F Kennedy Jr and Tulsi Gabbard.
Kennedy is the president’s choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services and Gabbard has been tapped as America’s next Director of National Intelligence but both have endured fiery confirmation hearings in front of the Senate’s committees this month and been dogged by unease about some of their controversial past statements and policy positions.
Former independent presidential candidate Kennedy has faced questions about his oft-stated opposition to vaccines, penchant for entertaining conspiracy theories and checkered personal history while Gabbard, a military veteran and former Democratic congresswoman, has endured scrutiny over her past comments on Syria and Russia.
“I have met with most of the cabinet nominees and have carefully watched their confirmation hearings,” Fetterman wrote on X late on Thursday.
“After considering what’s at stake, I have voted against moving forward to the confirmation of Ms. Gabbard and Mr. Kennedy, and will be voting NO on their confirmations.”
Despite his stand, both RFK Jr and Gabbard are nevertheless expected to be narrowly confirmed, with their nominations no longer considered to be in jeopardy.
Fetterman has recently raised eyebrows by voting in favor of other Trump nominees, including Pam Bondi for Attorney General and Scott Turner for Housing and Urban Development Secretary, when his fellow Democrats have largely declined to follow suit.
Asked why he had supported Bondi, Fetterman told reporters: “I’m saying that she’s qualified and it’s not my ideal pick, but it turns out that [her predecessor] Merrick Garland wasn’t anyone’s ideal one either.”
He was also the only Democrat to cast a committee vote endorsing billionaire Howard Lutnick’s nomination to lead the Commerce Department.
While many Democrats are still struggling to come to terms with former vice president Kamala Harris’s crushing election defeat last November and work out how best to respond to the new Trump administration in its opening weeks, Fetterman has said that anyone hoping the president will fail is “rooting against the nation”.
The senator also made an effort to meet with the president in person at Mar-a-Lago as he worked with Republicans on the Laken Riley Act and has joined Trump’s Truth Social platform in the interest of engaging with his conservative base.
He was also apparently relucant to join his colleagues in condemning the president’s mass pardoning of January 6 defendants, commenting: “Some people are very deserving of a second chance and get a pardon.
“There’s some that I don’t… agree with. I don’t agree with them… What I’m saying, though [is] that [some] pardons I can agree with, some that I don’t.”
Fetterman appeared on ABC’s The View in late January and was grilled by host Sunny Hostin about his apparent “rightward shift.”
“I’ve been on record as saying I am not going to become a Republican, you know, although maybe some people might be happy on one side,” he responded.
“But I would make a pretty terrible Republican, because, you know, [I’m] pro-choice, pro really strong immigration, pro-LGBTQ… I don’t think I’d be a good fit. So I’m not going to change my party.”
Fetterman likewise told Semafor that rumors that he intended to switch parties were “amateur hour” and that doing so represented “a rocket sled to Palookaville.”
He added that he had no intention of following the likes of right-leaning Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema in exploiting his positioning for influence.
