Susan Collins

For the past month, the tone among Washington insiders was dour as it related to the confirmation prospects of Donald Trump’s edgier nominees. Sure, the argument went, Marco Rubio is a slam dunk, and no one takes issue with Doug Burgum or Sean Duffy. But the attitude toward Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination for health and human services secretary and Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination as director of national intelligence were grim. More than a dozen Republican insiders in the past week assured me that one or both nominations were doomed, citing the opposition from the Wall Street Journal editorial page, legacy newspaper columnists such as David French and Marc Thiessen and the editors of National Review, who took a particularly aggressive stance against Gabbard. All of them lost.

Tulsi Gabbard has been roundly described for weeks as the Trump cabinet nominee with the most narrow path to approval, with multiple media sources suggesting that she does not have the Republican votes to win should she even get out of the Senate Intelligence Committee. But if that is the case, it wasn’t on display in her performance before the committee today — not in her presentation, her chosen backers, nor in the lines of questioning from Republican members. It has been widely suggested that two senators, Todd Young of Indiana and Susan Collins of Maine, could potentially break with Trump by siding against Gabbard in the behind-the-scenes vote on her nomination.

With a 51-49 vote, the debate on Pete Hegseth’s nomination to be defense secretary ended Thursday afternoon. The vote mostly fell on party lines, with the exception of two Republican senators: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine.  "After thorough evaluation, I must conclude that I cannot in good conscience support his nomination for secretary of defense," Murkowski said in a post on X. "I did not make this decision lightly; I take my constitutional responsibility to provide advice and consent with the utmost seriousness." “Although he has recently revised his statements on women in combat since being nominated, I remain concerned about the message that confirming Mr. Hegseth sends to women currently serving and those aspiring to join,” Murkowski followed.

The reaction in most elected Republican circles to the naming of President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees for the most prominent positions in his administration has ranged from the exuberant, to the somewhat skeptical, to the truly head-scratching, to, in one obvious case, outright disgust. But what’s emerging now is a clearer picture of what Trump 47 has as an idea of his cabinet — and it’s far more consistent, and potentially transformative, than some observers currently seem to appreciate. Cabinets and top officials are most often drawn from a pool of experienced politicians with lengthy résumés, earned from decades of service in varied capacities and concentration in their particular area.

Is Donald Trump feeling overstimulated? First he scorned stimulus talks with the Democrats, tweeting on Tuesday afternoon that he was summarily ending them. Then, a few hours later, he started backpedaling after the stock market plummeted, demanding that Congress send him legislation to stimulate the economy. Next, in the wee hours, he issued a belligerent tweet about declassifying all the intelligence documents related to the Russia investigation, as though he could win the election by running once more against Hillary Clinton rather than Joe Biden. Democrats have largely moved on from the Russia investigation, but Trump seems addicted to it.

Augusta, Maine Six weeks in Maine can’t make you an expert on the state, but it does teach you a few crucial things about living up here. Weather forecasts are rarely accurate (you’re better off just looking at the sky). Moose will not get out of the way of your car on the road. Rural broadband access, or the lack thereof, really is a big deal. It’s totally normal for your neighbors to construct elaborate displays of bloody skeletons or creepy old dolls in their front yards and keep them up year-round. Oh, and this: Sen. Susan Collins is going to be a tougher incumbent to unseat than the national media and Twitter pundit class would like to think. I currently live in Maine, sort of.

President Trump’s woman troubles never seem to go away. A recording aired by ABC News today indicates that Trump himself demanded the ouster of the American ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, during a dinner with Lev Parnas, whom he claims he never knew. He did. Trump declared at an April 30, 2018 dinner that included Parnas, 'Get rid of her! Get her out tomorrow. I don’t care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. OK? Do it.'It took a while but eventually Trump’s paladins did. They understood that by 'take her out', the president didn’t mean ask her to go to a fine restaurant or the ballet. They had other ideas. Eventually, Yovanovitch was dismissed and replaced by William Taylor. Look how well that turned out.

The normally sober Associated Press is reporting the Senate’s vote to overturn Trump’s declaration of emergency in the southern border as ‘a stunning rebuke’ and ‘a remarkable break between Trump and Senate Republicans.’ But it isn’t. The 12 Senate Republicans who joined forces with every Democrat in the vote to annul Trump’s declaration did so for predictable ideological reasons. Libertarian-leaning Republicans such as Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and Pat Toomey voted to overturn the emergency on ‘constitutionalist’ grounds, seeing the National Emergencies Act of 1976 as constitutionally dubious or worse and rejecting the mechanism by which it allows the president to appropriate funds.

When the new class of Congress officially began this month, the Democrats dominated the airwaves — perhaps for the first time in the Trump era. The Democratic rainbow coalition of women were front and center of the public conversation. Many of these freshman congresswomen are young and come from diverse backgrounds. Some of these women support wildly erratic forms of leftism, including socialism. But, despite the silly and dangerous ideas of incoming congresswomen such as Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, they are adored by the media. Such naked identity politics might annoy conservatives, but there is no denying the logic: when the electorate is so diverse, having diverse politicians is effective.

Teachers Scotch used to run an amusing ad that read ‘In life, experience is the great teacher. In Scotch, Teachers is the great experience.’ Droll, what? But is it true? Or was T. S. Eliot’s mournful observation that ‘we had the experience but missed the meaning’ more pertinent to our situation? What happens in the aftermath of Judge — as of a few minutes ago, make that ‘Justice’ — Brett Kavanaugh’s bizarre confirmation process will tell us a lot about whether we have learned anything from the horrible experience of the last weeks. When the Senate voted 50 to 48 to confirm Kavanaugh, they drew a line under a battle that was not just bitter but insane.