Friday, February 28

A make-or-break week for Trump’s nominees: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online edition of From the Politics Desk, an evening email that provides you with the most recent coverage and commentary from the campaign trail, Capitol Hill, and the White House by the NBC News Politics team.

Sahil Kapur and Garrett Haake discuss the slim margin of error that some of Trump’s more contentious nominees face this week in today’s podcast. Additionally, Matt Dixon covers the rising GOP civil war in Florida due to Trump’s immigration crackdown from Tallahassee.

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Wollner, Adam

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A make-or-break week for Trump s nominees

By Sahil Kapur and Garrett Haake

It will be another crucial week for President Donald Trump’s candidates as he seeks to swiftly assemble his administration, following Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s narrow Senate victory.

Additionally, the White House wants to make it very evident to Republican senators that they would suffer electoral repercussions if they reject even one nominee.

This week, the Senate will hold confirmation hearings for three of Trump’s most troubled nominees: Kash Patel for FBI director, Tulsi Gabbard for national intelligence director, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for health and human services secretary. They all have a difficult road ahead of them, and the hearings might make all the difference.

Since she had a secret meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in 2017 and has previously opposed Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which permits warrantless surveillance of non-U.S. individuals, Gabbard is widely regarded as the most vulnerable.

According to a senior White House official, she is the one who must put in the greatest effort for herself and is where the balance of firepower is changing. She must make it clear that she understands the importance of intelligence and that this is a matter of life or death.

Skeptics have criticized Patel for being unqualified and motivated to use prosecutorial authority to pursue Trump’s detractors and settle personal grievances. The White House official, however, seemed more hopeful about his prospects. Both Kash and Hegseth put in a lot of effort at work. They put in a lot of overtime and are intelligent and tough. You must do that if you want to succeed.

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For his part, a group led by former Vice President Mike Pence is spending money on advertisements to thwart Kennedy’s nomination because of his prior support for abortion rights. Kennedy might use his position to discredit vaccines and help his trial-lawyer friends who have sued medication and vaccine companies, according to the Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial board, which also urged GOP senators to reject him.

The three Republicans who opposed Hegseth were Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who recently resigned as the Senate’s longest-serving leader and is largely expected to retire when his term ends in January 2027; Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, a moderate who has long fended off right-wing challenges; and Susan Collins of Maine, a blue-state GOP senator up for reelection in 2026.

Compared to the other 50 Republicans, Trump has less influence over those three senators, and they are anticipated to be future wild cards for the president’s other choices. Assuming Democrats were united in opposition, it would only take one more GOP defection to sink a nominee if the three of them regrouped at some time. As of right present, there are no clear contenders for a fourth defection.

Rush to align with Trump’s immigration moves sparks a GOP feud in Florida

In a number of significant cities, the Trump administration is stepping up its immigration enforcement efforts: roughly half of those detained on Sunday do not have criminal backgrounds, according to Gabe Gutierrez and Nicole Acevedo, who report that immigration officials made roughly 1,200 arrests.

Republican officials around the nation are racing to support Trump on the subject that they believe will win the election because it was a key component of the party’s platform in the previous one. This includes former Trump opponent and governor Ron DeSantis, who convened a special session of the Florida legislature to get the state ready to assist in implementing the president’s flurry of executive orders pertaining to immigration.

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However, a desire to align with the Trump administration on immigration has revealed some intra-party divisions in the Sunshine State, according to Matt Dixon’s report from Tallahassee. The special session was unceremoniously adjourned Monday morning by Republican leaders in the state House and Senate, who promptly convened their own.

The action essentially destroyed the legislation that DeSantis’s friends had already submitted, giving Republican leadership the opportunity to draft their own immigration plans with wording that places the governor in a precarious political position. Legislative leaders’ plan would transfer DeSantis’ broad immigration supervision authority to Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson, a statewide elected official who has a tense relationship with DeSantis and is considering a 2026 run for governor.

DeSantis is forced into a corner by the move. DeSantis would either have to reject a measure that contains hard-line immigration reforms, many of which he favors, or sign a law that essentially knee-caps his power to coordinate immigration enforcement in the state if the Republican leaders’ bill succeeds as anticipated.

Additionally, the episode emphasizes that DeSantis no longer has the same political influence in the state as he did before to his 2024 presidential candidacy.

Read more from Matt.

The Department of Homeland Security is being sued by a collection of Quaker churches for altering a policy that forbade ICE agents from conducting operations in supposedly sensitive areas, including places of worship, playgrounds, schools, and hospitals, without supervisors’ consent.

ICYMI: Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., encouraged his fellow Republicans in Congress to give the Trump administration’s mass deportation plan more funding during an interview on Meet the Press.

Today’s top stories


  • On the way out:

    The Department of Justice said it had fired several career lawyers involved in prosecuting Trump.

    Read more


  • The retribution agenda:

    From firings to revoking security details to removing portraits, the message is sinking in for those who may have crossed Trump: Payback is coming, and coming fast.

    Read more


  • The pardon agenda:

    Trump granted only one pardon during his first year in office when he last served as president. Now, Trump has averaged one pardon for every few minutes he s been back in power, rewarding those who have been supportive of him and he might not be done.

    Read more


  • Next up:

    Trump is expected to sign

    four new executive orders

    : one related to Covid vaccine requirements within the military; one that would create a defense system for the U.S. like Israel’s Iron Dome; one that aims to

    restrict transgender people s military service

    ; and one to crack down on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in the military.


  • Water wars:

    Trump has also signed an executive order seeking to circumvent federal and state laws dealing with California’s water system in an effort to provide the southern part of the state with necessary water resources to fight wildfires.

    Read more


  • Trade war averted:

    Over the weekend, the White House said that Colombia had agreed to all of Trump s terms after the president threatened to impose sweeping retaliatory measures against the country, including tariffs and visa sanctions, after it denied entry to two U.S. military deportation flights.

    Read more


  • Gearing up:

    Vice President JD Vance s top political advisers have signed on to help Vivek Ramaswamy as he prepares to run for governor of Ohio.

    Read more



  • Get the latest updates on our politics live blog

For now, that’s all from the Politics Desk. Adam Wollner and Ben Kamisar put together today’s newsletter.

For comments, likes, or dislikes, send an email to politicsnewsletter@nbcuni.com.

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