Hello. It’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕️
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) has every reason to at least perform independence.
Up for reelection in 2026 in a state where Democrats can win, he’s often plunked next to Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Susan Collins (R-ME) as a member who has either personal or political incentive to sometimes loudly buck their party.
But Tillis isn’t acting like the other two. He rubber-stamped Pete Hegseth, a nominee so defective that even Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) voted no. And on Thursday, after boisterously introducing and sherpa-ing Kash Patel, the FBI director nominee most known for his “deep state” enemies list, he stopped by post-confirmation hearing to give a temperature check on the other controversial nominees to we reporters still hanging around.
“I was a lean yes coming out of the Finance hearing,” he said of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary.
“You’ve got a diverse group of people on Intel and I doubt seriously she’ll get any Democrat vote,” he added of Tulsi Gabbard, President Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence. “So a unanimous vote with the broad spectrum of members that are on the Intel Committee says all I need to know to support the nominee.”
That latter may not come to pass; Gabbard’s refusal to call Edward Snowden a traitor at her hearing Thursday has, reportedly, even some hard-core Republicans publicly wobbling.
Still — Tillis has clearly made the calculation that he doesn’t need to break with Trump. In fact, he went a step beyond loyal foot-soldiering, lashing himself to one of Trump’s most troubled nominees.
“I do what I believe satisfies my objectives as U.S. senator and I let the electorate play out on its own,” Tillis told us.
Translation: As of now, two years out from the midterms, he sees no electoral downside to being Trump’s right-hand man.
— Kate Riga
Here’s what else TPM has on tap this weekend:
- Khaya Himmelman notes that among the tectonic changes underway at the Trump Department of Justice is the abandonment of voting rights cases.
- Kate Riga explains how the anti-abortion movement learned to stop worrying and love RFK Jr.
- And Emine Yücel highlights the moment when RFK Jr. had to acknowledge his true self.
The Trump DOJ’s Big Reversal On Voting Rights Begins
Donald Trump’s Department of Justice dropped out of a lawsuit this week that challenged GOP Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s efforts to purge supposed non-citizens from the voter rolls ahead of the November election. It’s a stark reversal from its position during the Biden administration, when it argued that the challenge was a violation of the National Voter Registration Act.
The reversal from the Biden to the Trump administration is, perhaps, not a surprise. But, experts say, it signals the troubling direction the Trump DOJ is headed. It is expected to be among the first of a series of similar moves on voting rights to come.
“With the DOJ’s recent decision to voluntarily dismiss the case challenging Virginia’s voter list maintenance actions, the question is whether DOJ is now putting the political interests of some before the interests of ensuring free and fair elections?” David Levine, a senior fellow at the University of Maryland’s Centers for Democracy and Civic Engagement, told TPM.
In August, Youngkin announced the state’s new program designed to purge supposed non-citizens from the voter rolls. The DOJ, alongside voting rights groups, then filed a lawsuit against the state, arguing that the program was in direct violation of the National Voter Registration Act and could wrongly disenfranchise eligible voters. The DOJ won an emergency ruling in federal court, but the Supreme Court stayed the order, and reinstated it only days before the election. The case has been ongoing since, but the advocacy groups will now be the only plaintiffs.
— Khaya Himmelman
RFK Jr. Is Game For Trump’s Plans To Restrict Abortion
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump’s pick for Health and Human Services secretary, had a clear objective going into Wednesday’s hearing: Smooth the feathers of an anti-abortion movement wary of his very recent pro-abortion-rights stance.
It seemed to work, per one of the biggest anti-abortion groups in the U.S.
“We are encouraged by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation hearings,” said a Thursday statement from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America’s president, Marjorie Dannenfelser. “When Kennedy was first nominated, we immediately voiced concern and the need for assurances given his previous positions on abortion. It is important that President Trump, Kennedy, and the GOP Senate took these concerns seriously and that public commitments were made. We will not score Kennedy’s nomination in committee or on the Senate floor.”
Kennedy soothed their anxieties by previewing Trump’s intentions: conducting more “research” on mifepristone and its side effects, clear pretext to make the abortion drug less accessible (or not accessible at all). He hedged on EMTALA — the federal emergency room mandate that requires most hospitals to provide abortions in crisis situations — feigning ignorance about whether the federal statute supersedes state abortion bans. Many Republicans also prompted him to confirm that Trump wants to end “late-term” abortions — the likeliest entry point to a national ban.
He presented himself as game for all of it, repeating that he’s always thought that every abortion is a “tragedy.”
His true convictions on abortion matter about as much as Trump’s — very little, given their willingness to playact hard-right Christian zealotry.
— Kate Riga
Words Of Wisdom
“I did probably say that…”
That’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s response to a question from Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) during this week’s confirmation hearing. The coy response came after Bennet asked Kennedy to clarify whether he previously claimed that Lyme disease was “highly likely” to be a “militarily engineered bioweapon.”
Though it’s often hard to take RFK at his word, he was honest in that one part of his statement: he did claim in a podcast episode that Lyme disease — a bacterial infection which can spread to humans through the bite of an infected tick — is likely a bioengineered weapon created by the military.
That conspiracy theory is, of course, thoroughly debunked.
But what made this quote qualify for this week’s “Words of Wisdom” is how nonchalant Kennedy was in accepting that he was spewing conspiracy theories about one of the most common vector-borne diseases in the U.S. while answering questions to get confirmed to lead the Department of Health and Human Services — the federal department created to protect the health of the American people. While the confirmation hearings have, for weeks, showcased remarkable contortions by nominees as they avoid confronting their past statements, perhaps, for RFK, some of those past statements were just too perfectly on-brand to be denied.
— Emine Yücel