Just like that, the hardest hearings are over (and so is a dangerous week)

The White House’s hard week is over and appears to have been a success. Booby traps abounded — plenty of opportunities for things to go wrong (and some did), even before the deadly aviation disaster Wednesday night.

This Friday morning, however, the final three contentious Cabinet nomination hearings are over, another contested nominee has passed out of committee, two more Cabinet posts have been confirmed, and the Office of Management and Budget funding order has been reduced to a public-relations slap-fight. In the end, the White House is primed for a series of victories — instead of the string of defeats Trump’s administration could easily have suffered.

It’s not all clear sailing. Next come the actual confirmation votes.

Early in the week, the White House threw the federal government into a tizzy when an OMB memo cut the outside-program funding off to a broad range of programs across the world. The order generated a lot of excitement (including right here), but was overly vague and allowed room for panicked (and partisan) administrators and bureaucrats to overreact, shutting down Medicaid portals and other important government functions never meant to be touched.

The mess was quickly tidied up, but not before Democrats managed to get their teeth into that bone, making the OMB order a central portion of their Wednesday hearing with President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The confusing rollout ended up serving as an important stress test for what can be done (and who’s on the White House’s side), but it was also the first time Democrats have laid a hand on the ball since Vice President Kamala Harris’ nomination honeymoon.

In the end, however, Republicans held strong. The easiest case Democrats could have made was in tanking former OMB Director Russ Vought’s nomination to return, but they weren’t even able to pull that off (so far). His nomination sailed out of committee Thursday on a strictly partisan vote, without a single Democrat “yes” (or even any Democrats showing up).

Vought isn’t out of the woods yet, and plenty of Republican senators are ticked off about the Medicaid thing, but he’s looking a lot stronger than he did Wednesday morning.

And on a side note: The larger Senate also confirmed Trump’s nominees to lead the Department of Transportation, Department of the Interior, and Environmental Protection Agency. Amid a continuous flurry of executive orders at the White House, Trump also signed the first law of his second administration this week, adding his signature to the Laken Riley Act.

On the hearing side, FBI nominee Kash Patel, HHS nominee RFK Jr., and director of national intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard went through their respective committee grillings. Patel kicked it off Thursday, and right away the Judiciary Committee descended into a clown show. He handled himself well, kept Republican members from a panicked rout over January 6, and is cruising toward confirmation.

RFK also did well in his second day of hearings. Republicans may find the subject matter challenging, but his broad voter support across both parties appears to be gradually influencing the upper chamber.

As usual, the problem is the Grand Old Party itself: The hearing ended with a battle between Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) over the necessity of vaccinating newborn babies against hepatitis B, a disease that most commonly afflicts prostitutes and drug addicts.

Kennedy is not a politician, and it showed. He didn’t shy from confrontation and didn’t shy from showing senators he's smarter than they are. They don't like that much.

Then it was Gabbard’s turn. She taught a master class in discipline in her testimony Thursday. The Senate Intelligence Committee is also a different animal, where senators are even haughtier than normal. That’s in part a relic of a pre-nuclear, pre-Trump time when the committee was largely bipartisan, but it can still be seen in the more serious nature of the questions and the manners more often on display.

Gabbard’s confirmation is still uncertain. Going in, her biggest problem was Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), but Gabbard seemed to satisfy her questioning early in the hearing. Senators were particularly riled up over her past support for Edward Snowden and continued refusal to call him a traitor (even while calling him a criminal and committing to steps making sure there are no repeats). She had it out with Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) in particular.

Indiana also happens to be the home of former Vice President Mike Pence, who has been nipping at the heels of Gabbard and Kennedy for weeks. Does Young, a sitting senator, feel the same urgency as a man whose political career is over to attack the most popular Republican president in decades? The kind of man who doesn’t forget double-crosses? That’s more doubtful.

The harsh reality of the D.C. fights on Thursday, however, is that most Americans weren’t even watching. It might come as a surprise in such a self-important town, but across the line, viewers were glued to coverage of the awful and deadly crash at Reagan National Airport, less than three miles from the U.S. Capitol. Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, NBC? Every one of them kept the cameras on the Potomac all day. So much for all the grandstanding.

So it’s not all clear sailing. Next come the actual confirmation votes. Gabbard and RFK are all but guaranteed to get three Republican nays, forcing Vice President JD Vance to cast the deciding ballot. A fourth — required to sink the nomination — is less likely but still certainly possible.

But it’s not just nominations. The lower chamber of Congress is supposed to be plowing ahead on funding the president’s agenda, but House Republican leadership hasn’t produced a plan for passing deportation and border funding or reauthorizing the Trump tax cuts for families and businesses. And that is after three days of planning in Miami! Leaders claim everything is going according to schedule, but no one believes them.

So nothing is set, but nothing is screwed up yet, either. That’s just how it goes, isn’t it?

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