Senate Confirms Gabbard, Then Turns to RFK Jr.: Trump Cabinet News and Live Updates – The New York Times

“We discussed Ukraine, the Middle East, Energy, Artificial Intelligence, the power of the Dollar, and various other subjects,” Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post.

“We each talked about the strengths of our respective Nations, and the great benefit that we will someday have in working together,” Mr. Trump added. “But first, as we both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine.” (An estimated several hundred thousand deaths have occurred in the conflict, not millions.)

The U.S. president said he planned to inform President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine that both countries planned to “have our respective teams start negotiations immediately.” Mr. Zelensky’s office later said that the Ukrainian president spoke with Mr. Trump for an hour.

However, Mr. Trump did not say in his social media post how Mr. Zelensky would factor into the negotiations that he and Mr. Putin were setting in motion. Mr. Trump has long been skeptical of Ukraine and has never warmed to Mr. Zelensky.

The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told reporters that Mr. Putin’s call with Mr. Trump lasted almost an hour and a half.

He said that the two men agreed to hold a personal meeting and that Mr. Putin invited Mr. Trump to visit Moscow, something that Mr. Trump also alluded to in his social media post. Mr. Putin agreed with Mr. Trump that “the time has come for our countries to work together,” Mr. Peskov said.

On Ukraine, Mr. Putin told Mr. Trump of “the need to eliminate the root causes of the conflict,” Mr. Peskov said. That was a sign that Mr. Putin would not accept a simple cease-fire in Ukraine and would seek broader concessions from Ukraine and the West before he stops fighting.

The Ukrainians appear to be facing an effort in which they have little leverage. The call between Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump came on the same day that the U.S. secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, speaking at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, said that it was an “unrealistic” objective for Ukraine to restore its borders as they were before 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea. Mr. Hegseth added that the U.S. does not support Ukraine’s desire to join NATO as part of a realistic peace plan.

He also suggested that Europe needed to assume a greater role in its own defense, echoing a point that Mr. Trump has made for many years.

For Mr. Putin, the call was a major milestone, marking the collapse of Western efforts to isolate him diplomatically after he invaded Ukraine nearly three years ago. Ever since Mr. Trump’s re-election in November, the Russian president has heaped praise on Mr. Trump, underlining the Kremlin’s hope that the new American leader could reshape Moscow’s relationship with Washington and back away from supporting Ukraine.

In response to news of the conversation between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin, the United Nations said Wednesday that it welcomed any efforts leading to peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.

“We would appreciate any efforts to resolve the war in Ukraine that would involve the Russian and Ukrainian sides, so obviously if both of them are willing to be involved in the process, that would be a welcome development,” said U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq.

Mr. Trump wrote in his social media post that the U.S. negotiating team would include Secretary of State Marco Rubio; John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director; his national security adviser, Michael Waltz, and his Mideast envoy, Steve Witkoff. Mr. Witkoff was in Moscow this week and retrieved the American schoolteacher Marc Fogel, who was imprisoned for more than three years in Russia.

Mr. Trump did not mention Keith Kellogg, the retired general named by Mr. Trump as his envoy for Russia and Ukraine. Mr. Kellogg has generally taken a more aggressive posture toward Russia than some of Mr. Trump’s informal advisers, and he recently suggested that Mr. Trump could increase sanctions against Russia to force them toward a peace deal.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly refused to say whether he’s spoken to Mr. Putin before Wednesday, although individuals who would know of such a call in the U.S. government were not aware of one, according to people briefed on the president’s conversations.

Mr. Trump has often made admiring remarks about the Russian president, whom he called a “genius” after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. But in the first week of Mr. Trump’s second term, he was more critical, saying the Russian president should not have invaded Ukraine.

“He can’t be thrilled, he’s not doing so well,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office hours after he was inaugurated. “Russia is bigger, they have more soldiers to lose, but that’s no way to run a country.”

Farnaz Fassihi and Julian E. Barnes contributed reporting.

Ms. Pace said that the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, had earlier informed an A.P. reporter that the news organization’s access to the Oval Office would be restricted if the news organization did not start using the term “Gulf of America” to refer to the Gulf of Mexico. On his first day in office, Mr. Trump ordered U.S. authorities to make the change to official maps in an executive order.

“The actions taken by the White House were plainly intended to punish The A.P. for the content of its speech,” Ms. Pace wrote in the letter. “It is among the most basic tenets of the First Amendment that the government cannot retaliate against the public or the press for what they say. This is viewpoint discrimination based on a news organization’s editorial choices and a clear violation of the First Amendment.”

Ms. Pace said The A.P. was prepared to “vigorously defends its constitutional rights.”

The A.P. had issued editorial guidance on the geographical name change, explaining that it would continue calling the body of water the Gulf of Mexico because Mr. Trump’s executive order only carried authority within the U.S. and had not been recognized by Mexico. The outlet did, however, say it would refer to Denali, the peak in Alaska, as Mt. McKinley, a change Mr. Trump declared in the same order.

At the White House briefing room podium on Wednesday, the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, talked about the administration’s commitment to the First Amendment while maintaining that the administration was within its rights to single out The A.P.

“It is a privilege to cover this White House,” she said, calling her own role a privilege, too. “Nobody has a right to go into the Oval Office and ask the president of the United States questions.”

She added that other reporters with credentials were not part of the press pool and said, “We reserve the right to decide who gets to go into the Oval Office.”

Asked if the standard was being set for how news outlets would be dealt with if they did not use “Gulf of America,” she did not directly answer but said she’d been clear “that if we feel there are lies being pushed by outlets in this room, we are going to hold those lies accountable.” She maintained that “Gulf of America” is the name for the body of water and said she did not understand why some news outlets were not using it.

First Amendment supporters and freedom of the press groups objected strongly to the Trump administration’s moves on Tuesday. Timothy Richardson, the journalism and disinformation program director at PEN America, a free-expression nonprofit, labeled the actions as “retribution, plain and simple, and a shameful attempt to bully the press into ideological compliance.”

The White House Correspondents’ Association president, Eugene Daniels, said in a statement on Tuesday that the White House “cannot dictate how news organizations report the news, nor should it penalize working journalists because it is unhappy with their editors’ decisions.”

At the same time, the center’s longtime president, Deborah F. Rutter, announced to staff that she was stepping down, according to an official at the center. Mr. Trump recently named Richard Grenell, who was ambassador to Germany during the first Trump administration, the center’s “interim executive director.” Mr. Grenell visited the center of Wednesday, the official said.

The Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Kennedy Center, which has historically been run by bipartisan boards in the past, posted a revised list of board members on its website on Wednesday that showed how much things had changed.

While the board had been roughly split between Biden and Trump appointees until recently, it is now entirely made up of appointees of Mr. Trump. The new board members include a litany of Trump loyalists, including the president’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and Usha Vance, the wife of Vice President JD Vance.

Ms. Rutter, the center’s president since 2014, said last month that she planned to step down at the end of the year.

It is the second challenge to aspects of President Trump’s policy after a judge prevented the government from moving three Venezuelan men who are being held in immigration detention in New Mexico to the base.

But the new case is significantly broader — and potentially more intrusive — on executive branch operations and raises the question of what rights detained immigrants are entitled to if they are relocated abroad. It asks the court to give immigration lawyers in-person access to the migrants at Guantánamo as soon as possible, and in the meantime, to immediately make remote access available, either by video or telephone.

“This is unprecedented,” said Lee Gelernt, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer and the lead counsel in the case.

“No president has ever before tried to move immigrants from the U.S. to Guantánamo and prevent lawyers from meeting with them,” he added. “In an administration that has shown little regard for the rule of law, this may be the most flagrantly disrespectful action yet.”

A Justice Department spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Any order to provide access to lawyers would create major logistical complications for the military. Human rights lawyers won a similar right to visit and communicate with the hundreds of terrorism detainees the Bush administration brought to the base after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks so they could represent those who wanted to file lawsuits.

The Trump administration has not released a list of the names of the migrants it sent to the base, and it is holding them incommunicado. As a result, the men cannot currently file lawsuits themselves.

The plaintiffs include four immigrant advocacy organizations that say they want to offer their services to the migrants to help them bring any lawsuits: Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, Raices, American Gateways and Americans for Immigrant Justice.

Several family members of three migrants have joined the suit, saying they want their relatives to have access to lawyers. They identified their relatives through photographs of one of the transfer operations that the government released.

The lawsuit argues that under the circumstances, the legal groups and family members have standing to sue since the detainees cannot file their own cases. A ruling that requires the administration to facilitate the migrants’ access to lawyers is required for several reasons, the plaintiffs contend.

Under the Constitution, detained immigrants facing deportation proceedings on American soil cannot be held incommunicado and denied access to lawyers. The lawsuit argues that the Trump administration cannot eliminate those rights by moving prisoners to foreign soil against their will.

As a result, it says, the migrants can still file habeas corpus lawsuits challenging the legality of their indefinite detention at the base, and with that comes a constitutional right to have lawyers. It also states that the legal organizations have their own First Amendment right to meet with detainees who may want to be represented by those groups.

On Jan. 29, Mr. Trump directed the military and the Department of Homeland Security to prepare to expand a migrant operations center at Guantánamo Bay, saying it would “provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States.”

Since then, the military has flown dozens of men — all believed to be Venezuelans — from El Paso to the base. Most have been housed in a prison building built by the Bush administration to hold Qaeda suspects in wartime detention, while some are being held in a lower-security building on the other side of the base.

But while the Supreme Court has ruled that Congress authorized the wartime detention operations at Guantánamo, it is not clear what legal authority enables the Trump administration to imprison the migrants at the overseas base.

The U.S. government has long taken migrants picked up at sea to Guantánamo to be processed. But Mr. Trump’s order signals the first time an administration has taken people already detained on American soil — and who therefore have constitutional rights, even if they are in the country unlawfully — to a U.S. facility abroad to be held in continued immigration detention.

In addition to the A.C.L.U., lawyers with the Center for Constitutional Rights and the International Refugee Assistance Project are assisting with the case.

Earlier, the White House press secretary was asked if Trump had signed a conflict of interest waiver for Musk and if they’d release it in the interest of their vow of transparency. Leavitt said she was unfamiliar with the conflict of interest law that makes it a crime for government workers to touch an official matter that affects their personal interests without a waiver, and did not address whether Musk had received one.

On Tuesday, my colleagues Theodore Schleifer and Eric Lipton reported that Elon Musk planned to file a financial disclosure report to the White House, but that it would remain confidential.

Ms. Sgamma is president of the Denver-based Western Energy Alliance, where she has worked for nearly 20 years on behalf of independent oil and gas companies that have sought to strip away government protections and rules on extracting fossil fuels on public lands in Western states.

Her nomination aligns with Mr. Trump’s vision for the Interior Department as a government tool to achieve “energy dominance” by aggressively promoting the extraction of the nation’s oil and gas resources.

Leading the execution of that vision is Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, the former governor of North Dakota who served as a liaison between Mr. Trump and oil and gas companies during Mr. Trump’s most recent presidential campaign. Mr. Burgum helped gather fossil fuel executives last year at Mar-a-Lago for a dinner during which Mr. Trump suggested that industry leaders raise $1 billion for his campaign and that as president he would eliminate Biden-era climate policies.

On Mr. Burgum’s first day as interior secretary, he signed a stack of orders aimed at using all “legal authorities available to facilitate the identification, permitting, leasing, development, production, transportation, refining, distribution, exporting and generation of domestic energy resources and critical minerals.”

In an email to The Times last week, Ms. Sgamma wrote, “We’re pleased that the interior secretary’s orders were so comprehensive and detailed, but they’re just the start of a lot of work to roll back the anti-oil-and-gas policies of the Biden administration.”

The selection of Ms. Sgamma to run the Bureau of Land Management is a 180-degree turn from her predecessor, Tracy Stone-Manning, who sought to enact former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s “all-of-government” approach to fighting climate change by opening up public lands to wind and solar development while limiting oil and gas drilling. Ms. Stone-Manning, who had worked as an environmental policy adviser to Congressional Democrats and at an environmental advocacy group, also worked with anti-logging activists in her early 20s and was criticized as an “eco-terrorist” by Senate Republicans.

Ms. Sgamma’s nomination alarmed environmentalists. Athan Manuel, the director of the Sierra Club’s Lands Protection Program, said in a statement, “Big oil C.E.O.s already had a friendly face in the White House, and now they have the B.L.M. on speed dial,” referring to the Bureau of Land Management. “By naming Sgamma to run B.L.M.,” he continued, “Donald Trump is betraying the American people and threatening our public lands, all to keep the promise he made to the corporate polluters at Big Oil.”

At least one Republican lawmaker was quick to praise Ms. Sgamma’s nomination on Wednesday. Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado, a vocal Trump supporter and frequent Congressional provocateur, said in a statement that Mr. Trump had made a “fantastic selection,” saying that Ms. Sgamma “knows our public lands and their untapped resources as well as anyone. I’ve had the opportunity to work closely with her on several efforts to responsibly manage our lands while also allowing our oil and gas industry to thrive and bring back American energy dominance.”

“I want to ensure that your companies are not promoting invidious forms of discrimination in violation of F.C.C. regulations and civil rights laws,” Mr. Carr said in his letter.

Comcast confirmed it had received Mr. Carr’s letter.

“We have received an inquiry from the Federal Communications Commission and will be cooperating with the F.C.C. to answer their questions,” Jennifer Khoury, a spokeswoman for Comcast, said in a statement. “For decades, our company has been built on a foundation of integrity and respect for all of our employees and customers.”

Greg Watson, a spokesman for Mr. Carr, did not respond to a request for comment.

The investigation into Comcast is the latest in a series of moves by Mr. Carr to bring media companies under regulatory scrutiny. Appointed chairman of the F.C.C. by President Trump, Mr. Carr has ordered investigations into PBS and NPR, examined an interview that “60 Minutes” conducted with former Vice President Kamala Harris and announced an inquiry into the San Francisco radio station KCBS for its coverage of immigration enforcement actions.

While Mr. Carr has ordered investigations into several media entities, the inquiry into Comcast is the first focused solely on D.E.I. His investigation into PBS and NPR focused on corporate sponsorships of news programming, and his inquiry at CBS News is focused on a “news distortion” complaint. Mr. Carr said in his letter that he was starting his D.E.I. push with Comcast because the company covered “a range of sectors regulated by the F.C.C.,” including cable and high-speed internet.

Tom Wheeler, a former chairman of the F.C.C., said in an interview that the recent investigations by the agency fit into a pattern of using the commission’s power to further Mr. Trump’s political agenda.

“It’s clear that what is going on here is — whether it be Comcast and D.E.I. or NPR and PBS, or CBS and the ‘60 Minutes’ interview — is how can you use the coercive authority of regulation to accomplish the goals of your master and mentor, Donald Trump?” Mr. Wheeler said.

Anna Gomez, a Democratic commissioner on the F.C.C., said in a statement in response to Mr. Carr’s investigation into Comcast that the commission should not stoke “partisan culture wars.”

“It is time we return to our core mission — closing the digital divide, fostering innovation and protecting consumers,” Ms. Gomez said.

“It has been an enormous privilege to work with each of you (and your predecessors) to support and further the critical NIH mission,” Dr. Tabak wrote.

Dr. Tabak resigned at a turbulent time for the institutes, the nation’s premier biomedical research industry, composed of 27 separate institutes and centers that study and develop treatments for diseases like cancer and heart conditions as well as infectious diseases like AIDS and Covid. The N.I.H. spends roughly $48 billion a year on medical research, much of it in grants to medical centers, universities and hospitals across the country.

President Trump’s decision to slash billions of dollars in N.I.H. grant funding has sparked a bitter court battle. And the Senate on Wednesday voted to advance the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic and the president’s pick for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the N.I.H.

Mr. Kennedy has said he would cut 600 N.I.H. jobs.

The N.I.H. said it would soon have a statement about Dr. Tabak’s decision.

Dr. Tabak was not well-known to the public. But his decision to leave is surprising, and destabilizing for an agency that is on the political hot seat. He was viewed as someone who could work across party lines; he had survived the presidential turnovers of both parties and had indicated he expected to stay on after Mr. Trump was elected in November.

Ordinarily, Dr. Tabak would have ascended to the job of acting N.I.H. director during the transition from one administration to the next. But the Trump administration installed another researcher, Matthew Memoli of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as acting director. Dr. Memoli criticized Covid vaccine mandates, as did Mr. Kennedy.

As acting director of the N.I.H. last year, Dr. Tabak pushed back against Republicans’ assertions that a lab leak stemming from U.S. taxpayer-funded research might have caused the coronavirus pandemic. He told lawmakers that viruses being studied at a laboratory in Wuhan, China, bore no resemblance to the one that set off the world’s worst public health crisis in a century.

Ellen Barry contributed reporting.

Mr. Kennedy’s vocal criticism of vaccination made some Republicans deeply uneasy. During his confirmation hearings, he refused to accept the scientific consensus that vaccines do not cause autism, rejecting large scale studies that have found no link.

But at the same time, Mr. Kennedy declared himself in favor of the measles vaccine and the polio vaccine and vowed not to do anything as health secretary that would prevent or discourage people from taking those shots.

Among the most closely watched votes on Wednesday was that of Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader and the Senate’s lone polio survivor, who voted in favor of moving ahead with the confirmation. That does not mean Mr. McConnell’s final vote is assured; he voted to advance the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard as director of National Intelligence, but voted against confirming her on Wednesday.

Mr. McConnell did not have a customary courtesy visit with Mr. Kennedy, and he had warned that “anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming administration would do well to steer clear” of “efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures.” Polio survivors were watching his vote closely.

Senator Lisa Murkowski Republican of Alaska, whose support for Mr. Kennedy was also uncertain, also voted in favor. Ms. Murkowski told Mr. Kennedy during his confirmation hearing that vaccination campaigns had been essential to the survival of Alaska’s native people.

Both Mr. McConnell and Ms. Murkowski had kept their plans a tight secret. Still, it was clear going into Wednesday’s vote that the nomination would move forward. Mr. Kennedy had already won the support of two other key Republicans: Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who along with Ms. Murkowski is one of the few remaining Republican centrists, and Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. That panel oversees the Department of Health and Human Services, which Mr. Kennedy, if confirmed, would lead.

Mr. Cassidy, a doctor, is an ardent proponent of vaccines. Early in his medical career, he cared for a young woman who required an emergency liver transplant because of her infection with hepatitis B, a disease that vaccines can prevent— a story he recounted when Mr. Kennedy testified before the health committee.

“Since then, I have tried to do everything I can to make sure I never have to speak to another parent about their child dying due to a vaccine-preventable disease,” Mr. Cassidy said in that hearing. He later had heated exchanges with Mr. Kennedy about vaccines and autism, and declared himself in a quandary over how to vote.

But in the end, Mr. Cassidy backed the nomination after winning certain concessions, including a promise from Mr. Kennedy to give Congress advance notice of any vaccine policy changes.

House Republicans have struggled for months to come up with the numbers they released Wednesday, and even now have yet to make major decisions that would determine whether it can win approval given their razor-thin majority. Fiscal hawks have clashed with moderates in the party over how much spending to cut and how much more the United States can borrow.

They rushed out their plan on Wednesday just as the Senate Budget Committee was meeting to consider its own, much narrower fiscal blueprint, having decided to move forward ahead of the House given the many divisions that have delayed action there. The Senate plan is focused on increasing spending on immigration enforcement and the military.

Republicans in Congress must agree to a budget outline to unlock a special legislative procedure, known as reconciliation, that allows them to blow past Democratic opposition in the Senate and push through a fiscal package on a simple-majority vote.

At the center of the differences between the chambers is whether to try to pass a tax cut quickly. House Republicans want to, while Senate Republicans have made clear they are happy to take their time with the tax code. Many of the tax cuts enacted in 2017 during Mr. Trump’s first term expire at the end of the year, creating a hard deadline for Congress to extend them or effectively impose a tax hike on many Americans.

But simply preserving current tax rates on individuals, as well as large and popular tax benefits like the child tax credit, could cost more than $5 trillion over a decade. Cutting taxes any further would add to that price tag, and Representative Jason Smith, the Ways and Means chairman, has in recent days complained that even a $4.7 trillion budget for the tax cuts would be insufficient.

The $4.5 trillion maximum for tax cuts set by the House budget plan would require Republicans to rein in their plans. They have already discussed the possibility of extending some of the 2017 tax cuts only temporarily and are planning to ignore many of Mr. Trump’s ideas for additional tax cuts, like not taxing overtime pay.

Republicans trying to squeeze their favorite tax cuts into the bill, including lawmakers from New York and New Jersey who want to lift the limit on the state and local tax deduction, will now have to compete for precious budget space.

At the same time, House Republicans plan to pursue deep cuts to Medicaid, the health care program that covers nearly 90 million Americans. The plan instructs the Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Medicaid, to come up with at least $880 billion in cuts, more than half of the reductions laid out in the budget outline. Cutting spending on programs for poor Americans while approving tax cuts that provide their largest benefits to the rich could pose a political problem for Republicans, some of whom have worried about deeply cutting Medicaid.

The outline also calls for $300 billion in new spending on defense and immigration enforcement. House Republicans now plan to consider it in the Budget Committee on Thursday.

Catie Edmondson contributed reporting.

Her defense of Bashar al-Assad, the former Syrian dictator, and her sympathy toward President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia also gave some Republican lawmakers pause.

But in the end only one Republican was willing to oppose her. Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the former majority leader, voted against her.

Mr. McConnell said he voted against her because the director of national intelligence should not be someone “with a history of alarming lapses in judgment.”

“Entrusting the coordination of the intelligence community to someone who struggles to acknowledge these facts is an unnecessary risk,” he said in a statement.

Mr. McConnell has taken stances against several of Mr. Trump’s nominees, but so far has not persuaded many in his caucus to join him.

Before the floor vote, the Republican members of the Senate Intelligence Committee fell in line and backed Ms. Gabbard’s confirmation. Some, like Senator Susan Collins of Maine, highlighted Ms. Gabbard’s pledges to streamline the office. Others, like Senator Todd Young of Indiana, emphasized her vows to hold accountable people who leaked classified information and to help reauthorize overseas surveillance programs.

That support from skeptics paved the way for Ms. Gabbard’s confirmation by the full Senate. Republicans cited her military experience — Ms. Gabbard is a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve — and her support of Mr. Trump’s agenda.

“She has been a consumer of intelligence for many years, giving her valuable insight into the intelligence needs of our government and military,” said Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Republican of West Virginia.

Democrats remained united against her. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, said Ms. Gabbard was not qualified. He said that in a secret vote, she would have received little Republican support. He said he was troubled by her “long record of weakness” against Russia.

“We simply cannot in good conscience trust our most classified secrets to someone who echoes Russian propaganda and falls for conspiracy theories,” Mr. Schumer said.

Mr. Schumer said there was pressure on Republicans to support Ms. Gabbard. In recent weeks, supporters of Mr. Trump have made huge numbers of calls on behalf of Ms. Gabbard. Some members of Mr. Trump’s coalition see Ms. Gabbard as a key voice in their movement and have demanded more traditional Republican senators back the president’s choices.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s most important job, arguably, is overseeing the President’s Daily Brief, an intelligence summary assembled each morning. In Ms. Gabbard, Mr. Trump will have someone aligned with his foreign policy views supervising those updates.

During his first term, Mr. Trump grew irritated when briefers lingered too long on Russian influence operations. He often wanted briefings focused on economics and trade. He also liked the agency’s insights on world leaders he was meeting, or with whom he hoped to make deals.

Ms. Gabbard shares Mr. Trump’s skepticism of mainstream views of Russia as a grave national security threat. She also, like Mr. Trump, is deeply critical of the long overseas wars the United States became embroiled in during the George W. Bush administration.

Still, there are limits to the office’s power and influence. While it sets broad goals for collecting intelligence, the individual spy agencies have latitude to set their own collection targets and collection goals.

Those limits, along with Ms. Gabbard’s commitment to rein in the office’s work, persuaded Republican lawmakers that opposing her nomination was not worth the political risk.

Ms. Gabbard’s fierce opposition to foreign wars, and frequent appearances on Fox News, have made her a darling of the Trump wing of the Republican Party. Elon Musk, the president’s ally, attacked at least one senator, Mr. Young, who was thought to be wavering on his support for Ms. Gabbard. Mr. Musk initially called Mr. Young a “deep state puppet,” then retracted his comment after speaking with him. Mr. Young denied he had spoken to Mr. Musk about Ms. Gabbard but later announced his support for her.

Ms. Gabbard has said her first moves will be to depoliticize the organization, a frequent refrain among Mr. Trump’s nominees. She has cited the faulty intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as one example. She has said information from intelligence agencies was used to falsely portray Mr. Trump as a puppet of Mr. Putin.

She has also criticized former intelligence officials for a letter suggesting that material from Hunter Biden’s laptop could be Russian disinformation.

Some former officials expect her to halt the work of the Foreign Malign Influence Center, which watches for threats against the election from adversaries.

She is also expected to press intelligence agencies to scour their files for any information on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy that has not yet been released.

The Senate voted 52 to 48 to confirm Tulsi Gabbard to be director of national intelligence, a position overseeing the 18-agency intelligence community and a top adviser to President Trump on matters of national security. Senator Mitch McConnell was the lone Republican to join all Democrats in opposition of her confirmation.

Gabbard, a former Democratic House representative, faced bipartisan concerns about her lack of intelligence experience and sympathetic statements about the former Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad, and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Her confirmation was the latest sign that Republicans, facing intense pressure from President Trump and his supporters, are willing to drop serious reservations and capitulate to his wishes.