Welcome to the NewsHour. Two of President Trump's most embattled cabinet nominees cleared major procedural hurdles today on their paths to confirmation.

The Senate Finance Committee voted along party lines to send to the full Senate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

And the Senate Intelligence Committee advanced

former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard's nomination to serve as Director of National Intelligence.

Our congressional correspondent, Lisa Desjardin, is following the cabinet confirmation process

and joins us now. So Lisa, let's start with HHS first, since that's one of the largest federal

agencies. What does the Kennedy Committee

vote mean? Unless something changes, RFK Jr. will become the next HHS secretary. He has the

votes to be confirmed at this point. There are enough votes on the Senate floor for him.

Now, this is a 71-year-old, of course, who does not have a history or expertise in health care other than the fact that he's an environmental lawyer and he spent years researching and writing about health care.

He does deserve credit for changing the conversation about processed foods, and that's what we heard during his Senate confirmation hearings.

But at the same time, there are open doubts about his views and his past

statements about the safety of vaccines, his refusal to accept studies that have shown there

is no link between autism and vaccines.

And that raised real concerns about him.

You could hear these two very sharply view, different views of him in committee today.

I, for one, think that it is time to put a disruptor in.

It is time to put somebody in there that's going to go wild.

But there are areas where I think that's exactly what we need, and there are areas of

health and human services that if you touch the gold standard for the NIH and the CDC,

then I'll have a problem with that nominee, and we'll bring that up during oversight.

Mr. Kennedy appears more obsessed in chasing conspiracy theories than chasing solutions to lower health care costs for working families in Georgia and to make sure that we are protected. The last thing

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