The Senate voted on Wednesday to confirm Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, pushing a controversial national security nomination through on a nearly party line vote.

Gabbard was confirmed 52 to 48, with only Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the longtime former GOP leader, breaking with his party. Gabbard will lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, a role that involves overseeing the broader intelligence community and presenting the president with the Presidential Daily Brief.

It’s the second time that McConnell, who has said he plans to dedicate the final acts of his career to standing up for traditional conservative approaches to foreign policy, has broken with the GOP majority on a key national security nominee, following his vote in January against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. In both cases, McConnell voted in favor of procedural motions to move the nominations forward before voting against the nominations themselves.

McConnell has also been critical of key staffing decisions at the Pentagon under Trump.

Senators failed to reach an agreement to speed up Gabbard’s confirmation process and bring her nomination up for a final vote sooner due to widespread opposition on the Democratic side to her nomination. 

The vote concludes what was a rocky confirmation process at times, with Democrats remaining unified against her nomination while skeptical Republicans had to be won over amid concerns about her past and current positions on foreign policy and surveillance matters. 

Other than McConnell, wary GOP senators eventually came around, despite previously taking issue with Gabbard’s support for government leaker Edward Snowden and refusal to call him a traitor, her longstanding opposition to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, her 2017 visit to Syria as a member of Congress and subsequent support for then-Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and her past opposition to the Trump administration’s hawkish Iran policy, among other areas of concern. 

Among the key swing votes on the GOP side who ultimately backed Gabbard were Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Todd Young (R-IN), John Curtis (R-UT), Mike Rounds (R-SD), James Lankford (R-OK) and Jerry Moran (R-KS).

Speaking on the Senate floor ahead of the vote, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) compared Gabbard’s DNI nomination and Robert F. Kennedy’s nomination to be Health and Human Services secretary to the difficulties faced by former Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, both of whom left the Democratic Party over policy differences with progressives. Thune noted that Gabbard and Kennedy both faced unified Democratic opposition despite being former Democrats themselves.

“I make that observation only because there’s a lot of talk these days about loyalty oaths and allegiance and purity tests for people to be considered good enough to be in the so-called MAGA movement, in other words, the Republican Party,” Thune said. “And yet, when it comes to Democrats, a very different standard seems to be being applied.”

Thune acknowledged that Gabbard and Kennedy left the party over views that some in the party privately, especially on the far-left, hold on “the orthodoxy of the health care so-called establishment” and national security. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in floor remarks that he was “proud to say” that all Democrats “will oppose the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard because we simply cannot in good conscience trust our most classified secrets to someone who echoes Russian propaganda and falls for conspiracy theories.”

“Before my Republican colleagues cast their vote to confirm Ms. Gabbard, I hope they’re going to think carefully about America’s safety. America’s security is at stake. Is Ms. Gabbard really who Republicans want leading intelligence agencies? I’ll bet not,” Schumer said.