WASHINGTON >> After early signs that some of President Donald Trump’s unconventional Cabinet choices could be derailed by Republicans alarmed at their character, disturbing paper trails and lack of expertise, the resistance has collapsed.

One after the other Tuesday, Republican senators fell into line behind two of the president’s most baggage-laden nominees, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for health secretary and Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence.

The party-line committee votes to send both nominees to the floor for likely confirmation next week provided the clearest evidence yet that Trump’s pressure tactics and the threat of a barrage of abuse by his allies against would-be defectors had sapped whatever remained of a GOP impulse to balk. And they suggested a broader impulse among Republicans on Capitol Hill — even the few who have maintained some degree of independence from Trump — to shrink from confrontation with him and allow him to have his way at the dawn of his second term.

The decision by Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., to back Gabbard, in conjunction with the announcement by Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., that he was setting aside personal reservations to back Kennedy, marked the end of any serious effort to stop Trump’s most divisive nominees.

Together with the narrowest possible confirmation of Pete Hegseth last month as secretary of defense, the moves constituted a surrender by Senate Republicans to Trump even in the face of serious qualms among some in the GOP. Another nominee who had initially been seen as facing a potentially difficult path to confirmation, Kash Patel for director of the FBI, has impressed Republicans and seems headed for approval as well despite strong Democratic objections.

Though a handful of senators had walked up to the edge of rejecting one or another nominee, putting their confirmations in peril, all but a very few backtracked in the end, issuing statements that they had received promises and assurances from both the nominee and the White House that had eliminated their chief concerns.

The nomination of Gabbard had also run into trouble, particularly for her past push for a pardon for Edward Snowden, the intelligence contractor who had leaked damaging classified secrets. That view and others expressed over the years heightened concerns from Republicans on the Intelligence Committee, including Young.

Most Republicans have been extremely supportive of the Trump nominees from the start, enthusiastically endorsing people they argue have the capacity to shake up a government badly in need of an overhaul. Members of a president’s own party also very rarely vote against Cabinet and high-level administration nominees, making the objections registered by the three Republicans on Hegseth out of the ordinary.