Dan Sullivan on Cabinet Confirmations: Hegseth, Noem and Kennedy, and What Their Agencies Did to Alaska

On January 24, 2025, Dan Sullivan voted to confirm Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense. The Senate split 50 to 50 and the Vice President broke the tie, so Hegseth would not have been confirmed without Sullivan. Under Hegseth the United States has fought a war with Iran since February 28, 2026 in which at least 21 service members have died and 865 service members have been wounded. Sullivan also voted to confirm Kristi Noem and Markwayne Mullin at Homeland Security, whose department held nearly 70,000 people in ICE detention by March 2026, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at Health and Human Services, whose CDC lost 30%, or more than 3,800 employees.

In Alaska, the officials Sullivan confirmed denied the state's request for full federal payment of Typhoon Halong recovery, leaving the state covering the remaining 25%, and Kennedy's grant cancellations led the state to lay off 30 public health employees.

The Officials Dan Sullivan Voted to Confirm and What Their Agencies Did

• Sullivan Cast One of the 50 Votes That Confirmed Pete Hegseth, Who Has Led the War With Iran. On January 24, 2025, Dan Sullivan voted to confirm Hegseth as secretary of defense; the vote was 50 to 50 and the Vice President broke the tie. That day Sullivan said, "I am confident Mr. Hegseth will work to refocus our military on lethality, warfighting and peace through strength." Since the war with Iran began, at least 21 service members have died and 865 have been wounded, and the Pentagon put the cost at $43.6 billion as of September 2026. Before strikes in Yemen in March 2025, Hegseth sent the quantity and strike times of manned U.S. aircraft over hostile territory over Signal on his personal phone, which the inspector general found broke Pentagon policy.
• Sullivan Voted to Confirm the Homeland Security Leaders Under Whom Detention and Deaths Rose. Sullivan voted to confirm Kristi Noem as secretary of homeland security on January 25, 2025, Rodney Scott as commissioner of Customs and Border Protection on June 18, 2025, and Markwayne Mullin as Noem's successor on March 23, 2026. Nearly 70,000 people were in ICE detention by March 2026, and last year, ICE recorded 31 detainee deaths, a two-decade high. In Minneapolis in January 2026 an ICE officer killed Renee Good and Border Patrol agents killed Alex Pretti, and the county medical examiner listed her death as a homicide and ruled Pretti's death a homicide as well. The department's FEMA denied Alaska's request for full federal payment of Typhoon Halong recovery under Noem and denied the state's appeal under Mullin.
• Sullivan Voted to Confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Whose HHS Cut the CDC and Rewrote Vaccine Policy. On February 13, 2025, Sullivan voted to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of health and human services, by 52 to 48. The CDC lost 30%, or more than 3,800 employees, between March 2025 and May 2026, and in June 2025 Kennedy fired and replaced all the members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. The country then reported nearly 3,887 confirmed cases of measles as of October 1 in 2026, the most since 1991. In Alaska, after the federal government canceled public-health grants, the state abruptly laid off 30 public health employees.
• Sullivan Voted to Confirm Mehmet Oz, Whose Agency Projects 2.3 Million Fewer People on Medicaid. On April 3, 2025, Sullivan voted to confirm Mehmet Oz as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, by 53 to 45. In June 2026 his agency issued the rule carrying out the Medicaid work requirement, projecting that "enrollment would be reduced by 2.3 million individuals in FY 2027". Alaska's Department of Health projected that only 50% of the individuals subject to manual reporting (9,452 individuals) would lose coverage in its lowest scenario.
• Sullivan Voted to Confirm Marco Rubio, Who Ran USAID as It Was Shut Down. On January 20, 2025, Sullivan voted to confirm Marco Rubio as secretary of state. As acting head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Rubio announced the cancellation of 83% of programs funded by U.S. Agency for International Development, cuts a Lancet study projected could result in more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030.
• Sullivan Cast One of the 50 Votes That Made Todd Blanche Attorney General. Sullivan voted to confirm Pam Bondi as attorney general on February 4, 2025, Todd Blanche as deputy attorney general on March 5, 2025, and Blanche as attorney general on August 8, 2026, a 50-49 vote that would have failed without him. Their department's release of the Epstein files had thousands of redaction failures on behalf of nearly 100 individual survivors, its cases against the president's critics mostly failed (Protect Democracy), a judge found Trump's IRS lawsuit that Blanche's department settled was brought for an improper purpose, and in October 2026 it sued to block certification of Alaska's U.S. Senate result if Sullivan's opponent wins.
• Sullivan Voted to Confirm Kash Patel and Emil Bove, Who Purged Investigators of Trump and January 6. Sullivan voted to confirm Kash Patel as FBI director on February 20, 2025 and Emil Bove to a lifetime appeals court seat on July 29, 2025, a 50-49 vote that would have failed without him. Patel's FBI fired special agents who worked on Jack Smith's probe into Trump, and Bove, as acting deputy attorney general, had ordered the firings of the Jan. 6 prosecutors.
• Sullivan Voted to Confirm the Civil Rights Chief Whose Division Collected Alaska's Voter File. On April 3, 2025, Sullivan voted to confirm Harmeet Dhillon to lead the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. The staff of its voting section dwindled from approximately 30 lawyers down to about 6, and Alaska is one of the states that gave their full voter files to the DOJ under the division's demands.
• Sullivan Voted to Confirm Russell Vought, Who Directed Federal Layoffs and Canceled Funds Congress Approved. On February 6, 2025, Sullivan voted to confirm Russell Vought as budget director, by 53 to 47. In August 2026 the government workforce was 264,000 employees smaller, a decrease of about 12%, than in September 2024, and Vought's office used a pocket rescission in which it clawed back $4.9 billion in funding Congress had approved.
• Sullivan Voted to Confirm the Trade and Treasury Officials Behind the Tariffs. Sullivan voted to confirm Jamieson Greer as trade representative on February 26, 2025 and Scott Bessent as treasury secretary on January 27, 2025. Tariffs now cost households about $1,100 annually under current law, the Yale Budget Lab estimates, and executive tariffs have cost Alaska the equivalent to $420 per Alaska household since January 2025, according to the National Taxpayers Union Foundation's tracker.
• Sullivan Voted to Confirm the Immigration Services Director Who Runs the New Visa Lottery. On July 15, 2025, Sullivan voted to confirm Joseph Edlow as director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. His agency runs a wage-weighted H-1B lottery under which the number of wage level I petitions will decrease by 10,099 annually, and it collected a $100,000 charge on new H-1B petitions until a judge struck down the fee on June 8, 2026; while it was in force, Alaska districts such as Kodiak, with over 30 teachers hired abroad, faced the charge.
• Sullivan Voted to Confirm the Leaders of the VA, Social Security and Education as They Lost Thousands of Staff. Sullivan voted to confirm Doug Collins at Veterans Affairs on February 4, 2025, Linda McMahon at Education on March 3, 2025 and Frank Bisignano at Social Security on May 6, 2025. The VA was on pace to reduce total VA staff by nearly 30,000 employees in 2025, Social Security cut roughly 7,500 employees (13 percent) in a year, and the Education Department terminated grants for Alaska Native student programs, a cut KTOO reported is estimated at $2.9 million at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

What the Agencies Run by Officials Dan Sullivan Confirmed Did in Alaska

• Disaster recovery. After the October 2025 storm from ex-Typhoon Halong, FEMA denied full disaster funding for western Alaska, and on May 31, 2026 it denied the state's appeal; the denial leaves the federal government covering 75%, and the state covering the remaining 25%.
• Medicaid coverage. Alaska's Department of Health counted 61,169 Medicaid expansion enrollees ages 19 to 64 who fall under the work requirement Oz's agency is carrying out, and projected that at least 9,452 of them would lose coverage.
• Public health. The state health department abruptly laid off 30 public health employees after the federal government canceled grants under Kennedy.
• War costs. Regular gasoline in Alaska rose 38.1 percent between February 18 and August 20, 2026, as the war Hegseth leads continued.

Frequently Asked Questions About Dan Sullivan on Cabinet confirmations

Last updated: 2026-10-25

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