Tulsi Gabbard, President Donald Trump’s choice to be the Director of National Intelligence, arrives to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee for her confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill on Thursday in Washington. John McDonnell/Associated Press

Maine’s U.S. senators questioned Tulsi Gabbard Thursday about her past efforts to excuse Edward Snowden from criminal charges for disclosing classified national intelligence information during a sometimes contentious confirmation hearing for President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the director of national intelligence.

Gabbard, a military veteran and former Democratic lawmaker, faced questions from U.S. Sens. Susan Collins, a Republican, and Angus King, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, during the public portion of a hearing before the U.S. Select Committee on Intelligence. The committee also questioned Gabbard privately in a classified session.

At a separate committee hearing Thursday, Collins also questioned Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has been nominated to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service, about his stance on vaccines, including one for Lyme disease being tested in Maine.

It wasn’t clear when the two committees will vote.

Collins is being closely watched on both nominations, but there is a particular focus on the Gabbard vote in the intelligence committee because Republicans have a narrow 9-8 majority on that panel. That means Gabbard will not come out of the committee with a positive recommendation if she loses a single Republican vote and fails to win over any Democrats on the committee.

After the hearing, Collins told CNN she was still undecided.

“I need to review the entire hearing,” she said. “I want to make a careful decision.”

At the hearing, Collins did little to break through Gabbard’s prepared answers and talking points during her five minutes of questioning. She did not ask follow-up questions or press Gabbard to explain inconsistencies.

King, on the other hand, repeatedly pressed the nominee on her past efforts to make it harder for authorities to prosecute people under the nation’s espionage laws and drop criminal charges against Snowden, who is now in Russia.

As a Democratic lawmaker, Gabbard sponsored a bill that would have dropped the criminal charges against Snowden. She cosponsored the bill with former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Florida, who was nominated by Trump to be attorney general but withdrew amid criticism, including from Collins.

“Edward Snowden does stand out as having done particularly grave harm to our national security by revealing top secret information including sensitive sources and methods, thus jeopardizing agents in the field,” Collins said. “If confirmed, would you support or recommend a pardon or any kind of clemency for Edward Snowden?”

Gabbard said she would not recommend any actions on Snowden, an answer that appeared to satisfy Collins.

In response to others’ questions, Gabbard told senators her bill was aimed at exposing abuses of U.S. intelligence gathering and how it can infringe on the civil liberties of Americans. She was questioned about her past statements, including once in which she called Snowden a “brave whistleblower” and about her conversion to now supporting the country’s warrantless wiretapping program, which senators said accounts for 60% of the information in the president’s daily briefing.

King pressed her about whether she had reviewed a bipartisan report about Snowden leaks before submitting her bill. That report described the leak as “the largest and most damaging public release of classified information in U.S. history” and determined that most of the classified information taken and released had nothing to do with an infringement on civil liberties of Americans, he said.

Gabbard said she never had access to a classified version of the report and that the facts stated in her bill were based on publicly available information. She conceded that she was aware of the report’s conclusions, though.

“He should not have released all of that information that caused that harm — there is no question about that,” Gabbard said, noting Snowden took 1 million documents.

King pressed Gabbard about why she partnered with Gaetz on a bill that would essentially pardon him for “enormous compromises of our national security.”

“I focused on raising concerns around egregious, illegal and unconstitutional programs that our government was conducting that was clearly violating Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights,” Gabbard said.

“If confirmed as director of national intelligence, I would take seriously the responsibility to protect our nation’s secrets,” she said. “I have a specific action plan in place to make sure there isn’t another Snowden-type leak in the future.”

During a brief follow-up round of questioning, King expressed concern that Gabbard wasn’t swayed by a heavily redacted five-page section of the public version of the bipartisan report on the Snowden leaks under the heading “what damage did it cause.”

“I would have thought that would have raised a question in your mind,” King said. “I’m concerned about your apparent lack of interest in the scope of Edward Snowden’s traitorous activity.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump’s choice to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, appears before the Senate Finance Committee for his confirmation hearing, at the Capitol in Washington on Wednesday. Ben Curtis/Associated Press

Collins also serves on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which held a simultaneous confirmation hearing for Kennedy Thursday morning.

During that hearing, Collins pushed back on Kennedy’s desire to devote more funding from infectious diseases towards chronic disease prevention, noting that it’s Congress that sets the funding levels, not the department. Collins took over as chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee earlier this month.

Collins also asked Kennedy about his past criticisms of vaccines. She said physicians are worried that if more children continue to go unvaccinated then children who cannot receive a vaccine because of compromised immune systems will be put at risk, as so-called herd immunity is lost.

“All vaccines are dropping and they’re doing that because people don’t believe the government any more,” Kennedy replied. “We need good science, and I’m going to bring that in. I’m going to restore trust and that will restore vaccine uptake.”

Collins did not challenge Kennedy on his well-documented views against vaccines, including his promotion of widely debunked claims that vaccines cause autism.

Instead, Collins asked whether he would oppose ongoing efforts to develop and test a vaccine for Lyme disease, which she said is important in Maine given the number of people who work outdoors.

Kennedy said he and his immediate family members have all had Lyme disease in the past and he would not block vaccine efforts.

After the hearing, a Collins aide said the senator didn’t spend more time probing Kennedy’s anti-vaccine past because it had already been covered extensively. The aide declined to comment on whether Collins believes Kennedy’s past positions have contributed to the lack of trust he claimed was leading to a drop in vaccination rates.

Collins is facing pressure from Maine health care advocates and professionals to oppose the nomination. On Thursday, 355 health care professionals in Maine submitted a letter urging Collins to reject Kennedy, calling him a “dangerous nominee.”

“Every day we see how health misinformation has eroded the trust between provider and patient,” the group said. “RFK Jr, founder of Children’s Health Defense, the most damaging anti-vaccine organization in the world, has been fueling vaccine skepticism for decades.”

Kennedy’s appearance before the Senate health committee came a day after a hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, in which he struggled to show an understanding of the complex health programs that he would oversee as secretary, including Medicare and Medicaid.

At one point, he criticized Medicaid as having high premiums, when most people don’t pay any. And he described it as being fully funded by the federal government, when states share in the costs.

Kennedy was also called to account for his anti-vaccine views, as well as his past support for abortion access. The former is a concern for Democrats, while the latter concerns some Republicans, a dynamic that puts his confirmation in a perilous position.

Kennedy has falsely linked vaccines to autism, which studies have widely and repeatedly debunked. Kennedy told senators that he’s not anti-vaccine and instead described his views as “pro-safety.”

Democrats also highlighted his about face on abortion.

Kennedy set aside his past support for a woman’s right to choose after dropping his own bid for the White House and endorsed Trump. He told senators that he now shares Trump’s view that every abortion is “a tragedy” and that “we cannot be a moral nation if we have 1.2 million abortion a year.”