Long before Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., took the witness chair, a ragtag group of antagonists had snagged coveted seats in the limited viewing area of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Jan. 10. One said he arrived at 4:30 a.m. to secure a spot at the first of numerous hearings to consider President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees.

“Putting people in jail for marijuana is the last legal form of slavery,” one man said to anyone who would listen, while another displayed a sign stating, “END RACISM, STOP SESSIONS.”

Several people were clearly professional protesters—familiar faces who frequently show up to disrupt high-profile hearings. Predictably, they did just that to both Sessions, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, and, the next day, to secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson. But that didn’t prevent mainstream media outlets from treating the protests as a new phenomenon.

Apart from left-wing hysteria over Trump’s Cabinet picks—one group called them equivalent to “Batman villains”—Sessions and Tillerson entered their Senate hearings facing significant challenges. Sessions needed to bat down old charges of racist tendencies that derailed his nomination for a federal judgeship in 1986, while Tillerson needed to, among other things, assuage concerns that he put profits over ethics as CEO of Exxon Mobil Corp. The two nominees also needed to address key issues important to many conservative lawmakers.

Both men, with their Southern drawls, testified for at least nine grueling hours, with only one emerging with a clear path to confirmation. Yet both hearings revealed how the two nominees might, if confirmed, support or stymie certain conservative policy agenda items in Congress.

Before, during, and after Sessions testified, he received copious high-profile endorsements, ranging from former attorneys general to Senate colleagues to a group of black pastors. Sessions’ testimony didn’t disappoint. He never appeared rattled amid interruptions and pointed questioning before the committee he has worked on for the last 20 years.

Sessions’ biggest boost may have come from Democrats, who failed to land serious blows and at times even complimented him as a well-liked colleague during his Senate tenure. Sessions, a former U.S. attorney, insisted the 1980s-era caricature critics created of him was false and frequently pointed to his civil rights accomplishments, including the successful prosecution and death sentence for an Alabama Ku Klux Klansman who murdered a black man.

The nominee’s arguments gained strength as it became clear Democrats couldn’t produce a more recent example of his alleged racial insensitivities. Instead, they fixated on his traditional Republican views: against abortion and same-sex marriage and in favor of voter ID requirements, the Second Amendment, and enforcing immigration laws.

Sessions, who spent 14 years at the Department of Justice, portrayed himself as strong on law and order and vowed to rebuild sagging law enforcement morale: “In the last several years, law enforcement as a whole has been unfairly maligned and blamed for the unacceptable actions of a few.”

Although it was doubtful many, if any, Democrats would vote to confirm Sessions, his performance made him a near-lock for confirmation with Republican votes. Sessions’ views aren’t without controversy among some conservatives—who have criticized his immigration stance and his resistance to bipartisan criminal justice reform efforts—but he gave even those critics reason for optimism.

When pressed on immigration, Sessions left open the possibility of a path to legalization for the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants. “Enforce the law, and then we’ll look at how to compassionately deal with those who have been here for a long time,” he said, articulating a position popular with the American public but notable since Trump once promised to create a deportation force.

When Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., pressed him on criminal justice reform, Sessions noted the two had worked together on legislation to slash the drastic difference in punishment for selling crack cocaine versus powder cocaine. Sessions also cited his support for the Prison Rape Elimination Act.

“Sen. Sessions has been critical of criminal justice reform and applies a lot of scrutiny to it, [but] that is not a bad thing,” said Craig DeRoche, senior vice president for Prison Fellowship, the Chuck Colson–founded group that has advocated for reforms since 1976.

DeRoche said Sessions has supported other reform bills but acknowledged he’s been the primary roadblock to a sentencing overhaul package that has support across the political spectrum. That could change if Sessions heads to the Justice Department: “Our hope is that we can get those reforms through the Senate while he is attorney general.”

Whether Tillerson would head to the State Department remained a murkier proposition in the days after his appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The former oil executive, who resigned from Exxon Mobil in December, pledged to uphold U.S. commitments to allies in order to restore America’s image abroad. While he avoided major gaffes at his Jan. 11 hearing, he didn’t equal Sessions or secretary of defense nominee James Mattis, who delivered a standout performance before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan. 12.

“Tillerson had a rockier time—tough questioning from both sides of the aisle,” acknowledged Duke University professor Peter Feaver, who worked on the National Security Council staff under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Tillerson broke with Trump on numerous issues, including the belief in man-made climate change, whether it would be good for South Korea and Japan to have nuclear weapons, and the viability of a registry for American Muslims. Tillerson admitted he’d so far only discussed global affairs in general terms with Trump and specifically cited a lack of dialogue on either Syria or Russia—the most frequent topic of the hearing.

The secretary of state nominee declined to recuse himself from State Department matters related to Exxon Mobil beyond the required one-year period, dismaying Democrats, but it was human rights that proved to be a continual stumbling block: Tillerson justified Exxon’s business activity in Equatorial Guinea, despite egregious corruption in the country, because the company “didn’t break any laws.” He wouldn’t label Saudi Arabia a human rights abuser. He wouldn’t denounce Rodrigo Duterte, the Filipino president who has bragged about thousands of extrajudicial killings. He declined to call Russian President Vladimir Putin a war criminal.

Tillerson frequently cited his lack of security clearance to access information as the reason he couldn’t make such judgments, but his sharpest critic, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., argued sufficient information is already public: “Mr. Tillerson, what’s happened in Aleppo is in the public domain,” Rubio insisted. “It should not be hard to say Vladimir Putin has committed war crimes in Aleppo.”

In playing the part of a cautious Southern gentleman, Tillerson came across as someone whose confirmation was merely a formality, yet Republicans hold only a one-seat advantage on the Foreign Relations Committee—meaning it would take just one skeptical GOP member combining with the panel’s Democrats to deliver a stinging rebuke to Trump.

Republicans could bring Tillerson’s nomination to the floor without approval from the committee, but as few as two Republicans could derail a nominee, since Sessions has pledged not to vote for himself or other Cabinet picks. Sens. Rubio, Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and James Lankford, R-Okla., all expressed lingering concerns over Tillerson.

Tillerson assured the committee he views aid as a key foreign policy lever and would use it, when possible, to persuade countries to follow through on their commitments. Although he did not offer details, he said, “Our leadership demands action specifically focused on improving the conditions of people the world over, utilizing both aid and economic sanctions.”

Lawmakers repeatedly pushed Tillerson on sanctions, given his past statements that they’re ineffective and given claims that Exxon tried to work around them in countries such as Iran. Tillerson said he’d never lobbied against sanctions and called them an “important, powerful tool,” when used well.

Tillerson’s remarks suggested he sees the world through the lens of law: He cited Obama’s policy changes with Cuba as inconsistent with the earlier embargo passed by Congress, so he vowed to target them for reversal. He said the United States made NATO commitments, so he would advise using force, if necessary, to defend Baltic states from Russian aggression.

Where law wouldn’t bind him, Tillerson didn’t want to make concrete statements that would tie his hands. When pressed on Duterte, he noted the Philippines as a longtime ally. When pressed on Saudi Arabia—a country where he’s done extensive business—he said he didn’t know if labeling it a human rights abuser would be helpful.

Former Ambassador Alberto Fernandez, who spent 32 years in the U.S. foreign service, told me Tillerson’s approach was the right one, saying he needed to “maintain maximum flexibility when everyone wants him to sign off publicly on their agenda, pet project, or crusade.” (Fernandez, the U.S. ambassador to Equatorial Guinea from 2010 to 2012, also said Exxon Mobil exercised a “very high level of moral behavior and outstanding corporate social responsibility” when doing business in the oil-rich African country.)

Despite the hearing’s focus on human rights, in nine hours of testimony no one probed Tillerson on his tenure as national president of the Boy Scouts of America—where he pushed for policy changes lifting the ban on openly gay scouts—or on what level of priority he would put on LGBT rights as secretary of state. Under President Barack Obama, the State Department elevated LGBT issues to “the core of our commitment to human rights,” created the first LGBT special envoy, and funneled millions of dollars to various causes through the Global Equality Fund. Critics said the elevation of gay rights often came at the expense of traditional human rights, including unprecedented slaughters of Christians, Yazidis, and Shiite Muslims.

Religious themes went largely untouched at the hearing, despite the growing belief that secularization may be the biggest problem at the State Department—which promotes “non-sectarianism” and continues to insist religion is not related to terrorism.

Still, the lines of questioning on international human rights showed how high a hurdle Tillerson needed to clear in order to become the next secretary of state—and, if confirmed, where he could clash with fellow conservatives.

“We need clarity,” Rubio told Tillerson. “We can’t achieve moral clarity with rhetorical ambiguity. … We need a secretary of state who will fight for these principles.”

Confirmation controversies

In 2013 Senate Democrats changed long-standing rules so it would take only a simple majority vote to approve Cabinet nominees, rather than the previous 60-vote threshold. That change increases the odds Trump’s picks will earn confirmation, but it’s not unprecedented for a president’s own party to scuttle a nominee.

In 1989, conservative activist Paul Weyrich, co-founder of The Heritage Foundation, led a successful effort to block John Tower, George H.W. Bush’s nominee for secretary of defense, over accusations of drunkenness and womanizing.

Democrats say they plan to stage significant resistance to eight of Trump’s nominees. They would need Republican help to succeed on an outright rejection, but stalling tactics have also proved effective in the past. In 2001, Democrats waged a bitter, five-week battle over the confirmation of Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was eventually confirmed but politically damaged in the process.

Duke University’s Peter Feaver said Democrats would love to take down one of Trump’s nominees, but he doesn’t think it will be Tillerson. He cited former secretary of defense nominee Chuck Hagel, who stumbled badly in 2013 and still won confirmation.

“[Tillerson’s] still finding his sea legs when he’s talking about human rights,” Feaver said. “I think he will get much more comfortable speaking about these issues as secretary of state.” —J.C.D.