There are few politicians more qualified to weigh in on Donald Trump’s cage-rattling nominations of Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Hegseth than Rep. Elissa Slotkin, the Democratic senator-elect from Michigan—a blue wall state, notably, that Kamala Harris lost. A former C.I.A. analyst and Department of Defense official, Slotkin has endured the confirmation process, herself, and offered an extremely candid opinion on the “character and competence” required to run those agencies—and the potentially life-or-death consequences if the Senate gets it wrong. In this lightly edited conversation, Slotkin discusses her fears of a politicized military, how Trump might bully Republicans into abolishing the filibuster, and why Gabbard could be a threat to the very intelligence apparatus she’s seeking to lead.